SpiceMan

But most of us don't face daily beatings and are not chained and don't work for 20 hours per day. I'll be avoiding fish products from the Charoen Pokphand (CP) Foods company in future.

The girl on the left is not fat. Oh my Buddha, no wonder so many girls are anorexic when Miss Thailand is called too fat.

I was once told by a Qantas flight attendant that I was drinking the free beer too quickly "We need to slow you down a bit." She made me wait 90 minutes for my next beer. I will never fly Qantas again.

I'm teetotal now but its the principle.

Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot wrote:

"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle more elegant'? Instead they say "No, no, no! My god is a little god and I want him to stay that way".

Informative post, Mekong but "pick up a rental at an airport and not realise where one is at, it's a dead giveaway when the steering wheel is on the other side".

That doesn't apply everywhere. In the Bahamas, cars are imported from America but they drive on the left, with the steering wheel on the wrong side. The reverse applies in Burma where the military government thought that if they continued to drive on the left it could lead to left-wing political thinking so they switched to driving on the right. Unfortunately the buses were designed to drive on the left, so passengers now need to go out into traffic to board and leave the bus.

Obama signalled that he was opposed to Scottish independence. The US wanted its ally to remain "strong" and "united", he said.

Indeed.

Triumph has 3 factories in Chonburi. http://http://www.bc...l.asp?CorpID=46

And their bikes are superb.

I'm glad to see that Triumph motorcycles are now manufactured and available in Thailand.

When I have seen hand written notes, penned by Thai's; the calligraphy is excellent in both Thai and Latin scripts. Have other people noticed that Thai's seem to write clearly?

I like to drink a lot of diet cola but don't like laying in bed staring at the ceiling at 3am. Are caffeine free cola drinks available in Thailand?

A core principle in Thai culture is "face". The issue of face in Thai culture is not amenable to reason. It may be hard to comprehend this in the West, but to us here, it became perfectly clear that for both opposing sides, face had become a higher priority than the fate of their nation.

Oh, so the Thai people are too stupid to deserve democracy. That is supercilious nonsense.

But as a person who voted your government into power, I do have a right to hold you to account and to challenge you, and to demand that my government act in a less hypocritical manner.

He wants the benefits of democracy while happily denying it to Thailand. Now that is hypocrisy. I wonder how the foreigners on this board would feel if a coup d'etat happened in their own country.

'Godfather of ecstasy', dies aged 88

Alexander Shulgin earned his nickname, the Godfather of ecstasy, after honing a way to make the drug - and testing it out on himself to check it had worked.

Shulgin began his study of organic chemistry at Harvard University in his teens and, after a stint in the US Navy during World War Two, returned to Berkeley to get his PhD in biochemistry at the University of California. In his early working career, he joined Dow Chemical Company and, while there, developed the world's first biodegradable pesticide.

But it was while he was pursuing his own research that he began experimenting with psychoactive compounds. He died surrounded by family and caretakers and Buddhist meditation music.

During the swinging '60s, he says he made and tested hundreds of concoctions. In 1965, he parted company with Dow, but continued his studies and began teaching classes at local universities. Nearly a decade later, he came across a compound closely related to what we now call ecstasy or MDMA. MDMA had been previously synthesised and patented in 1912 by the pharmaceutical company Merck, but was never fully explored within humans.

Shulgin decided to start human trials - again, starting with himself. Once he had fine-tuned his recipe, he introduced the chemical to a psychologist from Oakland called Leo Zeff. And Zeff introduced Shulgin to a lay therapist called Ann, who later became Shulgin's wife. Zeff used small doses of the substance in his practice as an aid to talk therapy, and introduced it to hundreds of psychologists across the nation. Clubbers have been known to use ecstasy so they can dance for hours. In some cases, people have died from taking ecstasy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...health-27676669

I saw a report on TV about the New Caledonia settlement in Panama. Apparently 70% of the settlers were dead within a year from malaria and other diseases.

Yes the Army controlled Post and Nation are so much more free to report. Hahaha

Tourists may not be aware their travel insurance is no longer valid.They should check their policy.

So the army has taken hostages to deter Taksin's hand.

Looks like Takky wants some dead people so that he can play the "injured party" again.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed periodically with the blood of patriots and tyrants" - Thomas Jefferson

Yes but they their condemnation was not strong. They know coup's in Thailand run to a script: army seizes power, changes the constitution, then holds elections. Repeat ad nauseum.

I imagine that if they do it will prove very unpopular.

If I remember correctly, foreign TV news was not shut down in 2006. It has been shut down now, so maybe this coup is a little more serious. Or better organised.

Democracy is not perfect anywhere. Buts its better than the alternatives.

Also, BBC news in the UK is reporting that they have been closed down in Thailand. That is certain to piss them off.

There is also the fact that foreign media mostly report to citizens of democratic countries where army coup's are a no-no.

Yes this coup was well organised. Except that Thai and other airlines are still bringing in passengers even though they are not allowed to travel from the airport during curfew hours. Foreigners are still allowed to go to the airport though.

20 years! Is that all? He should receive the death penalty. Taxes in Scotland are high enough without paying for the upkeep of this scum.