kutjebu

Move the capital to another location-seriously!

They did; in 1767 the capital was moved from Ayutthaya to Thonburi then in 1782 it was moved again to its current location.

Don't move it.Make Chiangmai the capital .Then the red,yellow and other colors are together.

There may be flooding, but I doubt it will be worse today than flooding that has been experienced in Bangkok in the past. I remember hearing stories of swimming on Sukhumwit!

I've always somehow avoided them (knock on wood), but I agree with LaoPo that it is a "when", not "if", scenario. Every year we talk about how they should expand the city sewer system, manage the khlongs better, and stop people from clogging up the sewers with their garbage and cooking refuse (all those street stalls pouring hot fat, etc down the sewers). Every year, nothing gets done.

I still think that Thailand would be smart to follow Malaysia, and create a new capital somewhere that won't sink and is on higher ground. At least infrastructure can be maintained where it will be needed to coordinate a response if everywhere else goes down.

What about Amsterdam,20 ft below sealevel without any problems?

These guys are in the current government. They are not the nicest once as we know it.

But the statement from Abhisit came not to bitch about the BJT, but just to establish some 'self-esteem' and to declare he isn't just together with them and sold his soul to the devil because he wanted to become the PM. He 'could' do it without them, he says.

But don't wait for the day that he will prove it, Abhisits conjunctive moods will never have consequences, is not followed by action that will ever occur.

He has proven his clean image and aversion to corruption multiple times over. He has proven through his policies that he cares for the entire country in ways seldom seen in Thai politics. Evidently you don't follow the news or read any posts that don't fit your ideology.

He has proven his clean image and aversion to corruption it multiple times over.

Special when you have Newin as best friend.......Then what are you reading......?All the good sides are blocked.But you don't know offcourse.

Behind the silence is the unspoken "Oh shit" as BJT realizes they have overplayed their hand. Abhisit hasn't been PM for two years during the most amazing turmoil because of his good looks - he is also one of the most impressive politicians Thailand has ever seen.

comedy gold

sorry that deserves a few more :lol::lol::lol:

he is also one of the most impressive politicians Thailand has ever seen.............Yes,you tell that to the families from all the people who were killed last april.

What has he done in the south??????Every days killing?You must be a top joker.

A strong yen is problematic.....What about a strong baht?

How pathetic that these retards use the most cowardly of all tactics to terrorise their fellow Thais and murder anyone within a yard of their stupidity.

Stupidity is of course the trademark of the Red Shirt Movement, their leader, the craven Shinawatra reptile, the stupidist and most cowardly of them all.

This most recently banal of threats undeniably bears the Shinawatra trademark.

Take the reptile out.

NOW!

You know how stupid this post is ?

and the man without a brain.Is this your country?No?Then,stay out of Thai politic.

Throw her in jail!

Good idea...with the penis.

Tourism and Sports Minister????He must just come back from Afghanistan or Irak,because they are used to it.

The boring things during the day,the action during the night...

Always complain and complain....When they have two days off,then they complain that they don't have money to do anything.

Be happy that you've work.

Either the story is true and serious and Animatic's question is very wise, severe and scary: How influential are these people, that thais can not find someone much more powerful

Or its a message to discredit the police.

Or its a message to show that Thailand had never been so corrupted.

Or it is someone showing how powerful they believe they are....

There are no doubt types that wouldn't look for this stuff,

but might buy something because it is in their face,

and they are curious. But warped enough to have that curiosity.

There must be a Catholic church in the neighbourhood.......

So anyone heard of any arrests of foreigners that showed up with 20k and a ticket at the airport?

Anyone blacklisted...?

I paid the 20K as I was 9 months over but they let me stay in the country and accepted my application for a new non immigrant O without me having to leave the country. I'm by no means rich but earn more than 40000B a month so my visa was reissued. They're not all bad!

It all depends on what kind of Visa you where on and if it could reasonable be a cause of misunderstanding on your side and not malice intent.

Someone that comes on visa exempt and stay for 3 years clearly isn't in a confused state about the rules - he just ignores them.

Not when you overstay 9 months?????

Zone 2 Parking Lot at Airport Closed off by Armed Men.......

Why is it not in the media?

Nothing on the net from Bangkok post.

I officially forecast Thailand will NEVER recover as long as reds have their way.

Thailand must decide... Tourists orTerrorists?

Malls or Mobs?

Best City or Bomb City 2010?

Too true...

There are no terrorists in Thailand.All on holiday in the West..

Baht up,tourist down.

If a general election was held today, slightly more than half of respondents surveyed by Abac Poll said they would vote for the Democrat Party......

When you believe this,then you believe everything.

is this ACTALLY a bomb???

Duh ! of course it's a Bomb !

Definitions of bomb on the Web:

• an explosive device fused to explode under specific conditions

Its more like fire cracker.In Irak they laugh on this kind of bomb.

Amsterdam is 18 ft below sea level,so what are we talking.

it would appear that the coup leader general Sonthi wants him back, as by his own admission the country has become a clusterfuc_k without him.

Now to the newspaper reports about the alleged bombers admitting to their deeds and admitting to being redshirts, do any of you actually 100% believe those reports? Come on guys, seriously?

If you never believe answers, why do you bother to question, now seriously ?

As for your first sentence, logic is not your strong point I guess.

Never think logic in Thailand.

isn't it amazing how normally the police could not find their own <deleted> with both hands, yet they seem to be finding unexploded bombs in places they would not normally even visit, the more sceptical amongst us can see these alleged explosives for exactly what they are, an excuse to continue with the pointless and oppressive state of emergency that is keeping other political parties down.

Amazing thailand

99% of the detective work they do works on a tip off. They are usually up the ears in the dodgy business, so they are usually well aware of wrong doings in the locality.

That's right.I thought the same.

Mr. Purcell go back to Australia and involve yourself of politics there! Don't come back. You are not welcome here by the Thais and us foreigners. You give us a bad name.

We have already a bad name over here.Read the Pattaya post.Everyday bullshit with farangs.

Sorry this is long, you know my penchant for bloviating.. ..

Living almost directly behind what is purported (by the owner) to be the 'largest thai language school in the world', I have met quite honestly HUNDREDS of thai language students. To a person they enroll in the school thinking that simply by attending the 4 hour minimum requirement the MOE has as a qualification for an ED visa they will suddenly start speaking/reading thai.

Unfortunately, in the 3+ years I've known those students (and many of the former and current thai teachers too); I've never met a single person who came into the classes 'cold', knowing neither how to speak or read, and yet after attending a year of 4 hours a week could do either with anything resembling proficiency. Even the students who have attended several years are far from speaking coherent semi-structured thai in anything but the most basic situations. In fact, I can count on a single hand with some fingers (and my thumb) left over the number of students I've met who can carry on a conversation in thai without having to break back into engrish when they forget a word. Most of those people have native language interference to such a great degree that when speaking thai their structure is almost unintelligible.

IMHO, there is NO short cut to learning thai; no magic pill you can take, no magic method that fills you with the language within a specific time frame. It is an investment of a lotta time and a lotta effort too, nothing more. True, different people learn differently, and a particular methodology may work better for me, and not so well for you, but it still boils back down into the time you're willing to put into learning.

Invariably I meet people who profess to being able to speak thai, some have been here 15-20 years, have thai wives, kids, etc. Yet when I hear them speak it's more along the lines of '2-word-tourist-thai', or 'horse-peak' (bar-thai). That manner of speaking is certainly NOTHING I'd ever want to speak at say, Immigrations, or when dealing with anyone who holds a position in even a semi-official capacity here. It makes me sad that someone could live here in this country, have a thai wife, thai kids, houses, cars, buffaloes, etc, yet never put the time into learning the language.

The excuses I've heard for people failing to pick up even rudimentary thai are nearly universal; I'm too old, I'm tone deaf, and can't hear the tones in the words, I'm not good at languages, blah-blah-blah. It's all b/s because they won't/don't put the time into learning. I am no language pundit, nor do I excel at anything in particular. I'm far from the sharpest knife in the proverbial drawer but I was able to do it. If I can, anyone can, plain and simple.

I've been here over 5 years, but I've only studied thai about 30 months now. I taught myself to read, first by learning the alphabet, but NOT in the traditional way. I didn't give two shits what a letter was called nor did I care what its corresponding word was. I learned by recognizing the characters which (to me) made similar sounds. Here's an example; (And I included the chart I used to learn as well)

Thai has

1 - 'g' sound - ก

5 -'k' sounds - ข,ฃ,ค,ฅ,ฆ

3 - 'ch' sounds - ฉ,ช,ฌ

4 - 's' sounds - ซ,ศ,ษ,ส

6 - 't' sounds - ฐ,ฑ,ฒ,ท,ธ,ถ

AND SO ON.

I learned to recognize the initial sound a character made and the corresponding ending sound. I also learned the vowels and more importantly vowel length (a BIG deal here). Sadly I spent zero time learning the tone rules, and freely admit I've no clue about 'em at all other than the most rudimentary ones. I taught myself to recognize written thai words by memory ONLY;

white – ขาว

news – ข่าว

rice – ข้าว

he/she – เขา

knee – เข่า

enter – เข้า

I also learned to weed out spurious definitions when reading by the context of a sentence. If I am not certain of the meaning of the word I look at the words around it or in the previous sentence. Many times I can get a words meaning simply by ruling out similar sounding words whose meanings don't make any sense in the sentence.

Face it, if you read a word and don't know the meaning, you just don't know the meaning, plain and simple. Being able to pronounce it perfectly does NOT help you remember the meaning, it only gives you the ability to pronounce it and maybe ask someone what it means.

This is one of the reasons I'm reticent to speak thai daily as my pronunciation is, well, it's outta whack. I mean it's totally understandable, but I hafta do what I call the normal "song and dance" (ice-breaker), "Hello, how are you?", "I'm fine thanx." "Can you speak english", "Oh I can speak thai a little as well, maybe we can chat." "What do you think about that?". Now if I do that; to a person every thai I speak with understands me just fine. Just as the thais I interact with on a daily basis understand my foreign accent when speaking thai to them.

However if I walk up to someone I don't know / doesn't know me, and ask a question without doing the seemingly prerequisite "song & dance"; nearly to a person thais will not put the effort into understanding me. (FWIW, my thai teacher friends said they'd never met someone who knew more thai, could read and understand thai as well as I do, and yet spoke such off toned thai. Actually when they said that it made me very sad Although they said if I put in a month or so of only speaking thai I'd be able to dial it in to something less mangled )

When I first started learning I made up my own sheets of common verbs, opposite words, directions, common foods, etc and drilled with them every day. I also made flash cards of every vocab word from my language school, by chapter, and drilled them until I could recognize each word when I saw it. The same with Benjawan Becker's "Speak Like a Thai" series.

I went to a language school for a year and it increased my reading ability but not my speaking. I've bought, begged, borrowed, and stolen more thai lesson books from the various and sundry language schools out there than I care to count. It has taken HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of hours to even get to the level I have, and I've a long way to go to be anything resembling proficient in this language.

To me learning thai is about one thing(actually two things really), but the first one; word memorization is the ball breaker. The second is thai language structure, which is outta kilter from english structure in MANY areas (I know it's still a S-V-O structured language, but you know what I mean). I also think english language interference when speaking thai can send you "off the script" faster than poorly pronounced or enunciated thai.

Remember what works or worked for me, may not for you, your mileage may and likely will vary, there is no expressed or implied warranty, some restrictions apply, call now operators are standing by.

And NEVER EVER forget the thai saying; "Something is better than nothing", colloquially spoken as กำขี้ดีกว่ากำตด or coarsely translated as; "A handful of shit is better than a handful of fart". Knowing ANY thai is better than knowing none.

Good luck, in your language endeavors,

Thank you very much for all your suggestions.I'm 68 and like at least to speak some Thai and the only way is to put some hours in it and repeat and repeat.

Many thanks.

The Red leaders simply play good-guy bad-guy.

If Weng was sincere about his apology, why doesn't he turn in Payap and the 200 guards who stormed the hospital?

EXACTLY !! this is the responsibility of a 'leader' !!

where is that CRIMINAL Payap now ? show up, you are deserved !!

LOL

So what did he do ?

Kill patients ?

Beat up nurses ?

Make people die through lack of treatment ?

They did nothing.

The hospital can run as normal last night and today but IT DECIDES NOT TO, have they been "paid off" to put on a media circus show and play to the TV and other YELLOW media for the "mass propaganda".

More propaganda, just like Silom BTS attack and the claims of Suthep and the Yellow shirts and Yellow newspapers after that happened.

Pure BS.

You see it very clear.The yellow shirts are giving Abhisit support with a lot of false information.

Deputy PM Suthep has raised the alarming prospect of action against those named in the army’s document alleging a plot to overthrow the monarchy. Many people are on his blacklist.Hundreds of web sides are blocked.

Now they let us believe that the red shirts threaten hospitals and medical staff.

You read only what they want you to know.Nobody ask:Why are the redshirts checking this hospital?

Something happen before,what upset the red shirts.

Abhisit is indeed a good guy. He deserves credit .....blablabla.

Let he goes back to England where he belongs and the peace comes back in Thailand.