Shaunduhpostman

As refreshing and courageous as Bernie is in arguing to introduce aspects of socialism to America, I don't know that he is trustworthy and isn't already yet just another toothless figurehead for the still constitutionally suspended national security state to play another 4 year sidewalk hustle game of hope and change. I thought Bernie was overly aqcuiescient to Hillary in the 2016 election, there were many aspects of the democratic primary that pointed to election fraud and manipulation of rules to favor Hillary in 12 different states, Dem party correspondence via Wikileaks also confirm a program to appoint the candidate, voters be damned and Bernie said nothing other than to concede defeat and ask his supporters to vote for Hillary. While he overcame the corrupt mainstream medias near blackout of his campaign, and amazing and inspiring feat, the very same total blackout on the manipulations of the Democratic party to appoint candidates he has yet to overcome it would seem. That conservative Republican interests got behind and financially backed Hillary also adds to the mix where I for one feel uncomfortable to back a Democrat ever again. I was suckered by Obama and voted twice for him but I think enough is enough, and the meaninglessness of these big party candidates in terms of creating a change for normal Americans and indeed the world is enough to turn my attention elsewhere, no more big party support from me.

What is so ingenuous about Thai style is that they really know how to rig these humiliating passive aggressive pay back to the bad farang games, and often a main component is the  ingredient that  you don't really know whether a short changing or being ignored and not served or not given a bill, the usual is just them spacing out and forgetting or becoming distracted or not. That may be all it is that your waitress is absent minded. But The ambiguity that gets baked in is really the salt in the wound. If you feel convinced that the short changing was deliberate, and you feel like risking deportation, your face all over Facebook and  Thai Visa headlines "Foreigner Short Changes a Restaurant 15 Baht! Refuses to Pay!" and even the target of a nationwide man hunt spearheaded by Big Joke and/or the wrath of her big brother and his cronies or whoever, why not just head right down to the restaurant right now with loads of change, order something and when it comes time to pay leave an amount that is 15 baht less than what is due and wait around for your waitress to come back and ask for the remaining 15 baht. Or put her in the position of being really petty by shorting the bill 2-3 baht. As Chief Joseph or one them injuns once said when facing certain defeat at the hands of General Cusstard or whoever, "Today is a good day to die (over 15 baht)". I wouldn't even bring up the past times you've been short changed and return the humiliation and ambiguity and simply cooly feign confusion her why she thinks 15 or 2-3 baht is so important? You can almost bet she does think it is important and that you give the money to her and I think you would have made your point whether you decide to relent and pay or take things up a notch a not pay. I guess the point is, don't forget that you can play them back if indeed they are taking the mickey. I remember at the office where I worked with one other westerner, we had cheekily been nagged for months to treat the staff of 6 Thais to a lunch ordering a Pizza Hut feast. We had the money and they didn't, it wasn't fair! One guy I could never tell if he was sincerely really angry that we hadn't bought the whole office lunch or if he was just playing. He'd shout at us sometimes. "You never buy lunch for the Thai staff!" We would just crack up laughing he looked so angry. We were paid so much and they weren't. Boo hoo! I don't know what got into me and my colleague but he got into feeling sorry for them one day and he twisted my arm a bit, "come on! It will be something different, lets treat them to a lunch feast like they have been nagging us! they can invite their friends over from the other offices and we can cheer things up a bit around here." I agreed and we gave them 2,000 baht budget or so and told them OK they could order food for all of us. When the food and the guests arrived from the other offices, they laid out the spread on their side of the office and placed a small salad on my desk and one on my colleagues desk. The rest of the food was meat pizza, chicken and other things that both my Aussie colleague and I could not eat because both of us were vegetarian. We asked had they ordered the vegetarian pizza and other things we could eat. "No. They not have." My colleague and were clearly relegated to our cubicles with the placement of the salad on our desks away from the others. They had the music blasting laughing and chomping and yucking it up with their freinds. They were jubilant at having made us pay for their lunch and party and they didn't even have to invite us.  My colleague and I just shook our heads, they were so much worse than we ever imagined. Just, thanks for the money, later fools! We were not feeling good at all so we left the office and had lunch elsewhere. When we got back they weren't there. The office was still a mess, chicken bones paper cups of half drunk Pepsi being wasted all over the place and crap all over. One of the points of contention in the office was that the Thai office workers had convinced the manager not to trust the farang with keys to the office. We had to wait for a Thai to be at work to unlock everything in the mornings. Sometimes no one showed up for work until 2-3 hours after we were supposed to be in the office and we simply had to stand in the hall and wait. Now we noticed that several of them had all left their keys on their desks. we were both finished with our work mostly so we just f****d off, closed the doors and left for the day.  We played it off the next day like we had no clue what had happened, "Yeah...we came back from lunch and we couldn't get in! Someone had closed the door! We were locked out! Oh my god! So we went home!" They had gotten locked out and they had to get a locksmith over the next morning to make copies because everyone's keys were locked inside. Just what they had told us, "We can't make copies of these keys for you because locksmith can't do it. Its special lock! Sorry na!" That was fun rubbing that one in, "the Special Lock!" jokes.

Just another day in paradise!

Mae Hong Son at 235 pm 2.5 as of 11:00 am today (http://aqicn.org/city/thailand/mae-hong-son/hongsonsuksa-school/)

Other places:

CMU Mae Hia CNX.....295 pm 2.5  @13:00pm; down from 322 pm 2.5 @ 11:00 am http://aqicn.org/city/thailand/cnx/cmu-mae-hia/

Chiang Rai...................159 pm 2.5   @15:00pm http://aqicn.org/city/thailand/chiangrai---gaia-station-01/

Khon Kaen..................152  pm 2.5   @14:00pm http://aqicn.org/city/thailand/khonkaen/

Ayutthaya....................151  pm 2.5   @14:00 pm http://aqicn.org/city/thailand/ayutthaya/ayutthaya-witthayalai-school/

Pai Hospital................158 pm 2.5 @ 14:00 pm http://aqicn.org/city/thailand/mae-hong-son/pai-hospital/

Pong Hsptl., Pha Yao 163 pm 2.5 @ 14:00 http://aqicn.org/city/thailand/phayao/pong-hospital/

Municipality Office, Nan 158 pm 2.5 @ 15:00 http://aqicn.org/city/thailand/nan/municipality-office/

World map with many sites reporting multiple times here: https://waqi.info/

According to this international air quality map: https://waqi.info/

as of 5 pm today, Lampang is at 895 air quality index. If you click on the Lampang air quality indicator you can see that PM 10 levels are through the roof. Of all the sites reporting on this map Lampang is the worst place in the world at the moment. There was a site in north Thailand in the 500's yesterday, beyond code red and the Chiang Mai university site was also code purple two days ago. There is a code purple above red and above that is brown. Lampang is at brown at the moment

In Kalasin, Roi Et its been quite smoggy/smoky/dusty. I check the Khon Kaen PM 2.5 readings daily and when ts high there it feels/looks bad here. I grew up in the inland suburbs of Los Angeles in the 60's before smog devices and the pain in the upper chest, slight nausea, having low energy that recall having most of the summer as a kid is what I experience here when levels are red flagging in Khon Kaen. This is a good website with a fully zoomable world map and stations world wide reporting every 3 hours. Thailand does not stack up too well most days, only industrial North East China and India are worse most days:

https://waqi.info/

Hasn't the Tourism Ministry turned it into the number sports destination on earth? A few years ago... And what about ankle bracelets with alarm systems and tracking devices, and beach chair staff wearing govt. issued burlap to make visitors feel safer, and national park status to preserve all the natural beauty, seemed a few years ago with all of those plans the place was set to pick up? What happened?

I enjoyed reading the OP's lengthy post, to me the swathes of 6 word dismissals, emojis and dry witticisms which seems to be the way people are being "socialized" to "communicate" with on internet is vastly more tedious than a detailed, well written lengthy post. Even a poorly written lengthy post is better to me, than the insulting witticism I am supposed to laugh at and push the heart button for, so that Johnny Hotshot gets an additional star on his rating or whatever it is, the short sharp barking of the forum bullies that is meant to end "discussion" on a discussion board. I'd rather read more detail in a longer post and by that you can better appreciate the uniqueness and message of any particular post. Short posts are aggressive or quick fix ego aggrandizing  gestures and not usually too much else. If you don't want to discuss anything or don't know how to then go kill things on a video game or whatever or don't and just spray the forums with your mark.

I would say that much of what the OP bemoans is sadly quite on the mark. I've observed that certain character types and even people with a certain physical appearance seem to be able to win more Thai people's attention than just being flat out ignored most of the time, but I don't really trust that perpetually smiling/soft spoken/skinny/5 foot 5/pasty faced males/ with wooden mannerisms  or people who are naturally quite obsequious and favor currying and are obsessively fastidious about their pleats and creases eventually get rewarded with a brilliant life here either. The Thais  are doing you a favor by ignoring you and they don't deserve your company or help even for a second if they are as you wrote about, I agree with what your relatives in Europe said about how you get received.

In the end Thai people have a problem. They don't seem to know anything and don't want to know, cannot cooperate, communicate, love, care, or appreciate anything, the majority of them, I don;t agree that its just reserved fro foreigners but being a foreigner certainly doesn;t help either in most cases. I have no idea what is wrong with these people and I would feel sorry for them if they didn't make my life  hassle  every time I have to leave the paradise that is my shack in Isaan. They live to obstruct and get in others' way because that is what has been done to them their whole life long. The signs of that nation wide malaise appear daily in the news and in your neighborhood. Its not your problem unless you let it and there is nothing anyone can do for them to solve their problems short of the probably alrerdy starting slow motion train wreck of the national karma has run its course and only then will something else emerge from the wreckage that even has a ice cube's chance in hell of being any better.

Myself, I can stay on here in Thailand, despite having long ago withdrawn from trying to be present in a significant way in the community and society at large, because my wife, who is Thai,  is a caring and mostly pleasant companion and friend whom I could never hope to land in the west  and because I was always pretty much of a lone wolf in my own society and don't need an outrageous social life and a motorcade and  a 1 millon dollar income to have self esteem or be happy. My wife has similar problems with Thais as you and I do. If you value integrity, your health, your life, are courageous, don't tolerate people's crap, and ask for just basic respect you'll have few if any friends as a foreigner in Thailand. That said, if you can cultivate a rewarding personal/family/inner life it becomes rather immaterial where you live aside from the pollution, noise and other things we can do nothing about. Finding a way to disengage without alcohol or drug dependence from the madness of this country is key and then you can relax and it will all bother you less. The rest of the world is not so great either is the way I see it, its no great loss to stay here.

That said I am not in as deep as you are even after 22 years. Long ago, I guess I saw it as a bad move to get involved in a business with the people in this country, who to me  plainly seemed to not care about anything, not even themselves. And again, I am not judging, no one says anyone has to care, its on you if you don't, but its difficult enough as you mentioned just getting a tooth filled because of that attitude, so I decided long ago I wasn't going to get too involved in trying to make a living here by becoming a business owner where 90% of the people are so poor they can't afford to pay attention, as the saying used to go.

Perhaps there is a way you could shift your business away from having to employ Thais. To me having to depend on a staff of Thais  just seems like an absolute nightmare. That would be a source of enormous stress if it were me.  Zero will to communicate or even get along with others, they don't want to be at work, and look out, everyone else is going to pay! Perhaps there are ways to do business online with people from outside the country. That way you could stay with your wife and get free of some of the bad parts of Thailand that you are stuck with presently.

It depends on your wife and how you feel about her, how important that relationship is to you. If that is not so hot, then it would seem  its a no brainer, you should make plans to gracefully leave. I don't agree that just because your wife  won't leave to live elsewhere that it means she doesn't care about you. My wife used to pack up and leave with me but now she doesn't want to do that, she feels living in another culture is even more stressful despite her being deeply unhappy with what Thailand has become. It would never occur to me that that change has anything to do with me.

https://www.5gspaceappeal.org/the-appeal/

Chemtrailing Bangkok with drones to solve the problem!? That's what it sounds like. Or spraying something without even the vaguest second thought about the health consequences of the chemical.

Seems strange that suddenly there is all this rigamarole about the problem, almost as though it were new. Its hard to imagine that any level of anything dangerous, deadly etc. would cause even the slightest raise of an eyebrow amongst those in a position to do anything about any of it. Seems this is just yet another game being played for someone's political and/or financial advantage.

5 hours ago, webfact said:

In a video posted to Facebook Lt Gen Surachate said that there are many good English teachers and religious teachers but that some bad ones slip through the net. 

That Lt Joke lets slip a comment suggesting he conflates religious teachers with English teachers does not convince me that Lt Joke is in the mind at all to be fair or clear headed about this. Why mention religious teachers? What does that have to do with this situation? I would guess that because he is of Pakistani origin, Joke then "thinks" that therefor the guy should be religious, ie Muslim and therefor supposed to uphold religion. Kind of a nasty very questionable thing to say to make this already quite nasty case even nastier. He really does seem to be afflicted with quite a bad case of animosity and prejudice against foreigners and his conflation only incites even more outrage before the case has even gone to court. Yet another drop in the bucket towards diminishing respect for Thailand in the minds of many living in the rest of the world.

Give me a break. Ridiculous article and irresponsible because people new to Thailand who don't know any better may take this rather bad advice seriously and not  carry their passports with them. Obviously our consulates and embassies did not issue us passports expecting us to carry them around with us at all times, but in practice and in law that's how it has worked in Thailand for quite awhile, to my knowledge. The law hasn't been changed and the way things are now you can bet  attitudes have not changed. Seems the police are actually advising us to break Thai law. Glad the Russian embassy has the sense to tell its citizens they ought to carry their passports. "No passport No promplem!" Yeah right. Me? I carry my passport and a few other things that are important in a  pouch inside my clothing. I attach the pouch every time I step out, and  it is not a hassle to do that in the slightest. In 22 years, my passport has never fallen out, been stolen  or been damaged. So for me there is never any reason not to carry my passport when in Thailand. Anyone who has been here for a few years knows that there is nothing regular about how the law is enforced. Not having your passport and meeting the wrong situation with the wrong officers  is well known to be a ticket to the station and maybe even several days in jail, loss of a not insignificant amount of money etc.  So what has suddenly changed, that we don't need to carry our passports? Nothing. Nothing that is being reported here. Just that there is an operation X-Ray crackdown on foreigners going on, but in total contradiction to the spirit of all that we are supposed to trust that actually now they are going to be lenient about the sometimes enforced law? No contradiction here. Whats mean contradiction? No understand contradiction, sorry.  It is also not unknown that people will be told by the police, "A copy is no good." Its your word against his and how far do you think your word is going to go down at a cops' station in Thailand? People have been charged for counterfeiting passports in some cases in Bangkok for having a copy of their own passport  if I remember correctly. Again what has changed? Here I keep my passport photocopies at home should I lose my passport and bring my actual passport with me every time I set foot out of my place. There is nothing difficult about that. It soon becomes second nature. Nice try, but I will never stop taking my passport with me everywhere when I am in Thailand. I feel much better that there is nothing like a trivial passport issue ie my passport is in my room, may go and get it,  that some cop who is granted absolute authority can use to get me over a barrell over nothing. Has anything happened recently that now  holds the police to any sort of standard or rule of law? No, so why are they reporting that I can now cast my worries aside and carry a copy? Personally I don't want to have to worry about that, that suddenly it may in fact maybe sort of sometimes be all better now in Thailand depending on you and who is dealing with you and no need to worry, maybe. Who are we kidding here?  What someone said to the Phuket Gazette will not matter one whit tomorrow, that's how it is here and it is disingenuous to pretend that these kind of statements actually mean anything. "Oh but officer! I read in the newspaper about 6 months ago that we didn't need to carry our passport..." Yeah right! I'm sure that'll work just a treat! Thanks a lot Phuket Gazette! No need to carry your passport, but you might want to carry a copy of your passport and in addition to that get a copy of the article in Thai saying you don't have to carry your passport.  So much more convenient now!  Thanks for the comedy!

The death penalty is way over the top for what he was doing, and it makes me wonder whether it is a case of, added to his not at all negligible crimes,  the unspoken crime of not being Thai and stepping on people's sensitive toes simply by having yachts and successful restaurants. I would guess the real issue is his success and also how it would be easier for whoever to have no recourse but to relieve him and his kin of  his assets if he were executed.  People routinely get away with much worse in Thailand and hardly face any repercussions let alone the death penalty. My guess is they won't actually execute him but want to use the opportunity to create a climate of increased pressure on foreigners in Pattaya and perhaps Thailand. All reminds me of the case a few years ago of the Dutch ganja coffee shop entrepreneur. As I recall, essentially, they decided that because of his legal business in ganja in the Netherlands that it was illegal for him to even have the money from such things in a Thai bank account, which seems to have been his real mistake, transferring huge sums into a Thai bank account and last I heard he is serving a multiple decade sentence in a Thai prison somehwere. You can bet that his money isn't just sitting in his account waiting for him for when he gets out. I don't see how any of these attacks on foreigners, the Big Joke effect,  solves anything, there is nothing constructive about any of it aside from a way to appropriate peoples assets by the police, cow foreigners into submission for more malleable workers, prop up egos, a false sense of national pride etc  its a rather poor substitute for say enforcing laws, having competent people at entry points to the country who can actually sort out the kind of people that are bad for Thailand. Ironically It is a rather gangsterish mentality to execute people for dealing drugs and not one belonging to a civil society that Thailand I assume would purport to be running. But then again maybe they'll do it, maybe they'll actually execute him, make an example of him hoping the human rights people and international press will not care because of what the guy was involved in. Rather a shame, but most people seem to think if you are criminal you deserve no justice at all, rather ungenerous to say the least, yet if its you whose on the wrong end of things...and particularly if there has been some mistake and you were not guilty of anything, you wouldn't want to be facing the death penalty.

Yet another surreal headline from Thailand. I'll give the govt. the benefit of the doubt that the article doesn't convey their actual meaning and  intentions on the issue of student drinking. If I had to guess it would be that the government is not really being forthcoming about what they really mean because it would  make them less popular than they already are, that is that they want to do what they said they'd do 3 years ago and ban alcohol sales period in any area near a school. Totally non-sensical to say you've made a no drinking zone law for schools. What they are omitting is that that zone extends 300 yards beyond  the school or whatever it is. So if you live in that area I guess that means you, or could mean that if someone wanted to collect a fine from you.

Anything but actually having a plan and enforcing better education standards which must be among the worst in Asia. That would be too difficult, easier to raise a stink about alcohol to appear as though they care. They also need to pay teachers enough and in return ask that they do their jobs or be fired. Like a lot of work in Thailand the agreement seems to be, OK, we won't hardly pay you to do your job, so actually its OK, just do your job once in while for when important people show up and aside from that do what you want, if someone asks that you do your job tell them you are not their slave.

The kids in my in-laws families seem to be languishing in school. The teachers won't teach them. The system here is made that way, so of course people feel and the kids feel hopeless and some will drink and do yaba at school in response to that. In the US the schools weren't half as bad as they are here but definitely could have been better, but even so a lot of people got high at school, maybe that's why its called high school.

Over the last few years, there's been some OK ales produced by some small Thai brewers, probably the reason the big boys are doing probably inferior copycat products to be mass distributed at 7-11. Mahanakorn white ale and Chalawan among a few others I can't remember the names of offhand are the most drinkable Thai beers I know of. But I agree, I prefer the German Kaiserdom, best value for wheat beer, even available out in Isaan at minimarts and the like. The major Thai brewers do not produce very good beer, so I wouldn't even go there and try these.

Or how about special and unique invisible Thai newspapers printed with invisible ink and news web sites with special unique Thai webfonts that exactly match the background color so that nobody is endangered by the possibility of reading the next brain corrodingly daft idea about how we can solve the next national problem we aren't even vaguely interested in solving but yet for some mysterious reason feel we have to agonize in public over just to get ourselves a first row seat at the boufant and big 70's eyeglasses and frumpy 1940's dress convention.

19 hours ago, xylophone said:

Would be interested in your feedback...…...

Be glad to post it right here on this thread, Mr. Xylophone.

Alrighty then, I'll have to keep an eye peeled next time I'm in a decent wine section for the Gran Monte wines. Hopefully they are below 700 baht.

On 10/16/2018 at 9:28 AM, Dumbastheycome said:

Not sure if this topic is still alive but I  came across an item that contains some very interesting information.

Seems  like it  is not only the consumers  are being rorted by the applied assumption that wine is an eliteist beverage  that the rich can pay for. 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/business/rural/7265344/Making-quality-wine-in-tropics

 

 

Haven't heard of Gran Monte wine, if indeed that is the name of the wine this family produces. Anyone know the name of the wines they make, would be interested to try them.

My BKK Bank card says it is good till Aug 2019. Sounds like people are saying they are switching the cards off Jan. 1 2019. Really? Doesn't seem right, but TIT. Anyone heard from their bank?

Thanks so much again, Cheryl.