Johpa

to tell the truth, even here i'm paranoid about driving with one in the car; the association of narghila with the 'younger crowd' and hashish is here in israel even if there are narghila bars all over the place. a guy with long hair and a narghila are more suspect then 'karrim barhum' from jamila and a narghila. i would think that a western 'hippie type' tourist carring one in looks more suspect then a bunch of saudi arabians bringing theirs' in.

Wasn't the national song Hava Narghila?

As a tourist, long ago before the hatred settled upon the landscape, we would buy our hashish (homer nefesh) by the Damascus Gate where the old men sat and smoked their narghilas in the small cafes just inside the gate.

Ihave never seen so many toyota landcruisers per capita in any country as cambodia !

The cars are not manufactured there, the LandCrusers came from Japan.

Large number of imported expensive 4WD you saw in Cambodia made you not believe stories and stats about poverty there?

The secret could be - all the UN and other NGOs who were there after Paul Pot, simply dumped the vehicles for a nominal sum instead of taking them back.

Long ago a good friend of mine who worked in Cambodia for years for the UN noted that most of the UN vehicles were simply "stolen" and then replaced in a never ending cycle of corruption.

Adelman, Edelman...

Jewish conspiracy.

If they come to Thailand, well they should be warned that are many wells in Thailand too.

The Chinese are a different kind of tourist than most Westerners and are not of the typical kind who visit bars, beaches etc. but are mainly cultural visitors.

Also, they never travel for longer periods but -mostly- a maximum of 10-14 days and 90% travel in groups due to the problems of getting EU visa.

China has special selected travel agents who are held reponsible for their tourists (and their return...). Therefore their travel-schedule is pre-set and filled with visits to cultural attractions, rather than beaches etc.

I suspect that due to the nearly wholesale eradication of culture in the PRC, they would be starved for some of those old time cultural artifacts elsewhere.

But due to the tightly controlled nature of Chinese group tourism, they get a pass on "high quality" tourism as high quality also relates to tourists in Thailand who spend little money outside the bubble of resorts, hotels, and pre-selected shops. Although they do not individually spend as much as weathier western tourists, all of the money they do spend is well accounted for with scarcely a sataang escaping the tour operators or falling into the hands of an ethnic Thai.

Burma must be a really terrible place to make a lot of (sometimes educated) Burmese to come working as skivvies here, and be treated worse than cattle by their historic enemies...?

Burma is also formerly a Buddhist Kingdom ruled by an inept, paranoid junta.

Burma, AKA Myanmar, is indeed a really terrible place at the moment, but a place that Thailand apparently wishes to emmulate with its own ever increasing inept and paranoid junta Or as one recent poster noted, Thailand is undergoing a slow "Myanmarization" process.

Or perhaps they just need the money to build the road to the border & then help themselves.

I'm sure that this scheme is basically about getting money out of the gov't coffers for one thing or another.

Admittedly it has been many years since I last visited that area, but as I remember those somewhat remote districts were already staffed by bureaucrats who had been caught with their hands in the cookie jar and been exiled there for not sharing.

Some of the previous comments about Sondhi L. are fair enough. He is at least a controversial man and the fact he owns Asia Times through his holding makes the interview a one-way story and the interviewer Shawn Crispin not independent, since he's on his payroll, indirectly, but still.

However, the fact that he's born from Chinese (Hainan) parents and standing up for the Thai middle class (90 % of them have Chinese roots) makes it interesting.

But, the old Thai feudalistic elite has, for the major part, Chinese roots also and that's what makes the interview, and what he says about the backgrounds of Thai politics, so fascinating.

I though the reference was to the traditional high sakdina familes, the descendents of the Mom Ratchawongs and Mom Luangs as well as the princely familes of yore from the Muangs more distant from Bangkok who are often designated by the family name Na [name of muang]. This group forms the highly influential extended palace guard.

If I read between the lines of said article it looks like if he is disappointed (using his words: pissed off) that the present power-people in 'charge', ALL belonging to the old elite and thus also Thai/Cinese, didn't invite/accept him to be part of the new rulers.

* I would be most interested to learn where the (thin?) line lies IF/WHEN someone (or a family) belongs to the 'elite' or is 'allowed' to join them....

After all, an elite-member, ever, wasn't one in the first place; he/she became one at a certain stage in the past....but not overnight, right?

Those of us who have to ask such question will never know the answer.

Social bonds :Thais love only themselves: Prawase

Social critic Prawase Wasi yesterday urged Thais to care for others and refrain from abusing power.

He said Thai society was structured vertically and lacked horizontal relationships so equality and a sense of sharing were absent, while the pressure on the lower classes would make them take revenge on society.

Vertical relationships allow those with power to dominate and cheat others and create a system of cronies where rumour is rife, he said.

"Although Thais are deeply religious, they only love themselves and not their neighbours," Prawase said.

Source: The Nation - 28 April 2007

So we are back to the old Thai society as a series of vertical "patron-client" relationships. There is certainly some social structural truth to Thai society being vertically arranged with very little opportunity for equality, starting with the phii/noong relationship beginning at birth even for twins.

Whether this social structure actually hinders the ability of Thais to love their neighbors is a matter for the newest generation of the post-modern social anthropologists to argue ad nauseum. But no doubt, especially amongst the Bangkok elite, Thailand is a major "kite flying" self-absorbed society only capable of asking one single question regardless of the issue at hand: "What's in it for me?"

This interview neither shows a good light on both Sondhi L. and Shawn Crispin.

Sondhi L. at least has shown some of his true colors as a demagogue of the worst order, a rabble rouser, and a megalomaniac.

Some people simply can not be presented in a good light, and I think that perhaps Crispin sees that the best way to expose Sondhi is to tread lightly and just give Sondhi some rope to hang himself with by jabbing lighty so that he does not raise up his defenses.

If you are asking a rhetorical question in frustration (slightly confrontational), I suggest

'laew ja hai tham yaangrai dii la" (So what would you have me do, then?)

(In my experience Thais are more prone to use "tham yaangrai" as opposed to "tham arai".)

I agree with Svenske that "ja hai tham yaangrai/arai" is the closest approximation.

So who is going to try to translate Hamlet's existential questioning of self into Thai?

Thankyou Lao Po interesting and a bit frigthning´.

This man is a real piece of work, google him and you will find at least 20 billion good reasons why nobody should ever have belived one word from that mans mouth.

I had the opportunity to hear Sondhi give a speech in the US last winter. The man is indeed a real work of art. It is funny to now hear him rant about the "old feudal elite" after having previously listened to him disparage the rural poor as uneducated masses who must be led by, of course, Khun Sondhi, as "democracy" was beyond their understanding. At least in the Crispin interview Sondhi finally honestly describes his support base as the Bangkok Sino-Thai upper and middle classes. When he gave the lecture in the US, apart from the handful of interested Farangs and a few academics, the lecture hall was filled by that identical support base that live as ex-pats in the US. I had never imagined seeing so many Thai restaurant owners in the US under a single roof outside the lcoal Wat.

I am concerned that we are missing the point of Sonthi's warning. Thai politics never changes, just the constant movement of individuals without any real political agenda attempting to be within whichever group of boys that are in position to get the biggest piece of the pie. Constitution, oh please, they have been writing, re-drafting, proposing reforms for the mythical Thai constitution since I first arrived in LOS decades ago. The drafting of the constitution is just one big blow-smoke-up-their <deleted> campiagn to convince the forever duped populace, as well as the neo-sahib ex-pats, that those carving up the country have a political agenda.

So perhaps the crisis involves other issues.

I believe you all are getting close to the first of the two "solar max" or "no-shadow" days for Chiang Mai. If there is no cloud cover, expect sweltering conditions.

The "Duty Free" shops are there to service the travelers who forgot to purchase souvenirs for family and friends. They have a captive audience with no choices left. On some controlled and heavily taxed items like tobacco products and liquor, they might even provide some modest savings. But primarily they offer convenience to business people who have been too busy to do some shopping for the spouse and kids or for vacationers who have been too engaged at Nana Plaza to do such shoping for the spouse at home. I rarely seen the bulk of the passengers who fly economy paying any attention to these trinket shops apart from the occasional transit passenger who never exits the airport. Despite the limited market, and the ex-pat community is not part of that market, these shops are clearly profitable.

Farmers always have a fairly rough ride of it, unless they are heavily subsidised like back in the UK (my local farmer was paid a lot of money NOT to farm his land).

One can not compare farm subsidies to US or UK farmers to the situation in Thailand as the they represent a very small percentage of the populace in those countries. I believe the US farm subsidies go to a mere 25,000 farmers.

Farmers tend to have a rough go of it because the processors and middlemen make great efforts to insure that the producers of raw materials, whether agricultural or other natural resources, are paid little in order for these corporate folks to increase their profits. That is why in the US ADM continuously makes huge profits and farmers becomes destitute. The economy is structured so that poor rural people do not make much profit.

Again, no big social problem in the US or UK where we are talking small numbers, an entirely different story in Thailand where the rural poor make up a far larger percentage of the population.

WARNING

If this thread turns into an Anti-American rant then it will be closed with possible suspensions.

Please keep it on topic.

Hey man, don't shoot, I'm an American!

Maj. Gen. David Fridovich said on Wednesday that US troops could help to train Thai forces to quell the insurgency, if Thai authorities asked for assistance.

- AP

=============

Thanks Dave, but no thanks.

There has been a long history of American specialists training Thais in counter-insurgency. Perhaps the best known is the legendary (in some circles) Bill Lair back in the 1960s with his PARU units. Roger Warner's book Back Fire provides a fascinating account of Lair. And for many years I use to share drinks with guys from the 1st SFG out of Okinawa who were annual visitors to Chiang Mai to train the Thai 5th SF north of the city.

There are some very good tactical people in the US military who could indeed provide training for Thai troops to handle the military and counter-insurgency facets of the problems down south. But I fear addressing those facets alone will not put a dent into the "southern problem" and the US has shown itself singularly inept at addressing such multi-faceted complex issues at a strategic level. As the current US administration seems to be incapable of even understanding the difference between the tactical level and the strategic level, I think the Thais would be well advised to temporarily defer US assistance on these matters.

For some reason I am having a difficult time finding images of other business class passenger aircraft dedicated to the usage of constitutional monarchs.

For what it is worth, Bangkok Pundit's blog has an excellent amd thought provoking recent entry on violence in the south.

Again, it really is a shame. Pure abject unadulterated ignorance. It is a bad sign that the hidden agenda seems to continually point to the 'Myanmarization' of Thailand. ie. "Just keeping em down here boss" as a way of accepted life here now.

As a fellow dinosaur, I do like the concept of "Myanmarization" as there are parallels: a dependence upon the occult and astrology; a strong indigenous based military alongside an economy controlled by a more recently arrived ethnic minority that acts, ecoonomically like a colonial power; and the never ending denigration of the rual majority.

I would not be surprised to see the capital or the palace relocated in the future.

In the words of the wise man, 5% should be sufficient for economic growth! Why should Thailand ratchet up to the unsustainable growth levels reached before the crash in 1997. Enough is enough. As long as Thailand's exports continue to far surpass its imports, things should be fine.

Which would be fine if the incoming profits for those exports weren't also re-exported offshore. But methinks things will continue to be fine for all you neo-Sahib IT folks who are enjoying the low cost of living, the low cost of sex, and the ability to jump ship at any moment if new visa regulations bunch up your panties a little too tightly.

Maybe not a Thai/Scottish star in the Hollywood /Bollywood/Pattaywood sense of the word but when it comes to changing attitudes in LOS and even more so saving lives nobody can beat good old Senator Mechai (king C)(Viravaidya)....

His dad met his mum while studying medicine at Edinburgh Uni........

Catapulting Cabers! Mechai is Scottish too! Wow!

Now I am beginning to understand why so many Thais like to drink that rock gut cheap Scotch whiskey. Time to ban the haggis in Thailand before we all start batting from the other side or end up drinking that swill.

Or maybe we need a Mel Gibson movie made here about revolutionaries.

I am looking for a tractor. I am about to clear several rai of land to get it ready for plantation. Where can I get quality and reliability ion a used tractor? I live in Wangchin, just South of Lampang. Your support is appreciated!

Wooty

Depending upon your plans with the land, you might want to ask around about hiring a tractor for a day. Look to see if there is any road construction going on nearby for possible leads.

If you learn all the tone rules for the different classes of consonants then you can greatly reduce the consonant possibilties for any particular word. But methinks it is just as easy to memorize and remember the correct spelling over time.