Coss

As one who doesn't read or supeak Thai to any level that's useful: 1/. where is this? it'll be open again by now... 2/. I find it interesting that the service providers are more Tatooed than the Punters, the reverse of what it was in the past. 3/. Lots of died hair, why?

Yes

Well, for me, as a simple user who decries Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the other myriad of 'services' that sell your email address to anyone with a dollar, I find that Gmail does the best job of auto deleting junk mail, I've only ever found one email in the junk that shouldn't be there. So I just let Gmail do it's thing. As to how long can this go on? Infinity at present, though more accurately, unless Gmail changes their policy, until you die and your account becomes inactive.

It's code for a little known quantum physics theory, that there is a 'Mabel' boson, the female equivalent of the woman behind the 'Higgs' boson, which itself is still on shaky ground, existentially, so to speak...

Maybe it's on the top of the fence?

I think she is referring to the lighter pixels where there should be none at the border of the arm against the background. Whilst she could be right, these artefacts are common, when a clear cut image is pasted on to another, they are also commonly found, when the sharpening filters in photoshop are used 'too much', specifically the 'sharpen edges' filter, but also others. Another cause of these kind of artefacts is when a photo of low resolution is heavily compressed into a jpeg (joint photographics expert group), the compression software starts averaging the values of the pixels based on too little information (the low resolution) and fudges the output, often with clumps of similar coloured pixels where there were none before. Me, I reckon the backpacking tourists with mini-backpacker, had walked along the motorway (freeway) in a misguided attempt to get somewhere without having to pay anything. Why they would do this is unknown to me, because I have no understanding of backpacking.

"The Japanese ban covers any “change of aviation services,†the Thai civil aviation department said, and also bars airlines from changing the type of aircraft normally used on scheduled routes." I seem to remember the Lao Authorities banning a flight or flights from Thai Airlines because they were swapping types of planes around on a whim.

A different gentleman from Australia and I have eaten the Pork Chop offering there, to satisfying gain. Good it was.

Hahahahahahaha hahahahahahaha hahahahahaha hahahahahaha (catches breath) Hahahahahahaa hahahahahahahaha hahahahahahaha!!! http://amusingthailand.com/page/2/ Dear Cambodians, your black magic is useless now. We have fighter jets from the Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry. Your move.

BANGKOK – The ASEAN Economic Community, including the Heads of State/Government of Brunei Darussalam, the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Republic of Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, the Union of Myanmar, the Republic of the Philippines, the Republic of Singapore, the Kingdom of Thailand and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Member Countries of ASEAN, on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of ASEAN and the 13th ASEAN Summit in Singapore; recalling our earlier decision to establish by 2020 the ASEAN Community, including the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), made in the Declaration of ASEAN Concord II in Bali, Indonesia, on 7 October 2003; determined to achieve higher levels of economic dynamism, sustained prosperity, inclusive growth and integrated development of ASEAN; conscious of the increasing interdependence of the ASEAN economies within the region as well as with the rest of the world and stressing the importance of narrowing the development gap for accelerating the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015; recognizing that different levels of development within ASEAN require some flexibility as ASEAN moves towards a more integrated and interdependent future; reaffirming our collective commitment, made at the 12th ASEAN Summit in Cebu, the Philippines, on 13 January 2007, to accelerate the establishment of the ASEAN Community, including its AEC pillar, to 2015; cognizant of the need to have a strengthened institutional framework and a unified legal identity as set forth in the ASEAN Charter by putting in place rules-based systems to realise the establishment of the AEC by 2015; espressing satisfaction at the overall progress made and commitment shown by ASEAN in developing the AEC Blueprint and to ensure its timely implementation; REAFFIRMING the ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM) as the coordinator of all ASEAN economic integration and cooperation issues; have successfully adopted the AEC Blueprint which each ASEAN Member Country shall abide by and implement the AEC by 2015. Under the leadership of Thailand under the guidance of His Majesty the King, the AEC has transformed ASEAN into a single market and production base, a highly competitive economic region, a region of equitable economic development, and a region fully integrated into the global economy. Thank you. Sustaining co-operation jointly through synergistic unity of harmonic friendship jointly co-operative sustenance. Source

I know that Som Tam (Tam Mahk Houng) destroys the lining of MLG's colon, if that's any help.

A foil, to the likes of me, who constantly post negatively, about Thais?

Not yet darling, not yet...

Well it used to be the Roosevelts, the Rockefellas and the Rothschilds, I'd be interested to see if there's an updated list of people who actually run the world...

The three or four times I've been there, I've visited on the way to somewhere else and haven't partaken. The ladies are however, a useful collective visual barometer, with which to base one's evening, on.

Like, like, don b a hater

How significant is this?, I've seen statements on Al Jazeera from Iran condemning the strikes and from Saudi Arabia saying things like, 'We are the big dog here, it's time to show this'. Links and excerpts below http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dd53ad1a-d37f-11e4-99bd-00144feab7de.html#axzz3VWuLlcXk The price of oil rose on Thursday as Saudi jets bombed Houthi rebels in the Yemeni capital, raising fears that the civil conflict in the Gulf state could escalate into a regional war. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/saudi-arabia-targets-strategic-areas-around-yemen-in-heavy-bombardment/2015/03/26/4e455830-d343-11e4-8b1e-274d670aa9c9_story.html Saudi Arabia launched intense airstrikes on neighboring Yemen on Thursday, as part of a bold Arab-led offensive against Shiite rebels that threatened to expand into a war involving ground troops. Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies plunged into the Yemen crisis after a rebel advance forced the country’s Western-backed president to flee and left the Shiite insurgents, known as Houthis, on the brink of controlling the country’s two largest cities. http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-arabia-launches-operation-yemen-ambassador-234725579.html Warplanes from a Saudi-led Arab coalition bombed Huthi Shiite rebels on Thursday in support of Yemen's embattled president, as regional rival Iran warned the intervention was a "dangerous" move.Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi, on the eve of a regional summit in Egypt, declared his full support for the strikes against the Huthis who he said had carried out a "coup" in Yemen.

Like it's so, you know, like, dub

more... The broker said agents then sell the slaves, usually to Thai captains of fishing boats or the companies that own them. Each slave typically costs around $1,000, according to Patima Tungpuchayakul, manager of the Thai-based nonprofit Labor Rights Promotion Network Foundation. The men are later told they have to work off the "debt" with wages that don't come for months or years, or at all. "The employers are probably more worried about the fish than the workers' lives," she said. "They get a lot of money from this type of business." Illegal Thai boats are falsely registered to fish in Indonesia through graft, sometimes with the help of government authorities. Praporn Ekouru, a Thai former member of Parliament, admitted to the AP that he had bribed Indonesian officials to go into their waters, and complained that the Indonesian government's crackdown is hurting business. "In the past, we sent Thai boats to fish in Indonesian waters by changing their flags," said Praporn, who is also chairman of the Songkhla Fisheries Association in southern Thailand. "We had to pay bribes of millions of baht per year, or about 200,000 baht ($6,100) per month. ... The officials are not receiving money anymore because this order came from the government."

http://www.nzherald....jectid=11423387 The Burmese slaves sat on the floor and stared through the rusty bars of their locked cage, hidden on a tiny tropical island thousands of miles from home. Just a few yards away, other workers loaded cargo ships with slave-caught seafood that clouds the supply networks of major supermarkets, restaurants and even pet stores in the United States. But the eight imprisoned men were considered flight risks - labourers who might dare run away. They lived on a few bites of rice and curry a day in a space barely big enough to lie down, stuck until the next trawler forces them back to sea. "All I did was tell my captain I couldn't take it anymore, that I wanted to go home," said Kyaw Naing, his dark eyes pleading into an Associated Press video camera sneaked in by a sympathetic worker. "The next time we docked," he said nervously out of earshot of a nearby guard, "I was locked up." Here, in the Indonesian island village of Benjina and the surrounding waters, hundreds of trapped men represent one of the most desperate links criss-crossing between companies and countries in the seafood industry. This intricate web of connections separates the fish we eat from the men who catch it, and obscures a brutal truth: Your seafood may come from slaves. The men the AP interviewed on Benjina were mostly from Myanmar, also known as Burma, one of the poorest countries in the world. They were brought to Indonesia through Thailand and forced to fish. Their catch was then shipped back to Thailand, where it entered the global stream of commerce. There is a lengthy article at the source, with pics, well worth the read, Thailand seems to be the 'Hub' of illegal fish distribution.. big surprise! http://www.nzherald....jectid=11423387

A lot of people in this country pooh-pooh Australian table wines. This is a pity as many fine Australian wines appeal not only to the Australian palate but also to the cognoscenti of Great Britain. Black Stump Bordeaux is rightly praised as a peppermint flavoured Burgundy, whilst a good Sydney Syrup can rank with any of the world's best sugary wines. Château Blue, too, has won many prizes; not least for its taste, and its lingering afterburn. Old Smokey 1968 has been compared favourably to a Welsh claret, whilst the Australian Wino Society thoroughly recommends a 1970 Coq du Rod Laver, which, believe me, has a kick on it like a mule: eight bottles of this and you're really finished. At the opening of the Sydney Bridge Club, they were fishing them out of the main sewers every half an hour. Of the sparkling wines, the most famous is Perth Pink. This is a bottle with a message in, and the message is 'beware'. This is not a wine for drinking, this is a wine for laying down and avoiding. Another good fighting wine is Melbourne Old-and-Yellow, which is particularly heavy and should be used only for hand-to-hand combat. Quite the reverse is true of Château Chunder, which is an appellation contrôlée, specially grown for those keen on regurgitation; a fine wine which really opens up the sluices at both ends. Real emetic fans will also go for a Hobart Muddy, and a prize winning Cuivre Reserve Château Bottled Nuit San Wogga Wogga, which has a bouquet like an aborigine's armpit.

Satire? Shouldn't their offices be attacked and burnt to the ground so we can all go Je Suis Wadiya on them?

Source The detention of an infamous rogue fishing vessel off Phuket deserves special notice and praise. Authorities apprehended the ugly-looking ship after it was chased by various nations for years. It has gone by an assortment of names and sailed under numerous flags, but always with criminal intent. The 625-tonne vessel was known and blacklisted worldwide for illegal fishing in and around the Antarctic. The maritime police chased and caught the ship on March 6. It is currently called Kunlun but is also known as Dorita, Black Moon and Galaxy. Its flags have included North Korea, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Panama, Indonesia and Equatorial Guinea. Police have detained the Kunlun and its crew - 31 Indonesians, four Spanish officers and a Peruvian captain. A Spanish officer who apparently attempted to commit suicide is being treated at a Phuket hospital. The ship's owner is officially unknown. There is quite a lot of bad news in the accomplishment of this feat by police. The capture of the Kunlun poses yet more problems for Thailand in its continuing, even escalating diplomatic battles. It turns out the Kunlun specialised in fishing for Patagonian toothfish, a highly regulated species near endangerment. Most Thais and visitors may know little about the toothfish, but millions are familiar with its other name - the snow fish, in Thai pla hima. Seafood and Chinese restaurants, including at top-rated hotels, feature snow fish on their menus of "luxury dishes". It is popular for obvious reasons. For anyone who enjoys eating fish, it is by any name a succulent main-course ingredient at any dinner or banquet. Steamed, poached or pan-fried, the fish is extremely popular at any price. It is impossible to think of a more damaging conflict of interests than the capture of the criminal Kunlun ship, and the widespread availability of a supposedly regulated species. The government remains to be heard from on the matter. But if there are any enforced regulations about importing, buying or selling Patagonian toothfish, aka snow fish, no market or restaurant operator seems to be aware of them. Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, who is responsible for enforcing fishing regulations, said last week he did not know why Thailand faces criticism and possible sanctions from the European Union. He told media the military is trying to improve fishing standards. All but about 3% of fishing boats are registered and licensed. And now, from a completely unexpected direction comes a rogue ship with tonnes of illegal fish in its hold. When detained by marine police - not the navy - the Kunlun had 182 tonnes of fish in its refrigerated holds. The manifest and the ship's captain told police boarders they were grouper. A quick inspection revealed most, if not all, the fish are snow fish. The ship was supposedly on its way to sell the illegal cargo in Vietnam. Catching the fugitive ship and crew is a praiseworthy achievement. On the other hand, it now serves as stark reminder of just why the EU has turned on Thailand and threatened sanctions. The country has plenty of laws and regulations to deal with illegal fishing and trafficking in regulated seafood. As with human trafficking, however, those who are concerned want to see action against violators, rather than hear about new laws and paperwork. The capture of the Kunlun should lead to a crackdown on both sellers and buyers of protected seafood. If crew and cargo of this serial poacher are to be punished, so must others who profit from such illegal fishing. __________ What this article, in it's effusive praise of the Thai authorities fails to mention, is that the NZ Navy shadowed the vessel in question in Antarctic waters, photographing the capture of tooth fish. The NZ Navy received criticism for not sinking the illegal fishing vessel, but apparently you can't just sink vessels in International waters, according to maritime and other law. The NZ Navy then alerted Interpol and a combined international effort tracked the vessel to Thailand where the Thai authorities were handed on a plate, the true identity of the vessel, the nature of it's illegal fishing and it's the aliases. On a plate. This vessel has been linked to known Spanish Criminal entities whose representatives promptly arrived in Phuket, to presumably grease some palms, for the ships release. This may still occur.

You might be surprised to know, that it's well known and used amongst the cognoscenti of the board.