YimSiam

I find that periodic eating of som tam (with crab, or best, some pla raa) is an excellent way to regulate weight gain: it is difficult to each much, and while I cannot attest to the lining of my colon, virtually everything else in there passes quickly through for about a week after. Kind of like the Indian Guarantee Weight Loss Spa I hope to open someday - guests arrive, drink one glass of Delhi tap water their first day, and for the rest of the week are free to do and to eat anything they are able to. Upon returning home, they will be gaunt as they could wish for. Cost per week yet to be determined. For foreigners without long residency, you have a chicken and egg problem with pla ra - if you're dumb enough to jump in and eat, it's hard to measure subsequent deterioration in intelligence...

Take away the blond-haired baby and it's "som nam naa" for being dirty hippy backpackers - but with that baby, I can see that there would be support. A couple of my friends took a taxi from Pattaya to the airport recently - car kept stalling, but shouting and gesticulating driver wouldn't let them out of the vehicle to get another taxi, even when they offered to pay... bags in the trunk. Taxi drivers are not making a good name for themselves these days - wonder whether Lonely Planet foreigners are going in on some Thai version of uber yet?

If Yemenis were not likely to be as unruly and unrulable as they are likely to be, if I was a Saudi I'd just annex - didn't work well for Saddam with Kuwait, but perhaps the Saudis would have more international clout... They will certainly get a free pass from the Americans, and that tends to count for something in today's crazy mixed-up world... Al Jazeera's coverage of the strikes and situation so far has been disappointing to me in its very heavy bias towards the Saudi/Sunni side - I'm a very big fan of AJ as an example of what a news network really should be, but now that it's gloves-off in the Sunni-Shia conflict over Yemen, it's hard to consider their coverage impartial - yes, they still tack on a statement or two from Iranians or others acknowledging the Shia perspective, which shows they are at least by the letter of the law still giving both sides, but the emphasis so far has been clearly to the Sunni/Saudi side. What a mess. And wow, look at the American hardware on display - all those years of supporting the Saudi military finally will be visible (and, the Americans must hope, this war will result in massive reorders by the Saudis and other American friends - fire up the factories back in the States!) Suddenly the Afghan war seems like a civilized minor sideshow, and the Taliban as a fairly reasonable national liberation movement... YimSiam

Yes, it's tough in there - what amazes me most times recently is that there are often far more gentleman customers in the place than working girls (and by working, I mean virtually any level of willingness or intent to engage in semi-animated sexual behavior, simulation, stimulation - any girl in there who'd help me flag a taxi, even). And these gentlemen are not there for the first time, they appear to know what they are getting in to. They know where they are, and they have not arrived by accident (as I seemingly have, each time, again.) Visually the most attractive girls might be the servers, and they're nothing special. I have found a solution, though. Temporary. The remodeled upstairs pool table area is clean, air-conditioned, and allows me to gather my wits about me with the customary four-beers-before-leaving (I see you follow a similar rule. Wise man. One should not flee on an empty stomach.) It's useful to drag one of them up there for a game of pool, as it is lonely up there. But you're out of the shit, either way, and looking down safely from a good height. Only concern is that lack of egress - you will, in the end, have to go out the way you came in, and that is not an easy mile the second time. After a visit to biergarten, I tend to make a pass-through of the old lane between sois 7 and 5, to walk off the nasty feel of the 'garten and not least to remember the old days in there on that lane, back when I was young and they were beautiful, and the world - at least the lower Suk portion, much of it - was spread-legged at my feet. YimSiam

If a Hindu shrine to facilitate the construction of latter-half 20th century hotel qualifies as holiest places in Bangkok, that town could up its game, holy-places-wise... I could probably up my game, holy-places-wise, too - next time, I go temple, tham boon...

I think you are mistaking Jim Beam for "passion" - though I prefer the former, in a pinch.

I only suggest this nefarious and disappointing possibility because I have encountered similar, only realizing after I succumbed. This was pre-notification days, I suppose. Or rather - I was too blind, and too lonely in the moment, to implement safeguards appropriate to the situation...

21 year old - just a kid. RIP.

And why the apparent earlier shots downrange? Checking the weapon, or just trying to get the Thai guy to lower his guard? Strange indeed...

I have made some very dubious choices during moments of sexual stimulation, but I do not believe I have ever done an automobile - at least there's no photographic evidence of such that I'm aware of, thankfully. I can only imagine how embarrassed that elephant is now that the rut has gone out of him...

Does Western Union need to verify the "Miss" or "Mr." status on the ID card when confirming the name? I could see that as one area of potential conflict in some cases... Of course, a lesser woman than this Ms. Pam might try the oft-effective cash-extractive operational strategy of "WU not give! Tingtong too mutt -- send again you bank me okay mai?" YimSiam

That's the kind of first day that my memory just can't hold for more than an hour running these days - good of you to put it on the proverbial paper before it has slipped your mind, and this trip is just the usual blur under the heading "The Time I Had Shit Fish n Chips After Checking In And Can't Recall The Rest". Enjoy - YimSiam

Sending Western Union, you good man - and supporting the Thai dental industry, too! Double good. I remember there used to be another little outfit that would allow you to send money online to Bangkok - some name like "Send Money to Thailand Girlfriend" or something. I actually used it a couple times, worked smoothly, cost was less than Western Union - but I'm afraid banking regulations caught up with them and the business ended...

My understanding is that the point of the scheme was essentially to secure control of the government, from which grand profits could be made by the Thaksin camp, and that the scheme itself was not expected to be a source of income directly. Thailand is a country of rice farmers, and they have to be subsidized for a government to have the support of sufficient people to win elections. So the Thaksin side proposed subsidies higher than those of the Democrat side - the Dems were offering something like 11,000 per ton in subsidies, while the Thaksins offered 15,000. It was expected to be a loser, like all subsidies, but to keep people working in the industry happy. Unfortunately for Yingluck, the subsidies were too high, and they had a very stupid plan to try to play the rice market to get back their money by manipulating the market price in their favor. But markets are more clever than people, and through market forces (and an unluckily-timed change in India's export law, which allowed India to take up the slack when Thailand held back their rice) the thing ended up costing hugely more than expected. I'm sure there was some level of corruption and middle-men taking cuts in the scheme, but that's incidental - the point was giving money to rice farmers to get votes, in order to control the government (obviously, that ends up being a very lucrative position, but not because of rice profits). There was delay in payments to farmers, and when the project was falling apart, there may have been reductions in the payments expected by the farmers - I'm not sure about that. But the farmers are not the unhappy ones, generally - while it was running, it was lucrative for them. In my view, it certainly appears to be more of a case of a dumb-but-effective populist measure to get votes, that resulted in much higher costs to the state than expected, than a crime (though crimes may have been committed in the period when the scheme was collapsing, and the Thaksin camp was scrambling to persuade folks that it wasn't as bad as it seemed). The US subsidizes farmers and billionaires, the Japanese subsidize their fishermen, Hong Kong and Macau just hand out cash periodically and pay residents' electric bills - it's what governments do to win votes (well, in Macau and HK, not really votes - they buy complacency, you could say). But go too big, and fuck with market forces, you get burned and it becomes unsustainable - and down you go, Ms. Prime Minister!

I'm just looking forward to the first Thai police station to start posting their 'wanted' photos, to seek public help in identifying the most notable offenders...

Oops... YimSiam

How will the people of Thailand EVER get their money back? Ah, so - but it seems the money is already in the hands of... the people of Thailand... who elected TRT and PT on the understanding that they would get money to the farmers... which they did. And now? We have ourselves a conundrum. I suppose eventually the question about what to do next should go to the Thai people. I wonder what they will say, when asked by ballot? Just kidding - we know what they'll say. There's a reason populism is popular!

Anyone goes by Eye or Aye in Laos, probably the older brother, beware! YS

Good. Welcome to the real world.

Just so inquiring minds can know which tits are which... and have a phone number for the owner.

Plaintains will do nicely, thanks.

How many board members are now at risk of getting arrested for sticking their dick in the banana display at the local Tesco...?

What great promotion of the underboob selfie industry! I think we will now be flooded with these images, and that can only be a good thing!

IOM's International Migration Law - Glossary on Migration: http://publications.iom.int/bookstore/free/IML_1_EN.pdf (No expat, no 'sex traveler', regrettably) YS

But that doesn't include say the Lost Generation writers who were living in France, and classic expatriates. I think the key issue in expat version immigrant is in the intention - immigrants intend to stay, expats don't, not in the long run. I'm an expat, certainly - and I click all the boxes: white, professional, from a developed country, living abroad (and in undeveloped countries generally) the past 10-15 years, not settling anywhere permanently (in which case I'd become an immigrant, in my understanding). Migrant is a term currently popular because it's so flexible, it doesn't require an assessment of the intention or status - it's just someone who is moving or has moved. For example, most broadcasters now refer to Arabs and Africans crossing the Med (north-bound...) illegally as 'migrants' - while more specifically they may be asylum-seekers, refugees, immigrants, or just guys out for a good time for a while, looking for an adventure and to make some money, say - so, expats. but they can all be lumped under the migrant label. I'd say race has some substantial role - but that class and occupational status are the real factors with expat in common usage. Of course you can be an African expat, if your job status is high enough - the Pakistani manager at the Burj Khalifa is an expat, but the cleaners are migrants... Pointless distinctions really (easy to say, as an expat...). Like backpackers dividing themselves up into "tourists" (a negative term, in their world) versus "travelers" (positive). As a friend of mine likes to say: "Don't call me a 'sex tourist'! I'm a 'sex traveler'..." YimSiam