No more Spice Club Soi 11

[elroy]

Yes it's true. Baccarra has good Belgian beers...for a "good" price.

[Gadfly]

The wine at Baccara is drinkable, but that's about it - calling it 'premium' is a bad joke.

 

That is what I suspected. Well, have drinkable wines is an improvement over anything I have encountered in any other Thai go go.

 

The Belgian beers at Bacarara come at a price, but anything that isn't local is expensive in Thailand anyway. Really not the bar's fault.

 

Thailand's excise ("sin") tax creates an opaque taxing regime that is extremely protectionist. Excise taxes, in the area of alcohol at least, are supposed to discourage the consumption of high octance distilled spririts and nudge consumers toward less harmful drinks with lower alcohol content, such as beer and wine. Not so in Thailand.

 

The excise tax on locally produced 78% Lao Khao - the stuff that causes most of alcohol related deaths in Thailand - is a few Baht on the bottle while the excise tax on a imported wines is hundreds of Baht on dollar. Imported beers and alcohol of all kinds are subject to high and irrantional taxes based on a subjective assessmentof the product's "intrinsic" value. And then, of course, there is import tax on top of that.

 

Funny thing is that although the Ministry of Public Health is on a campaign to eradicate the promotion of alcoholic beverages in Thailand and reducing alcoholism in Thailand generally (or so they claim), they focus on foreign producers and distributers.

 

Now how many alcohol related deaths over the New Year in Thailand do we think will be realted to consumption of Belgian beer or imported wines vs. the locally produced rocket fuel the poses here as a beverage?