Trickcyclist

Something should be done about the off the wall prices private hospitals are charging. They have you over a barrel if you are in an emergency situation, insurance, or, no insurance. Insurance is pushing-up the prices that hospitals are allowed to get away with as the insured don't care what the price is, once they are covered.

Poor old Sonic. Probably in musk looking for a mate. Musk swells male elephant brains, gives them dreadful headaches which drive them berserk until they either get their rocks off or it passes. Every village should have an elephant bar with pole dancing females elephants to service male elephants in musk like Sonic. Bar fine: 10 kilos of bananas, or, sugar cane. It works for falangs. When did you last see a falang running amok, or, even with a headache, in Soi 4? Problem solved. You heard it here first.Government Health Warning: Give 'em plenty of room when they get down to business.

try AMWAY..bought one there a few years ago...

or if you want to go through the trials and tribulations of importation and save money, perhaps, try Alibaba

If these are tiger bees: large with black and amber body, the local council will spray the nest for nothing. Sting potentially lethal, very, very sore and disabling. Also, if you upset them they will send an alarm call to the rest of the hive who will arrive tout de suite and then..........

RIP

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On an earlier trip to Phuket in August last year Mr Maraldi had his passport stolen from a car rental agency.

...

It would be interesting to know the name of this car rental agency that asks its customers to leave the passports with them and then has the passports stolen from them. I have a feeling that the FBI will be looking into this. How many passports were stolen? Did passport theft from that agency happen often? Is there any record of other passports stolen from this agency having subsequently been used for travel? Etc.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Don't leave or show your passport to ANYBODY and that goes for the alleged Falang busybodies that hang around the Visa office in Phuket.

Don't!

My tap water stinks. How can I get checked-out?

Are the inhabitants of 77,000 villages going to lose their land?

Could be the biggest land grab since since Christopher Columbus landed in Hispanola in 1492.

And the beneficiary will be?

Answers on a postcard please.

Dogs are usually OK here, are allowed to run free, only attack other dogs

in territorial battles and these are just usually noisy skirmishes.

However, if a dog is isolated by an opposing gang, he is history.

I have had two beautiful dogs killed by marauding gangs of semi-stray Thai dogs.

Pit bulls however, are another matter and a serious danger to life and limb.

Dogs are pack animals and are not designed to languish behind bars day in, day out.

Pit bulls, especially. If they are, watch out!

If pit bulls are locked-up and don't get exercised properly they are an un-exploded bomb liable to go off at any moment.

Its impossible to restrain them as they are too big and strong once in attack mode.

They are bred to kill and also to feel no pain.

One was killed in my neighbourhood by a farang using a sword after it attacked his dogs.

The pit bull was a legend in the neighbourhood as he was allowed to run free.

Everybody knew him, he was always friendly to people but dogs could drive him into a frenzy of uncontrollable rage that had to be seen to be believed.

If he saw a small animal he would good humouredly kill it in the most casual way.

In my experience nothing is every done about dog violence unless carried out privately by poisoning, which is a very nasty and despicable business.

Recently a gang of nuisance dogs in my area were poisoned by "persons unknown."

Nobody every bothers to find out who carries-out these acts and if they know, say nothing.

Everybody just seems to sigh with relief and get on with their lives.

All dogs are potentially dangerous but are not a major threat.

Pit bulls are the exception simply because they are big, heavy, with mouths like a crocodile,

bred to kill and are impossible to control when in a rage.

Over the centuries they have been bred by humans to be what they are today: killers.
Although I like them, I, personally, believe that they should be bred out of existence in a humane way.

However, it all comes down to earth with a bang with the inevitable pit bull attack,

as happened with the unfortunately lady reported here.

Thank God the lady is OK and recovering.

Also, thank God it wasn't a little defenseless toddler.

I have been attacked several times, once confining me to hospital for grafts

which took almost a week to complete and several weeks before the wounds had healed..
However, I love dogs and would never be without one.

A word of advice to visiting falangs. You will be befriend by local dogs, stray and otherwise.

When you are walking on the beach they will adopt and accompany you.
When you are with these dogs, other local dogs will attack your doggy friends.

Be prepared for this and always carry a decent sized stick to protect yourself

until the danger is past and until you encounter the next gang.

The addition of ear muffs would also make your stay less fraught.

Clearly, the only way to fix this is colonization. (ducking)

Its already happened. Our colonial master resides in Dubai as an absentee puppet master.

There are scumbags in all societies in every country.

My experience among the people I know here is that parents make great sacrifices to give their daughters a higher education.

Its pointless trying to rationalise her utterances and behaviour.

These are consumer product scams.

Products must work at the retail end for it to be viable and it never does. Why? It costs zillions to change and/or amend consumer habits and make the consumer buy something new..(See link)

http://www.inc.com/inc5000/list/industry/advertising-marketing

Check the revenue figures, multiply by ten and then you will see how much it costs to keep a product on the market or to launch a new one.

The scam will work for a time at the wholesale end and but everybody will end up with a garage full of unsalable garbage.

Ditto goes for muli-level marketing.(MLM)

Pyramid selling etc.

Whatever happened to the recent telephone MLM whereby people paid money to join and were paid for recruiting others? Down the line they were to be paid a tiny %percentage of the customers phone spend.Where is it now???

Incidentally, warn your kids. Direct sales scam. There are variations of this that attract young kids, university students etc. who are desperate for money. Companies advertise for marketing agents. The kids reply and are told that they must buy the product first at wholesale price and then the kids must sell at retail: headbanging telesales. Costs the companies nothing and the kids everything they have got.

These so called volunteers and anybody that would buy into a justification of their antics and their nosy parker tomfoolery should be tied to an elephants tail and ..... ...... .......! (Fill in the missing words and win a bottle of Mekon)

There's a hidden agenda here. I hope we don't find when its too late to do something about it.

Sad and traumatic.

Dare I ask if there are fire inspectors who have the responsibility to check buildings and lifts etc., or, is that a question that invokes stifled guffaws and sad shaking of heads?

If you have the choice between stairs and lift, its a choice between heart attack on the stairs, or,

crushed, or, burned to death in the lift

If you are in a condo you are at the mercy of the service company.

The less they do the more they can put into their pockets.

Imagine the people who have actually bought apartments in these places?
They are stuck with the depreciating asset as the general user areas fall into disrepair and are dangerous through neglect.

Look at the high rises around. What chance have you got in a fire??

And not just condos-how many housing estates can one see around Thailand that have fallen into decay.

Build 'em. Get the money. Charge the service fee and do little or nothing at all.

A lift service engineer advised me once- never get in a lift at the weekend or holiday in an empty office building, in any country.

I had been in a lift that stopped half way below the exit door and the floor. I had to climb out. Just as I got out the lift moved again and I barely escaped being crushed.

The engineer, when he arrived, told me about a guy who had been stuck in a lift for 4 days in an empty office building in the UK over an Easter holiday!

He was a near dead, dehydrated, starved, gibbering idiot, when they found him.

I was stuck in a tiny overloaded lift once with 7 others, cheek by jowl. The lift shifted off its tracks and jammed against the wall.

Talk about panic! Longest half - hour of my life.

Have stayed in hotels here where I didn't want to use the lift as it looked as dependable as a used bean can.

When I went for the emergency stairs the safety doors were chained shut.

We take lifts for granted until the inevitable malfunction.

In fact, we take everything for granted until the worst comes to the worst.

As for the guardians of public safety: a guy told me that his hotel in Khamer went on fire.

On his way to the exits, fighting his way through the smoke and the other punters,

he spotted the fire chief frantically running in the opposite direction.

He was wearing scuba diving goggles and a snorkel.

Or, maybe it wasn't the fire chief!

Maybe it was Jacques Cousteau on a location shoot!

Who knows in a fire?

If this is true it is a most odious invasion of privacy.

What right has anybody, other than an immigration official,

to see one's passport, visa application

papers and other private documentation?

Who, in their right minds would instigate a procedure such as this?

Who, in their right minds would hand over passports and other official government documents

to complete strangers who are not even nationals of this country, let alone

employees of the government?

What kind of pathetic human being would want to do this "volunteer" job in the first place?

Is there an ulterior motive of some sort, official, or, commercial?

Is that why these so called volunteers came to Thailand to hang

about immigration centers all day invading peoples' privacy?

Do we see the long shadow shadow of the Patriot Act in this?

Are they passing on private information to commercial interests, or, even to connections in the underworld?

How are these volunteers selected?

Are they paid?

What background checks are being carried out on them?

What right have they to access anybody's private information or tell anybody what to do?

What do they do with the information once gleaned from the hapless visa applicant?

In the alleged conversation one can see the high handed nosy parker Nazi block warden attitude developing.

Once these "volunteers" get their feet under the table where will it all lead?

Complain to the salient authorities, embassies etc., about these pseudo officials and get rid of them before the procedure becomes official policy everywhere.

Beware the politics of the last atrocity that grow more and more atrocities.

We don't know who did this. Everything we hear is just hearsay.

All we know is that an innocent woman is dead and has left a grieving family who will never recover from the trauma of visualising their mother's last moments and their own irreparable loss.

Moreover, each killing multiples the chances of further tit for tat killings and more sadness.

Eventually, you end up in a Rwanda situation with wholesale genocide and mass migration spreading the problem into adjacent territories and among different ethnic groups.

Then the political opportunists and paranoids come out of the woodwork: the Hitlers, Stalins, Milosevics etc etc and the full gaudy array of Mickey Mouse monomaniacs that exist today all over Africa. We all remember the bemedalled morons running banana republics in South America- the origins of the Columbia conflict can be traced back to minor clashes between different political parties 70 years ago, Look at what Colombians have had to endure since: Communist subversion still unresolved in the post Soviet era and drug cartels destroying the very fabric of the nation.

More recently, in the Balkans, we have seen previously civilised people resort to barbarism.

We can even trace the origins of WWII to this same racism, bigotry, nationalism and genocide fanned by Hitler and his cohorts after the break-up of the Austrian, German and Russian Empires in 1919, eventually claiming the lives of 80m people, globally.

You can say what you like about the European Union, but it has kept the lid on this kind of exploitable situation for over 60 years.

The killings in the south have their origins in social, political and religious differences and can only be stopped by the willingness of all sides to sit down and hammer out mutually agreeable ways to live in peace and it can't be dealt with by gun toting coach potato vigilantes.

Our greatest current human example of properly dealing with situations of this sort is Aung Sun Suu Kyi, in neighbouring Myan Mar and the progress she has made, while under house arrest for nearly 40 years, in helping her country escape the dictatorship of its military junta and at the same time meeting the differing needs of 9 ethnic groups, to evolve into a full democracy and, she is getting there.

As Churchill said: Jaw, jaw is better than war, war!

Is there anybody out there that can rebut the Pipkins input?

Sheeeesh! This is a wind-up, is it not???

That's my boy!

Get stuck-in and the best of luck and bugger the begrudgers!

Thanks JetsetBKK.

The car companies really try to screw us up.

This business of getting locked-out of the car with the key in the ignition is a total screw-up by the car companies.

You could have a kid or a dog in there while you open a gate or something.

Can this be disabled???

Dogs are not to trusted around infants - fact.

I don't like dogs at the best of times.

Poor little kid. Hope she's OK.

Salutary lesson for parents, grandparents and everybody else.

The perennial debate continues and will do so until Armageddon:

Dogs is bad,

No, they're not,

yes they are.

Good breeds,

bad breeds.

Good owners,

bad owners

good legislation

bad legislation

no legislation

yadah

yadah

yadah!

Health Warning! We are stuck with the buggers!!

Did the bump into any old Jap soldiers in there screaming about the emperor?