connda

Three weeks and change to Trump's inauguration. It should be an interesting three weeks. I think the real fun begins after the New Year. Standby...

Who wants to Deny that Joe Biden was a Corrupt Liar? Definition of "Politician" - A corrupt liar. I'm not backing Joe Biden, he's vile and I dislike him, but for the record the vast majority of those who gravitate toward the power of politics are habitual liars who can be corrupted for money to gain additional power which brings in additional money.

But none of them are turning tricks in Phuket.

A 45 kg Thai sex-worker vs a 90 kg foreign sex-worker. Hummm 🤔 Dude deserves to be ripped off if for no other reason the a poor taste in sex-workers. If you want the latter, vacation in Africa. Or for that matter, just vacation domestically in Southern France.

Any farang who has been married to a Thai woman for 10 years should be given the option of permanent residency. At a minimum, the extension process should be nothing more than submitting proof you're still married. Or even better - apply the same rules to foreign men married to Thai women as they do foreign women married to Thai men: After 3 years of marriage allow the man to apply for citizenship. But? Never gonna happen. FYI - my Under Consideration stamp this year is two full months after I submitted my extension paperwork. So yeah - the Thai Immigration bureaucracy in BKK is drowning under a flood of their own paperwork. Consider it an "Own Goal." On the plus side, my wife has literally made friends with two of the women immigration officers in our district, so the actually paperwork shuffle, although still a bureaucratic pain-in-the-ass, is otherwise a fairly smooth, friendly process with smiles all around. That's sure a hell of a lot different than the horror stories I hear about some district where the IOs literally hate farangs which is very sad.

Along with all the other vitriol spewed at Farage, call him a Russian-Lover and Pootin's Puppet too. That will cause the heads of the rabid UK Europhile Statists to explode like in the first 5 minutes of the movie - Scanners.

Like Germany's AfD, the Reform UK party will be branded by the Tories, Labour, and the UK media as a "far-Right, Extremist Organization Just Like The Nazis," after which Parliament will propose that the party be banned in order to "Save Our Democracy" which actually means to keep the nascent totalitarian UK state in the hands of the Conservatives and Labour who can then continue to bend the Anglo public over a stump and have their way with them. Welcome to 1984! - it just arrived 40 years late.

In BKK it is against the law - however, like everything else involving the laws and the BIB, the key is: Enforcement! Or the lack thereof. You can put laws on the books until the cows come home, but without enforcement they are meaningless. After enforcement comes... Sanctions In the US for example, in most states if you are caught driving down the road the wrong way you are promptly arrested and jailed. Driving the wrong way down one-way streets and highways leads to traffic deaths and the sanctions imposed by US authorities are harsh for this infraction as well as a host of others which can lead to injury and death. Here in Thailand, if caught driving the wrong way on a one-way street is a fine similar to driving without a helmet - ฿500 and if you don't pay it, well, no worry. You can still get your tax-stamp. Well if you want to. If you drive without a helmet, or a tax stamp, or a license shame on you - place what you have in a "brown envelop" and be on your way. And oh, by the way, in order to get caught driving the wrong way you'd need to be caught at a road-block, and considering all the cops have their backs turned to you, you can just turn around and be on your way. So driving on the sidewalks already is illegal in many cities in Thailand, but hey, who cares...right? In the meanwhile in Chiang Mai, business owners park their cars on the side walk in front of their businesses to keep from getting a parking ticket. "See - I'm not parked on the street which is illegal, I'm parked on the sidewalk where the cops don't care." <take a video of farang tourist almost getting hit by cars as they are forced to walk down a busy main road due to cars parked on the sidewalk>

Yeah - coffee is served everywhere in this country and making a latte isn't rocket science. So when I buy a latte, I buy from small Thai coffee shops and get a latte which is on par to the "American green logo coffeeshop" for a quarter of the price. Why spend money for nothing special?

Medium to high-end farang food restaurants are suffering quality problems? Color me surprised. We eat out at those places on very rare occasions and the couple of restaurants we rely on are still serving good food. Other than that we eat Thai or we eat at home - mostly at home. I'm not surprised as food inflation for the type of food that farangs like probably has a lot to do with it. The farang chain restaurants and upper-end farang-centric restaurants aren't making the profit they once did and cut back on quality of service. And why not? They serve to farangs who are probably tourists who will eat their once and never come back. And then those like yourself? You're turned off and vote with your feet and pocketbook. If you're eating native, I don't see a problem. The prices of vegetables and meats like pork and chicken are still very reasonable out here in rural Thailand, especially if you're shopping in the local rural markets. People are selling home grown vegetables and produce to locals who won't buy them if they are ridiculously priced. We went to the market yesterday and bought a bunch of beautiful cool season veggies like snow white califlower which were dirt-cheap. A large bag of medium sized cauliflower heads for ฿20. Like my wife said, we'd spend more money on the electricity to power the water pump if we grew them ourselves. The same goes for local village, tambon, and amphur restaurants - if restaurant prices go up or quality goes down, people will just go to a different restaurant or will eat at home. I've noticed price increases at Thai restaurant in small cities like Lamphun, but the food quality is still top-notch, and the price increases are incremental over a whole lot of years.

Yep - and all the foreign grade school kids were telling mummy and daddy to high to higher ground. That is the classic tell that a tsunami is about to hit.

Well color me wrong. They may have actually hit it with an air-defense missile in the fog of a drone swarm. "They shot it down on purpose because Russians are Evil." 🙄 They probably shot it for the same reason that a US F/A-18 was recently shot down by USS Gettysburg in the Red Sea. With so many targets in the air, IFF system are on the edge of their technical ability to correctly identify what is a threat and what is not. More than likely it was a friendly fire incident just like in the Red Sea.

The Devil's in the details as she, like Tony, wouldn't be coming home to visit them (if she had them) in the quiet solitude of retirement. The Shinawatra dynasty returns is to rule. "Visit the grandkids and enjoy retirement!" "I promise I won't be involved in politics!" Right!

Actually - there's the truth neatly wrapped and topped with a bow: It IS a business venture of the Shinawatra dynasty.

This is working so well for Tony, I'm sure that Yingluck will now want to "come home so that she can spend the rest of her days quietly visiting the grandkids."

The police will ensure that the victim pays his 300,000 THB hospital bill (more or less) before he is allowed to leave Thailand you mean? I doubt the kiddies or their parents will be handed the bill.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. I've got a bridge over the River Kwai that I'm selling cheap.

Most of the Left are secular or non-religious. Anyway, Joe isn't doing much of anything. His proxies working in his name are doing the leg work on end-of-term policy.

Just a heads-up, but come the next election cycle, when all the candidates are again sporting, "Vote For Our Party And We Will Give You ฿10,000 ฿20,000!", how many dumb Thai voters will fall for it a second time? Don't answer that question, I know the answer.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but really - what planet are you on? Wife and I drove to the market in our amphur here in NE Lamphun and the haze IS back already. The AQI sucks - and this is the wonderful December Cool Season weather that you are celebrating. According to wife the Thai government is implementing a burn ban starting Jan 1st until probably around May. I can once remember clear, blue skies and AQI in the "Good" range. What is here now is not clear, blue skies. Most people living here have probably forgot what a clear, blue sky looks like. Look out - this years "Burn Season" is going to be a doozy. My personal preference is the rainy season where I know the air is relatively clear. With "Cool Season" comes inversion layers and with inversion layers come the smoke. The PM 2.5 right now is anything but "Good." But hey - look on the bright side - it's not violet or purple yet, only yellow, orange, and red! https://aqicn.org/map/chiang-mai/

So has the US - Iran Air Flight 655. So using that same logic, perhaps using an America proxy in the region it "increasingly looks like they've done it again." Yes! That statement is as ludicrous as yours. But I expect no less from the Russian-haters here on this forum. Time will tell.

Ahhh! The "Joke of the Day!"

Bangkok Lowers Speed Limit to 60 km/h Amid Safety Push Dear Thailand - all Thai drivers ignore the posted speed limits. And now that traffic tickets can't affect the ability to renew your car's annual registration (excise tax sticker), few if any Thais (or farangs for that matter) are going to bother paying their speeding tickets. I wonder how many billions of THB will be spent changing the signs and what percentage of that amount will go into brown envelops and "brother-in-law's" pockets? 🤔

Omg, the loons in the West are now dumber than a box of hammers. Up next? STEM should be banned as a STEM-based education is synonymous with White Privilege. 🙄

The Persian (I-Ray-Knee-N) Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was the Father of Algebra. So no doubt in the liberal West - The Bastion of Democracy and of All Things Exceptional - all Algebra and references to Algebra should be banned as Iranian propaganda and as a Danger To Our Democracy, and any country using Algebra should be sanctioned.