Natural Resources and Environment Minister Vichet Kasemthongsri yesterday instructed PCD officials to collect further samples of seawater from around the island for testing. He expects to release the test results today.

So he didn't like the first reading so ordered the tests to be repeated. Only a moron keeps performing the same operation again and again and expecting a different result.

Try an experiment that will prove you wrong...

Drink 6 beers tonight and breath into one of those breathalyzers. Sleep it off. Then breathe into the breathalyzer tomorrow morning, then tomorrow afternoon.

Only a moron would expect a different result? I think you have that one backwards.

unless bagwan keeps drinking day and night

Natural Resources and Environment Minister Vichet Kasemthongsri yesterday instructed PCD officials to collect further samples of seawater from around the island for testing. He expects to release the test results today.

So he didn't like the first reading so ordered the tests to be repeated. Only a moron keeps performing the same operation again and again and expecting a different result.

Actually no. The SOP in situations such as this are to take repeated samples, preferably no less than every 8 hours during the crisis . This is the only way in which to determine if there is still a problem and if the mitigation efforts are working. The testing is somewhat useless unless there is a benchmark, i.e. a set of values that existed prior to the event.

Unfortunately, Thailand curtailed its beach water testing program some years ago. For example, if you wanted to know something as basic as the e.coli count (an indication of feces on the water) at a popular beach in Thailand today, you would have a difficult time finding out because Thailand does not publish the information. If the swimmers at patong beach knew that the water was not of good quality, the tourist industry would suffer. If consumers of shellfish in Thailand knew that their ocean shrimp were raised in areas with heavy metal concentrations, people would stop eating the shrimp etc. IMO, the commercial seafood sector and the government have long worked together to keep this information from the public.

I fly a microlight and about 10 days ago, late morning, was on the way down to Koh Chang with a friend. We passed over Koh Samet and did not see any oil on the beaches. However, shortly afterwards we noted several long slicks on the surface with no spraying vessels anywhere in sight. Why not? I would have thought that they would have as many capable vessels out there as possible to clean it up as quickly as possible. Please don't say "but this is Thailand"!

But they already spent a million baht on this!

I fly a microlight and about 10 days ago, late morning, was on the way down to Koh Chang with a friend. We passed over Koh Samet and did not see any oil on the beaches. However, shortly afterwards we noted several long slicks on the surface with no spraying vessels anywhere in sight. Why not? I would have thought that they would have as many capable vessels out there as possible to clean it up as quickly as possible. Please don't say "but this is Thailand"!

But they already spent a million baht on this!

Who spent a million bht ??? is this a joke. 30,000 usd ?? wow that's enough to break the bank of Monte Carlo.

I fly a microlight and about 10 days ago, late morning, was on the way down to Koh Chang with a friend. We passed over Koh Samet and did not see any oil on the beaches. However, shortly afterwards we noted several long slicks on the surface with no spraying vessels anywhere in sight. Why not? I would have thought that they would have as many capable vessels out there as possible to clean it up as quickly as possible. Please don't say "but this is Thailand"!

But they already spent a million baht on this!

The pcd has spent 1mn baht. That isn't the entire cost of the cleanup.

There are dozens of industrial cleaning firms in Rayong who could undertake to clean the oil in the sand. All it takes is money.

I fly a microlight and about 10 days ago, late morning, was on the way down to Koh Chang with a friend. We passed over Koh Samet and did not see any oil on the beaches. However, shortly afterwards we noted several long slicks on the surface with no spraying vessels anywhere in sight. Why not? I would have thought that they would have as many capable vessels out there as possible to clean it up as quickly as possible. Please don't say "but this is Thailand"!

But they already spent a million baht on this!

The pcd has spent 1mn baht. That isn't the entire cost of the cleanup.

There are dozens of industrial cleaning firms in Rayong who could undertake to clean the oil in the sand. All it takes is money.

So cough up PTT, money was the first thing you said you would give in response to the oil spill. If the 2 days to clean turns out to be 1 month you could have put money forward and got more hands on. Love to defend you, but sorry your effort has dropped short of your comments on day 2 on Thai T.V.

I fly a microlight and about 10 days ago, late morning, was on the way down to Koh Chang with a friend. We passed over Koh Samet and did not see any oil on the beaches. However, shortly afterwards we noted several long slicks on the surface with no spraying vessels anywhere in sight. Why not? I would have thought that they would have as many capable vessels out there as possible to clean it up as quickly as possible. Please don't say "but this is Thailand"!

But they already spent a million baht on this!

Who spent a million bht ??? is this a joke. 30,000 usd ?? wow that's enough to break the bank of Monte Carlo.

The gov't spokesman proudly said they had spent 1 million Baht on the cleanup. He wasn't joking,but it certainly had me laughing, morbidly. Spending hundreds of billions on the rice "scheme", ฿18,840,000 on Ipads for themselves, yet only a paltry million on this environmental disaster shows very clearly how serious this regime is about this ecological disaster.