Johpa

Wake me up when Mom Sujarinee comes out of hiding and writes her autobiography.

I have a very trusted friend who holds a high position at a prominent uni here in CM and is from the Koran (sp?) Hill Tribes. He related a story to me about how he wishes he and his department could do something to stop the selling of the children in the hill tribe (and Thai) villages in the area. When he told me the details of how someone would come into the village and just simply buy some of the children, and then the village throws a party to celebrate the event!

Balderdash! Having lived off and on in the hills for several decades now I have never heard of such an event. I do know families who have sold their children. There is no celebration, only a resigned and great sadness. Today there is far less "tok kiow" where the Chinese traders would come looking for the young ones just finishing elementary school. Today it is mostly refugees from Burma, internally displaced folks, kids who have no parents who enter "the trade". Listen to the interviews and all the kids are speaking simplified Thai with an accent. In Chiang Mai it is often young Akha and Karen boys working the western tourist crowd. Bangkok is the center for the young girls and it is mostly, and has long been, a domestic customer base, but not exclusively.

From my experience, aren't most the travelers non-nationals?

My wife and daughter are Thai and we always use the Thai passport line and I have never waited.

When I use to travel alone and used the foreign passport line, then I waited.

My family also follows my wife through the "Thai National" line and there is rarely much of a line, if any. This is not about wait times that do not exist but only about the ability of a few to skim off the top of a large contract ably assisted with the connivance of the manufacturer of the system as well as the connivance of the international banking system. It is about as good as it gets for immigration officials and is rather paltry compared to their peers in the Thai military.

In Germany we have a pandemic of ehc coli bacteria. No one knows for the moment why.

Currently in Chiang Mai there is a pandemic of the E. Cohok bacteria similar to other outbreaks around the Kingdom. Everyone knows why this occurs: it is a result of the raksaa naa plague that has long impacted human habitation throughout the Siam region of the Golden Peninsula over the past century.

And what do you know about the Singaporean guy, did you know that Singapore is one of the most corrupt governments in the world... Singapore`s banking system runs on dirty moneys.. nearly all of the Burmese Junta`s cash is invested through Singapore, and Singapore is the world hub for Heroin, and always has been..

Singapore is not that corrupt for every day living, but the banks there are indeed where the money from the ruling military junta in Burma deposits into their personal accounts the cash so graciously provided by the local natural gas consortium led by Chevron and Total S.A. Singapore has also overtaken Thailand as the depository of choice for heroin money as a result of the relocation of the heroin trade back to South Asia. But the international banking system as a whole and not just Chinese bankers, with the IMF as part of that system, cares not a whit about illegal gain just as long as the money gets deposited back into the system where it can be loaned out again ten times over. Its called fractional banking and for every $1 on deposit they get to loan out at least $10.

it seems that children home schooled tend to be able to make connections at an adult level better than average, without lossing the ability to make childhood connections.

Here in the US I work in an environment where it is easy to spot the home schoolers as they are the only kids who come into my shop during school hours with a parent. Here in the US, on average, they are less socialized than their peers. That is not to say there are not some bright precocious ones out there, but again, on average, my experience with this group does not support your statement.

And yes, you will have to bring in a tutor for English writing.

I don't know of a Westerner who likes Pla-Rah (Although I'm sure I'm about to be proved wrong by a number of 'gone natives' on this forum).

I have been enjoying pla raa for decades now. Yes, it is an acquired taste, but so are many local dishes ranging from fermented tofu (tao hu yii) which is of course an adopted Chinese foodstuff to the signature raw meat dish up north of laap dip. There is also laap loo which is basically a raw blood soup as well as laap plaa (raw fish) which is more commonly found in Isaan. Any type of raw meat dish comes with some health risks, especially the raw fish dish which I will not eat due to health concerns. I doubt there are health risks eating any of the fermented dishes like plaa raa as the fermentation process should kill off most bad guys in residence. But I have had a few minor tummy issues after eating laap dip. But being that it is the signature dish of the Khon Muang up north, one learns just to grin and bear these occasional episodes that require copious amounts of tea drinking the next day. The only food item that I have encountered that I did not care for and never ate again was a cooked bamboo rat (a rodent but not a rat) whose meat was just foul tasting.

IMHO, the best sit down restaurant is along the canal, just a hundred meters or so south of the Mae Sa Valley RD before you cross the canal just as you turn onto the 1096 from the 107. It is a garden style restaurant named the Koh Kaew. Best lunch spot with a large selection is an unnamed traditional noodle shop (open walls, corrugated roof, and wood floors) further up the 1096 on your left just past the monkey place, across from a large tree. You will often find the long term residents from the Four Seasons slumming there as they have discovered that the Thai food is far better there then at the Four Seasons. For a fun place try "The Beatles" place nearby on the north side of the same road. Later at night there are a number of decent food stalls and shops between Bangkok Bank and the Amphoe offices.

Television soaps are made for one and only one reason, to sell advertising space. If they reflected real life then people simply wouldn't watch them.

Of course the makers of the soaps have a financial motive that is realized by the selling of advertising. They also have social motives in fostering a complacent female population that is encouraged to use emotion and not reason to negotiate the world. And they also use the soaps to promote an East Asian concept of beauty above a Southeast Asian concept of beauty. Thus we get Sino-Thais tending to play the leading roles and ethnic Thai actors tending to play the servants in these imaginary households. This of course leads to the selling of even more "beauty" products in order to change appearances. So the goal is twofold, to make money and to manipulate certain segments of the society.

The bright orange ones are Theravedic (sometimes called the Hinayana tradition) tradition the tradition followed in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Burma, cambodia, and Laos. The darker maroon ones are followers of the Mahayana tradition - the tradition followed by the Tibetians, most Chinese Buddhists (Pure Land Buddhists), Korean, and japanese (including Zen). Theravedic is the overwelming Buddhist tradition in Thailand. Thai Theravedic followers mostly consider the Mahayana tradition heretics.

To the best of my knowledge, no Thais or other Southeast Asians follow the Mahayana tradition in any numbers that would be noticable.

It also raises broader questions about the use of this chemical in the broader hotel industry in Thailand.

Why limit your concerns to the hotel industry. You should perhaps be far more concerned by the inappropriate use of chemicals in the food industry, especially the vegetables which are found to be so tasty by so many indigenous species that in order to get them in one palatable piece to a humanoid table requires massive amounts of biocides, both the insecticide and herbicide varieties. And the people spraying tend to be folks with little education and certainly people incapable of reading any warning labels in English, although these days the labels are often in Thai. And then of course one can always witness these same folks rinsing out their sprayers in the local streams. We only notice these deaths because they are sudden and happened to some young white folks. We pay no heed to the premature deaths of the masses of the population due to the inappropriate use of chemicals as Dow, and others producers, has no financial interest in seeing that such chemicals are used in an appropriate manner.

I remember when Logic classes were offered in high schools in the States. Until the 70's. Then they disappeared.

I always wondered why this was.

I have my own conspiracy oriented thoughts that have no basis in fact, but some of the results of teaching the "new math" that leave out logic and proofs from the curriculum are clearly seen in this thread and countless other threads scattered about the Internet. The ultimate result is of course twitter and the retrogression towards a visual world and away from the world of books and reason.

Last time we were in Chiang Mai there seemed to be lots of Expats reading bumph around.....

Maybe its wrong time of the month??

"Bumph"?? Is it related to chromosome sets or is it some sort of Commonwealth euphemism?

Armless ??

Blind in both eyes ??

Independently wealthy ??

Contagious disease ??

None of the above but I am bit surprised yet gladdened to hear Alan is still alive and well. We are talking old school Chiang Mai here, and Alan is probably not the cup of tea for the neo-sahib generation of ex-pats that now dominate this forum.

Finally paid some attention last night to the highlights as there were no other options on the TV other than a Vin Diesel movie. I confess that I thought it was the younger brother getting wed so now I understand better all the brouhaha to which I have paid no heed over the last few months. But I daresay the bodice on the bride's dress was smashing, she has got a nice little set of boobies on her and the hint of a Lady Gaga design did her well. She could match up nicely with a well known similarly nicely designed nude diner in another Kingdom we all know so well. But the highlight was of course not the ridiculous horse drawn carriages but the Aston Martin. Made me jealous and wanting to say to her: "what say, you, we go out on the down and swing, baby? Yea".

Yeah...no opium in the golden triangle. What color is the sky in the universe you live in? The hill tribes have been processing opium for hundreds of years. Maybe it is less in your face, but it is still there, and now we have added Meth to the mix as well.

Opium was introduced into the hills of Southeast Asia as a cash crop relatively recently, about 150 years ago. Prior to that it was harvested in India and Turkey. There has been relatively little opium production within the Thai borders since the 1980s. There are still to be found a few small poppy plots for tourists to admire. Cross border traffic in illegal drugs use to be raw opium, but by the early 1980s, after the police action against Khun Sa in Hin Taek, the processing labs had moved across the border and the traffic tended to be in refined heroin. Over the last 15-20 years most of the labs and drug traffic has switched to methamphetamines as the old school opiate dealers like Khun Sa in Burma and his able lieutenant in Thailand Laota, retired or were temporarily imprisoned and replace by the meth crowd, still financed by the same cast of characters in Bangkok.

And what's with Doi Hang? I though that was just west of Chiang Rai town. You would need to follow the Kok river on almost a straight line in a northwest direction, into Chiang Mai province, and to the Burmese border to do some serious drug business.

"Full Moon Pub offered free drinks to girls who showed their breasts"

Is the PUB management too sick and cheap or are the ladies too desperate and naive?

That's how the country will improve into a civilize nation. SAD!!

Yes, we would like to see Thailand reach up to a civilized standard such as we see in the United States where young lasses reveal their boobies in the streets in exchange for cheap plastic beads and not for anything as tawdry as a free drink.

One word comes to mind... opium. Lots of it.

Still listening to Journey, the Go Gos, Depeche Mode, and other stalwarts of the 1980s are we?

It is my opinion that it does not matter which side wins as the lot of the poor will not get better in any significant way for a long, long time. The leaders - red or yellow - will give them as little as possible to keep them in check and it will not amount to much. All the class warfare stuff is just rhetoric to exploit them and take or remain in power.

I agree. Thai politics is all about which group within the "old boys network" will get the biggest piece of the pie as they all continue to go about "eating the country", (kin muang)as they say in the vernacular. They are not arguing over policy or ideology, only in how to obtain and then share the spoils and yet still get elected by the populace. Thaksin relies upon the more rural and poorer folks for votes by throwing them a few more bones then do those under the "Yellow" banner promoted by closet racists like Limthongkul. And since nobody can predict when the big storm will actually hit (and ya got to love the euphemism that allows us to post on that subject here) everyone is fluid in their loyalties as everyone is jockeying for position. And since there are no substantial politics or ideologies involved, it is easy to remain fluid in one's political fealties.

Climate change. Maybe. Not man made, for sure.

The 10 magnitude earthquake that hit Japan recently not only that moved the entire nation 8 inches, but also shifted the planet's axis to a measurable degree. That change in the axis certainly has an effect on the oceans' currents, the magnetic poles and the jet stream.

Not climate change silly, climate change is a relatively slow and uneven phenomena that is best seen by noting temperature changes in mid-ocean depths and at arctic extremes. This event is probably due to normal oceanic events such as La Nina (this year) or El Ninos, the two best known global weather impacting oceanic events. Last night on the TV news they noted the exact same phenomena at Cape Cod, near Boston MA, with large krill formations just off the beach with the more easily observable large gatherings of the now rare "right whales" just off the beach. The demise of the right whales, once numbered into the tens of thousands, is a result of near extermination from human whaling activities, the same humans who are now very slowly planting the seeds of their own demise by sending their carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Only those with their heads buried very deeply into the sands beneath the krill still deny this effect. But the existence of weather phenomena such as La Ninas does mask the global climatic warming trend, as does the highly variable temperate weather patterns found in the homeland countries of most deniers.

People are still buying and wearing Levis? I thought that after the Dockers phase that Levis had moved on to producing branded adult diapers.

It isn't polite to write any religions lowercase. If the place is run by Jews/offers Jewish or Israeli food (not the same thing) and you think it's a ripoff, that seems fair to me and just descriptive. I have eaten there a few times and found the food pretty good but nothing to write home about.

Since when is the religious persuasions of a restaurant owner in any way relevant to the quality of the food or service?

There hummus and pita is better than that rip off jewish place at Thapae by far...!!

Feeling a tad anti-Semitic today?

Sawasdee Khrup, TV CM Friends,

So, would just like to share recommending either of the books by Warner.

I agree that Warner's book on Laos is a must read, ranking up there with Alfred McCoy's opus of "Politics of Heroin". A first person account from one the the more interesting primary western players in the Lao saga is Doc Weldon's "Tragedy in Paradise" which I use to see in the book stores in Thailand. There are also some interviews to be found online with Bill Lair, another country boy who went too native for the CIA, he had actually married a Thai woman and spoke Thai, and ended up driving trucks back in Texas.

Unfortunately, altering the topic headline is out of the question since its already been indexed by google and would screw up the search parameters and yield a 404 page with google.

So we must all bow to the new aged deity named Google? I have long hypothesized that there are striking similarities between the WWII cargo cults in the South Pacific and the current twitter brained beliefs in the technology messiah. Glad I am an atheist and don't find 404 results as an affront to my beliefs.