Johpa

First, I am glad to here that Adam is still around although I have not bumped into him in many, many years. I suspect by now he is one of the true old hands now that many of the old breakfast club at the Stube have passed away.

Second, using a decent transliteration system in the beginning is a good methodolgy for us left-brain dominant types who benefit from reading and text books. I learned via the old AUA system of Marvin Brown for the first year at college, which used a modified IPA system, although by the end of the year we had already begun to transition to nearly 100% written Thai.

Royal endorsement for members of charter-drafting panel

100 appointed by CNS include many well-known names

The appointment of 100 members of the Constitution Drafting As-sembly (CDA) has received Royal endorsement.

Many well-known figures were among those appointed by the Council for National Security (CNS), and endorsed by the Royal command dated Monday. ....

Source: The Nation - 3 January 2007

Well I am glad to see that the less-than-well-known top vote getter, Okart Tepalakul, a car dealer from Chachoengsao province, remains on the committee. It appears that Khun Ohart's primary qualification is having been a loyal classmate of coup leader Sonthi. It also appears that the primary drafting of the newest constituion will fall to the coterie of the legal hands from Thammasat U on the list as many of the names are simply other friends and business acquaintances of the coup leaders.

Chaiyo!

Just to put it all in ex-pat perspective the equivalent fatality rates would be (with some gross rounding of figures)

US 1,755 (35 per state)

UK 351 (approximately same population as Thailand)

Oz 117

Canada 175 (approximately half the population as Thailand)

Wow, the farang circus is a real three-ring affair and all the gossipy old ladies are turbo-charged tonight.

No matter what happens, from earthquakes in Taiwan to early closure of bars to airport openings to Internet slow-downs to global warming, the grannies on steroids have all the answers... and the answers are inevitably the same:

• T.I.T
  
• Tourists and foreign investors will stop coming
  
• Thaksin is to blame
  
• The police are to blame
  
• The Muslims are to blame
  
• TRT is to blame
  
• The junta is to blame
  
• This would never happen in Europe
  
• This would never happen in UK
  
• It's a feudal system
  

Some of you need to make a few New Year's resolutions to get a life, to stop assuming if you ruled the world it would be a better place, and to stop clenching your butt cheeks 24 hours a day.

Sawatdee pii mai

Heheheheeee,, How very, very true!

,

the pair of you are not being resonable on the posters. while some of the posts are pure specualation. quite a few are resonable. all you do is just attack everyone.

After reading through over a dozen pages of posts, I have to agree that Khaojai's post was one of the few reasonable posts in this over extended and redundant thread where the vast majority of posts, those not quoting news sources, are indeed pure speculation, and not very well informed speculation at that.

Other than Thai what languages use similar "polite" endings to every sentence.

And what is the purpose of ending every sentence with krap / ka ?????

I am lazy and find myself not always ending my phrases using krap and have been told that I "poot mai paw"

In a society as highly stratified and feudal as Thailand was until fairly recently, the use of the polite affirmative particle at the end of clauses insures that one is giving and being accorded a minimum of correct status when the status of the two speakers relative to one another may not be completely known. In effect, better to be safe then sorry and give the other person the benefit of the doubt that you do not look down upon them.

And as Svenske has pointed out, Japan also recently emerged from a feudal and highly stratified society and has far more varied social class markers integrated into then language than does Thai.

English also use to have class markers in the pronoun system back when England was a bit more feudal than today. There was the formal "you" and the informal "thou". French still has the "tu" (informal) and "vous" formal.

And I am sure they are telling you that you phuut mai phra, speak impolitely and not phuut mai paw speak not enough.

I am sorry to say this, but I doubt a force of the size quoted has much to do with pro-Taksin or anti-coup political activities. I fear it is a harbinger of bad news for the Kingdom. It is the logical next step for the reasons many think were behind the coup to begin with. Again, entirely speculation on my part, but it fits the pattern.

Oh brave new world. An earthquake damages a "backbone" in a relatively small link off Taiwan and Internet traffic is negatively impacted throughout Asia to varying degrees. Well I have sone bad news for you, these "backbones" are rather vulnerable and the "web" is not quite as robust as many may think. Sure, most of the traffic that is normally routed through the broken line can be rerouted, but imagine what happens when more than one of these "backbone" lines get damaged.

I never thought much about it until I was told that there is a major international Internet line running only a few feet away from my work place here in the US, a land based equivalent to the undersea cables. The person in charge of the line stopped by and we talked for almost two hours as I had volunteered for a local city committee that was advising on a project that was going to impact the line. The city had not taken into consideration that their project would disrupt the line, they were not really aware the line was there, and the costs were daunting.

Any project that requires a breaking or stopping of this line incurs a cost of $30,000 per hour. Yep, that is a 3 with four zeros following. An accidental severing of the line could incur the same costs and the minimum time to repair would be several hours. If the project required exposing the line, it is normally buried, then the city must pay for a guard (off-duty policeman) 24/7 while the line is exposed. The total estimated cost to the city was an unanticipated $1,000,000. This was not only a surprise to myself, a non-techie, but was a surprise to the City Engineer and the head of the City's Public Works.

The bottom line is that although the Internet is robust, it is not invulnerable, and it can be taken down.

I agree with yankee-expat. The United States founders recognized that only a vigilant armed citizenry is an effective deterrent against armed criminals.

That is simply incorrect. The founders wrote in the second Amendment to the US Constitution:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The right to bear arms was given by the founders in context of a well regulated militia whose purpose was political freedom and had nothing to do with thoughts towards deterring criminals. Nothing more maddening or dangerous than an uneducated gun nut.

Come on guys, there is no way they will close suvarnubhumi, it would be as hard to reopen Don Muang as it was to open suvarnubhumi and it would cost a fortune. No other country in this region has 2 airports in one city. Suvarnubhumi is by far superior to Don Muang, the only problem I see is the arrivals hall being too small. I have flown in 6 times and never had any problems.

Perhaps no other major city in the region has two operating airports, but there aren't that many major cities in the region. Look further afar and there are many major cities that are served by more than one airport: New York, London, Los Angeles.

I have not yet visited Suvarnabhumi, but from all reports, both positive and negative, I see no mention of significant advantage over Don Muang.

As far as reopening Don Muang, I doubt the costs would be that great unless they have already destroyed infrastructure. I would think that at the very least, re-opening the domestic terminal for the domestic low cost airlines would cost little unless they yanked out the wiring and cabling.

If they had any sense of humor, they would rename the joint

Thaksin Memorial Cobra Swamp Airport

while he is still alive.

Credit where credit is due.

Actually I think you can trace the development of this airport all the way back into the 1970s and the Kriangsak era. I know I have been reading references in the newspapers to the Cobra Swamp airport since my first extended trip back in the early 1980s.

Indeed credit is due where credit is due.

Chaiyo!

That's part of the problem. No one really DOES know how many honorary cards were issued and how many were paid for. The Program certainly has never produced the numbers and the media has been unable to get a straight answer to that question. The whole program's inner workings are shrouded in mystery, enigma, and doubt.

There was little doubt from the beginning that the Elite Card program was a a front for providing tea money to Thaksin to grease the access to him and some of his cronies for the foreign business community. Certainly many cards were given away to make it look legitimate, just as free tickets to high society social events are given away to models to provide window dressing to such galas. The business community saw the elite card as just the price of doing business and gaining access while any actual benefit was simply a minor bonus. Most of the cost of these cards was written off as a business expense the same year they were purchased and a refund would not be sought after as access to influential government people is still desired.

Of course quite a few private people outside the corporate sector actually fell for the advertising scheme thinking that the Elite card was a legitimate program that would be a good long term investment. The naivete of some of these neo-sahibs relative to Thai culture never ceases to amaze me.

.... it is a crisis of another sort in another way worse - the world has lost faith in your market and basically visiting your country - this cannot be good for anyone except wealthy thais to consolidate power/money.

Wasn't that the point all along?

Do not think the elite in Bangkok is so naive or that they do not understand the FOREX markets or that they are ripe for manipulation by other players. Somebody knew exactly what they were doing and made one heck of a short term profit. Coups are not cheap.

It would appear to me that some bills for the coup came due and this little burp in the Thai equities market provided some in the new government, those who were better informed than others, with some fast cash.

But clearly too is that the Bangkok elite and the old money wishes to find someway to deter foreign investment that competes with them.

Generally speaking, rice padi land is rented for 50% of the harvest. Given the vagaries of rice growing, renting padi for a fixed price is a rather high risk investment.

So basically everyone that says they like KSR, likes it because it's a great place to watch farang girls big tats bouncing up and down as they walk along... oh and then a lot of them said "at least there's no sexpats"! Strange logic indeed.

Listen Flint, I ain't no sexpat cuz I don't go around looking for Thai hookers to pay to clean my pipes. But that doesn't mean I can't look and appreciate a good looking young woman walking down the street as I sing doo wah diddy diddy dum diddy do. I am middle aged, but not dead yet. And besides, I ain't into big tats.

johpa

so...before the thais came, there's no khmer empire, just only tai yai there in central thailand? that's what you're trying to say, in a summary?

I have reread my posts and can find no evidence of an erroneous statement that there was no Khmer Empire nor an erroneous statement that there were Shan populations in Central Thailand so I would think that any summary on my part for your benefit would be a tad bit superfluous at this point.

I don't know, but they do tend to freak out my youngest daughter. She is very tolerant of 'alternative' lifestyles ("Mummy, when will K+J have a baby?") but some khatoeys really are out of her acceptable things folder

Too bad, my kids always got a real kick out of that tacky little caberet show in the corner of the night market next to the equally tacky Thai boxing ring. For some families, dinner with a little mildly outrageous behavior is good family entertainment.

Lots of words are from Khmer, because Thai sacked Angkor Wat and took many Khmer scholars.

The original Siamese is from Yunnan and they probably speak laos with some kham muang before Khmer influence.

There were probably several migrations of Tai people into present day Thailand who originated to the north. One of those groups migrated into the Central Plains and became the Siamese whose language evolved into Central Thai. I am not a historical linguist although, if memory serves me right, Marvin Brown of AUA fame did some early work on the various Tai languages spoken in modern Thailand and their asscoiated migrations of Tai folks. The earlier migrations would have included the Shan and thus their nickname the Tai Yai, or greater Tai, as they did not remain dominant for long. And as a footnote, in general, the original language is usually preserved more towards the farthest from the point of origin, so Central Thai may be closer to what the original migrants spoke than Lao or Kham Muang.

One of the largest area of Khmer is upon the Royal language, ratchasaap, but some have recently sugggested that this is a relatively modern creation. The other common words of Khmer origin are, as an earlier poster noted, those with the infix /am/ as in tamruat.

I see that the current thinking towards the larger parent language group for Tai languages has been swinging back to a Tai-Kadai association, meaning that the Tai languages are more genetically related, rather distantly I should add, to Indonesian, with the ancient split occuring on Taiwan where one group became island and coastal loving seafarers and the other moving orginally westwards to the mainland and becoming rice farmers. But the debate seems to change direction every generation or so and as my college Thai professor use to say, if you go back far enough you can make just about any historical linguistic claim you want.

where were the thais in 10 century?

and who were these people in central thai before the thai immigration? these were part of khmer empire so therefore, those people were originally khmer before the thais came to set sukhothai, then ayuthaya.

and can the immigration kill all those original people? no, the thais intermarriage with them for a long time, and that's how the thai is today.

There is no Tai Yai in Central Thailand during Khmer Empire reign

And the Shan are in Eastern Burma while Burma is Mon

There were no "Thais" in the 10th century, but Chinese chronicles indicate Tai people in present day Yunnan and today there are still many Tai people in Yunnan and in the hills of Vietnam. The largest diversity of Tai languages is still found in that area which indicates to linguists that this is the home area of the Tai peoples.

Before the Tai immigrations, the Chao Phraya area was probably dominated by Mon (one of the earliest settlers in the region) and Khmer, mostly Mon, but the area seems to have been a disputed area politically between the Mon and Khmer states, and only later between Tai and Burmese states. And I daresay you would be rather hard pressed to find anyone else who would argue that Burma is Mon, although the historical Mon influence on Thai and Burmese culture can not be understated. One can argue that before their encounter and conquest of Mon Kingdom in the area of Lamphun (Haripunchaya) the Tais were akin to uneducated warrior louts, the vikings of Southeast Asia.

No doubt the original people of Centrak Thailand, few as they were, assimilated towards a Siamese Tai identity, either by marriage or by the typical path of people assimilating towards the dominant elite. But the myth of a neat linear Tai migration from north to south (Chiang Saen --> Chiang Mai --> Sukhotai --> Ayuttaya --> Bangkok) does not hold up to lingustic analysis as there were probably numerous Tai groups migrating through the region prior to the establishment of the these historical Tai capitols.

I only used the Shan as an example of a migration of Tai people that occured before the migrations of the Tais who became the Siamese. I did not intend to infer there were Shan in Central Thailand at any time. But when the later migrations of Tai people came down south, they encountered this large and powerful group of Tai speaking people up north, and it is guessed that it was quite early on when the Shans were nicknamed the great Tais (tai yai) when the likes of Mengrai lorded over minor principalities (muangs)

thanks Diablo Bob I have a B visa to invest not a work visa but I need to keep working while here so I hope this works and going through that side does not give them any reason to charge tax ..

:D

I got 'quality' stuff like VS Naipul, Nick Hornby, Roddy Doyle, Ruth Rendell, Ian McEwan, etc and was hoping to get a reasonable deal on swap/trade/credit, however if that Grisham and Clancy garbage is all KSR has to bargain with I'll look elsewhere. Maybe a good excuse for a visit to CM...Thanks

I am so sorry, but it has been decades since there had been a market for "quality" books in travelers' bookstores in Southeast Asia. Young people don't seem to read much anymore as they look forward to watching the next video or plan their trip to the nearest "full moon party" to groove on those computerized techno drumbeats. Oh brave new world......

And yes, for my fellow middle-aged curmudgeons, KSR has some of the best international eye candy (ahaan taa for the Thai lurkers here) on the planet, with lots of bounce. And if they notice your a Farang who speaks Thai, well every once in awhile you can even get some young lady to acknowledge your existence on the same planet and engage you in conversation, which at my stage in life is equivalent to hitting the "home run".

it's not about nationalism and anti-Americanism - it's about the american state militaristic policies all around the world.

yes, I do know thai who are not happy with that

There is NO American State militaristic policies worldwide...We Americans are very slow to enter a war..history so provides such evidence...and we are very impatient with loss of innocent lives particularly American lives... Your sophomoric rants are truelly indicative of third world mentality...do nothing let facism and terrorism run free then cry your little eyes out when it affects you and plead for American help...here's hoping that we let you all reap the rewards you so justly deserve.

Khun Bill, I suggest you read the recent books by that young firebrand radical, Chalmers Johnson ( ) , to get an entry level description of the American State's military empire.

meaning that the Tai languages are more genetically related, rather distantly I should add, to Indonesian

I'm curious. What do you mean by Indonesian? Is this Bahasa Indonesia (which I thought was simply a version of Bahasa Malaysia, with the spelling tidied up a bit)? Or is it one of the other languages used in Indonesia, such as Javanese?

I should have said the Tai languages have been thought by some to be related to the Austronesian languages, which include both Bahasa and Javanese and other languages ranging from Hawaii to Madagascar. I may be mistaken, but I think that modern Bahasa Indonesian is a fairly modern lingua franca trading language that has been relatively recently codified into a fully formed language that is now used as a native tongue. I am not sure if there is any major difference between Bahasa Malay and Bahasa Indonesian apart from politics.

Lots of words are from Khmer, because Thai sacked Angkor Wat and took many Khmer scholars.

The original Siamese is from Yunnan and they probably speak laos with some kham muang before Khmer influence.

There were probably several migrations of Tai people into present day Thailand who originated to the north. One of those groups migrated into the Central Plains and became the Siamese whose language evolved into Central Thai. I am not a historical linguist although, if memory serves me right, Marvin Brown of AUA fame did some early work on the various Tai languages spoken in modern Thailand and their asscoiated migrations of Tai folks. The earlier migrations would have included the Shan and thus their nickname the Tai Yai, or greater Tai, as they did not remain dominant for long. And as a footnote, in general, the original language is usually preserved more towards the farthest from the point of origin, so Central Thai may be closer to what the original migrants spoke than Lao or Kham Muang.

One of the largest area of Khmer is upon the Royal language, ratchasaap, but some have recently sugggested that this is a relatively modern creation. The other common words of Khmer origin are, as an earlier poster noted, those with the infix /am/ as in tamruat.

I see that the current thinking towards the larger parent language group for Tai languages has been swinging back to a Tai-Kadai association, meaning that the Tai languages are more genetically related, rather distantly I should add, to Indonesian, with the ancient split occuring on Taiwan where one group became island and coastal loving seafarers and the other moving orginally westwards to the mainland and becoming rice farmers. But the debate seems to change direction every generation or so and as my college Thai professor use to say, if you go back far enough you can make just about any historical linguistic claim you want.

For cheap delicious local wines you might try living in Italy, France or Bakersfield, California. When living abroad it's best to drink the indigenous specialities. The local homebrew rice whiskey has a bouquet that, though harsh on first try, one learns to enjoy in large quanitities - and no taxes!

Here here! Finally a poster on ThaiVisa with some common sense. As far as I am concerned, the beer in Thailand is pathetic and one would expect to pay 300B for a decent bottle of wine in LOS as that is about the price range I must pay in the US to bring the odds of a bad bottle down to an acceptable risk level. I mean once in awhile I can get a good bottle for less, but I am just as likely to get a stinker. But as far as I am concerned, nothing beats a Mae Khong & soda.

There were also far more sinister killings performed by death squads, mostly led by border police officers, and staffed by a mix of police and right wing militia, many of them veterans of the very similar communist killings. Nobody really knows, or has proof, who ordered them, how high up the chain went, and where the chain went. Not all chains lead to Thaksin.

Are you suggesting that there are 60 year old "veteran" hitmen running about who belong to long clandestine cells of Krating Deng or Nawapol?