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Pattaya: Man caught removing parking restrictions with thinner!


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I think the moment when I finally truly understood Thainess was when I moved into a shophouse in a quiet cul-de-sac but close to a market, so, packed with cars during the day.

Each property had two parking spaces outside, so, early one morning when I knew I had a delivery truck coming, I put up a sign and roped off my two spaces. One of my neighbors, an older Chinese Thai lady who owned a pawn shop further down the street, went ballistic, because she was used to using those spaces for her cars.

I said sorry, no, those are my spaces, and I have a delivery truck coming.

"Well", she says, "Let me use the spaces now and, when the truck comes, just come to my shop and I will have my cars moved"

She was somewhat offended by my uproarious laughter. I essentially told her to get fracked and, after a couple of weeks of stopping anyone removing my barriers and using the spaces, they came to accept it. "Don't park there or the crazy farang will run out!".

It was later explained to me that she was also a money lender and, at any given time, had possession of 8 or 10 cars being held as loan security. So, she felt entitled to park them in front of everyone else's shops, making the whole street less accessible to customers. Despite the obvious cost to them, everyone else was too polite to tell her to stop.

 

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6 hours ago, donnacha said:

I said sorry, no, those are my spaces, and I have a delivery truck coming.

I have often wondered in Thailand....do they actually own the pavement and part of the road in front of their premises? So many here seem to lay claim to them, as you too have done. If it is 'public', surely you would have no more rights than the neighbour. 

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31 minutes ago, jacko45k said:

I have often wondered in Thailand....do they actually own the pavement and part of the road in front of their premises? So many here seem to lay claim to them, as you too have done. If it is 'public', surely you would have no more rights than the neighbour. 

They don't, and only a few years ago a 500 baht reward was being offered to those that reported anyone putting, chairs, cones etc on the road in front of their premises.

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7 hours ago, donnacha said:

Each property had two parking spaces outside, so, early one morning when I knew I had a delivery truck coming, I put up a sign and roped off my two spaces. One of my neighbors, an older Chinese Thai lady who owned a pawn shop further down the street, went ballistic, because she was used to using those spaces for her cars.

 

Like some other posters, I'm curious what authority allocated you 2 parking spaces on a public cul-de-sac?  Or was it a private parking lot?

 

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18 hours ago, Dionigi said:

If, as it appears it is painted by the authorities to designate that it is close to a soi opening, it does not matter if it is painted or not it is still illegal to park within a certain distance from the soi. The police can act whether there is paint there or not.

You mean that they should work? Would there have been any money in it for them?

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20 hours ago, Dionigi said:

If, as it appears it is painted by the authorities to designate that it is close to a soi opening, it does not matter if it is painted or not it is still illegal to park within a certain distance from the soi. The police can act whether there is paint there or not.

Usually to allow cars to turn left

Edited by ChrisY1
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7 hours ago, jacko45k said:

I have often wondered in Thailand....do they actually own the pavement and part of the road in front of their premises? So many here seem to lay claim to them, as you too have done. If it is 'public', surely you would have no more rights than the neighbour. 

 

6 hours ago, baansgr said:

They don't, and only a few years ago a 500 baht reward was being offered to those that reported anyone putting, chairs, cones etc on the road in front of their premises.


This was a "managed" development. I have no idea if the roads had been signed over to the local authority at some point, but the shophouses were certainly being sold as including the two parking spaces.

Regardless, in a chaotic situation, absent any authority bothering to establish order, it is legitimate for the businesses to work together to do so. In this case, a limited resource, essential to the running of each business, existed but was being hogged by one business as a form of storage.

The existence of those spaces was paid for by those businesses, the ideal use for them is to serve their customers, who are ultimately the ones paying for everything. Being able to accept deliveries is an example of a necessity without which customers cannot be served.

When you see unused shops in Thailand, understand that it is not necessarily because there is no demand in that area. Often, a business could exist there, and pay the rent the landlord requires, but infrastructural issues such as access and parking tip the balance. 

In this situation, one party (the money-lender), had slipped into the habit of using 4 to 5 times more spaces that anyone else. This had been able to come about because many of the shophouses in that cul-de-sac were shuttered. The shophouse I rented had been shuttered.

While I was told that we owned the spaces, I accept that could have been incorrect, and that I might have been breaking some bye-law in reserving them for our use. Even so, it was the right thing to do.

 

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6 hours ago, impulse said:

Like some other posters, I'm curious what authority allocated you 2 parking spaces on a public cul-de-sac?  Or was it a private parking lot?


As mentioned in the post above, it was a managed development, and each shophouses was sold as owning the two spaces directly in front, but perhaps they had been signed over to the local authority at some point, I don't know.

Here, at least, is a funnier example of why, sometimes, in the absence of any other enforcement, it is legitimate for residents to take matters into their own hands.

As you know, Thais will park almost anywhere. A favorite spot for people visiting the market was at the narrow neck of our cul-de-sac, the actual road access.

People would block the only access in and out, trapping 14 cars inside, and wander off for a leisurely lunch. This would cause mayhem when other leisurely lunchers would return and find they were now unable to return to their office. This had gone on for years.

We fixed this whole problem by creating a heavy sign that blocked the neck from being used as a parking space but still allowed cars in and out.

Was that illegal?

Probably.

It doesn't matter. Laws should serve people, where they don't, or where enforcement fails, it is legitimate for people to route around them.

 

Edited by donnacha
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48 minutes ago, jacko45k said:

No, because that would not be jaywalking. 


Look, we're essentially saying the same thing.

Logically, you do not mean that running out onto the road to save the infant is not jaywalking, what you mean is that no rational enforcer would prosecute you for breaking the jaywalking rule in that circumstance.

Context is everything.

I am saying that most laws are a poor fit for reality. That is why they constantly evolve. That is why every country has laws that directly contradict other laws. That is why only a small fraction of laws are ever actually enforced. We all break laws every day without even knowing it.

If a law is a poor fit for your current context, or if the existing laws governing your situation are not effectively enforced, not only is it okay for people to manage the situation in an equitable way, that is the right thing for them to do.

If, even after accepting that you would save the infant from the truck, you still want to claim that you would never break a law, well, you would be operating on a different logical plane, and we would just have to agree to disagree.

 

Edited by donnacha
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5 hours ago, donnacha said:

Context is everything.

No one "owns" the parking space on a public road. Unless it is an enclosed area with security, it is still public.

 

It is wrong to mark it off full time.

But it is also wrong of your neighbors to not understand you have a delivery coming.

 

I personally hate it when there is no place to park, but there are cones and chairs spread all over the road.

 

Last time i just parked in front of the chairs, and took pictures of the people in the shop before i left my car.

After 10 minutes or so, nothing wrong with the car at all.

 

That being said, if they are really an annoyance...key the cars?

 

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Similar parking problems in China, so drivers buy plaques for the dashboard with their phone number.  If they double park you in, you call the number and they come and move their car.  I saw it many times when dinner partners excused themselves for a few minutes.

 

That's only if they didn't leave the car in neutral with the brake off so you can push it out of the way...  I've seen that solution a lot in Thailand.

 

It's only going to get worse as more people buy cars in a country that was developed without concern for parking.

 

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3 hours ago, MarcB said:

That being said, if they are really an annoyance...key the cars?


Jesus, that would really be going down a dark path.

I think, in Thailand, you have to be somewhat forceful in how you present yourself in situations in which people would otherwise be inclined to walk all over you ... but ... I never forget that I am a foreigner and that Thais can overreact in spectacular fashion. You could be in real danger if a Thai is nurturing a festering resentment.

Honestly, if it came to that, you would be better closing the business and allowing the shop to become, again, yet another shuttered, useless property on a dying street.
 

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