YimSiam

Neither, bust: NGO = 'ngo" = stupid, foolish, right Flash? No offense meant, no-how, I'm sure. Sure there are plenty of NGOs that go wrong, leadership that perpetuate lies and fraud - Somaly Mam, the "Three Cups of Tea" guy. And they exaggerate facts to improve - in some cases, simply to perpetuate their own existence. But I'll stand up to defend them in general terms - they can do a lot of good, handle issues others prefer not to deal with, remind us of our principles and help us to put them into practice. "And that's all I have to say about that..."

Vulture Peak - I think the latest in the John Burdett Bangkok 8 series. I really enjoyed and was impressed by the first book, a great blend of culture clash, humor, Bangkok, and a little bit of thriller or detective mystery - whatever you call the genre. The plots are weak, ridiculous, formulaic - just excuses for putting down the various ruminations, cultural comments, and insights into the Bangkok/farang vortex, etc - but worth it, no matter whether the plot fails to grip. The first, highly recommended - and decreasingly so afterwards, as the series lingers on. Not a lot of new stuff in this one, but hey, that's the case with all these series, generally. At least this author deals with topics I really love, in an informed, funny - if ludicrous at times - way. YimSiam

I think we should consider the possibility that those are not that lady's clothes, and that there is a woman wandering the airport buck nekkid! YimSiam

Guess Pattaya's glad they never went through with changing the "WALKING STREET" sign to Cyrillic... Too bad for Pattaya businesses, I rarely had negative run-ins with Russians. Wonder if this means more or fewer Russian girls working the strip? YimSiam

I move for work regularly - six countries in twelve years - including Thailand about a decade ago, with many many short returns between then and now, many more to come. As I move from unsatisfying country to shithole to hellhole and back, Thailand is always there in my mind - the future 'home' that I don't have now, a fantasy place to finally settle down a bit and live off my savings and so on in a happy little paradise... Probably best to just keep moving, and keep Thailand as a fantasy that I look forward to, but never actually get down to brass tacks with... Five days at a time? Heaven. For a few more years at least, I'll leave it at that... YimSiam

I actually thought the New Yorker article was borderline parody, not actually making those points, but making fun of the thinking that leads one to that kind of thesis. Economy is the way it is because that's how we like it, and we'll take it worse if the regulators will allow the airlines to give us worse! http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2015/01/airlines-worsening-customer-service FOR those of us compelled to fly in cattle class, life is becoming more and more miserable. On that point most of us agree. But who is to blame? Opposite perspectives can be found at the New Yorker and Bloomberg. Tim Wu at the New Yorker wrote recently that the increasing hardship can be put down to premeditated malice by the airlines themselves. He calls the phenomenon “calculated miseryâ€. The problem, he says, is that carriers now make a big chunk of their money by charging for additional services, be it a slightly better seat, checking a bag or priority boarding. Quoting researchby Ideal Works, an airline consultancy, he points out that global airline ancillary revenue reached $31.7 billion in 2013, with United Airlines accounting for $5.7 billion of that by itself. This reliance on ancillary fees, says Mr Wu, has consequences: ...the fee model comes with systematic costs that are not immediately obvious. Here’s the thing: in order for fees to work, there needs be something worth paying to avoid. That necessitates, at some level, a strategy that can be described as “calculated miseryâ€. Basic service, without fees, must be sufficiently degraded in order to make people want to pay to escape it. And that’s where the suffering begins. It is a seductive argument: our misery is all the fault of greedy corporations squeezing innocent consumers. But regular readers of Gulliver will know by now where we are going with this. Our view would be better encapsulated in the headline of the Bloomberg piece, written by Megan McArdle: “Hate flying? It’s your fault.†We would perhaps have couched it in less confrontational language, but the reality is that customers are effectively demanding worse service. While we might say in surveys that we care about quality, when it comes to clicking the button to purchase a flight, we overwhelmingly choose an airline on price. And so carriers do everything they can to give us what we want: cheaper fares over a pleasant experience. This is the reason that Spirit Airlines, by far-and-away the most complained about airline in America, is hugely profitable, while Virgin America, a far more accommodating airline, has historically struggled to make a profit. As Ms McArdle (who used to write for The Economist) explains: High-fixed-cost, low-marginal-cost industries are characterized by brutal competition and punishing boom and bust cycles. Which is exactly what we see in the airline industry. Over the last 15 years, the three remaining major airlines—Delta, United and American Airlines—have averaged profit margins of 3 to 8 percent, with periodic dips into deep red. Things aren't getting more crowded and fees higher because it's a good way for them to shake a little more off the money tree. Rather, the only way that they can make any money is to schedule more flights, cram more seats into the planes and manage their yield so that the planes fly fuller. The result is unpleasantly reminiscent of cattle walking up the slaughterhouse chute. But unlike the cattle, we have to claim our own share of the responsibility. Ultimately, the reason airlines cram us into tiny seats and upcharge for everything is that we're out there on Expedia and Kayak, shopping on exactly one dimension: the price of the flight. To win business, airlines have to deliver the absolute lowest fare. And the way to do that is...to cram us into tiny seats and upcharge for everything. If American consumers were willing to pay more for a better experience, they'd deliver it. We're not, and they don't. For us cattle, that is something worth ruminating on.

It would be helpful to my holiday plans if the baht could get back to the upper 30s by February 19th, reduce my booze costs a bit, but that seems not in the cards...

And anyway, from the way the Nation writes about it, it sounds like the airport run is basically a losing proposition until they go for the 150 baht upcharge - that driver should be grateful he doesn't have to go to the airport anymore!

... and the vicious cycle continuous: tourism falls, police and authorities lie to protect tourism, tourism falls further, police and authorities lie... and so on.

The girls can help carry...

It is truly due only to careful planning, heavy reliance on minibars, and the grace of God that I am able to ensure appropriate inebriation during all hours of the day or night. It's almost a miracle, really.

I'm tired of those lackluster Muay Thai fights in the rings around some of the bars - but I'd put up my 100 baht merrily if they would throw say 10 Thai tourguides and a handful of Chinese illegals into the ring and let them scrap it out. No guns, of course, no knives either - just old-fashioned Tour Guide Territorial Fight Rules.

Ask them no questions, they'll tell you no lies. Carry on.

I need to get myself a big strong backpack that fits the whole ten litres - I get nervous with all those bottles in plastic bags, disaster if one tears...

It was a pretty good run - 165 years - but looks like the white/Latino-Hispanic pendulum has swung back the other way now. (The Native pendulum remains pretty much stuck, I guess.) Doesn't offer much competition, time-wise, with the reign of the Chakri Dynasty certainly, but 165 years is nothing to scoff at... Maybe the reason the Army/coup types were so upset around the time the airport opened is that it was by then clear that a plan that they had conceived and hatched, had been brought to (allegedly) benefit their opponent and his mates in the end, when many of the fat contracts were being handed out? Who knows. Not me. YimSiam

Hell, after a long flight, I'm willing to spend a couple hundred baht extra! And I prefer to go with the ones who wear their trilingual "Japanese Cessation" sign...

... and so we return to the earlier points made about beer, barfine and ST/LT rates currently prevailing in Bkk... and note the profound parallels between sanuk in LOS and Chinese manufacturing. YimSiam

Ah, there it is - another 23-year-old dead of "natural causes". Not impossible, certainly - disease or congenital flaw taking it's toll - but somehow that seems unlikely. Or just unlucky for the bar-owner dude. I've got a trip in a few weeks - 28 days, but who's counting? - and this confirms it: I am going to stay firmly within the confines of very lowest Suk, Cowboy, mornings on Soi 4, late afternoon perhaps QPP, the late late night bars, and Pattaya. No Koh Tao for me - don't dare risk my health and safety! YimSiam

I wonder what it has meant for that Thai restaurant in North Carolina? http://www.mythai360.com/

Chungking was still doing its thing full-on when I was in HK around 2007-2010 period: still a source in HK for a real melting pot of some crazy above- and below-board commerce going on, not to mention the wild mix of cultural stuff, food, and chaos -- not general the vibe in HK, but once you walk through the doors of CK mansions, it's all around. The cops basically stay outside the doors, except for serious cases - violence, bigger drug busts, some piracy stuff - and let commerce rule. Africans, South Asians, Chinese, some hideous Sri Lankan hookers loitering around, and, what, fourteen floors up of mysterious guesthouses and offices and little hidden away rooms? Interesting place. Some professor eventually did a book on it: Chungking Mansions: Ghetto At the Center of the World, or something like that. And the professor even does tours for the curious, or used to... That's where our boy Edward Snowden *should* have headed - not the Mira (or at least tried Mirador Mansions!) YimSiam

Right - check out a graph of the dollar-baht historical exchange rate from the 80s through today ( http://www.tradingec...ailand/currency ) and you'll see that those of us who were around in the late nineties through about 2006, and to a lesser degree onwards for a few more years, were able to enjoy the fruits of the baht crash and SE Asia crisis - the steady 25/dollar went nuts for a few years, and we wandered the streets with a precious commodity flying out of our hands - nice reliable valuable currencies! Things have stabilized now, that heady time is over (where economic development - transitory as it was - had apparently taken place so it wasn't a third-world/developing world 'feeling' place in Bangkok at least, but still our currencies were kicking their ass and we lived like lords). That's over, plus the other developments Nasiadai notes. For me, actually I don't care much - I'm one of those assholes who comes in from a pretty good overseas gig with RnR, for a few days of wild abandon, throws my baht around like a jackass, then heads back out to nurse my hangover to make more money, and those short visits don't hurt very much. But if I was one of the longer term people in Thailand, and still committed to going out alot, or one of those who are saving money back home and making an annual trip on savings, the price change would be a hit - and I would head to Pattaya. Curious what the Russian rouble smackdown has done to Pattaya - any word from the front-lines down there? Have the mobsters vanished and the hookers multiplied? YimSiam

I like it down there - still has life and small commerce and lawlessness - kind of like Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong, a little glimmer of something different in a homogenized world. These days it's got an African component to it too, and everybody has something going on. Good spot.

Yeah, that's a good diagnosis - it's just the letting go is proving harder than I would have guessed! It gets under your skin somehow, this obsession with clarifying original sex... this sense that they are all around... Once bitten, twice shy, I suppose. It feels like I'm the guy who realized the world is round - especially round in the vicinity of soi 4, the street bars at the mouth of Asok, the late night spots - and no one else sees it. But yeah - let it go, is the right path to take! And I truly have nothing against them, have many whose company I enjoy, it's just the deception that does it for me. My Crying Game, my M. Butterfly experience. Gotta shake it.

He'll be thrilled to read that... I have to say, when thinking about websites that were part of sucking me into Thailand, there was one that I think was called Bangkok Phil - a bunch of thoughts on Thailand, nightlife, culture, foreigners - very interesting to me at the time, i wonder how well it stands up these oh-so-many years later - but I recall it as a good one that piqued my interest. YimSiam

Wow, it takes some time to live down a Time magazine story, no matter what the facts are. A few enthusiastic cops supplementing their income, and millions of dollars in tourism swirl down the drain...