Johpa

Do you have any link at all that you can point to that would confirm this law such as which version of the constitution it was included or even just some kind of credible link that speaks of the plight of women's rights in Thailand that mentions this?

Sorry, can't find any link to older Thai laws. I could not even find a decent search engine to look through the old usenet soc.culture.thai (SCT) postings where this subject was often discussed. As for getting some feedback on such womens rights in Thailand try conversing with my old SCT pal Nong Od at her blog site here.

Years ago, a thai female could not own land if she was married to a farang. She also had to give up her right to any land owned by her family. I hope that this isn't a first step to returning to that repressive era.

Really? Where did you read that?

Common knowledge amongst us older hands. Those laws were the reason we never changed my wife's name when we first got married 25 years ago. For many years she kept all her Thai ID in the name of Nang Sao and maiden family name, all to the amusement of other Thais. The laws have now changed and my wife has not only changed her name, but our kids now have full Thai citizenship and are registered on the tabian baan.

Why all the fuss? Nothing really belongs to the foreigner over here, so you can't lose what you don't really own. When you wake up you'll find that it was all just a dream anyway...

Actually most everything really belongs to foreigners here. We could start with the inability of this Buddhist nation to invite the Dalai Lama to visit or we could start to talk about the over 60 tons of tax money recently sold off with the proceeds relocated "offshore". Oh, but I forgot that in the newly imagined (with apologies to Achaan Ben) post-modernist and apologist academic narrative that Thailand has always been a multi-cultural state, a narrative assisted by an earlier group of anthropologists from Cornell who got their assimilations arse-backwards.

Sriracha Charoenpanich = xenophobe.

And with a family name like Charoenpanich, well trained readers will assume that such a person would have intimate knowledge about foreigners owning not just land but almost the entire freaking Kingdom. I daresay the pot is calling the kettle black.

Chaiyo!

Tha Royal Thai Navy is still suffering from institutionalized second class status since they were involved in that failed coup some 70 years ago. Not to mention the embarassment of the true chang puak in Thailand, the HMS Chakri Naruebet.

I met an Issan girl last week who told me she has often eaten elephant, and was amused that I was shocked... I bet there are more of them killed than anyone could ever guess.

Having lived in elphant country for many years up north, I have never heard of an animal being slaughtered for meat. However, sometimes when an elephant died from a known accidental cause then the animal was butchered. I would imagine that the same thing happens in the Suai populated regions of Isaan. Eating elephant meat is, in and of itself, not shocking. I have eaten such meat twice over the past 25 years. But slaughtering a healthy elephant for meat makes no economic sense apart from when very wealthy Chinese are willing to pay big Baat for the opportunity.

There is nothing new here. Once you had paid your way into the position of National Parks Chief then there are fewer ways to get a return on your investment compared to say purchasing a high position in the Police or military. It is all in the book by Achaan Pasuk et al: Guns, Girls, Gambling, Ganja: Thailand's Illegal Economy and Public Policy which was published over a decade ago. And the heavy hiting response to Mr. Wiek could have been easily predicted if one had read the expat bible for understanding the concept of and use of power in Thai culture, Niels Muldar's Everyday Life in Thailand. Anyone who confronts Thais in power directly is asking for trouble. As a foreigner, Wiek should have found a better Thai phu yai to advance his cause.

My daughter enjoyed Chiang Mai so much that she decided to attend college in Chiang Mai and not in the US. Plenty of kids hanging out in the malls just as in the west. But do not homeschool! Your child needs a social network and the international schools are the place to start. You can always complement the school education when you find it lacking. There may not be quite as many "cultural" activities available as in Bangkok, but there are far more outdoor activities which leads to a far more balanced lifestyle. And pay no heed to the rabble here about the kids of missionaries. Yes, a few of within this group are as intolerable as the rabble that doth protest against them. But the families here long enough to have teenage children attending school are usually pretty well grounded and will even be tolerant of a grandchild of Shlomit. I, an atheist, have become friends with some of the longest serving missionary families in the north, and none of them have yet to take offence when I decline, but always with a smile, their inviations to their prayer meetings. And as others noted, there is a somewhat higher percentage of leuk krueng kids here (one Thai one Farang parent) who are often both bilingual (common) and bicultural (less common) and can serve as a guide into Thai culture. The real social danger are, as in Bangkok, the well educated kids of the despicable Thai Hi-Sos who are often as mean spirited as their parents. If the family is not speaking Kham Muang in the home then proceed cautiously.

Your relying on the Internet for directions instead of buying a road map?

I just wired funds from the US to my daughter's account in SCB and in less than 24 hours and she got the e-mail notification. Quite the improvement from yesteryear when the Sophonpanichs would sit on your money for two weeks before depositing it into an account. You people should have no complaints.

Reading your posts, WTK, I wonder why you keep hammering on the same thing: that is, the ENP a 'very successful voluntourism business'. Isn't the ENP not a bit more than that in your opinion?

The ENP is a tourist business run by people with their hearts in the right place and who are good at promoting their particular schtick. The Mae Sa elephant camp, the largest in Thailand, is a similar business that takes another direction for promotion, but the owner, although a very different personality from Khun Lek, is also a person with his heart in the right place and is devoted to helping the pachyderms. The bottom line is that both are tourist based businesses which take diffferent advertising paths and attract different types of tourists and supporters. It is just like Las Vegas, if they don't like Elvis then you entice them in with an alternative such as Star Trek or a fake European city.

Most of the elephant camps offer similar experiences. If you have a full day then head up to one of the smaller and more intimate camps around Mae Tang and then combine it with a visit to the caves up at Chiang Dao. If you are more limited on time then go to the Mae Sa camp where you can combine it with any number of different tourist activities and still be back in town early in the afternoon.

Pai is good for a night, or maybe more if you enjoy the "scene" and being in the t-shirt selling capital of Thailand doesn't bother you too much. The surrounding area is very nice. But Pai is not for everyone and honestly, I prefer Mae Hong Song. Although a much larger town, MHS somehow remains more quaint, more laid back. And the surrounding areas are just a nice as Pai and all you need is a copy of the GT-Rider MHS Loop map to explore in all directions. May I suggest a day trip, and maybe an overnight, to Mae Aw (AKA Rak Thai) with a stop at the Royal Palace along the way. Or take the "elephant trail" road past the Fern Resort to the first viewpoint for a spectacular high mountain view. There are countless day trips from MHS with a few options to stay at guesthouses at many of those destinations. You might try the Piya guesthouse along the lake if you want to stay in the middle of town. There are less costly guesthouses nearby as well as higher end hotels not far away.

OK, but still, what's the point?

Clearly for you there was no point, although others did get my point. And so the point of noting in public that for you there was no point is pointed in which direction? OK, no real need to respond as that would indeed be pointless.

Kallam = cabbage in Thai, in this case cabbage meaning money of course. But I could be wrong.

First, you are wrong, it is Thai slang for testicles. Second, congratulations to Mallmagician for getting my post without my needing to resort to using the smiley face figures. And third, I agree with Chiangmaipat that this is only the most ridiculously named housing estate amongst many ridiculous names estates built along the various ring roads. Methinks many of these estates have been financed by ex-pat Thais living in Los Angeles, But the most ridiculous of all is calling these housing estates muubanns. Oh, oh, there I go again using Thai words on ThaiVisa.

Johpa - from what you say you must know Edwin and you must have read what Edwin said in his open letter that started all of this. Edwin just asked for the baby elephants in captivity to be DNA tested against thier mothers to make sure that they haven't been poached from the wild.

I have no problem with DNA testing and have made no comments upon that subect although I doubt many owners would be able to afford such testing. I respond here when people characterize the entire industry as corrupt as I disagree with that assessment. And I respond to those who demand that all of the tourist camps be shut down as I believe that the tourist camps are an important component to a less than perfect solution.

Ya gotta love CNX. About 1/2 of the departure terminal space is dedicated to domestic travellers, who constitute about 90% of all travelers. On the other hand, if you enter the international departure section you arrive into this large, empty cavernous hall occupied almost entirely by forlorn clerks standing idly at the gift shops that have no customers. So yes, for international arrivals and departures, CNX, which dedicates half it space to that 10%, well it is great for its size.

Just curious if any of the posters here had the kallam to buy property and live within that Sino-Thai wet dream housing development named Richy Rich Land located on the northern outer ring road (121) just south of Mae Jo.

1. is being done for that tourist dollar, and it is just a taste.
   
2. In numerous cases, those "poor farmers field" are ilegally encoaching on elephant habitat.
   
3. What I do, and who I am in contact with, for security reasons, is not up for discussion. But clearly, I'm more aware of what's going on than you are.
   

I agree that the camps are for-profit business ventures, but I argue that without the camps many of the elephants woulud not have a place to live. And many of the owners of the larger camps are committed to the long term welfare of the resident elephant population and invest significant funds towards that goal.

The farmers are indeed expanding their fields as the Kingdom expands it all weather road network into the hills. This is no different than any other nation on earth that has seen its population expand. Care to find wild bears in Europe of buffalo herds in North America? Thailand does have some wildlife sanctuaries, probably not enough, and certainly not enough to hold the resident pachyderm population. Therefore, I argue that the tourist elephant camps are one part of the solution. They are not a perfect solution, but there is no perfect solution for the elephants unless we start culling people as well.

And grasshopper, I have been involved with elephants in Thailand for 25 years. I have owned elephants in Thailand and I have met most of the major players. You know nothing and your feigned need for "security" only empasizes that you are but mere bluster.

The nation was cursed with a terribly poor genetic gene pool. It is that simple.

Crikey, it was only a few weeks ago that I felt that a ThaiVisa thread had hit a new low and I was expecting that new low to hold its own for at least a few months. But then this post just pulled the bar even further downwards into the neo-shahib moral morass. Yet I doubt we will see blatantly racists posts like the above deleted by George's minions. Once again George...Chaiyo!

Yesterdays encounter; at a McDonalds I order 1 dip cone. The Thai way is "aw cone dip neung" In 30 seconds the girl hands me a cone of ice cream only. I tell her I ordered a Cone dip. She then informs me it is more expensive than the reg cone. Perhaps to save face she has to say this. I ask her "what did I order" A; cone dip. I smile and say thank you and sawadeekap. There just blazing mind boggling incompetence everywhere.

Again, that is just the way it is.

And what do you care? As long as domestic staff and sex for hire remain affordable you will stay and complain and be happy in the mistaken belief that your spoken Thai can be easily parsed by everyone you encounter as even I want to know what "dip" classifies (go to the langauge section to ask how classifiers work). Chaiyo!

If each place keepingy elephants had the elephants DNA tested and the plane regularly inspected the approved by the nesasery government body, it reduce these numbers very rapidly followed by the death penalty for people buying, selling and taking bribes in such ventures.

For what it is worth, there is suppose to be ownership documents for all non-wild elephants. The elephant that we use to own had such a document and that document was transferred to the the new owner when we sold the elephant several years ago.

There are two intermingled narratives here. Make no mistake, they aren't shoooting 10 year old elephants for the ivory, fully adult males perhaps, but not youngsters. That is why fully developed tuskers are rarely left out in the forests unattended. The relatively recent killing of wild elephants for meat is to feed the increased culinary demands from the now more commonly seen wealthy Chinese tourists from the PRC to their southern most monthorn. But of course criticism of the Chinese in Thailand rates right up there with lese majeste.

And then there is the issue of the elephant camps for the trained "domesticated" elephants who can no longer find employment in logging. And yes, unemployed elephants often go hungry. One could take all the elephants in all the camps up north and transport them to the few uninahabiated reserve areas, but then they are even more susceptible to poaching and eventually, given the bounded nature of such reserve areas, would be subject to culling. There are no perfect solutions here, but clearly the camps are one part of the less than perfect solutions available.

it's not high on locals lists to go to such places.

What?!? Last time I was at the Mae Sa elephant camp there were loads of Thais visiting. The elephant camps are very popular destinations for Thais.

The slaughter of family groups of elephants in Thailand and neighbouring countries is being funded by tourists. Not until there is global awareness, outrage expressed, and elephant entertainment boycotted, will this stop. I am closely connected to those "on the ground".

And pray tell, without the tourist dollar, where would the elephants in the camps go? There is no longer much in the way of open forest habitat where they could live and graze without trampling upon some poor farmers field. There is no longer any work in logging. And in the larger camps up in Mae Sa and up the Mae Tamam, the breeding programs are quite successful and the resident herds are self-sustaining in population. So just what exactly is the problem with tourists providing funding to feed and care for animals that would otherwise not be allowed to forage in the wild? I can undertand your concern about protecting the wild herds in the national parks. But the elphants in the major camps up north depend on the tourist dollar. And just what does it mean that you are "closely connected to those on the ground"? I have known several of the owners of some major elephant camps for decades and some of them are well grounded people indeed.

I’m really at 85 getting a bit too old for having to fix the ####ps of Thais. Seriously looking for a buyer or buyers for the properties so I can throw my clothes in my satchel and move on. From previous living there Dalath in Vietnam sounds appealing, Maybe Baguio in Philippines or Bandung, Indonesia, the Indonesians did find out by now that the Dutch weren’t so bad after all.

Perhaps what you really need during your waning years is to give up the neo-sahib liefstyle and find an assisted living facility in the Netherlands. You might even find some former colleagues of Westerling and raise glasses to the superiority of Empire.