Johpa

He is right, the market sets the prices.

Market conditions may influence prices, but there are real people in the back office who determine profit margins and who also set the prices. Thailand has an under developed property tax system and they offset that revenue weakness by very high vehicle taxes. This is a benefit to those in the back office who set the prices and who tend to own property worth far more than their vehicles. It is just another instance of regressive taxation. Funny how the "market" tends to favor regressive taxation over progressive taxation.

I have a home up a turnoff from the Samoeng Loop RD and I can't recall any stray dog on that road or any roads giving me chase over the past many years. Sometimes a dog in a village may yap and chase a bit, showing off to protect its territory, but nothing serious. Most stray dogs you see along the side of the road in the forest areas are on their last legs so to speak, too weak to bite or give chase.

The drive to Doi Angkhan to Chiang Rai and back is doable, but that would be one long drive. Best to make a day trip just to Doi Angkhan, or better yet overnight on Doi Angkhan but dress for the cold, or overnight in Fang or Thaton with a return via Mae Salong and Chiang Rai.

Way too early for the primary spawning event.

This is slang....saying to go and die. The being re-born in future part is not relevant....

I believe it is relevant in the sense of adding additional insult to injury.

Regrettably not restricted to Thailand. There was a big case in Bavaria last year were several members of the state parliament had hired relatives at amazing salaries and benefits. And plenty of US Senators that employ relatives, too.

Despicable in any case and even more so in Thailand where the Army took over to clean up.

We could also mention the recent resignation of Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber due to hiring his new squeeze/fiancée. And yes, most members of the US Congress would be out of a job if hiring family members was to be made a crime. But relative to corruption in Thailand, this case is not really worth noting.

Thai workers have reeked havoc on the Israeli wild life by trapping and sneering small

and medium wild life for their own consumptions, Thai workers have been smuggling Ya Ba

and other drugs in to Israel for years as they were never searched or even looked at,

the laundry list is long, do not presume that this is ALL ISRAEL FAULTS.. learn the

subject well before irresponsibly commenting......

The Israelis do not need the Thai workers to bring in the drugs for them as drugs such as Yaa Baa have long been easily available in the larger cities, especially the larger coastal cities. Israeli involvement in the international drug trade has been going on for decades, most notoriously the episode where many members from that disbanded/ disgraced nut brigade (Egoz) went on to provide security to the Medellin Cartel. Back in the 1990s the drug trade on the beaches of Samui was delegated to an Israeli group of characters.

Wildlife throughout the Middle East has long disappeared from environmental stress. Like Thai forests, the "Ceders of Lebanon", which once would have stretched down the Ladders of Tsur to Haifa, are long, long, gone due to environmental degradation begun millennia ago. There is little wildlife remaining although I can imagine that Thai workers who are not kosher would go after the few remaining wild boars and other non-kosher animals found in the hills up north just as did certain foreign European and American volunteers a generation ago. And those were the workers replaced by the Thais, and rest assured, those volunteers also indulged in drugs of various sorts.

It is just a lottery dependent upon which side of the bed the immigration official in the line you chose arose that morning. I have been given a pass for a one-day overstay and I have been sent over to the desk to pay my fine for the same one-day overstay.

It's just slight-of-hand. Goldman is secretly dumping all fiat currencies and buying gold and property in New Zealand. According to infowars, even Jacob Rotshchild is scared and stockpiling ammo and canned goods.

One can make a reasoned argument that GS is a criminal organization (for those few here who do read books may I suggest Matt Taibbi's Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America). But you will find little reasoned argument nor people who do read books over at Infowars, although on that website the wearing of tinfoil hats is de rigueur.

Out of some morbid curiosity that often accompanies that first early morning cup of coffee I googled the phrase and came across a Thai music video of the same name and have concluded that it means that after listening for 10 seconds you would rather die and be reborn again that continue listening.

If you are fit enough to ride the loop on a bicycle, and I am not, there is the alternative to ride down into Samoeng and then ride up to North Samoeng towards Mae Pa and then up to Mae Khi and then its all downhill to Mae Rim from there. Look at the GT-Rider Samoeng Loop map for details.

NO !

They are taking down monorails all over the world - they dont work and are a waste of public money.

Build better roads, and get more Taxis (no buses - roads too narrow).

Monorails work fine but they are unsightly and block views of people who own prime real estate and thus have something to say. And related to that point, monorails are used in western countries where there are property taxes and nobody wants to see prime property devalued by the building of an elevated rail system of any type. And further connected to the impact upon the propertied class, monorails are too cheap to build compared to alternatives and thus are not favored by those influential people who would prefer the more expensive alternatives such as underground rail.

The last thing that CM, or the planet, needs are more roads and more taxis. CM needs to discourage car usage by building mass transit into the center from the satellite cities and build mass transit within the city and further discourage car usage.

The Queen of England is by the richest person in the world but of course her actual wealth would never be reported,or the Rockefellers wealth.

So Royalty continues to have its privileges.

I find the most upsetting part of the list, apart from the 3 people on the top 50 of the list with whom I am on first name basis but from whom I have never gotten an invite to their home for a beer, is that the Walton family has four members in the top 10 who have never worked a day in their lives and whose wealth is derived, as is Dhanin's (a man I am not on a first name basis), on the exploitation of labor.

Just talking about mass transit in Chiang Mai is step, however small, in the right direction. The city is not that many years away from experiencing a city-wide gridlock event.

I am no lawyer, but I would suggest renting and not buying. Given the risks due to things like lack of zoning and usage laws, lack of control over the building's owners (you only own inside the unit) why oh why would you want to buy?

Maybe Scania and Volvo didn't want to pay the kickbacks.

European and American companies are happy to provide kickbacks, but laws require said kickbacks to be reasonable, rather subtle, and hidden from sight. The main issue here is that because the Svenske buses are more expensive, there is less wiggle room for invoice inflation and thus the Thai partners wish to pursue contracts that have more room to skim off the top and the equally corrupt Chinese are only too happy to oblige and, as an added bonus, keeping the payback money in Macau without asking questions.

Glad you asked...Most of the Ivory is from cutting the tusks several times through out the Bull elephants life...

The mahout does this not necessarily for the Ivory to sell...it ensures healthier tusks. the tusk will grow stronger with less

chance of infection...I have seen this done many many times with no harm to the elephant. The ivory may or may not be sold

as some mahouts (the ones I personally know) usually will keep the ivory in their family...

Tusks are often cut to shorten them because of safety concerns to both those who work around the elephants as well as the safety of the other elephants. Full length tusks are that dangerous if you follow Archimedes and see the tusks as levers with a few tons behind one end. The tusks may be physically cut by the mahout, but the tusks belong to the owner of the elephant and that is not often the mahout, although owner-mahouts are a bit more common in Surin than in the north. The risk of owning a bull elephant is the poaching of the tusks. Often the poachers simply kill the animal, and sometimes they cut off the tusks too close to the nerve and flesh and the elephant later dies of infection.

The OP article does seem to promote the Sino-Thai concept of Thainess over Tainess by referring to the Lao script in question with a slightly derogatory tone as Thai Noi.FWIW, my experience observing Thai public schools is that the curriculum is indeed taught, for the most part, in Central Thai. The centralized mass media broadcasts , for the most part, in Central Thai. And for the most part, just about every Thai I know under the age of 50 not only understands Central Thai, but can also speak Central Thai when the situation demands it, although some may speak Central Thai with a slight accent or with a slight hesitation in their voice that is perceptible to the ear of a native Central Thai speaker. Non-Thais are unlikely to hear these small differences and I only know about this since my wife is from the north and I have witnessed how the Central Thai speakers detect that she is not "one of them" pretty quickly.

I am in interested in learning High Thai, exclusively, just as I learned High German.

High German refers to a linguistic and geographic feature of German "dialects". You want to learn Central Thai, which is what I too learned in school. It is just that after graduating college I moved to the north and some of my newer vocabulary became infused with Northern Thai (Kham Muang) vocabulary without having a Central Thai match, a fact that makes my Central Thai speaking friends chuckle. But I still refuse to say "raprathaan ahaan" (to eat) in speech, which is often seen in "Hi-So" Thai speech, or High Thai if you will, and I personally would not want to be associated with the despicable Hi-So elements of Thai society.

I live on Samui since 1986 and I paid 30 baths for a bungalow on the beach (yes I can remember) and I paid 10 baths for a plate of rice with something on top. Then they built the airport and it was the beginning of the end. Then we got the tourists. They wanted to eat the same food they have at home but Thai food is delicious. Much more than the Mc Donald's rubbish, they wanted air-con (if it's to hot they could stay at home instead of coming here and spoil the island. They also wanted swimming pools a few meters from the sea. I just don't understand these people who travel far to get what they have at home. If you come to complain, just stay at home, easy no? then after this we got the worst: THE RUSSIANS. I really miss the time without tourists, it was a great time.

Oh please, you were also a tourist back, as was I. And the development of Samui was clearly inevitable even back then as the airport was already a done deal in the very early 1980s. I am just grateful that I was able to spend time as a tourist on a relatively remote island paradise. I was a regular visitor throughout the 1980s but never went back again after a visit in 1991.

As for the American courts, this is the same idiotic center of American jurisprudence that declared corporations are people. Pay the US court system and the vast majority of the members of the US Bar who remain silent after multiple such travesties no heed.

Since you hate corporations so much, I suggest you go through everything you own and if it's made by a corporation, throw it out. Don't be a hypocrite and support them by owning their output.

Start with your computer. I've read enough of your drivel.

Let me make it clear that neither I nor anyone else is forcing you to read my "drivel". The remainder of your criticism is simply nonsensical and not pertinent to what I wrote.

What about the American girl crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer a few years ago. Was that tried in America? Was compensation given? Or did the Israelis tell the Americans to mind their own business.

The Rachel Corrie incident was brought to an Israeli court seeking damages due to negligence. The case was rejected by the Israeli court system. The case was also later rejected upon appeal. This is the same legal system that found the Israeli government culpable in not anticipating the acts of violence by its allies during the 1982 incursion into Lebanon. A good young woman, but she should have known better than to walk in front of a large moving tracked vehicle without being able to make eye contact with the driver.

As for the American courts, this is the same idiotic center of American jurisprudence that declared corporations are people. Pay the US court system and the vast majority of the members of the US Bar who remain silent after multiple such travesties no heed. They do not deserve your respect and this useless and meaningless decision regarding the Palestinian Authority is insignificant relative to far more serious demonstrations of these people having no moral center: e.g. allowing vulture capitalist Paul Singer to screw over the people of Peru.

Then the late 1990s Asian financial crisis hit Thailand. Bangkoks grand plans for its carrier were significantly hobbled. Commissioned in 1997, the same year the financial crisis struck the country, the Chakri Naruebet which means Sovereign of the Chakri dynasty, the Thai monarchys ruling family was mostly consigned to sitting in port due to lack of funding.

The pathetic story of the HTMS Chakri Naruebet has been noted by myself and others here in this forum many times over the past many years. The lack of funding had nothing to do with the 1997 financial crisis. There was never any intent to operate this ship in the capacity of an aircraft carrier, it was always simply and excuse to skim 30% off a contract. However, a deserving name to a deserving ship. Chaiyo!

In Oz, a pickup is known as a ute. It is also slang for an "easy" tart, who sometimes is referred to as "the town bike" because everyone can ride her. So a "pickup" is a truck WITH a flat bed, a tart who WANTS a flat bed or a well-ridden bike that's DUMPED in a flat river bed when it's of no more use.

I hope this helps to clear the language difficulty between our Aussie, English and American brethren.

Former US President Bill Clinton explained how you bring it all together by lining the bed of your "ute", in his case an El Camino, with astroturf which you then use to bed down your tart on some remote road. The man always had style with women even if the women left something to be desired.