GinBoy2

Did your Mom speak to you in Welsh as a kid? As a kid my parents spoke a mix of English and Spanish at home. That coupled with TV, radio and everything around me just made my baby brain soak up both. I'd define native languages as what goes on in your head. I 'think' in English & Spanish, and my thoughts will flip flop between both. I can speak Mandarin, Thai & Lao as second languages but I don't think in them. May sound weird, but those inner voices in your head say what's going on

In this day and age, strange question. Almost ever Thai adult has or does watch porn, it's just how it is. It reminds me of the old adage; There are two types of men. Those who masturbate and those who lie

I think that aligns with my previous point. I spoke English & Spanish from birth, and I have never considered either of them second languages. Languages I have subsequently learnt in adult life, they are my second languages

Well that's very true My son who was born in Singapore obviously spoke and wrote perfect English when we moved to Thailand when he was 11. His 'English' teacher at what was i was told the best International school in Khon Kaen was very well credentialed. Me and my wife would read the corrections to his homework, and to be honest didn't know whether to laugh or cry it was so bad. I remember a particular parent evening when he tried to talk to me in English. It was so embarrassingly bad. Eventually to end the misery I just switched to Thai, which I think made him give a sigh of relief, just to end the torture.

Now I'm too lazy to look up the numbers, but in the US there are around 60 million Hispanics, and i would say the majority of us speak English & Spanish. Add in the South Asians who will speak English and Hindi or Bengali, the Chinese and Vietnamese plus all the other immigrant groups. In the US at least most immigrant families tend to hold on to second languages. So not really sure your 20 million number holds up. I'm tempted to say that when asked the question, folks don't even consider their second 'native' tongue as a second language

Well this is disappointing, but hardly a surprise. Growing up bilingual I've never had a problem picking up languages, so today I speak my native English & Spanish, plus Mandarin, Thai and Lao. But if you don't start early with kids the brain gets hard wired not to accept new languages. All my kids are multilingual, but it's because they heard it all from their parents at an early age. The more interesting parallel would be the Dutch and the Scandinavians. I don't know how those guys do it. With my kids it was a deliberate decision that I spoke certain languages and my wife(s) another to the kids when they were small, so they ended up learning both. I can't believe the same is true of the Dutch and Scandinavians, yet they all come out speaking English as well as I do

Well having lived in Singapore for years, I'm gonna way in on that. Botswana I have no clue. Singapore is a single party State masquerading as a democracy. They have a great trick of bankrupting opposition leaders, then banging them up in Changi, often without charge for years. They are usually charged under the Internal Security Act, which can result in you disappearing for years My favorite quote regarding Singapore came from a former British Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten ....Disneyland with the Death Penalty. Don't get me wrong, we loved living there, but you need to understand what underpins that disney life you lead

Trouble with a lot of you is that forget, Democracy is messy! People argue, throw insults, and are at times downright idiots. But somehow it seems to work for all it's faults. Now pick your poison. You can either have all that messiness, or you can have a Great Firewall of China, Putin, or Lukashenko. The latter are far more orderly, but God forbid you say something out of line, you might well disappear, or worse still end up with some strange needle mark on your body You choose

Yeah I noticed that too. Good Job on that extra 0.8% over the top effort

To put this all in context. The smart folks, none of which reside here tell us, that a severe reaction to the shot means that our body is taking on board the protection of the vaccination. So I'm hopeful that the fact that both my second and third shots took me down for a day gives me super human resistance to this cr**p

I hear you. I kinda liked Smile too for the service and inclusive bags. But at the end of the day that may well be part of the unsustainability of the whole business model. Airlines are a business, not a charity and they make money or they fail. In Thailand there seems to be a belief that you can do both and defy financial reality

And maybe you could say something informative rather then a 'blanket statement' to counter what I said!

So I got my Pfizer booster on Sunday. Exactly the same response as my second one. Yesterday was an awful day, felt like cr**p. Body aches, headache like a freight train rolled over my head, body chills. My sore arm was horrible, but I also did a flu shot at the same time which probably made that worse. It lasts a day so I'll live with it. But I hope these new antiviral drugs work since if I'm honest I'd rather take my chances on getting sick and cure it than go through this vaccination day of Hell every year

My only regret is that for my Thai son I didn't get him to speak Spanish as well This was a tactical decision. Mandarin isn't a native language to me, but we figured it would be useful for him, which it has indeed turned out to be. It takes effort to do this with your kids, and I tried to speak Spanish to him as well in the beginning, but it was just exhausting trying to separate 3 languages, and talking to my wife in Thai & Lao. 5 languages swirling around in your head gets a tad confusing at times. As a kid I grew up speaking English & Spanish and I remember as a small child having weird conversations with my parents where we would all swirl around having conversations in a mixture of both without a second thought. The human brain's ability to figure all this out to this day amazes me, but it's something that has made my life better, and all that effort I put into my kids lifes richer too

At 3 it's still doable. I only spoke Spanish to my US kids up until they started Kindergarten, my wife only spoke English. With my Thai son, his Mom only spoke Thai and Lao, me only English and Mandarin until about the same age. It's hard, but at 3 the brain can still be rewired, but when you do it you gotta be diligent, no slipping into a different tongue. I found it exhausting, as did both my wives, but the result is we have 3 kids who are multilingual. So I don't think at such a young age you need to separate yourself, they hear it all and somehow their brain figures it out. My Thai son never heard Mandarin except from me, yet he now speaks better Mandarin than me

So I did this several years ago, so don't know how covid has affected things. 150 cubic feet is about 4.5 cubic meters which tends to be shipping companies minium. We shipped our stuff from Isaan to South Dakota, all told about 6-7 weeks. Don't know where you are sipping stuff to, but unless it's a few miles from the port always get the steamship line to ship it to the nearest port of entry as a bonded shipment. Trucking will significantly increase the cost. We used Asian Tigers, great service packing and delivery on the other end. https://www.asiantigersgroup.com/thailand/?gclid=CjwKCAiAnO2MBhApEiwA8q0HYcVcx6QlCziPC_HqehcIeowtZuSOg9cClO76c5QRiuTkrImXKFjtFBoCUtUQAvD_BwE I'll IM you the contact that we used, but can't be sure he is still there

Well of course what you say is true, but the reasons for this whole situation is hardly a one trick pony. A lot of young couples from Isaan go to work in the factories around Bangkok sending home money to Grandma who's looking after the kids. The there are the young, generally poorly educated who have the bizarre mindset 'if I have his baby he love me more more more'. They end up with a brood and no guy in sight. They tend at best to drift to factory work, or quite often in the 'entertainment' biz, again dropping off the kids with Grandma. Trouble is live in a rural village for long enough and scenario two is the worst, and most prevalent. And unlike for most of us in West where custody battles are hard fought, young Thai men will drop and forget their children faster than you can drop a pair of dirty underwear.

Hmm, Thai Smile the discount arm of a bankrupt airline. The thing to always remember with every single Thai airline is they are built on financial sand. I used to fly almost weekly from KKC to either DMK or BKK, most of the time for $30-50 USD one way. Now that is just nuts. You can be paying the flight crew next to nothing but the majority of the cost of flights isn't the crew, it's jet fuel, landing fees and the depreciation of the equipment, and those costs don't change anywhere in the world. I'd place money on the fact any of them; Lion, Smile or Air Asia are on a revenue per seat basis, at best breaking even on a 100% load factor. It's been a smoke and mirrors game, where finally financial gravity has caught up with them all

Well that's exactly what'll happen. They reduced their stake to under 50% to enable TG to enter restructuring, but just as the lights are about to go out, they will inject money in the form of buying a majority share. And that will be that, back to the roller coaster of the absurdity that is TG

In the wonderful world of TG things are nearly always never as they seem. I think I said in the last thread about them posting ridiculous profits, that was just accounting trick on how you report distressed assets. https://simpleflying.com/thai-aiways-2021-financial-results/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=echo&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1637023413 There are some gems in there; "Meanwhile, the auditors declined to express an opinion on the financial statements. Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of restructuring Thai Airways." "Thai Airways says the auditor’s decision isn’t due to queries about the accuracy of the financial statements. Instead, owing to the three reasons stated, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Jaiyos aren’t confident Thai Airways is a going concern." Gotta love when your own auditors are convinced you are a going concern!

Sent you an IM

Those rules only apply to airlines registered within the EU and subject to EU law. When you buy a ticket with an airline registered outside the EU you are bound by the terms and conditions of that jurisdiction. All EU, or any countries aviation law cares about is airworthiness, not the commercial deal you struck when you bought a ticket

Now I can't comment directly on Thai airlines. But I work for Delta in the US, and cover the United contract at our station. Bikes can be tricky. It's not the weight that's the issue it's the linear measurement, and that's the sum of height length and width of your bike case. The reason we do it because of cargo space, especially on some regional aircraft. So this is one where the rules may well be carrier specific often based on their fleet type, but usually airline websites have a section dedicated to onboard cargo

Apart from the fact this has been blindingly obvious to all, just stunned someone actually had the balls to say it publically, hardly the Thai way! We haven't been back in nearly 2 years, but my wife wants to go visit family We're going on vacation to Hawaii in a few weeks and she was thinking of maybe a doing a trip from there. An hour or so on her laptop, and the answer was 'screw it, I can wait' So if a Thai wanting to visit family can't be bothered with all the hoops, the chances of Johnny Sixpack and family thinking. 'yeah lets go to Thailand' is as ludicrous as it's tragic that the Thai Government can spout this nonsense.

I think most Bangkokians consider Isaan a foreign country, so that'll make the numbers lol