connda

The should read:

None of the above. John McAfee.

The Thai navy should have hauled it out to Internation waters, contacted the owner. No reply? Claim it under salvage rights, haul it back to port for sale. But instead, they now have to take care of the environmental problem.

Not a snowball's chance in hell.

I am quite happy & content in Thailand too, as are you. However, as one of those older gents you seem to shun, I will discuss both the good and the bad aspects of the country.

It really is better to understand and accept reality than to hide your head in the sand while repeating the manta, "Everything is wonderful, Everything is wonderful, Everything is wonderful, Everything is wonderful....", until is isn't, than acting shocked.

With that said, I'd rather be here than my home country (which I will also discuss both the good and bad aspects of). The future ls in Asia.

I stayed in the village during Songkran last year and probably will this year. I saw one group of kids on the side of the road throwing water. That was it. Pretty laid back in our village.

They should require Songkran revelers to only throw water while standing in a rice field. Second season rice planting problem solved.

Russians can't vacation in Turkey any more, soooo....Turkey, Thailand, both start with a 'T'. OK! To Thailand for vacation.

"I hear have Russian go-go girl in Phuket. Boris enjoy Sasha and Nakita pole dance very much!"

When I was stationed in Thailand back in 71 they had 3 lanes.each lane was for the direction you were going.The middle lane was for passing.No lines in the road.So if both cars decided to pass at the same time in opposite directions it could get A little hairy.

I'm assuming the "I refuse to give way" attitude caused a lot of carnage back in the day.

The RNC just blinked first.

No problem, well, until they bring the signed confessions into court. One brave old women walks, and everyone else?

"You sign confession. Say you gamble. You have guilty. You pay fine, we commute 1 year sentence."

Good luck. It ain't over until it's over.

Time to upgrade to Sukhoi aircraft.

Multi skilled , multi money , multi friends in high places,

Yes, but, It is not enough to win a ski race

Times are , the winner 2.36

the top ten 2.39

the top 50 2.55

Mae @ 3.26 last place , she can ski no doubt , just not to an accepted standard where by she would have qualified to represent a different flag at the games, would she have made any other team

Only a minute off, maybe she was slipping the course, I'm sure the next racer appreciated it

I put a video up. Yeah, she was slipping some of the gates, but to her credit, she 'carved' though most of them, at least on the video.

Using US wheat in their beer methinks. Wheat growers routinely spray highly toxic glyposate on their wheat to improve yield. The government doesn't interfere. When Germany buys US wheat for their beer, you get weedkiller in your beer. This isn't rocket science.

I watch something similar a couple of weeks ago as a white sedan ran out of lane on a four lane road that narrowed down to two lane. Instead of slowing and merging behind the car in the outside lane, he tried to force his way by on the shoulder and almost ran down a motorcyclist. The sedan braked, speed up and pass the truck, force oncoming traffic off the road, then rammed the truck driving both cars off the road at high speed.

Thai drivers are truly suicidal and aggressive beyond belief. Any joy that I had in driving in the US is long gone since driving here. It's a series of close calls everytime you get on the road.

Mussolini had a word for the tight bond between corporate interests and governments. Then you think that governments work for 'the people'. Yeah, sure. But therein lies the unholy alliance of 'agreements' such as the TPP. The hell with the citizens and free enterprise.

So many snakes, so few recipes..... I once had a snake soup in HK, still remember the taste....

Good or bad?

I wouldn't kill anything for fun (recently caught and released and monocled cobra from my garden) but happy to eat things as long as they aren't endangered,

I hear cobra is pretty tasty, like rattlesnake, but better.

Remember Steve....the guy who got spiked in the heart while filming/playing with a Sting Ray? You might be better off filming gophers.

Careful...venom and cameras are like drinking and driving.

Steve made it a habit to claim that he had never been envenomated while working with snakes. But, different species, and one screw up, and the rest is history.

It depends. GREXIT or no GREXIT. If the 'little people' say, "GREXIT", they will be punished.

Opening scene of The X Files Season 10 Episode 7.

Ceasefire can only come with the dismembering of ISIL, but this will not happen.

As much as media wants you to believe that , there are few other players who control the situation.

ISil could be easily eliminated if said players stopped to support it one way or another.

Just look at the facts , moment Kurds start to advance to push out isil, turkey bombs the crap out of them.

The moment Russia starts to cut off oil supply chain , Turks take out Russian jet .

Then all over sudden Saudi want to send army after almost 3 years of " silence "

What most people don't understand, is that last weekend, the world was on the brink of a crisis no less dire than the Cuban Missile Crisis. Someone in the West 'blinked'. So, not only don't the majority of people study history, they don't even understand current events.

Ask the average person, where is Oman? "Is that near Anaheim?" <head shake>

Yes, ignorance is bliss. What is truly terrifying is understanding.

The Western alliance will do just about anything to prevent President Obama being upstaged by the Russian chess master. Last time around, NATO allies Turkey downed a Russian jet to sabotage a joint initiative by the two superpowers to bring the warring factions in Syria around the negotiating table.

Could the head-chopping Saudis, or one of the other extremist Islamic Gulf states which have covertly supported IS from the outset, be plotting some kind of mischief to trash the peace process?.

And if this is the case, are acting independently or at the behest of Washington strategists, whose use IS and other fundamentalist outfits to bring down the Assad regime has foundered so disastrously - thanks largely, of course, to Russia's intervention on the side of the Syrian leadership.

Throwing the Saudis and their sidekicks into a the fray in the hope of stealing at least some of the credit for winning the phony war against Daesh could be the last throw of the dice for Pentagon hawks. They have been running out of options ever since the Russians started destroying important terrorist targets - supply convoys as well as ground troops - which lengthy US and coalition bombing campaigns had inexplicably failed to destroy.

The US and its Allies really have nowhere to go but the negotiating table. After nearly three years of creating havoc, IS has proved as unfit for purpose as its CIA-created predecessor, Al Qaeda. Even its most enthusiastic supporters, the oil -rich Saudi sheiks, are now seeking to distance themselves from their lengthy, duplicitous involvement with the Humvee-riding bovver boys in black.

Once more, Putin has outsmarted his Western rivals and looks poised to emerge the hero of the hour, unless. . .

In a sinister and cynical move, the Saudi-backed HNC has already begun to poison the prospects for a lasting cease-fire, warning of possible Russian attacks on "moderate" Syrian groups such as the Free Syrian Army (the very same "moderate" outfit, as it happens, that spawned the current Emperor of the Islamic state, Abu Bakir al-Baghdadi!).

Could another "false flag" event be on the cards? One desperately hopes not for the sake of millions of Syrians who have already suffered enough from being pawns in somebody else's power game.

What the Saudis and other Gulf States don't understand is that the demolition of Syrian sovereignty is a measured step toward the demolition of all Middle East sovereignty and the implementation of a neo-Sykes–Picot Agreement that will alter the control of oil producing states in the region.

But nobody studies history any more. The 'Study of History' has degenerated to mean 'What Sean Hannity said on Fox News two weeks ago. <head shake> Well, ignorance is bliss afterall, 'eh? And unlike most world 'leaders', I'm pretty sure Putin already understand the gist of what I wrote above.

I'm not Chinese. I'm from European ancestry. It's the concept that no matter how much we contribute to Thai society, we are always nothing but Outsiders, and will always be nothing but Outsiders. Never accepted. That's simply sad, and for a professed Buddhist nation, it's counter-intuitive.

Do stop your whinging, there are 100 000s of people born in Thailand , second and third generation, who arent recognised as Thai , are stateless with no Nationality .

They have a right to complain about not being "accepted"

Whinging?

The Chinese come with busses, overrun the place and don't behave at all. I can imagine it's not possible to charge only Chinese.

The inside of the prayer hall is well worth a visit because of the beautiful wall paintings. What many of you don't see is that Thai people donate a lot which farang don't do.

The restoration of the temple after the earthquake could only took place because of gifts from Thai people and benefit expositions from other artists.

@ Harry, although the name is wat Rong Khun, it's not a temple in the meaning of practicing Buddhism but a masterpiece of art.

Thais are one of the most generous races in the world when it comes to donating.

They give merit, bun, which is the expectation that they will get something back if they give. Without that expectation, I doubt they would give.

I confuse all Thais I know when I say that I give for no other reason than it's the right thing to do. No other motive. They can't wrap their heads around that. But, it is a different kind of giving that is from the heart.

100 baht now , if they realize they can earn money on this foreigners have to pay 500 baht tomorrow.

I don't go to Doi Inthanon any longer either due to the charge. But once compared to the grandeur of, say, Mount Rainier, there is nothing much to see at Doi Inthanon anyway. Frost? How about 30 feet of snow? Trees? How about old growth timber. And at the entrance of Mount Rainier National Park, everyone foreigner and citizen, are charged the same. So yeah, I vote with my feet.