lee68

I wish the British government would do the same.

I think most of the posts on this topic are missing the point entirely. The main takeaway for me is that many foreigners seem to think they can overstay as long as they like, fork over some cash and board a plane home. Overstaying a few days or so is one thing; but weeks/months, even a year??? What arrogance on the part visitors to Thailand who think such behavior is OK and that the Thai authorities should accomodate their flagrant intransigence. Such behavior is an insult to the Thai people, and foreigners who actually comply with the law. Personally, those who overstay beyond a few weeks should have the book thrown at them; jail time and a hefty fine. And perhaps being banned from being allowed to return to the Kingdom.

you guys think you rule the world.wake up!

And whatever happened to that American idiot scumbag ?

last I heard he was back home in America walking around ,free as a bird.

And what was his price ??

don't be so rude when talking of our Great brothers of the stars and strips

Not everyone is great there.

we're still the only thing holding the entire crazed world back for places like Australia and England, weak dollar, slow economy, bad foreign relations and all. so watch it.

All depends whos paying who?

Is it not illegal to carry firearms in Thailand?

Have you been to England lately? more eastern Europeans working there now than brits! thats the governments fault for opening the doors to immigration and letting anybody in.

Asiawatcher!

I like your analysis. One thing that you must factor in is the overall confidence of Americans in their economy, how it will be saved (or not) and their place in it (maybe non-existant!). The latest news in the Rockwell Report is that the public confidence that any jobs lost in the last 2-3 years will ever be regained again is extremely low. I have spoken with a lot of financial people here and they agree. There are even greater tidings on the burner for the future of Americans and their jobs that are not manual, menial or factory types. We know about the export of jobs from the US to anywhere that will pay less and help to cut the overhead on all things purchasable began years ago. So, steel is gone as well as most jobs that could help to serve the basic needs of business (building materials for homes and office buildings) where most of the jobs were lost in the downturn and the subsequent "created" mortgage crisis in America. Yet, as I have been reading in the New York Times, jobs done by paralegals here in the US are also going to be gone in the not-too-distant future! Yes, what is planned is to export all of that work to India, where people will be trained to fill in the forms and to prepare them to be sent via the internet for use by attorneys. Paralegals here in the US make from $15-75 per hour! There are many as the paperwork is so abundant that it is daunting to see how all of it can be stored in courthouse files for as long as 3-4 years after litigation in criminal as well as civil cases. So, if this happens, there will be a huge loss of jobs not only by paralegals but also legal office staff that will no longer be required to "finish out" the paralegal's work, office copiers may be used even less, paper will not be wasted as much (jobbers in the paper market will be lowered in number), xerox machines may be used less (xerox techs will diminish in numbers) and on and on. The fallout from this, according to the NYT will be dramatic as well as a great casualty in the legal field. So, even paperwork can be moved off shore, costing far less (estimated at close to one-third of costs in a legal office). What is next? Accounting services? Tax preparation? So, as the confidence in the return of lost jobs is not there, there is also a lack of confidence in what jobs will be there in the future. Imagine all of the attorneys who have worked for their J.D. who will be out of work as a result of this as well! Imagine how they will not be able to repay their student loans as a result when they go to work for MacDonald's or WalMart for low-paying unskilled jobs. This will be a mess and, of course, I am sure that other areas will also follow suit.

I like with England did! They would not allow a single job to be lost to foreign competition of off-shore exploitation! They know the value of people working and making good money for the society as a whole as well as for the economy. Why the US does not understand this, I will never know. I am an American and I hate to say it! This country is shameful to me in how business runs everything with profits as obscene as possible overriding the social interests of having a domestic workforce that is skilled, trained and ready should any crisis arise. Imagine what would happen should a "real" war break out! How long would it now take for the manufacturing sector to "ramp up" production to the rate necessary to produce whatever is necessary? I would say, "Too long!" There is no way that any country can rely upon others during any global crisis that may require secrecy as well as the best production oversight to assure that whatever they are using will be reliable or even workable. No, I don't think that there will be a big global war; however, any nation, in order to be truly strong, must have control over all manufacturing and production in order to really survive in a global crisis or a global war. With too many fingers in the pie of manufacturing, it would be too easy to get chips from Korea that may be programatically "tainted" or tampered with. It may be too easy to get metals for protective shielding or the making of a tank or battleship or plane that can experience metal fatigue too quickly to make the manufacture of such equipment unfeasable. On and on . . . The US, with its gunboat dipomacy and lack of control over the manufacturing and business sectors is no longer "strong." It is weak and getting weaker every day with every decision to outsource anything at all so as to keep things "cheaper" and not more "realiable" and "safe."

Well enough of this rambling diatribe. I just hope it makes sense to you out there and that you can break down or build up my thesis here. Thank you for reading.

i wonder if this is realy true.if this happend at a airport in the uk or europe it would be on the worldwide networks.nothing on thai news tonight?

Many of you guys crack me up no matter how long you stay in Thailand you still want it to be like home. If this happened in the west we would have killed them all. When ar you guys going to grow up.

This system has been working for the Thais for a lot longer than we have been alive, so stop trying to make Thailand the USA, UK, Germany,or France.

I love it .Only here can 40 armed men take over a parking lot. The cops are ;probably;just having a;coffee;and a cigarette and working out who is going to pay what to who,what % they are going to get,then off to the;karaoke bar in soi bumfuc_k and crack the black label.so civilised

Wet roads don't cause accidents. Knob heads driving like maniacs do.

exactly

I've been driving cars and bikes here for 15 yrs and it just gets worse all the time,cant even put into words some of the stupid totally reckless driving i see here everyday.minibus drivers are even worse than the bus drivers.

Well i dont know were they all are.not to many here in chaing mai.my next door neighbour is food and beverage manager for one of the 5 star hotels and they had a handfull of people there this week.septembers usualy quiet anyway.

My wife told me a few days ago that MAU tours on Charoenprathet Rd are finally being charged by the police. The story made front page of Chiang Mai News ( Thai newspaper) a few days ago. Many complaints over a few years about them not paying the airlines for tickets that they issued and customers paid for, have finally been acted on. People on this forum questioned how they were still in business and why nobody acted.

Apparently the problem was that the individuals that were victims of this company had to file individual complaints but it seems that now that the police have more than 10 complaints they can charge them with a Criminal offence whereas they were previously only liable to civil cases that can take years to resolve and are not easily completed when the victims live abroad.

They feature on Lonely Planet on-line as a company to avoid and some people have written of bad experiences on this forum. It's a pity that they got away with it for so long. I have never dealt with them but I have heard of their bad reputation.