connda

There must be more to this. The guy just sits there and takes it, nearly looking as if hes taking whats coming to him.

If it was a random attack would you not offer some resistance?

If it was unprevoked, you would think he would at least be up and running, or going for the throat of one of them

The problem with offering resistance is the immediate escalation. 2 or 3 on one, and if that doesn't work, pick up a weapon and start beating the guy to within an inch of his life, if not outright killing him.

If he knows Thai behavior, then not engaging may have saved his life. Even if he fought them off, as we've all seen before, they end up coming back with more people, or with re-bar, or with machetes, or a gun. I've lived here long enough to see this scenario play out before. Better to be the loser and bruised than the temporary victor, and then dead or severely injured when they come back to finish the job.

I lived many years in Pattaya.

Never, never have I seen Thais men beat a stranger for no reason.

I believe that this information is incomplete.

So the comments that follow will be pure fanciful speculations as usual.

I have had two of my friends beaten one to a pulp by Thai men on both occasion robbing them for cash.

But then again you could be right they did have a reason they wanted money for drugs or who knows.

Fanciful speculation My Butt.

I've know one person who had their eye put out by a Thai with a weapon, and one friend who was beat but managed to escape during a day time robbery attempt. And I've been assaulted. That's just people I know. There is a very dark side to Thailand under the surface. My guess is that those who don't see it live a pretty sheltered life.

Viciously beating a farang whist drunk: 500 THB fine.

Not wearing a shirt outside: 500 THB fine.

Not understanding the relative importance of your own society's problems, no less choosing not to sufficiently sanction the most dangerous and disruptive behaviors: Priceless!

TIT - Open Season on farang: Priceless maak maak!

It's like a covey of kettles calling the pot black.

" strictly follow road regulations,"

Do any drivers have any idea of road regulations?.........

Do any police actually enforce road regulations outside of the immediate perimeter of a traffic checkpoint, i.e., moving violations?

Deputy Prime Minister Gen Prawit noted that a higher rate of travel may have been a factor in the higher instance of accidents on roads, pointing out that overall the public was seen adhering to road laws.

Or overall road laws have no effect on road accidents - maybe because of ineffective road design,maintenance and enforcement?

There was a 54% increase in the number of tourist deaths last year in Thailand reported by Thailand’s Bureau of Prevention and Assistance in Tourist Fraud. The main cause of death was road accidents at 41%, followed by 11% by swimming and boating, 7% by congenital disease, 5% by suicide and 36% by other causes.

Deputy Prime Minister Gen Prawit noted that a higher rate of travel may have been a factor in the higher instance of accidents on roads, pointing out that overall the public was seen adhering to road laws.

Bunk. While driving in the city or highways, on a good day I can point out flagrant driving infractions at of rate of more than 1 every 15 seconds, and that's being highly conservative. In all my travels I've never seen abject stupidity on the road as bad as Thailand, although I am aware that there are other backward countries that are close runners up. The overall public does anything but adhere to the road laws, no less exhibit even a modicum of civility - it's everyone for themselves. I suggest that the DPM sit in front of a CCTV camera attached to a radar gun for a few minutes with a traffic safety officer and review the bizarre driving habits of his fellow countrymen. It's that 'head in the sand' attitude that keeps the mortality rates so high in the first place, and the complete lack of will to actively police the roads using patrol cars. Some things, I seriously doubt, will ever change. This is one of them imho.

But, but, but...think of all the shirtless foreigners that the BIB kept off the streets of Thailand during the holidays. I wonder if it has every occurred to TBTP that assigning the majority of the cops to patrol the streets for traffic violation might save lives instead of concentrating on protecting the delicate sensibilities of HiSo thais from the scourge of pesky foreigners simply having fun.

Nope...I didn't think so either. Nevermind. Let the road carnage continue unabated. Mai bpen rai.

It is apparently all over the Thai language media. Songkran is a religious festival too. What the behavior by the farang here does is further fuel the stereotype-typical view held by many Thais about the disrespectful and disgusting way foreigners behave here in Thailand.

sanctimonious bunch ..... SO no thais visit hookers, no hookers in Thailand, surely there are more pressing things to worry about eg a major cull on the roads,a non functioning police force, strange happenings in the corridors or power etc etc

surely there are more pressing things to worry about eg:

Men without shirts on in Chiang Mai! <gasp!>

A Thai friend phoned me to tell me about this story. It is apparently all over the Thai language media. Songkran is a religious festival too. What the behavior by the farang here does is further fuel the stereotype-typical view held by many Thais about the disrespectful and disgusting way foreigners behave here in Thailand.

It is such behavior that causes the police and immigration and other officialdom to make more stringent and difficult rules for farangs to get visa's and renewals etc.

What a crock of hypocritical nonsense.

It won't hurt tourism in Pattaya, expect a significant increase!

I've seen that action on a stage in a bar on Soi Cowboy. What's the diff? Not enough gun cha greasing the skids. What's a guy suppose to do when the candy has been unwrapped? Make this a theme bar and the tourists will flock. No different that a Pat Pong ping-pong show.

Interesting!

Each week we’ll post a picture that illustrates some of the best parts about living in Thailand. ............. and so we see a photo of some poor girl who looks as if face is peppered with shrapnel. If this represents what you deem to be the best part of living in Thailand, then you have my sympathy.

she also has an extremely bad comb-over...

I thought she had come off her motorcycle and face-planted on the pavement, but no, I guess those are piercings. Not my concept of beauty, but whatever trips your trigger. Some pierced, tatted up guy out there probably thinks she's hot. Not my cup of tea.

"When your Thai wife wants something, there is no negotiating. They make your life great 5 out of 7 days so they figure you owe them anyway"

Yours might, but dont tar all "Thai Wives" with the same brush.

Unlike my Western wives, my Thai wife plays the female role as I play the male. My Western wives? They wanted to wear the pants and a dress, and weren't necessarily good at wearing either.

In my Thai/Farang marriage, there is balance and relative harmony; no relationship is perfect. However, my wife is also one of the most assertive Thai women I've ever met. But there is give and take in our relationship, along with negotiation. I don't think that Thai women are 'subservient', I think that most Thai males are macho jerks. Relatively that makes Thai women look subservient in the eyes of outsiders. But I'm happier with my Thai wife and the light baggage that came with her than I ever was with any of my Western wives and the humongous load of emotional and material baggage that they carried around with them. Your mileage may vary. I'm only speaking for myself.

Comments like these don’t make any sense at all:

"IMO totally up to the individual, whether to wear a helmet or not".

"I believe it's everybody's choice to wear one or not"

Most motorbike accidents also involve someone else. If I’m involved in an accident, guilty or not, the repercussions will be totally different if the motorcycle driver was wearing a helmet and only needed a couple of band-aides or not wearing a helmet and died.

The difference to me could be a few hundred baht for a brief visit at the local clinic or millions of baht and a prison sentence just because some idiot did not wear a helmet that could have saved his life.

Not wearing a helmet will not only destroy the drivers life but the life of anyone he have an accident with and any dependants he might have.

Punishment for not wearing a helmet should be much more severe, at least confiscation of the motorbike.

The difference is people like you who advocate that it's the government's job to enforce safety regulations on people who don't wish to comply, and folks like myself who believe that government should relegate it's activities to maintaining infrastructure and the like, and stay completely out of the affairs of individuals who, imho, are capable of making rational decisions for themselves and their families and accept the consequences of their actions. You like big, intrusive government, I (and others like me) prefer small, unobtrusive government. You probably like socialism; I prefer individualism. In the current world, most governments are trending toward centralized power and projecting their will on their citizenry, ."for your own good and the good of 'society' as a whole".

You should be happy! My side simply voices our opinions; your side is winning global control. My only advice - be careful what you wish for - once that genie is out of the bottle it's gonna be difficult to rein it in, no less stuff it back in the bottle. You or your children may find out someday that they are required to wear a helmet and protective clothing simply to take a walk outside (the government regulates what to eat, what to wear, when to get up, when to go to bed, what gets injected into your body, what you learn, what you don't learn, what you say, what you can't say, and so on..."for your own good and the good of 'society' as a whole"). I don't particularly wish to live in that dystopian future, nor do others like me. Your mileage may vary.

The heat situation in Thailand is the exact opposite of Australia - it is a very humid heat not a dry hear. So swamp coolers make no sense, in fact you'll get more relief from the opposite - a dehumidifier.

One thing you might look into is a small portable air conditioner - an actual air conditioner but small and on wheels. I have one and it blows cool air directly on you if you are near it without noticeably changing the air of the room, so not a bad choice for a couple like you - you could have it on your side of the bed/bedroom probably without bothering him, and also have it trained on your chair during the day. The main disadvantage is that you do have to position it so that hot air can blow out a window so while on wheels, not so easy to move around from place to place during the day.

Might also try just running the a/c on "dry" instead of cool and see if Mr. K tolerates that, it will cool things off a little.

There is also the old standby of an ordinary fan and a big block of ice

Separate question - does anyone know if the dehumidifiers they sell here use less power than an a/c set to dehumidify? I've priced them and they cost as much as an a/c hence the question...

As long as a window or door is open the portable one would do the trick, but they use so much electricity and I'm afraid I won't be able to help myself and have it on all the time. We have friends with a big portable one - they had the doors and windows closed and it set him off. Tried using the dry cycle and it bothered him - not as much as refrigerated but it still bothered him.

You have just confirmed that my idea will work though - blue ice bricks frozen and the fan deflecting the coldness. I suppose it wouldn't matter if it adds more moisture to the air, our windows are always open anyway, but I thought of the ice bricks because they don't give of moisture as they melt.

Songkran was dead today according to Mr K who went on a mid-day hash club fun run and came back through Taipae Gate. Hardly anyone about, all the stages are gone etc so the government decree that it would only be 2 days this year seems to have been obeyed. So we'll be able to go shopping again - I'll have a walk over the market in the next couple of days and buy some ice bricks then experiment with positions and angles.

I love a good project, me.

Konini We had a small one for our apartment in CM. We ran that probably 16 hours a day last year and it may have raised our electric bill 1000 THB/mo if that. They really are only a fan and a water pump. They don't draw an excessive amount of current.

Konini, Sheryl may want to weigh in on this, but you've mentioned several times that you're a woman "of an age" where the heat bothers you. If you're going through menopause and having hot flashes, then yes you should talk to your doctor, but I'd like to pass along the advice mine gave me at the time. He suggested I try to tough it out for at least six months rather than demanding hormones at the first sign I was going to have some hot flash problems. He said once you start down the path of using hormones, it can be difficult to stop and often hot flashes just last for a few months while your body adjusts. He was right in my case. They lasted less than four months.

Of course, it came in handy that I went thru "the change" during the coldest months of a Michigan winter, although Hubby sometimes found it perplexing to wake up in the morning to find me sleeping on top of the the pile of bedding, wearing my thinnest night dress in a room that we heated to just 12 deg C in the winter.

Thank you for bringing that up Nancy - a lot of people are lurkers here and we never know they're reading this. I know 4 people close to me who had breast cancer - all of them OK now, and one thing they had in common was HRT. It may be just coincidence, but it's put me right off the idea. I've managed so far. I'm overdue an annual health checkup, will go in the next couple of weeks and request that when they take blood for whatever test they do that they specifically test hormone levels. Either that or I'll go to a specialist. It may be something else out of whack with my hormones and easily fixable. It might be just this last couple of weeks I've been feeling a bit off, had a water infection and the heat is bothering me more than usual.

Today I've been fine. I was out on the balcony before the sun came up and stayed there catching up with news and forums and emails before starting to clean up. By about 9am the whole place was sparkling and I went back onto the balcony and stayed there reading for a while then writing a long tome until about 1 o'clock, had to put the fan on at about 11, but it was heating up..

Then I just went into the smaller spare bedroom which is my workroom and east facing with a tiny bit of early morning sun so nice and cool. Had the fan on, but I've always had a fan on, I don't like being hot.

Ah, for some 12 degree days. Please buy me some

My wife is pushing 3 years of menopause and is ever so slowly seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Hormones simply complicated her problems and put her on a roller-coaster of symptoms. She dropped them early on in the first year and has just toughed-it-out. I don't envy you gals.

Christine Lagarde and all the unelected EU ministers pay no taxes at all. Sorta like the foxes planning on how to secure the hen house. Free passes for the rich; Machiavellian rules for everyone else.

Perhaps if the Thais want to uphold their cultural values, they might look to their Burmese friends to see how it's done.

burma parl..jpgthai mps.jpg

Changed by the previous military dictator:

The day that 'traditional Thai dress' died and was replaced by 'traditional Western dress.' Thank you for posting this gem! Now I've got to translate it. This is great!

I may have to print this out and put it in my wallet for the next time I venture out in CM without a shirt.

BIB: "You no respect Thai tradition farang. 500 baht fine."

: "But Somchai, I am dressed in traditional Thai style."

Thai_culture_poster.jpg

That would be worth 500 baht and a picture in the local CM rag with me holding up said poster and pointing to the man with a traditional Thai shirtless chest. lol

Only problem with that is that, in the poster above, the publisher is extolling Thais NOT to dress as in the left-hand picture, but rather to dress "civilised" (อารยะ), as in the right-hand picture.

And hence my initial comment, "The day that 'traditional Thai dress' died and was replaced by 'traditional Western dress."

They look appropriately dressed to celebrate traditional Thai culture imho!

Traditional Thai Dress Traditional Western Dress

Perhaps if the Thais want to uphold their cultural values, they might look to their Burmese friends to see how it's done.

burma parl..jpgthai mps.jpg

Changed by the previous military dictator:

The day that 'traditional Thai dress' died and was replaced by 'traditional Western dress.' Thank you for posting this gem! Now I've got to translate it. This is great!

I may have to print this out and put it in my wallet for the next time I venture out in CM without a shirt.

BIB: "You no respect Thai tradition farang. 500 baht fine."

: "But Somchai, I am dressed in traditional Thai style."

That would be worth 500 baht and a picture in the local CM rag with me holding up said poster and pointing to the man with a traditional Thai shirtless chest. lol

Bring your kids to Thailand, its the greatest country on earth with the best system of government and finest education Ive ever seen, all Thais are friendly and will do anything to help you................is that better?

Being a farang, your post shouldn't be lost on the OP as it would be on a Thai national, but I think the OP has already made up his mind.

It should have been shot down.

With what ?

The USS Thomas Cook Aegis radar system was jammed for a while.

I'm sure the Master-At-Arms could have broken out the 20s and 50s and have attempted to manually throw lead at the SU-24s, lmao. The Ruskies were probably tweaking their EW gear, gathering data, and providing a flying show for the bridge and those on deck.

The conflict could not ended with downing the SU-24's with a Phalanx.

While jamming the radar system, the S-400 missiles at Kaniningrad would have been operational. Even so, the region is also defended with many submarines with missiles launching capabilities.

It's uncommon to see a solo US destroyer nearing the Russian enclave. Knowing that the Russian S-400 missiles have a target range of 500 kms.

Weapons superiority was on the Russian side...

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/us-air-force-fears-russias-s-400-europe-14883

What's a solo US destroyer doing near Kaliningrad? The same thing the SU-24 was doing with that EW/Reconnaissance pod under the wing. Quality data is gathered up close and personal.

Sukoi 24MR? Look familiar? Nice machine. Built to do exactly what they were doing. http://www.16va.be/3.4_la_reco_part3_eng.html

Cold wars are so much fun!

I love that word: provocation. It's framed in the light of a moral relativism that is a function of how much propaganda a person accepts from their own country and their personal level of nationalism (and gullibility imho), regardless of what country they hail from. It's much more fun to simply watch the fun from the sidelines and hope none of it splatters on Thailand. Hopefully Prateet Thai can maintain that 'we've never been occupied' meme over that long-term. Trust me, the globalist don't care either, they simply want to move the 'pawns' to their advantage as they shape the world, e.g., "America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests." - Henry Kissinger. And as was previously noted, their are no 'innocents': there are players and the played.

And remember, 'never let a good crisis go to waste.' Stay tuned for news at 6! lol

It should have been shot down.

With what ?

The USS Thomas Cook Aegis radar system was jammed for a while.

I'm sure the Master-At-Arms could have broken out the 20s and 50s and have attempted to manually throw lead at the SU-24s, lmao. The Ruskies were probably tweaking their EW gear, gathering data, and providing a flying show for the bridge and those on deck.

It should have been shot down.

The problem with that is the resultant quid pro quo. Both sides play these games. And they 'are' essentially a 'Cold War' game that we played often prior to the collapse of the old Soviet Union.

If you want to understand why the US is there, read The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski. For further understanding the the geopolitical ramifications read The Geographical Pivot of History by Halford John Mackinder. Brzezinski was his protege.

If you chose to stay ignorant, well, 'Bad Russia, bad!' The MSM will not provide you with unbiased, geopolitical analysis. The uninformed simply parrot what they hear. No blame there imho, it's the price of ignorant 'bliss.' However, personally I sleep better at night when I understand what I'm seeing.