Thailand sees rare but significant drop in tourist arrivals

[BritManToo]

8 hours ago, pedro01 said:

This thread is indicative of one important fact.

If your experience of Thailand is limited to the dying sex tourism industry and a crappy 1 bed appt in View Talay - the country is on it's last legs.

If, on the other hand, you go out in the daytime - you will notice it's booming with a growing, vibrant middle class. 

Must suck to come here 'rich' and see the locals overtake you. 

I live in a nice 3 bed house on a Thai gated community just outside Chiang Mai.

All my middle class Thai neighbours are one pay check away from repossession.

Sometimes I walk around in the evenings counting the abandoned houses, about 5 in my road of 30 houses.

Not much chance of the locals overtaking me, they already need 2-3 incomes in their family to pay their home loans.

 

One thing that always amazes them (according to my gf), I'm clearly rich (nobody in my household works), so why don't I have a new car in my driveway and why do my kids go to government schools?

[luckyluke]

 

Well, I do BritManToo, just as I think someone who left school at 12 and lives in a mud hut, should respect an academic.

[morrobay]

8 hours ago, pedro01 said:

This thread is indicative of one important fact.

 

If your experience of Thailand is limited to the dying sex tourism industry and a crappy 1 bed appt in View Talay - the country is on it's last legs.

 

If, on the other hand, you go out in the daytime - you will notice it's booming with a growing, vibrant middle class. 

 

Must suck to come here 'rich' and see the locals overtake you. 

And that important fact is how perceptions are 180 degrees around here: If you experience Thailand with a Jomtien sea view with a Thai girl/girlfriend it is great. On the other hand if you experience the booming parking lot traffic by Thais in their in debt autos together with the surroundings described by Sonhia-post (calling spades spades) #249 then Pattaya is on last legs. Except for state of denial folks and Co. 

[BritManToo]

10 minutes ago, Father Fintan Stack said:

Many of these indebted Thais have tourism related businesses, so what do you think will happen if tourism goes down?

We'll have to disagree on this point.

Guy opposite is a factory manager in Bangkok, only stays here at weekend, but his wife, kids and parents live full time.

Next door is a school-teacher also works in Bangkok, his daughter and her kid lives there full time.

Next to that a factory manager, runs a potato factory.

Then there's a family that operates shops in the Hmong villages, about 20 of them living in the one house, pickups full of produce outside, police raid them now and again for having 'too much money'.

Couple of lawyers, more teachers, someone selling plastic pipes (garden full of stock) ............

One house was rented to four university students.

 

Don't know anyone who interacts with foreigners living near me.

But you're bang on with the rest of your post.

[totally thaied up]

1 hour ago, BritManToo said:

So you think someone with a university degree should respect someone who left school at age 12 and lives in a mud hut?

Our local coffee shop makes very good money but because the owner is totally uneducated and the locals know it, it is not the success that she is making now (and the fact the she is a nice person) but the fact she is of a social class that is beneath them that is so obvious to see with the way she gets spoken too. Pretty hard to see in fact.

 

31 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

a factory manager in Bangkok

Just about everyone in my village has a relative working in Bangkok or a daughter doing massage in Korea. It is theses outside incomes that bring in the money. 

[JSixpack]

5 hours ago, BritManToo said:

So you think someone with a university degree should respect someone who left school at age 12 and lives in a mud hut?

Depends on the particular mud hut dweller. But it behooves a farang in Thailand to show respect to all Thais regardless of how much better he thinks he is.

[DrTuner]

7 hours ago, josephbloggs said:

If you treat Thais as equal, show them respect, then they are incredibly warm and friendly people (until they get behind the wheel of a car) and they respect you right back.

Respect needs to be earned. So far very few Thais have shown any traits I respect, like having a backbone, living up to promises, working hard and being truthful. Some have, but that's a very select crowd and mostly people that have had extended contact with farangs. At this point it's show your cards first or I won't bother.

[mauGR1]

6 hours ago, BritManToo said:

So you think someone with a university degree should respect someone who left school at age 12 and lives in a mud hut?

Yes, i think everyone with some self-respect should respect others, regardless of titles, wealth and type of dwelling.

Plenty of good people are poor, and not all graduates are good people.

[Destiny1990]

2 hours ago, JSixpack said:

 

No evidence that any "balance," whatever that means, was any better for the average Thai in the past than it is currently or will be in the future. On the contrary, I think if you look into it that you'll find it has been much worse in the past.

 

Doom predictions are the norm here and were the norm in letters to the Pattaya Mail before TV existed. The cool thing is that a doom prediction never expires. We still got posters actively checking for ground subsidence to collapse the buildings near the Pattaya Tunnel or a tsunami to flood it, not that Sukhumvit would be passable in a tsunami anyway. At last! So, keep waiting. "A broken clock" and all that.

 

No, you missed my point that Thailand is a dynamic economy unlike North Korea's in which people constantly change jobs, move to new places, create new jobs, and find other sources of help if needed. Low unemployment here in LOS. And you've not taken into account--it never is--the Thai govt's ability to change if a situation become serious--by Thai standards, not yours. For example, in the currency crisis the gov't relaxed restrictions on foreign condo ownership. That was helpful. Later it tightened them back up. It allowed the currency to float, too. We hate that. ????

 

It's patronizing to suggest that poor rural families have NO means of support other than charity from some foreigner, who could, after all--as so many do--just send cash from abroad. And you've ignored the issue of Thai money management skills. You might find that a lot of that charity is in fact wasted according to most sound measures. Alert forum members, including mobile phone specialists, often call instances to our attention.

 

It's our ace TVF Economists who strongly believe in the principle of No Change. They see a shop house close and announce it as another harbinger of doom, though 20 shops just opened up in a nearby mall where, half blind from years of toil in the Bodleian, they can't see any shopping bags. Fixed Pie (see my last post) dictates that any new mall simply cannibalizes customers from already existing malls. So Only One was ever needed anyway.

 

In a successful economy, things would stay exactly as the poster saw them on his first trip to Thailand, say, in the 90s. So in effect a common but unspoken belief here is that a static economy like NK's is good.

 

No change is related to the Mausoleum Principle of TVF Poster Economics & Engineering. But let's leave an amusing discussion of that for another day.

 

That you can see, no. ????

Since in all ur posts u always only condemn and or blame the foreigners for something therefore i come to the conclusion that u JSixPack lack any objectivity.

 

[ThomasThBKK]

17 hours ago, pedro01 said:

This thread is indicative of one important fact.

 

If your experience of Thailand is limited to the dying sex tourism industry and a crappy 1 bed appt in View Talay - the country is on it's last legs.

 

If, on the other hand, you go out in the daytime - you will notice it's booming with a growing, vibrant middle class. 

 

Must suck to come here 'rich' and see the locals overtake you. 

 

Sure mate, in ur dreams mate.

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/thailand-greatest-wealth-gap-world-report-181221142723030.html

 

Thais are doing so good yeah mate, they even replaced Nigeria as the most unequal country in the world.

Most traffic deaths, most unequal country in the world, whats next? winning the football world championship?

 

 

Middle class he says, thailand has no middle class... you are either piss poor or rich.

[batata]

On 4/29/2019 at 2:29 AM, HuskerDo said:

WOW! Rather racist remark.  

really...wowow

[balo]

My married dad visited Pattaya in 1978, he told me it was a paradise but did not mention it was a place to meet girls.

We did not know much about that place in the 70's , only that it was very exotic.  

 

[HuskerDo]

On 4/28/2019 at 8:58 PM, smedly said:

only you

 

have you been assimilated already

are you trying to form a collective ?

 

are you full of your own self

 

 

Please explain.

[HuskerDo]

On 4/28/2019 at 8:38 PM, smedly said:

I expect to be treated fairly - you missed that one 

 

if you want to be shafted then assume the position …………………. up to you

 

don't forget to tell us so we can all come and watch

"I expect to be treated fairly - you missed that one ".... then be respectful of the country, the people and the culture. You are a visitor in THEIR land. If that's hard to understand then think back to a day when a foreigner acted unruly in your homeland. What was your reaction? What was the reaction of others? Not good likely. Same with folks who are living in Thailand. Be respectful and you'll be treated accordingly.

[HuskerDo]

On 4/29/2019 at 3:33 PM, dcnx said:

Why fix things when you can come up with new plans to lure them back?

 

Thailand doesn’t deserve the tourists it gets. Serves them right if the entire industry collapsed.

Do you live there DCNX? If so which area?

[BritManToo]

On 4/30/2019 at 2:40 PM, JSixpack said:

t's our ace TVF Economists who strongly believe in the principle of No Change. They see a shop house close and announce it as another harbinger of doom, though 20 shops just opened up in a nearby mall where, half blind from years of toil in the Bodleian, they can't see any shopping bags. Fixed Pie (see my last post) dictates that any new mall simply cannibalizes customers from already existing malls. So Only One was ever needed anyway.

The Moobaan in Chiang mai where I live. Finished 5 years back, all houses sold to middle class Thai families.

In each road of 30 houses around 5 or 6 now appear to be abandoned.

That's 20% of homes with mortgage defaults.

 

Obviously the economy is running well.

[Sonhia]

Finally the bubble has burst. It has been a long time over due in my opinion.

 

The quality of customer service,  accommodation, transportation and road safety,, policing, security, value for money, politness from Thais, pollution, cleanliness, health care, and so much more, is not what I consider acceptable, not forgetting the country is a military run country which is not democratic with most Thai being racist.

 

Who would want to invest their hard earnt money in such a place? No me!  A place of uncertainties, racism, fickleness, corruption, extortion, lack of human rights, undemocratic...

 

A tourist, farang, expat are simply walking ATMs that endure very poor conditions plus respect.

 

There are better countries to visit, invest in and feel welcomed as part of society, the community, with more respect, less extortion, cheating and ridicule.

 

 

[morrobay]

1 hour ago, Sonhia said:

Finally the bubble has burst. It has been a long time over due in my opinion.

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

Maybe but a .7% drop in a cyclic market is not much. And while Western visitors would find unacceptable the following points in above post, not sure if that would apply to Chinese, Indians ,Russians and Arabs. 

[Skallywag]

3 hours ago, Sonhia said:

 

The quality of customer service,  accommodation, transportation and road safety,, policing, security, value for money, politness from Thais, pollution, cleanliness, health care, and so much more, is not what I consider acceptable, not forgetting the country is a military run country which is not democratic with most Thai being racist.

 

 

There are better countries to visit, invest in and feel welcomed as part of society, the community, with more respect, less extortion, cheating and ridicule.

 

Sonhia, you also commented the other day, "They (Thais) should learn to respect tourists plus expats, after all they  are their bread and butter. Thailand would be a back wood of a place if not for farang..."

 

As an armchair psychologist, would say you need to leave Thailand and go to one of your "other countries" that are better.  You seem to be way less than 1/2 full on the positivity scale.  This is possibly harmful to your health and psyche.  IMHO, Regards 

[marcusarelus]

3 hours ago, Sonhia said:

Finally the bubble has burst. It has been a long time over due in my opinion.

 

The quality of customer service,  accommodation, transportation and road safety,, policing, security, value for money, politness from Thais, pollution, cleanliness, health care, and so much more, is not what I consider acceptable, not forgetting the country is a military run country which is not democratic with most Thai being racist.

 

Who would want to invest their hard earnt money in such a place? No me!  A place of uncertainties, racism, fickleness, corruption, extortion, lack of human rights, undemocratic...

 

A tourist, farang, expat are simply walking ATMs that endure very poor conditions plus respect.

 

There are better countries to visit, invest in and feel welcomed as part of society, the community, with more respect, less extortion, cheating and ridicule.

 

 

[metisdead]

Some off topic posts hijacking the topic into discussion of years ago have been removed as well as the replies. 

[BritManToo]

12 minutes ago, JSixpack said:

Exactly. A change in a moobaan in CM wherein 20% of a housing development with an unknown number of roads appears abandoned must mean mortgage defaults, bankruptcy for the developer,

Not sure why you would think this means bankruptcy for the developer, and are building many more estates in CM.

They sold every house, SCB that gave the loans might be different.

[travelling wilbury]

Not suprising really this country is turning into a rubbish tip i doubt there is anywhere in thailand you can stand without seeing rubbish (usually plastic bags or plastic ) now ,why people have to throw rubbish out of their vehicle defies logic and common sence

I bet yhe route of the corronation will be well cleaned before the king sees it , some of it was a tip last week so the yellow shirts will be busy now

 

[fhickson]

On 4/29/2019 at 6:29 PM, Sonhia said:

T O T are not opening their eye's.

 

Thailand is expensive. Thais in general are rude and aggresive. Thailand is unsafe with double standard charges for foreigners, has poorly maintained, filthy dirty hotels, roads, bars, restaurants etc... with corrupt Police, especially in Pattaya, with violent and aggressive motor bike plus car taxi drivers plus the B S visa issues with foreigners not being permitted to own, 100 percent, businesses, property and so on. Where do I stop!

 

Thailand is not the same. The bubble has burst.

 

Not all Thai or Thai establishments are bad, but in the general sense, Thailand has losts it's silver edge, with too much political unrest and uncertainties. 

 

I feel sorry for the young Thai generation.

 

 

So what? I'm not here to smell the roses.

[DLock]

This thread is still going?

 

Is there really that much misery in Thailand? If I hated my life that much, I'd either join the Pattaya Flying Club or find greener pastures.

 

I sure wouldn't spend my days in a 1-bedroom fan-room, eating fried rice and lamenting on the good old day on ThaiVisa.

[Gecko123]

 

3 hours ago, DLock said:

This thread is still going?

 

Is there really that much misery in Thailand? If I hated my life that much, I'd either join the Pattaya Flying Club or find greener pastures.

 

I sure wouldn't spend my days in a 1-bedroom fan-room, eating fried rice and lamenting on the good old day on ThaiVisa. 

Not sure if I fall into the demographic you are disparaging, but...

 

...since the beginning of March practically every day the temperature has been 100 degrees plus. Might help explain people being indoors more than usual. I live in a 3 bdrm 2 bath house, no aircon, just fans. Aircon would be nice, but worry about global warming. Same reason why I don't drive my 2012 Isuzu pickup much. Won't get into not wanting to go anywhere because I don't feel like running to immigration to fill out TM-30 forms after every trip.

 

Lunch was home-made pizza: mozzarella, Agnesi pesto, tomatoes, feta, onions, garlic, anchovies, olives, hot peppers, but I make a mean fried rice too: jumbo shrimp, minced carrot, onion, ginger, garlic, hot pepper, oyster sauce, soy sauce, two fried eggs, chopped, added at the end. Cancelled True Visions cable end of last month because got sick of having to call them to replace remote controls every 6 months. Sleeping much much better not having a TV in the bedroom, but admit to spending more time on line.

 

Keeping my fingers crossed that my lifestyle meets with your approval.

[Thongkorn]

59 minutes ago, Gecko123 said:

 

Not sure if I fall into the demographic you are disparaging, but...

 

...since the beginning of March practically every day the temperature has been 100 degrees plus. Might help explain people being indoors more than usual. I live in a 3 bdrm 2 bath house, no aircon, just fans. Aircon would be nice, but worry about global warming. Same reason why I don't drive my 2012 Isuzu pickup much. Won't get into not wanting to go anywhere because I don't feel like running to immigration to fill out TM-30 forms after every trip.

 

Lunch was home-made pizza: mozzarella, Agnesi pesto, tomatoes, feta, onions, garlic, anchovies, olives, hot peppers, but I make a mean fried rice too: jumbo shrimp, minced carrot, onion, ginger, garlic, hot pepper, oyster sauce, soy sauce, two fried eggs, chopped, added at the end. Cancelled True Visions cable end of last month because got sick of having to call them to replace remote controls every 6 months. Sleeping much much better not having a TV in the bedroom, but admit to spending more time on line.

 

Keeping my fingers crossed that my lifestyle meets with your approval.

 Do you want a Lodger.

[DLock]

8 hours ago, Gecko123 said:

 

Not sure if I fall into the demographic you are disparaging, but...

 

...since the beginning of March practically every day the temperature has been 100 degrees plus. Might help explain people being indoors more than usual. I live in a 3 bdrm 2 bath house, no aircon, just fans. Aircon would be nice, but worry about global warming. Same reason why I don't drive my 2012 Isuzu pickup much. Won't get into not wanting to go anywhere because I don't feel like running to immigration to fill out TM-30 forms after every trip.

 

Lunch was home-made pizza: mozzarella, Agnesi pesto, tomatoes, feta, onions, garlic, anchovies, olives, hot peppers, but I make a mean fried rice too: jumbo shrimp, minced carrot, onion, ginger, garlic, hot pepper, oyster sauce, soy sauce, two fried eggs, chopped, added at the end. Cancelled True Visions cable end of last month because got sick of having to call them to replace remote controls every 6 months. Sleeping much much better not having a TV in the bedroom, but admit to spending more time on line.

 

Keeping my fingers crossed that my lifestyle meets with your approval.

I don't see much misery there...you sound very happy, which is awesome.

 

[Kieran00001]

On 4/30/2019 at 6:18 PM, ThomasThBKK said:

 

Sure mate, in ur dreams mate.

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/thailand-greatest-wealth-gap-world-report-181221142723030.html

 

Thais are doing so good yeah mate, they even replaced Nigeria as the most unequal country in the world.

Most traffic deaths, most unequal country in the world, whats next? winning the football world championship?

 

 

Middle class he says, thailand has no middle class... you are either piss poor or rich.

 

Of course there are middle class, who do you think it is having all the debt piled on them? 

[ThomasThBKK]

 
Of course there are middle class, who do you think it is having all the debt piled on them? 

You are talking about the working class.... The bottom...

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