Shaunduhpostman

Why wait till November 2018? At massage can hold your election right now if you need, only 2000 baht.

Much more reasonable than the closure altogether which was suggested by news earlier today. 

I wouldn't worry about it. More than likely this won't be enforced too rigorously, as per usual. If bars persist and stay open,  a few may get popped as an example to the rest. But I would think closing down for a whole month would be a tall order in practical terms no matter how much bar owners might want to respect the funereal proceedings, especially considering this is, as usual, a snap decision with no warning and no one being able to plan for a month of losses due to the extended down time. The threat of the loss of income would be greater than that of being busted for most bar owners I would think.

Oh me oh my! What to do? What a peccadillo we're in now! Why didn't the garbage just disappear on its own? 

Elon Musk and Jackie Chan star in "Amazingly Dangerous Thailand: Escape from Potentially Explosive Methane-Garbage Island!"

Jackie: Ewon...yoe duh genius, what should we do?! Who will sabe duh good people of Ko Larn fwom dis enviwonmental catatwohpy, now?

Elon: Ah geeze, I dunno, why don't we just torch the whole island!? Exploding methane-garbage mountains? Nobody cares, Jackie. The tourists always come anyway. Besides there are other new attractions in Pattaya like nude unicycling, new condiminiums, an explosion of construction sites city wide, early closing times and tracking bracelets to provide 24/7 police monitoring ensuring tourist safety! Now that the beach chair rental operators can't sell beer and have to wear aprons, who can resist travelling halfway around the world even if Ko Larn is an explosive waste dump?!

JAckie: Gee, do you weawy finks so...yeah, maybe you right Ewon. You know, I ahways thought you were a hi-tech guy, but yeah maybe nobody care anyway so why think too mutt? Just torch the Ko Larn and enjoy molten plastic fireworks of burning garbage dump!

Personally, I haven't noticed that Abrahamic religions are particularly conducive to enlightenment, which would seem the only good reason for engaging religion, tho neither is Buddhism as practiced in most places, its just another handle people use to put themselves up and others down. Islam does seem a vehicle for Arab expansion by design, that said it has already been a part of people's lives throughout certain sectors of the far east for centuries. Its a bit late in the day to start telling fellow Thai Muslims that they need to get packing. There are longstanding Islamic promptings, in the Hadith I think,  to tolerate Christians and Jews and tax them, but they recommend that Hindus and Buddhists simply be buthchered, they are beyond the pale. Even so, It is not very good Buddhist behavior to start off attacking Muslims no matter what their doctrines contain, most Muslims are not Hadith thumpers. It is just ego based my territory-my way or the highway stuff which Buddhsim is supposed to help us get over in the first place. By fighting with them you become them and being a Buddhist becomes rather pointless. My religion, my community, my people is dualistic grasping at illusory phenomena.

Operative word I think would be "allegedly." Seems the speculation as to where she is gets shifted from place to place almost as a contrivance. Absolutely riveting. 

Can I get you 1,000 tanks to go along with your order sir? You know here in America everything started to go so smoothly once our police forces begins to militarize. No more fussing with grumpy civilians, show 'em who's boss, boss! Why, with a tank force at your disposal, those traffic ticket fees will be goin like hotcakes! Every traffic ticket roadblock needs a tank to go with all those machine guns! So, why not make Thailand's police the most powerfull police force in all of southeast asia tommorrow with your order today! At Tanks 'n Guns evrybody's a 5 star general, why not bring the whole whole family! Come on down!

Oddly, I am not having any issues so far today. Thanks for fixing them for me anyway.

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Perhaps offtopic but of interest to some:

 Phone lines have gone totally haywire today, you dial one number in Bangkok from Isaan and get a completely different phone number. I don't do a lot of phone calls so maybe that is normal these days, don't know. Spoke for ages about getting a colonoscopy with a polite attentive operator, got the line transferred to some other department who politely listened and commented that I was welcome to come into the bank for a consultation or email the details about the colonoscopy. Bank? "Yes of course sir this is an investment bank not a  hospital gastroenterology department." My phone showed I'd dialed the correct number for the hospital but the investment bank's number was a completely unrelated set of numbers. Also today phone pick ups trigger an automatic line disconnect as well. After 20 tries finally got through to the hospital only to have the funds on my phone dry up just before I was going to end the call by giving them my details. 

Still abnormally slow in fact seems to getting slower everyday and many "Bad GAteway 502" errors so that you have to try and load a page again after waiting a 30 seconds to load. The bad gateway is eating posts as as well. I hope this is not the new normal for Thaivisa, it has always worked very well in the past until this last week. Just sayin...

Someone sold them the  heads. So, apparently producing and selling them is OK. 

Another vomit inducing situation. Land of smiles? Land of disgusted wretching. I reckon Thailand will soon be paying  the happy hippy karma piper  by something like being totally annexed by China within 5 years. Oh the outrage. There would probably be an improvement in the sea of infinite unending corruption based horrors that we all shrug off due to becoming numb, tho no beer on the beach at Pattaya and probably spell the end of your torrid strip club rampages. Oh well, there's always Cambadia and the Archypelargo of the Poleypines, innit?

An apron? Seriously, that is borderline cruel and humiliating, adding insult to the injury of taking away one source of income. It accomplishes nothing, brilliant, people just go to 711 to buy beer. Have they forgotten about the tracking bracelets to be worn at all times by tourists idea, didn't that solve all of their problems in Pataya? Whatever happened to that idea? What does an apron have to do with renting out chairs?  Even if the apron is clean don't many people have an association with it being rather dirty and grease spattered?  KInd of vaguely sickening when you think about it. How about one of those food servers hairnet caps to boot. I want my tracking bracelet dammit!

Did something suddenly happen, some miracle whereby Thailand has become a tourist mecca? Please tell how  this has happened oh holy American font of truth oh Reuters sirs.

They are  not wasting any time with this one. I had my calander marked as Oct. 1 the day I would no longer be able to afford a night of drinking once a week. 

Seems to me the government was mincing around saying it wouldn't affect our prices don't worry, but the Thai media had read the fine print and there were some charts saying the effect on us would be a doubling of current beer and wine prices.

I hope the Thai media were not right about that, clearly the government was talking nonsense when they disingenuously said it would affect us not to woryy as the tax only applies to distributors, the tax consumers and retailers pay will remain unchanged. That was a while ago, so I apologize if I haven't got it quite right here.

And given that the politically powerful medical establishments make probably trillions off of people's health problems it ain't gonna change and you could argue all this will just get worse.

That said with research and motivation you can do much to improve your health. There are some good websites good books about how to eat healthier, surf around the net follow your nose. Many people seem to think you have to start getting very severe with yourself. I have found I can start feeling better just by adding foods that are very healthy to what I already eat. Of course there is no limit to how far you can push with a health program, but if it stresses you out and you go back to just eating whatever you like whenever you like, what is the point?

For me, fasting a little bit bit 2-3 times a week does not put me out and it helps enormously to keep my weight down. My fasting isn't cutting food out altogether either but just having a plate of vegetables and a plate of fruit for dinner and if I get hungry later the rule is to eat only more fruit. If I do the fasting, then I can eat what I like the other days, though I am not really a big junk food eater anyway, never drink soft drinks don't drink beer all the time, don't like too much in the way of sweets but I eat too much bread and dairy and not enough fruit and vegetables.

Another barrier I've noticed people have is: "oof! That stuff is sooo expensive!' The answer to that is simple: medical treatment and meds are probably more expensive, so shelling out for olive oil helps you not only save in the long run but helps you preserve your health which no amount of money can buy back in many cases.

Whats that the tourism ministry was talking about six months ago, Pattaya the hub of sports tourism, or something like that...well maybe they should have considered that sports might also include extreme sports such as freestyle marathon unicycle wanking!

18 hours ago, InMyShadow said:

Your view is overly simplistic. lets not forget the global meltdown of of 2008 triggered by the sub prime crisis in the USA, massively over inflated real estate came tumbling down so your pricing is where it should be. its not cheap and after countless years in a bubble that crashed  means  USA property is in for another 10 to 20 years of recovery.

 

Compare that to Asia since  they were not effected by sub prime because they learn t from their mistakes in 1990.

 

Plus USA landlords pay a fortune in rental  taxes. Ask any of us landlords what we pay here? zip! no work permit required , no taxes paid and in comparison vey small common area fees

Absolutely, I'm oversimplistic. I'm not saying US real estate is cheap. Also I'm not in a position to buy property and therefore not especially interested, so I suppose my take on all this would be simplistic and uniformed. I guess that was my point, that when someone like me sees ads for property in Bangkok advertising prices that are more expensive than properties in much more desireable places (Ibiza, Los Angeles), it signals a number of things to me about what is happening in the whole general scheme of things and I am sure that holds for anyone else who sees ads for 1-5 million dollar condos in Bangkok. Thats all I was trying say.

Just dialing it up on Google in the most cursory manner,  if you check houses say in Ibiza or the wealthy beachside Los Angeles county city of Santa Monica,  seems you could buy some absolutely stunning not  to mention rather large properties for that kind of coin. Seems something is really not right with the prices in the ad in the op, either real estate games to inflate property prices even more than they already are, or there are a lot of filthy rich people with no other options, which is an oxymoron  when you think about it or more than likely someone doing the Thai bar business strategy where if you don't have any customers you double your drink prices and if you still can't break even you double them again. I thought I was shocked to find that farm land prices in Isaan are higher than farmland prices in upstate New York. And like houses in developed countries the farms are going to have access to decent infrastructure where out here you are strictly on your own. Kind of a wake up call once again to how insane Thailand is becoming.

I

At least he asks for money, instead of just taking it. 

That the Bundesbank is there and 70 billion in gold is just a coincidence of course. Move along folks, nothing to see here...

He is the one who will suffer the most from how he is. As do we all. Poor guy. Poor us.

19 hours ago, impulse said:

 

The 2 key words in your post are "bubble" and "bursts".   It may go up to $10,000, but I don't want to be one of those holding the bag when it happens.  Unless I got in at $5.00, but it's way too late for that.

 

I get a kick out of an ad that plays on CNN, claiming that a cabbie in BKK got paid 300 baht in bitcoins and now he's a millionaire.  And when I was in China, the same ad had a cabbie in Beijing getting paid 100 RMB in Bitcoins and now he's a millionaire.  And when I turned on my VPN through Prague, it was a cabbie in Prague getting paid a few CZK in Bitcoin and now he's a millionaire...  

 

I love the concept of a digital currency, but Bitcoin's been hijacked by the worst kind of get-rich-quick charlatans.

 

More bad news for Bitcoin fans:  http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-trading-china-yuan-remnibi-2017-1

 

 

Don't mind me, I'm going to indulge in one of my favorite pasttimes a bit of recreational public drivelling.

Whatever you may think of Bitcoin, my point, which perhaps was not made very plain, was that there's no need for getting middlemen and their agendas involved by handing your money over to them to "help" you make money using Bitcoin.

Its just a currency, of course it can be used by charlatans, so can the fiat currencies we all use and we don't see people complaining about the evil of the Thai baht because acquiring it is what motivates all the corruption and organized crime in Thailand. 

The OP's friend, if she indeed did get scammed, at least has the possibility of getting her money back doing it all herself, depending on her timing, competence, grit, desire, bankroll  etc. Of course if she got into bitcoin yesterday she'd be getting hammered by the crypto currency sell off in progress, but as I am sure you well know it is a bit more complicated than just buying some Bitcoin and waking up on morning next month a millionaire next month. So, why make it even more complicated riskier and more complicated by allowing other people to do "invest" for you what you could do yourself, which is really the whole beauty of crypto currencies is that there is much you can do yourself.

Anyone can buy and sell currencies and with the smallest of bankrolls. Why play video games when you can you take 50 bucks and try to make into 150 bucks? Trade commisions are miniscule and it is liberating knowing you are trading directly with others rather than asking some employee of a brokerage to trade for you. I am as poor as many Thais and things like FOREX markets are prohibitively expensive for me to get involved with.

Its rather tragic that the media gloms on to scam stories and how absurdly over valued  Bitcoin is rather than the news that the average person now has great potential for opportunity that you  can to some degree manage and control yourself, vicissitudes of the crypto-currency markets not withstanding. There is also micro loaning to other crypto investors you can do, you can actually mine and mint various coins yourself using video game graphic cards. It is not something the avergae person has even a remote chance of doing with fiat currencies. Do we hear about any of that, of course not, haha!

So, That's what I was thinking when I read this post and what I would try to impart to my friend, rather than just say "See, ya got scammed! Too bad! Nothing you can do! Guess you learned your lesson about BItcoin and trying to invest your money! Just don't even go there dood! Forget it! Why don't you stop being lazy and greedy and go sell some papayas in the market like good honest people do. "

Bubbles and bursting bubbles and hype go with the territory and you accept those risks or don't, but that's not the same as people who take your fiat currency and tell you they are going to make you millions on Bitcoin. What I suppose additionally galling me about the guys who scammed the temple  was that the scammers offered to give them such a small return that it seems the scammers, had they actually put the money towards Bitcoin, which they probably didn't, could easily have made the 300 percent and kept a mere piddly 600 percent for themselves and everybody'd be happy. That's just the facts of the matter, bit coin did during one 300 day period go up about 1000%. 

As to whether or not that incredible run is finished or whether you or I too could make a lot of money on Bitcoin or other altcoins is, after some good timing, up to our guts,  intelligence,  research and decision making ability. I would assume I don't have to tell you that.

But Bitcoin, on its own is far from being just a scam or an instrument for people to scam people with and little to nothing else. What is really a shame as well  it seems it won't be too long before many governments will start conflating scams with crypto-currencies and making them illegal under the pretext of looking out for people's well being, which of course we all know they are so good at, as though there were something inherently wrong with cryptos.

A currency exchange shop in Kathmandu also pointed out some subtle irregularities on some new notes I got from Thai Commercial bank that I tried to change. There was quite a discussion among the guys in the shop, they had to phone someone but after the call they decided to buy what I was trying to sell. I had to agree, it looked like there were some problems with the printer or something, some of the notes didn't look quite all there. Just par for the course, really, around these parts, though that said obviously neither I nor even the exchange shop people are experts on the nuances of Thai bill design and what is OK and what isn't, nor is it considered to be any of our business I suppose, it is not like the Thai baht is taken seriously by many outside Thailand. I really have never understood why there never seems to be any standard to the thickness and size of coins, such that it is tricky to get vending machines such as BTS ticket machines to accept coins. With such slack standards you really are inviting people to print their own money. But as with most things it just doesn't matter.

If I were the OP I  would try to explain to my friend myself how buying and selling Bitcoin, while not easy, is, still, compared to other investments, a piece of cake, considering the fact that it is very possible to have gotten filthy rich quickly had you bought enough of them 300 days ago . I would say to him or her, look, just see if your friend can't get his investment back and do it himself, or barring that, invest more  again but this time on his own.

300 days ago Bitcoin was at $380/BTC

At the moment it is at $4724/BTC

Many expect it will at least go to $5000 before the bubble bursts.

But for now that is pyramid scheme like money, but it is not a pyramid scheme, anymore than the pyramid emblazoned U.S. dollar is anyway, for which you'd probably be right saying it was.

4 hours ago, webfact said:

He said if Yingluck had left on a private jet, a record of the flight would have appeared in the Immigration Bureau’s online database.

 

However, had she left discreetly via a land border, the bureau would have no record of it, he acknowledged.

 

Oh...so, then when we leave/come back from say Laos, to say get another 90 day entry stamp we have to fill out the TM6, have our passports scanned that's all  just for immigration to end up with having  kept no record of our entry? 

How cool is that?!