etxkgh

If he suffers from a weight problem advice him to drink water !

However, the department would continue with its close-circuit television monitoring of staff and inmates at the capital's five main prisons, including the Central Prison for Female Inmates, Klong Prem Prison, Bangkok Remand Prison, the Central Rehabilitation Prison and Bangkwang Prison.

I wonder if that will include monitoring of the womens shower area ?

if so will they charge or will it be free ?

Nordic leaders thank Thais for help

BANGKOK: -- The prime ministers of Sweden, Norway and Finland yesterday expressed their gratitude not only to the Thai government but to ordinary Thais who they said had worked tirelessly and shown great compassion in helping tsunami victims from their countries.

Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson, Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Bondevik and Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen told a press conference last night that accounts from survivors and their relatives had left them deeply impressed with the kindness of ordinary Thais and the tireless way they helped the nationals of their countries.

They said the Dec 26 tragedy had bonded their countries to the Thai people and they promised to help with an early warning system in the Indian Ocean.

``Europeans want to come back to Thailand and spend wonderful holidays here in the future but this must come with better security,'' Mr Persson said.

The three prime ministers were granted an audience with His Majesty the King at Klai Kangwon Palace in Hua Hin yesterday afternoon after arriving in Bangkok.

The three Nordic leaders gave their condolences for the losses of Thai people, including His Majesty's grandson Khun Poom Jensen, and also their gratitude to Thailand for helping their nationals.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra held talks with the leaders of the three countries and asked them for help with environmental and marine rehabilitation.

The three nations experienced high casualties in the tsunami, with 52 Swedish killed and 597 missing, 12 Norwegians dead and 82 missing, and five Finns killed and 177 missing.

The three countries have sent forensic and medical teams as well as donations of medical supplies to Thailand. Sweden also provided 20 freezer containers.

The three Nordic leaders will tour tsunami-stricken areas today and inspect Wat Yanyao, where forensic and DNA test are being conducted on victims' bodies, before moving on for talks with the interior minister and governors of Phuket, Phangnga and Krabi.

The Swedish leader will also inaugurate the opening of a honorary Swedish consulate-general at Pearl Village Hotel. A similar consulate for Norway is currently in the approval process.

The Finnish premier will visit Kata beach where Finnish volunteers are helping the victims. He leaves for home from Bangkok today, as does the Norwegian premier. The Swedish leader departs from Bangkok tomorrow.

--Bangkok Post 2005-01-17

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Interesting to note that the bangkok post does not elaborate what the swedish prime minister referred to when he required better security.

According to reports in Swedish newspapers there are 3000-4000 corpses in Kao Lak.

This new report comes after a team of doctors & investigators have visited the various collection points.

from the swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

Enbart i semesterbyn Khao Lak i Thailand finns 3 000– 4 000 lik.

Det uppger en företrädare för den norska ambassaden i Thailand.

Den nya och kraftigt höjda uppskattningen av antalet döda kommer sedan en grupp läkare och utredare gått genom samlingsplatserna för döda på vägsträckor, i tempel och på andra platser i staden.

Tidigare har det sagts att ett tusental kroppar påträffats i området.

Khao Lak är den semesterby på den thailändska kusten som drabbats hårdast av katastrofen. Det är också den by där många av svenskar som ännu saknas befann sig när jättevågorna kom.

from cnn

Meanwhile, police officers said 26 persons had been arrested for looting in Phuket, Phi Phi Island and the nearby province of Phang Nga.

Maj. Gen. Suwit Othong, Phuket's police chief, said 11 persons had been arrested for pilfering in damaged hotels and department stores, adding that they were refused bail for fear they would continue thieving during this time of chaos.

Other police reports said four boat drivers were arrested for stealing from souvenir shops on Phi Phi while 11 persons had been caught snatching television sets and other items from collapsed buildings in Phang Nga.

Thaksin earlier denounced the thieves as "despicable good-for-nothings" preying on people's sufferings, and authorities said any caught would face the maximum punishment.

BANGKOK, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Thieves disguised as police and rescue workers are preying on southern Thailand's Khao Lak beach, where the tsunami may have killed up to 3,000 people, witnesses said on Wednesday.

They were emptying tourist luggage, looting hotel safeboxes and robbing villagers on the beach north of Phuket island, with most police in the area dedicated to search and rescue operations in the worst hit place in Thailand.

Some local people blamed Burmese fishermen who crew many of the boats in Thailand's vast fishing fleet for a $1 or $2 a day.

"We've been hit by both natural disaster and thugs," the owner of one of the dozens of resorts and hotels on the beach told Reuters.

"Some pretended to be police and walked inside some hotels and broke open safeboxes for guests," he said. "Money was taken from tourists' bum bags and their baggage was left open with nothing inside."

"Please send police here," an elderly woman told a Bangkok television station from her mobile phone on Khao Lak, a tourist magnet on the Andaman Sea.

"All the food and drink I've received from the aid workers have been taken away by those fishermen."

"People steal because they are hungry," Phang Nga governor Anuwat Methiwibulwut told Reuters. "We will send more aid relief and more police today."

Rescue workers have retrieved at least 1,200 bodies from the beach and district police chief Col Aroon Klaewvatee said the toll could rise to 3,000.

Sweden fears many of its 1,500 missing tourists in Thailand are dead

12-28-2004, 18h55

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - The Swedish government said it feared that many of the 1,500 Swedish tourists in Thailand who are still unaccounted for after giant tidal waves struck Asian coastlines may be dead.

"We fear that many of them will not be found," Freivalds told a news conference.

Six dead Swedes have been positively identified so far, Freivalds said.

The admission by the Swedish government, which on Sunday had erroneously claimed that all Swedes were out of danger, could mean that the Scandinavian country with a population of nine million citizens turns out the be the European country worst hit by the disaster.

"The tidal wave catastrophe is a national trauma," Freivalds said.

The government's figures of unaccounted-for tourists is slightly below an earlier 1,600 estimate put forward by tourism officials.

Neither estimate includes people who organized their own holiday in Thailand without the help of a travel agency.

When the waves struck, some 20,000 to 30,000 Swedes were believed to be holidaying in the disaster areas, of whom up to 10,000 could have been travelling independently, officials said.

Of Sweden's big three tour operators, Fritidsresor said it still has no news from 600 Swedish travelers in the Phuket and Khao Lak areas.

"We know that many got out of Khao Lak by themselves and have gathered in the mountains," Fritidsresor spokeswoman Eva Olivecrona said, saying agency representatives were on their way to locate survivors.

Another operator, Mytravel, said it did not have any contact with around 500 Swedes in Thailand.

The Apollo agency said it was also still trying to reach 500 of the Swedish holidaymakers it had flown into Thailand for Christmas, but spokesman Mats Dahlqvist said there were "enormous communications problems" with neither fax or data lines working properly.

Some media reports, quoting sources in Thailand, said up to 200 Swedes could be dead in the country.

The Swedish foreign ministry has come under criticism since Sunday for being unable to field the thousands of telephone calls coming in from holidaymakers' families and for having insufficient resources on the ground in Thailand to help Swedes in trouble.

"Sweden is very good at helping distressed people all over the world, as long as they are not Swedes," quipped tabloid Expressen in an editorial on Tuesday.

Papers also picked up on a foreign ministry statement on Sunday which said, falsely as it turned out, that "all Swedes in the disaster-hit areas in Thailand, southern India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives are out of danger".

Expressen said the statement was made in "reckless ignorance" and showed "unforgivable cruelty" to the families of Swedish holidaymakers.

"After a terrible morning they were told that everything is fine, only to be plunged back into the nightmare a few hours later," Expressen said.

Freivalds admitted on Tuesday that mistakes had been made, but said Sweden would now step up air transport between Thailand and Sweden, and the minister said she would accompany a rescue team to Thailand on Tuesday to take stock of the situation herself.

In addition to scheduled and charter flights, Freivalds said 20 aircraft were needed to repatriate all Swedes from Thailand.

Half of those planes had been booked with tour operators, and the government would ensure the remainder, with the aim of flying 20,000 Swedes home by January 4.

Sweden has also dispatched a crisis management team to Phuket to help the Swedish embassy, which had set up a temporary bureau in Phuket to help Swedes in distress.

An identification team, made up of doctors, dental identification experts and police, was to leave for Thailand on Wednesday.

--AFP 2004-12-29

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Of these 1500 aproximately 400 are children.

Letter from KataThani (KataNoi) from today

------------------------------------------------------

Dear friends of Katathani and all the staff,

Thank you very much for all the e-mails we received, during the last 48 hours, expressing your concerns and best wishes. We have not been able to communicate because our telephone system is down, even mobile phones did not work for certain periods. Staff and guest alike have been great throughout the crisis and we thank them for their considerable support.

I would like to update you on the condition of Katathani Phuket Beach Resort following the earthquake off Indonesia on Sunday, 26 December, as you are no doubt aware the west side of Phuket has been effected.  Although Katathani has suffered some damage, we are more fortunate than most. A small number of guests did receive some relatively minor injuries, mainly cuts, grazes and bruises but no serious injuries. Most of the staff are back to work and do an excellent job in assisting our guests, while cleaning up the property together.

Most of our rooms are unaffected. Some of the ground floor rooms at Thani have been damaged, mainly due to breakage of glass. Gardens and swimming pools have also been effected but will be brought up to normal condition within a few days. The KataBhuri has not been effected in anyway and Kata Noi beach itself is in perfect condition.

To get an update for yourself on what the property currently looks like, please log on to www.katathani.com. We have pictures taken today and will upload it to the website anytime soon.

We all appreciate your thoughts and well wishes and looking forward to welcoming you back in the future.

Wishing you a peaceful New Year on behalf of all the staff.

Yours sincerely,

Uwe Lukas

Hotel Manager

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A marked lack of respect for the deceased , no condolances at all ?

Only worrying about the cash continuing to come in ?

I would urge every member of the forum to boycott this establishment .

All charter trips to the affected areas from Sweden have been cancelled for the next month.

After that there will doubtless be very little interest in visiting the west coast or the islands there.

http://www.chiangmainews.com/thenation/hea...s_15908069.html

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2004/12/28...s_15908069.html

Warning rejected to protect tourism

Published on December 28, 2004

Minutes after the earthquake hit northern Sumatra at 7.58am on Sunday, officials of the Meteo-rological Department, who were at a seminar in Cha-am, convened an emergency meeting chaired by Supharerk Tansrirat-tanawong, director-general.

They had just learned that the Bangkok office had reported a quake measuring at 8.1 on the Richter scale, which was much lower than the

level officially recorded later.

“We didn’t think there would be subsequent seismic waves, because a similar quake of 7.6 on the Richter scale, which hit Sumatra on November 2, 2002, did not affect Thailand,” said a member of the department who asked not to be named.

Moreover, the quake this time hit west of Sumatra and officials thought the island might offer a natural shelter, preventing any waves from breaking towards Phuket and its vicinity, he said.

With slightly less than one hour before the waves came ashore, Supharerk said, the department officials did not expect a tsunami. There are just four people on the department’s 900-person staff who are earthquake experts, he said. Also, a tsunami had not hit Thailand in more than 300 years.

But sources said they did discuss the likelihood that a tsunami could hit Thailand’s Andaman Sea coastal towns. This was also played down.

“The very important factor in making the decision was that it’s high [tourist] season and hotel rooms were nearly 100-per-cent full. If we issued a warning, which would have led to evacuation, [and if nothing happened], what would happen then? Business would be instantaneously affected. It would be beyond the Meteorological Department’s ability to handle. We could go under, if [the tsunami] didn’t come,” said a source who attended the meeting.

“We hesitated for a while whether we should issue a warning or not. It was discussed but we didn’t have a chance to do it.”

Supharerk denied that tourism factored into the discussion at the 11th hour. “I think we have done our best,” he said.

Precisely at 9am that Sunday, waves as high as 3 to 10 metres hit the main southern coastal provinces of Phuket, Phang Nga, Krabi and Ranong.

Pravit Rojanaphruk

The Nation

A little late!

The gold shops on the beach road were emptied.

I havent heard anything regarding robbing of tourists.

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Returning tourists have reported being robbed

latest figures - more than 24000 dead.

India more than 6289

Indonesia more than 4991

Malaysia at least 52

Burma at least 30

Sri Lanka more than 12029

Thailand more than 866

Bangladesh at least 2

Maldives at least 43

Somalia at least 100

www.thaitel.com must be the best , my gf works for them !

Thanks for all the replies , will just have to bring an extra suitcase when I come next month !

Should'nt be much weight !

I hope you do not have this problem with your socks and underware.

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He probably still wears his first rubber !

Macau,

Korea,

France

My gf is pregnant has a craving for cheese curls or cheese balls .

Does anyone know where in bangkok I can get some ??

Or some cheap site where it can be bought ?

The only site I have seen wanted $45 in freight !

Was posed with a riddle on friday and as a rule i'm quite good with them, however this one's a real kicker,

3 doctors are traveling through a desert, when they come across a drowned donkey lying before them, no planes have passed over head in months and the near'st watering hole is over five hundred miles away. The question of course is how did a donkey drown in a desert?

I dont have a clue and have just searched the web with no luck, any one have any ideas???

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Simple ,the donkey had been washed up on the beach, the desert extended to the sea as it does in many places.

Driving Licence has been sufficient so far.

and of course 'angrit' for the Brits (yes, not just the English)

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it's just an abbreviation for angry git

It turns out that a thai girls mortal enemy is the dreaded bling. bling is a leech, but the pling i am refering to is a bling teelay, better known by farangs as the harmless sea cucumber. thai's apparently think sea cucumbers are giant sea leeches and climb to the top of the nearest mountain to get as far away from them as possible, the reaction is quite amazing!

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Take her to Korea.

In Korea they eat them - eat them raw !

Try a big fat money belt.

Foolproof way of catching the girls attention.

Western food is far too bland, I always add chilli to the spaghetti .

No bite to it otherwise.

My wife is Thai and I are going to move to Thailand.Can anyone offer me a place to find help about what I need to do about taking my dog with us.

Thanks

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Thailand has enough dogs!

Seriously though- why not try the thai embassy ,they should be able to inform you of any regulations.

my filipina gf !