khunano

"Starbucks is not just only providing a premium coffee experience,..."

He could get a job as a politician. Or else he went to politician's school. Either way, his level of spin and outright deceit makes one of those options probable.

You should feel petty for the guy, he has to drink this brackish water at his employer's outlets every day. Or does he sneak across the street into a small mom and pop coffee shop with a halfway decent coffee machine using a halfway decent coffee blend however fabricating a much more decent brew than what you get at Starbucks at a hyper inflated price!?

What suprises me is this farmer had a post-pay phone, not a pre-pay like 99.99999% of the country.

I moreover wonder why the service was not cut when a certain credit limit was reached. On my postpaid account with DTAC I have a limit of 5'000 Baht and I would assume they send me an SMS or suspend my account once I have reached that limit. However this may apply to calls and similar services only and not silly games....

Unless you are thai your name will never be in the blue book!!!!

I dont understand why the sales agent is involved in taxes. Like i said previously just make your deal go to land office and they'll tell you the fees which will be about 6%. Ive done plenty of these and thats what it is.

...or a foreigner holding a residence permit than you will also be registered in a blue book!! Otherwise it is indeed for Thais only, as a foreigner you may apply for a yellow book though.

Incredibly poorly written article with hardly any real information or actual reporting to back it up. After reading the entire piece, I know next to nothing about the subject at hand. Do we really need articles to tell us that slavery is bad? Don't we all know that? Then why not give actual information?

Could not agree more; a heap of buzzwords without any substantiating facts. Though we cannot deny the fact that too many people are exploited in the seafood industry it is not all of them. Besides Thai GDP is not mainly built on this industry there are plenty of others contributing; industrial, tourism, just to name a few.

I had someone overtake me tonight (we were both in cars) on a normal 2 way road with bikes all around and heavy traffic.

there was no way to get any further than the gap I had left in front of my car as, as I said, heavy traffic after that and on coming traffic... I was amazed that he overtook me just to get in front of me and no further.

He had green number plates what is this for? some kind of government car trying to escape Thailand?

Stay away from those cars as far as possible, they have the worst drivers at the wheel! These are cars registered as limousines, e.g. by hotels, airports, etc. Those guys drive all day every day and think they are the champions of the road and close to qualifying for Formula 1.

Why would anyone take a chance on being arrested or pay a heavy fine or jail time ? The military mean business and they are just waiting to demonstrate that. Thai people know this.

Exactly, and that "under-the-table-thing" also does not work with them. So no exceptions!

I must admit I did laugh when I went to buy a case of beer in Tesco and they pointed me to the sign banning sale during certain hours. But they told me if I bought two it was OK, so I did.

I was under the impression that the law was there to prevent alcohol sales.

Perhaps they want you to indulge in binge drinking...

Makes sense. I can't imagine who would want to buy a house or condo in Bangkok now.. I wouldn't want to buy anything there, even if there were no political chaos.

Bangkok is a place for short entertainment trips, and a few nights of clubbing and drinking. Not a place to live if you can avoid it. Shittiest city in the world!

Ever thought that most of these condos are built for Thai people? Middle class people that live and work in Bangkok and will probably not have much choice to relocate elsewhere, hence buying their own abode makes sense, indeed!

For cat lovers in the Pattaya area, a British couple (Paul and Sandra)

has some 40 to 50 cats of all ages (from kittens on up) and all in good

health and available for adoption FREE. This is the address for their

Web site: cats4youinpattaya.webs.com

Would you know of a comparable institution in the Hua Hin area? We started to feed a stray cat a while ago but when we wanted to neuter her the vet discovered that she was already pregnant. Meanwhile she has given birth to 3 healthy kittens. Since we have already 3 grown cats and live in a small house, we cannot keep the new ones and are looking for a cat lover to adopt them, possibly through an adoption home like the one of Sandra and Paul.

Personally I have never really had a problem receiving mail, it usually arrives sooner sometimes later. EMS seems to work more reliably than ordinary mail, probably because it has been registered. Generally, I have as much as possible sent to me by email, don't like all that paper anyway. For packages I try to have them not sent by mail at all, particularly from abroad, don't want to bother with customs either, if I can't get it from there myself, I usually find a friend to handcarry for me.

An 11.6 km long bridge to cross a 500 metre wide river??? Can we see some pictures? Maybe this includes a ramp like they built for the bridge from Shanghai to Pudong...

Several issues are in play here.

1. The land on the Thai side is low and within the flood-plain when the Mekong rises during heavy rains.

2. A road running parallel to the Mekong needed to be accommodated so the bride was extended to allow it to underpass.

3. Acts as a Security Perimeter (to cut down on unsanctioned smuggling)

These pics were taken during construction last year:

IMAG2878.jpg IMAG2880.jpg IMAG0053.JPG IMAG0054.JPG

Thanks, RichCor, you should have reported on the project rather than MCOT-News, so 11.6 km is not the span of the bridge but rather the total distance of all feeder and auxiliary roads that were built.

An 11.6 km long bridge to cross a 500 metre wide river??? Can we see some pictures? Maybe this includes a ramp like they built for the bridge from Shanghai to Pudong...

This was to be expected! Any idea whether "grandfather" rule will be applied here as well, i.e. couples already on an extension of stay will be able to extend under previous rule of only one income/1x800K?

No but be aware use of funds outside of provide draws extra bank fees so normally best to have in a local account - which also makes it easier to obtain current letter of account balance as some banks will not want to issue for an account at another location. Normally immigration will take such things into consideration however and allow the extra time.

Thanks lopburi3 for your quick reply. It may thus indeed be best to transfer the 400K to my new account, which I already opened for daily transactions at a bank in my home town and to avoid extra bank fees, just have to watch the balance not to go below 400K during seasoning period.

This might be somewhat off topic, but perhaps somebody has some idea on this as well. We moved to another province recently but my "400K account" is as yet still in a Bangkok Bank account in Bangkok. Would I have to open a new account with a bank in my new home province to season/keep the money for the marriage extension of stay?

You could try Baan Krut or Baan Grood as it is sometimes spelled, a nice long beach with a beautiful temple on the hill at the northern end of it. A couple of resorts and restaurants, no nightlife I would know of. Google for Arcadia Baangood, other option is Baanklangaow Resort a bit older but nestled in a nice garden. Enjoy the holiday.

Your Thai friends are just worried about your testosterone levels if you are living by yourself. Hope your decision not to get acquainted with a local woman does not mean that you do not get "involved" with any of the pretties here at all, because then I am seriously worried about your testosterone level!

I just don't know where to start ...

"However, the aforementioned efforts have yielded dubious results, and have done very little to stem the tides of scandals experienced by locals and tourists alike."

Glad we all agree that there has been no progress .

"Whether reputation of Phuket as one of the kingdom′s leading tourist attractions has been permanently damaged is yet to be seen."

Yes it has.

The place is rotten to its core and the only remedy still possible would be to pull the plug and let the island be swallowed up by the Andaman Sea. Sad to see the paradise it once was (many decades ago) to have been ruined by a few too many greedy people! ลาก่อน

Try Hua Hin, a good mix of a local Thai town with a decent size of a foreign community. Golf opportunities are aplenty, probably one of the best in Thailand with some 10 golf courses within easy reach of HH. When night falls you will find an excellent selection of restaurants serving local and international food at reasonable prices and if you are still not tired from playing golf during the day, visit one of the bars near the Hilton with plenty of maidens, no gogo here, a bit of a low-key approach but I am sure you will find a pleasant girl to share a drink with and more... Beaches are not great here, neither are they around Pattaya, but drive south along the coast of Prachuap Kirikhan and will you will discover quite a few decent stretches of sand.

The Swiss dude on the right doesn't seem that impressed, arms crossed angry look on his face

he does that always when he his not in the mood...he is actually quite famous for this particular expression and has even been mocked on Swiss National TV for doing that...

Or, he's just upset he didn't get the Obama Treatment.

that's because Obama is so much more handsum man....

The Swiss dude on the right doesn't seem that impressed, arms crossed angry look on his face

he does that always when he his not in the mood...he is actually quite famous for this particular expression and has even been mocked on Swiss National TV for doing that...

"Bangkok Governor Mom Rajawongse Sukhumbhand Paripatra said that approximately new 100K cars are registered each month in Bangkok"

100K or 100'000 new cars each month!?! This equals 3'333 vehicles per day or 1.2 million a year! If this figure is really correct and considering that close to 8 million cars are already populating Bangkok's roads (1.2 million mean an increase of 15 % over that number each year), I think total utter gridlock is imminent!

This figure is probably in the right ballpark. A lot of cars are registered as being from Bangkok, even though the car might never even travel to Bangkok.

But rather than that being an average, I'd say that'd be an old statistic, likely dating back maybe 6 months or so, to when the new number plates were being issued for the cars brought at the end of the government subsidy, and then maybe rounded up a little (His figure might actually be correct of course, I just think he'd skew the figures a little to make it sound more dramatic).

That may be the explanation, actually both our cars still bear Bangkok plates even though we have left Bangkok for a congestion free area more than a year ago.