YimSiam

I also was given a bow and arrow, to learn responsibility and discipline. I shot my sister at about 60 meters, luckily she put up her hands in defense, and the arrow struck her hand. What I learned is that if you threaten your sister seriously enough, she will not even tell mom that you shot her with a bow and arrow...

Hello, paranoid schizophrenic, grandiose delude much? Let's hope that the Post is right and it's a replica - although that would beg the question: where are the real ones?

Back when Suthep had the intersections blocked and the city was a mess, I found the encampments to be very attentive to foreigners passing through, even late at night they'd pull back the gates, smile Thaily, and let me pass -- it was clear they had a policy of hospitality towards tourists in place and observed by all, in my experience. Current situation, I'm less sure - I would not want to be on the opposite end of a beach chair crackdown, or nightclub closure, or even jay-walking violation at present, it's not business as usual.

It's surprisingly comfortable here in the heart of Damascus, the Four Seasons is still open (and provides some deep discounts!) and global sanctions has greatly reduced the traffic snarls every where! Of course, one doesn't venture far from the core 'safe areas' and mortars drop with something like lottery ticket odds (yes, there's a few each day in the safe area - but what are your chances of getting hit?! Slim indeed.) "Amazing Syria 2014 - Getting A Visa Is The Hardest Part!" YimSiam

Grace Hotel Coffee shop latenight used to be something like I imagine the 21st/22nd centuries will look like - somewhere between Star Wars cantina and Blade Runner. Futuristic with a solid dose of what-the-fuck.

Momondo, Skyscanner and Kayak, and some snooping around to find the airlines that don't show up on these, usually odd little airlines that fly to crappy places...

Noted: the PM's brother is one of his NLA dudes? I thought the elites were supposed to show discretion?

Sometimes it's just easier to move the money into a personal account -- ever tried to buy a fighter jet by signing over a third party check? Easier to just keep the cash in your private account, and pay directly. And really, let's be honest - what's the point of having your brother mount a coup if you can't pull down at least a couple million dollars as a result? Truly, has there ever been a military coup of an elected government in which people squabbled over such utterly insignificant amounts of money? A million, two million dollars? And people are going to get upset about that, when it happens in the context of the military takeover of a 400 billion dollar national economy? So RUDE, really, to be even asking Preecha these questions. No further questions should be allowed, to protect the dignity of those robbing the country and running it into ruin and disgrace... YS

Man, that article terrified me - then I realized I am neither a dwarf nor newly married, after that it just made me laugh... YimSiam

Sea Two Pool Villa in Jomtiem - anyone been there, heard of it? What's the word? Thanks, YimSiam

The roach-and-rundown issue seems to have improved in the past year or so, at least in my experience - it used to be bad, I agree, but things seems better of late. Smells fresher, and no roaches on my last visits! (I know, seems to be hardly a strong recommendation for a hotel... but yes, you must stay at Penthouse at least once, and when you do make sure it's the bigger rooms with most features - don't waste your time and money in some standard room here, you need to go for the gusto. While I'm here: Anyone have good recommendations for Pattaya hotels with big comfortable suites, relaxed GF attitude, balcony? I've done Marriott, Hard Rock, Bayview/shore - boring and in case of first two, expensive. Whitehouse Condotel gets two big thumbs up from me, despite no view, and it has a feeling of cheap furniture, no view... but otherwise, I'm pro-Whitehouse Condotel. Barracuda D2 has decent suites, but... I don't know, doesn't completely click. Anywhere else recommended? Amari Nova Suites corner suites just caught my eye. What's a favorite big suite, private, don't-care-who-I-come-home-with-or-when kind of place? YimSiam

6 days... Nasiadai, may your visit possible and hopefully be as rejuvenating as possible! Leave as much of the melancholy at home as possible, who knows what you will find in Thailand. Best of luck. YimSiam

Well, he IS from Bakersfield! OKay, so he appears to be weirder even than the other two guys, who most likely are evangelicals... I just file them all together for sake of convenience. Seems this guy's passion has to do with some animated stuff, a fantasy Alice In Wonderland movie. Talk about 'down the rabbit hole' - hard labor in N. Korea is certainly Mad Hatter territory!

CPR Beach...

Maybe those two guys are better off in prison than on Koh Tao -- at least in prison, anal rape is free, whereas on Koh Tao it seems you'll have to pay for it from now on...

Just when you thought the Thais would be forced to understand how f*cked they have made things in Koh Tao, you get a brilliant (cough, cough) idea like this: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingnews/Tourists-may-be-required-to-pay-entrance-fee-for-v-30244592.html A meeting of tourism operators and local residents of Koh Tao in Surat Thani resolved during a meeting Thursday to collect an entrance fee from visiting tourists. They plan to use the fee for setting up a fund to boost security for tourists on the island. The meeting resolved to have the Koh Tao Municipality hold a public hearing on the fee rate.

Not the first, not the last...

They'd better 'surge' in sales, if they have these piles of stock just sitting, waiting to rot... Of course, price will not be a happy one - but never fear, the solution is at hand! “Every farmer grows rice. Why are you surprised if the price goes down? Perhaps, farmers should grow rice once a year. Don’t grow it too often. Or try to grow something else, or shift to other kinds of farm work. This will solve the price situation.â€

No sitting out drinking beer in Saigon? Tragic, tragic - that was my favorite pastime in that town, brief times I was there (although i suppose it was at night usually, and below 30 degrees). Anyway, what they should insist on is the temp of the beer - it's truly a crime to serve most Vietnamese beers warm!

THey probably found his head in the living room, body in the bathroom - clearly a slip-n-fall...

And taken over by Buddhists, too!

As is, more or less, RT.com, cited above...

If for no other reason than that I don't believe foreign bike gangs will be able to ensure the fun sanuking environment that I love in Thailand, I say kick the bums out - sure, if they can create local affiliates, fine, but foreign bike gangs getting excessively involved in bar management as is happening in parts of Bangkok seems to me to be a recipe for further decline of the scene. Bike mentality involves such a level of ugliness, intimidation and swagger, it has no place in the sanuk scene in Thailand. Leave the bars and girls to the Thais and to the foreign managers who work well with Thais, and stick to arms, industrial-level drug trafficking, and whatever other businesses you like...

Dean, I think that US attitude towards others stems from a fundamentally different conception of the state and nation - US is a political entity (by necessity, one could say, since there is not really another unifying factor that can be called up to define the nation), the state a legal creation, so others can come even in substantial numbers and be fully accepted as 'one of us' and we don't feel like it violates our sense of who or what we are. Whereas many nation states are expressions of a racial concept, of a 'homeland' and some notion of purity of blood and culture, and that doesn't allow a lot of room for newcomers to be absorbed, since they patently don't fit the vision of what "the nation" is (no matter that the notions of race/ethnicity/culture/however you want to call it are basically fabrications to fit someone's need for power and control (sure, blame it on the colonials, but their replacements are guilty too)). Where the state is not a political agreement between diverse citizens, the inclusion of anyone else can only be on an exceptional and begrudging basis, which will never be on equal conditions. Yes, it's delusional (where would Thailand be if it had not absorbed Indian influences and people, Arabs and Chinese over the centuries?!), but that's how it goes. Imagined communities, where a failure of imagination ensures that 'others' remain others - to be exploited, perhaps occasionally rewarded or finally acknowledged as never going away, but not really accepted as equals. Look at the 'colored ID card' approach Thailand has to its minority 'hilltribes', or Burma's multi-tiered levels of 'citizenship' - administrative contortions that seek to defuse but not resolve issues of 'the others among us'... But - I still say, you come as a tourist or businessman, or illegally, and you violate the terms of your agreed stay, you should pay the price, and then the nation should kick you out and never let you back - and where it has the means, like Thailand, should put you on a bus or plane and send you back where you belong.

Thailand is only a banana republic administratively, not financially - plenty of money on hand to deport the small numbers of vagrants and criminals when they're done with their sentences for immigration violations, I would think. Good for Thai Airways, too - a little cash infusion for a good cause, at least. I remember back when Immigration detention was on Suan Phlu (is it still?) a few years ago, there were some foreigners in there for four, five, even eight years - just biding time due to lack of documents and unwillingness to return. Put in a year or two post-sentence, there were charities who could buy a ticket for you, but some refused or couldn't establish a basis to get sent anywhere. And so they just stayed in Suan Phlu...