Johpa

I'll have to go back and ride the DTracker 250.

I sat on it; it had a high seat but still manageable.

I almost want to buy this bike so I can learn to do wheelies and stunt on it.

I think the narrow seat would be hard on a long ride but with its small tank you'd have to get off more often anyway.

I spent nearly a month on a stock rental 250 D-Tracker, riding fairly long distances daily. I got about 180km per tank and went over 200km on fumes with the reserve light on. I hear you can have a customized seat made for an affordable amount, but the stock seat wasn't too bad, but yes, a mature and slightly overweight adult like myself best get up and stretch once an hour or so. This fat guy was able to maintain a comfortable highway speed of about 105 kph. I also hear there are tweaks to get that speed up a bit higher from the stock configuration. The best news is that this bike will take you just about anywhere. This is particularly valuable if you travel deep into rural areas up north where many upland villages are only accessible by dirt roads. If you like doing wheelies it can be accomplished easily according to my son who does this sort of stunt. On the other hand, if you prefer speed, paved roads, and leaning into turns then this bike might not be for you. But I found it to be a good general purpose utility bike for touring.

My two kids, actually both young adults, went there recently to learn how to read (my son finally embarrassed that despite being a better speaker than dad he had to rely on me to read a menu and road signs) and were both pretty positive on the place. Classes are small and they both came out with the ability to read at a beginners level after a few weeks. They also tell me they were impressed with some of the beginners who were learning the language. Seems that with the small class sizes they are able to get good results with motivated students.

His movie Wall Street is and has been my all time favorite movie. I hear he is releasing a Wall Street II this Spring. However as a person he certainly doesn't seem all there. I simply can't figure out how a person who materializes engrossing movies is also someone I would likely have no respect for if I met face-to-face.

What an odd and rather oxymoronic statement. Are you implying that you lose personal respect for someone who you otherwise admire when their political opinion differs from that of your own?

Is it just me or do there seem to be a number of relatively high profile anti-corruption cases lately?

Well the southern most Monthol is simply following the edicts of the rulers to the north to get tough on corruption.

I had a test ride of the D-Tracker 250cc and the Ninja 650R on Saturday.

You must suffer from a split personality. Those two bikes could not be more different and appeal to completely different types of riders.

Thailand is a hodgepodge of regional dialects -Also true. Majority of Thais understand and can speak central Thai but there are minority who can’t. Less true in the north and isaan but very true in deep south. There are many people in deep south who cannot understand, speak, read or write Thai.

More correctly, Thailand contains a few closely related languages, the main languages being Central Thai (phasaa klang), Northern Thai (kham muang), Isaan, and Southern Thai. And Lao is usually taught as a separate language from Central Thai in western universities.

Spoken in their more modern and less assimilated forms towards Central Thai, such as spoken in more remote rural areas, these languages are not mutually intelligible. Although a speaker of one language may often understand the topic of conversation in another language, they often are not able to follow the comment. I remember well the occasion in the 1980s of the visit to our village of Thai political leader Bhichai Rattakul, who was looking to purchase some rural land, dressed in Brahman whites, talking to old Uey Keow, dressed in a pakamaa, yet needing an interpreter for the conversation. But as noted, just about everyone in Thailand is now fluent in Central Thai as a result of the universal education in Central Thai as well as the dominance of Central Thai in media and entertainment. Just about every Lao I meet has fluent comprehension in Central Thai from exposure to media alone.

There are however within these Tai languages lots of regional dialects. Up north where I am most familiar, it is common for people from one province, or even from neighboring districts perhaps separated by some hills, to sit around and talk about the regional differences in speech. Due to these variation I find most rural Thai to be far more linguistically aware than most of my fellow Farangs.

They should perhaps bring back "Big Jew" Chavalit as he once negotiated with the Burmese to allow Burmese troops to move onto Thai soil. Perhaps he can now negotiate for Thai troops to move onto Khmer soil without risk.

I'm not clear about the gender of the OP. If female -- then Mr. Ong at Absolute Zero on Huey Kaew is a great place for a newcomer. The place "feels" like a western salon and Mr. Ong speaks great English. Yes, his haircuts are 300 baht -- about twice what others charge for women's haircuts, but he does a great job with women's haircuts and many men visit him as well.

I've known Nong Ong since long before they opened Absolute or even the older spot in the mall. He is a very nice guy with good English skills and good hair stylist, although over priced. (Disclaimer: I have a simple buzz cut and do not get my hair cut there as I prefer my wife's cousin's shop for 30B.) A nice salon if you speak no Thai and want to be able to communicate to the person exactly what you want to have done and don't mind paying for that comfort.

It is not the quantity but simply the fact he broke the law and was subsequently arrested. Don't blame the Thai Police they were simply doing the job they are paid to do. I have arrested and charged kids for having less than this kid did. I to was simply doing my job.

You were not doing your job, you were just being a jerk, not an uncommon response to someone who dons a uniform, regardless of whether the uniform includes a badge or not.

More organized theft (taxes) to create handouts, perfect...another country going down the socialist drain of ruin.

Perhaps you should ask the poster snowflake just how miserable life is for the Norskes, or the neighboring Svenskes, or any of the other Northern European folks who enjoy a dose of socialism mixed in with their capitalism. And it is not simply oil revenue that allows this dose of socialism as another poster opined, it is the vision and the willingness to see that a progressive tax system works in everyone's interest. One can still become very wealthy in those ruinous socialized countries (they are not really socialist in the way that ignorant Americans use the term), but there are limits placed upon extreme wealth so as to maintain a stable and relatively happy society, a goal still shared by many wealthy Europeans yet a goal now discarded by many in that isolated world of the USA.

Thailand's politicians should be applauded for even mentioning this lofty goal, even if implementation is but a pipe dream and currently it is perhaps a mere political ploy. But at least it gets the concept out there.

.....PLUS the unexplainable growth in the strength of the Baht.

Not that unexplainable. There are influential people, I can't imagine who, continuing to move funds offshore in an orderly and measured fashion. At some point their need for an over valued baat will end and the baat will weaken.

Juthaporn was reappointed to head the international marketing department following an internal management reshuffle supervised by the TAT's new governor, Suraphon Svetserni.

"This year, the authority will not aim at luring higher numbers of visitors, but will try to encourage visitors to spend more money while staying in the country," she said.

I just skimmed over 6 pages of comments and I apologize to any more recent poster who perhaps already made the point I wish to make here, and apologies for interrupting the circle jerk, but the news release makes no comment about seeking "high spending tourists" but notes only that the TAT will seek to increase the amount spent by all tourists during their time visiting the Kingdom. Maybe a language/logic problem here, I am just not sure on which side.

My personal opinion is that all the "hobby" businesses make it difficult for the more successful busineeses to thrive.

Hobbyists eventually make poor business decisions. The most common mistake is to buy for themselves and not for more rational reasons such as profit. I run a hobby shop within my store in the US. It is a hobby that I do not participate in and have no personal interest in. I hire others to staff it and I try hard to avoid the hobby counter. But somehow I am one of the few nationally to make it happen.

The real problem these days are the hobbyists who open online stores for a year or two, usually until the taxman cometh, and then disappear after learning that making money and keeping that money are two different things. But then there is always another fool in the wings as the startup costs of an online business are relatively small.

Dexadrine - called Ritalin in the USA

Maybe I am I just getting old, but in the US I always thought that dexadrine was simply called "speed". Ritalin was just a politically correct name for the same drug often over prescribed to children. Sort of like calling heroin in a pill form oxycontin as it allows those who abhor heroin addicts to sedate themselves in the same manner.

But really, you can buy a small amount of valium to take on the airplane from most pharmacies in Thailand. I use to buy them for the flights until realized that staying hydrated made for a better experience.

The government well never eliminated the black market lottery.

And I always thought that it was government officials who ran the street lotteries. Of course many of you are far too new to Thailand (arriving after 1997 when the IMF forced the Thai government to open up the labor pool a bit) to remember that infamous day back in the late 1980s when, on live national TV, the lottery machines locked up between two numbers. Soon thereafter, a suspicious electrical wire was found running from the machines, under the rug (and you know how common carpets are in Thai government buildings) into an adjacent room where it was discovered that some unknown ne'er-do-wells had been hacking into the machines for quite some time as to fix not the national lottery but some street lotteries.

I can't recall any Thai making any comment that is akin to "bon appetite", not a one over the past decades. But then again, in the rural areas when a friend visits, one doesn't ask "how are you?" rather one asks whether the visitor has eaten yet.

If you don't read Thai, grab someone who does and scroll through the comments under these articles. Several to the effect of "Serves the farang right, a good example for other farang who come to Thailand and don't behave themselves, going to bars and acting up on the roads. Wives of farang (written with negative connotation) should tell their men to watch out."

Well I do read Thai and the links are to an online Thai message board where one can note that there are Thais who post anonymously on such message boards who are just as asinine as many of the Farangs who post on Thai Visa.

Your opinion will come down to whether or not you are able to comprehend the distinction between weather and climate.

You can check out my posting over at GT-Rider about the "dirt in Samoeng" for some short and well maintained dirt roads around the Samoeng valley to see how your bike handles off the pavement. If it is a bit sloppy then switch to a D-Tracker, a mini SM bike well suited to the north. I also posted some routes that take a bit longer, but still get you back into Chiang Mai the same day. All the roads are on David's Mae Hong Song Loop maps. As long as it stays dry without rain, you can take the D-Tracker just about anywhere off the pavement. Just go slow going downhill without the knobby tires. For some high mountain views the road from Samoeng up to Wat Chan is hard to beat.

Best times to ride, and I know this is hard, are before 10:00AM and after 3:00PM. Best to be heading west in the AM and east in the PM for the best lighting with the sun at your back and not in your face.

Saying it's better than the food court is less an endorsement of the food court, and more of an indictment of other Indian food I've had in Chiang Mai.

Comparing any food of any type, including Thai food, to any food served at any food court in Thailand would be an indictment.

mmm.... for potential hill tribe visitors your probably best to avoid the sea food if you visit any hill tribe villages.

Best to avoid seafood, other than shrimp, anywhere up north.

Prison is too good for these purveyors of death. Let em suffer the same end as some of their customers.

Look at the name, it is a highland minority name. This guy was just some poor mule who got caught in a turf war between two factions, one of which probably included some police. The real purveyors of this "death" are influential figures in Bangkok and their bankers and not some hapless trek guide named Jasor of the Wang clan.

My sausage always looks a lot smaller after a few beers also.

I believe many are told this same thing by the denizens of Soi 7. The truth can be painful after a few beers.

I tried to track down some info online and I could find that Tony Poe retired in Chiang Mai and lived there until 1992, when he, his Hmong wife and four children moved to California, where he later died.

Strange expats Chiang Mai weren't telling lies and legends about him in the early '90s. I did meet William Young, another spook who worked in Laos, whose missionary family stretches back several generations in Chiang Mai.

Poe was a footnote to history, a very colorful footnote, but a minor player. Good books on the subject of Thailand and Laos during that era include McCoy's seminal "Politics of Heroin" and Roger Warner's "Backfire". Backfire focuses on one of the real major players, Bill Lair, confident and protector of His Majesty the King, and Doc Weldon who has written his own memoirs "Tragedy in Paradise".

The Young family, I think it is four generations now and still based in Chiang Mai, continues to work for the betterment of the highland minorities in the region. They were missionaries who happened to be one of the few sources of information in the highlands, information that they passed on to US intelligence officials, but they were not exactly clandestine operatives (except perhaps during WWII) that the term "spook" invokes. That family's significance in Thailand, and Burma, over time has probably been greater than any other single Western family.

OH, and please note that I saw VERY little sign of garbage lying about like I do in the cities of Thailand. I don't know what the hill tribe people do with their garbage, but it certainly wasn't evident in the villages I visited and stayed at.

Villages I have lived at, and I have spent more time that most living in highland villages, the people do one of three things with their trash: recycle bottles and metals for a few baat as a recycler in a pickup truck (if there is a road) comes by a few times a year, burn it (most common method of trash disposal), or bury it. And lest we forget the pigs, and dogs, tend to recycle just about any organic matter. There just isn't as much waste in poorer rural environments as there is waste in urban environments.