Johpa

The problem with Acclimatizing your mouth is that at some point you reach the situation where you need to start addressing the inevitable results of putting spicey stuff into the inlet orifice.

Or as we use to say in the old days before the dominance of the high rise commode, food hot enough to burn the fingers of your left hand the next morning.

But a tad more on topic, cucumbers, often found on the plate of many Thai dishes, have a mild curative effect upon the heat on the tongue.

Seems like this happens every year. I wonder how many of these blankets will end up on Walking Street in Chiang Mai.

I have never seen these blankets being sold used in the towns. First, these blankets are not of particularly high quality and do not last long. The blankets especially do not take kindly to hand washing in a nearby creek bed. The blankets are often distributed only to the villages in the foothills and in the valleys. The villagers further afield, higher up, and in the more isolated areas do not directly receive the aid and so are dependent on relatives who do receive the blankets to pass them upwards so to speak. I am not saying that there is no unsrupulous re-selling of the donated blankets, but many of them are passed around in the hills to those who need them but are not in a position to get the aid first hand.

I think you all need to distinguish between long haul short-stay (vacationers) and long haul long-stay (backpackers). There will always be intrepid and curious young people heading out on some imagined adventure to far away places. But clearly the current global recession, with the a global depression not being far out of the realm of possibility, will have a very significant negative impact upon the ability of those looking for a few weeks vacation, which is the bread and butter of the tourist trade in Phuket.

local chao pors

Is it the new name of the N. C..... M.. family ?

I can't speak about the younger generations of the older high Sakdina families of Chiang Mai, but the older generations, the few times I interacted with them, seemed to be pretty decent folk and were not rumored to be involved in the never ending road contracting schemes that have been ongoing in Chiang Mai since I first spent time in the fair Muang nearly 30 years ago. But one never knows upon whose shoulder has been placed the nefarious right hand of the God of Greed .

I'm behind Obama 100%, but Michelle scares me. Her anti-white feelings are all over her face. Difficult to mask body language. If she will be pulling some strings from under the sheets, that won't be good (to say the least).

She could pull my strings under the sheets any time. I just don't get the angry vibes from her that others seem to perceive. But then again, I have long been an unrepentant heterosexual attracted to intelligence.

Its a sad day in America, when we know more about "Joe the plumber" than the "President elect".

You are either a functional illiterate or the video equivalent, a FOX news junkie, if you feel that you learned more about "Joe" over the past 4 weeks than you learned about Obama over the past 12 months.

Thailand, the new hub of right wing American whackos.

He is now the president of all Americans and its time to give him a chance.

Wrong again on both counts (dare I say, as usual).

He is not the President. He is the President-elect.

And now is not the time to "give him a chance."

You better not give him that chance Spee, that's right Spee, he is coming after you. This crazy black Muslim radical is going to come into your house and take away your money, right out of your bank account and from under your mattress, and give that money to an unemployed 14-year old single black mother on the South Side of Chicago and tell her to spend it as she pleases. And if you are in Thailand he will be sending his fellow Muslim school mates from his radical days in Indonesia over to Thailand to come to get your money there. But it doesn't end there Spee, oh no, he is going to tax you into oblivion. First up on the Islamic Congressional agenda is a revamping of the death tax, no longer a tax on estates but a real death tax where 50% of all assets, regardless of wealth, become property of the State and are then redistributed to unemployed Muslim youth across the world. And then he is going to increase taxes on unearned income to a whooping 90% and tax them additionally with social security and medicare so there will be absolutely nothing left. You just might have to return to the US and work as a greeter at Walmart. And then, the mother of all indignities, being a black man and a Muslim, he is, as we speak, lobbying congress to institute for the president and for any of his fellow Muslim appointees, by an amendment to the constitution, the right of prima nocta and he will be coming after your wife or boyfriend or even yourself, depending upon the proclivities of you and/or Obama's appointees. So Spee, you and your like minded fellows have only one real course of action to take at this point. Jump now!

If you are still contributing to your 401K you probably will be out of luck. It looks like they'll be taxed and the investment option will only be Government Bonds.

I do believe that the 401K plans, a retirement account system set up by corporate America that gave short term advantages to the corporation as opposed to funding a more traditional pension plan which only gave advantages when looting the pension plan at a later date, have always been taxed, a deferred tax for sure, but not tax exempt.

As the better of the two choices, I am pleased, not over joyed mind you, just pleased it was Obama the winner and not McCain, but I am still upset at the Democratic Party that they created rules to push Kucinich off the debate podiums once his numbers began to increase and polls showed him gaining strength after the earliest debates.

Fair warning, it was a young and charismatic John Kennedy who came into office with lofty ideals and who brought in a younger generation of advisers, the "best and the brightest" who then went forward and mucked up the world quite a bit. Until Obama, especially as a Harvard law school grad, comes out and asks for a legal reconsideration of 14th amendment protection to corporations (personhood) then nothing will change.

just as long as you didn't tell her that you were going to shoot it (ยิงกระต่าย) - then it could have taken on a whole new meaning

I could not find a correct Elmer Fudd image for that one.

Loei is a wonderful town and the area is very beautiful. The airport is one of my favorites to fly into in Thailand! If you haven't been go and explore.

On the contary, Loei is one town I would hope would never be visited by the vast majority of Thai Visa members. They would hate it there. Nothing of interest for them, nothing for them to do. Stay away please!

For a place called the "Land of Smiles", there sure are a lot of unhappy people.

Since Thaksin war on drugs not many people are "happy" anymore.

On the contrary, the war on drugs, despite its excesses, was very effective in diminishing the viral social plague that was raging through the rural communities. Although the "war" did not eliminate drug use, it did remove drug selling in the primary and secondary schools, and it lowered the overall availability of drugs which significantly lowered the crime rates in the rural areas as crimes had skyrocketed over the previous years, crimes such as robbery, domestic violence, assaults, and yes, murders. So although the "war" distressed many, especially the neo-sahib ex-pats whose lives were little touched by the meth epidemic, there were indeed countless more folks who were very happy.

Ahhhh.

The fruits of Thaksin's populist cheap loans are ripening then.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with "populist" loans but more with the typical loans farmers must take out to plant the crops before the harvest and the low ball prices offered towards the end of the planting cycle by the agri-business buyers of the products via the business agents who control the government pricing.

The Royal Institute Dictionary appears to agree with Todd. Here is the relevant portion of the definition of "ขี้" which applies to the modifier usage of the word:

ขี้ . . . ว. [วิเศษณ์] ใช้ประกอบหน้าคําที่แสดงความหมายในทางที่ไม่ดี เช่น ขี้เกียจ ขี้เหนียว, หรือมักเป็นเช่นนั้น เช่น ขี้หัวเราะ ขี้ขอ.

"khee . . . a modifier used as a combining element in front of another word to indicate a meaning which is not good, .......

And don't be afraid to use the word creatively. Perhaps it is not 100% original, but I made up the term (sorry for the lack of Thai fonts other than copy and paste) kii priap kii thiap to describe nouveau middle class folks constantly trying to keep up with the neighbors. No Thai had yet admonished me for my neologism.

He is after all the Information Minister, right?

Probably not unlike another Information Minister we've all heard of...

More like this über dispenser of information.

recent, additional information found on this and the other previously linked thread regarding the leading police investigator in this AFAIK unsolved double murder...

Police Lieutenant-General Priewphan Damapong, is the older brother of Pojaman Shinawatra, the wife of Thaksin Shinawatra, and thus ex-Prime Minister Thaksin’s brother-in-law.

- Alan Potkin, PhD, Adjunct Consultant, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University

Council on Thai Studies Conference, Northern Illinois University, October 24, 2008

I could of course not find the paper online as academia still fears disclosing its thoughts to the public, academia being the last bastion of the scared and the profane dichotomy (hoping that they could all write their papers in some dead language) but the title of the paper by Achaan Potkin “The Phrakaeo Morakot [Emerald Buddha] and the Assassinations in Nongkhai of the Pretenders to the Lao Throne: A Hypothetical Linkage” should give any thinking person pause here.

Thailand's economy will be virtually wiped out if 2% of the population will continue (with support of the highest people) to hold the country randsom. Therefore the comments are misplaced and thus absurd, Thailand will not escape a meltdown, the new tourist figures will speak for itself. The new investment figures will tell all of the story. Banks cannot even find customers for their credit nowadays that is even worse.

THis is not a very intelligent statement. Thaksin and his cronies are the core of the Thai-Chinese businessmen who brought this country to ruin 1987 and are at again.

First, it is a much smaller percentage of the population that controls the Kingdom. I believe there was study done around 2002 by economists from MIT that found that over 50% of the nation's wealth was in the hand of around 15 families and similar numbers held true for other Southeast Asian countries. This is even more concentrated than wealth in the US where the upper 1% of the population has as much accumulated wealth as the lower 95% combined. However I would guess that the upper 2% in most countries defines the political donor class that has direct access to political favors.

Thaksin and the extended Shinawat family were not core members of the traditional Bangkok Thai-Chinese power, they were outsiders who happened, either by luck or smarts, to see the profit potential of new forms of information and telecommunications technology and relatively suddenly became members of that top class, the upper 1/10% who are the political owner class.

One can find many links online to the increase in jellyfish populations worldwide. Here is a link to one such article.

Some have called the increase in such species along with the increase in algae mats along the seafloor and the increase of bacteria in shallower waters a 'de-evolution' or 'reverse' evolution of the planet's oceans, a trend favoring simpler life forms and less biological diversity.

And, for what it is worth, I had a close encounter with some unknown species of jellyfish just off Kata Beach on Phuket back in 1983. I doubt it was a box jelly, but it was one of the few times I was brought to tears by pain, and I carried a red welt on my side for over a year.

Perhaps one should think of the root meaning of ขี้ in English as 'to exude' thus capturing most meanings in Thai. But certainly, unlike us overly retentive westerners, Thais do not conjure up images of bodily waste when they hear common words using the ขี้ prefix.

Clearly the OP, as well as many subsequent posters, are unfamiliar with the quote of that great American and notorious war criminal Henry the K:

"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."

And one can easily substitute 'wealth' for 'power'.

London had long been the residence of choice of Thailand's highest ranking exiles fleeing the wrath of one group or another due to some misdeeds that somehow went beyond the usual acceptable misdeeds of what is clearly a deviant society at the upper social stratum. London remains one of the last bastions where the peerage system has quarters where it is not openly mocked.

What has the Peerage system got to do with it all?

Uh, perhaps you are unaware that even today many of the higher levels on the Thai social ladder are referred by those lower down as cao nais, best translated perhaps as 'lords'. Thus folks like Thaksin can find quarters and clubs in London where they will be treated to their imagined station in life above that of the rabble. Thus they much prefer London to, say, and American city during exile.

BBC probably ran out of money,thais would n't care who said what.

Actually it would not surprise me in the least that Achaan Giles Ji Ungpakorn, one of the government's most ardent critics, has his phone lines monitored by numerous Thai government agencies.

The BBC is reporting that Thaksin expected a guilty verdict. He also stated that he is not in fact seeking asylum in the UK.

Criminals do tend to know their guilt.

He is not seeking asylum. He is just taking a break in peaceful London.....

London had long been the residence of choice of Thailand's highest ranking exiles fleeing the wrath of one group or another due to some misdeeds that somehow went beyond the usual acceptable misdeeds of what is clearly a deviant society at the upper social stratum. London remains one of the last bastions where the peerage system has quarters where it is not openly mocked.

Rolls Rice as driven by poor Thai farmers who trust rich Thai criminals on the run from the law.

Are we to contrast the poor farmers with struggling lower middle class urban Thais who trust wealthy and equally scoundrelous Thai criminals who are not currently on the run from the law?

If they go at this rate, pretty soon DAAD will be branded as an anti-monarchy movement, something they always try to hide. If this kind of mass perception is formed, it will be extremely difficult to overcome for them.

Branding the opposition party as unpatriotic is as old as the hills. In Thai politics, if an opposition party has also wrapped themselves up in the flag then the next step is to brand them as anti-monarchist with a trumped up lese majeste charge. I remember when Achaan Sulak Srivaraksa was charged with lese majeste and was forced into exile. Many people assumed that the charges had merit, as opposed to being strictly a political tactic. But the fact was that Srivaraksa was always quite the opposite, a rather conservative monarchist.