joekicker

Hey, I've had worse than that on the FIRST day. So what do you figure is best - run my posts through you to do the final editing? Jeez, jacko, you're getting pretty testy in your old age. Maybe you should consider Chanthaburi or Chiang Rai or Hua Hin (my three favourites) as you say. Me I'm stuck in Bangkok for a while, baby STILL needs a new pair of shoes, and Bangkok can suck worse than a farm-fresh beer-bar girl. But I don't let it get me down that much, sheesh.

If by "less" you mean "none, ever" then getting one-day implants in Thailand would be a great idea. Unfortunately, it doesn't. I don't think much of the plan to get the implants done here and the maintenance elsewhere. That doesn't always work out well. To the OP: I have had a long and fantastic success with the St Louis Hospital dental clinic. Their staff are fabulous and they have dentists who do nothing BUT plates.

Actually every one of my posts in this thread said pretty clearly my opinion of what is behind the discrimination raised by the OP, although not this one. I have also stated in excruciating detail why the reason for discrimination is NOT religion. Several posters believe the discrimination of the OP rests on religion, and I know it doesn't and that is what I have been discussing. If you believe that's trolling, you must be pretty young in forum years. If you really, really, strongly care about my posts as you seem to, have a read of them in this thread again and I believe you'll see my opinion about what IS behind this specific discrimination. Or, to put it another way: Do you believe the described discrimination had something to do with Islam?

Only a gun fan would want to see past his nose??

Under normal circs, most airlines would send it to Pattaya, or anywhere else. I don't KNOW of one that wouldn't, but there may be one or two.

Uh-huh. Whatever. Readers will eventually judge whether my questions were horrible or your answers were horrible on why you think millions of Muslims willingly visit and pay tens of millions of dollars in a country where the people dislike them so much that you personally have noticed it. Let me be clear. There are places where me and my kind are disliked because of our kind - NOT our passports. Whatever kind you are, the same is true of you and those who are the same race and the same religion/lack of religion. Your race and your religious beliefs make you unpopular in many places. But moving right along. It's interesting you now claim the English-Scots as an analogy. I would not accept that Scottish is a religion (that would be Scotch, surely?). Muslims don't have a race, don't have a country, don't have an origin. You and I, generally speaking, can't tell a Muslim from an aetheist without a programme, and then only if they're in uniform. Like Catholics, say - there are quite a lot in Issan but without their uniforms on, you'd never know them. Muslims share a religious belief only. There are people who really hate them for that. And there are other people, too, who don't. Thais, for example, don't generally dislike people who practice the Islamic faith -- don't generally have any sort of feelings or bad vibes about Muslims at all. They don't even have special words for them like some languages do - the royal language of England uses raghead for example. Thais don't get that. Once again, by use of English-Scots, it sure seems to me that you view Muslims as Arabs/Indians. If not, how could that be relevant? I presume that this is the reason that the court language of England uses "raghead" - because those cloistered folks think all Muslims are Arabs/Indians or "Pakis".

No sir. Just repeated the question in the hope you'd read what I wrote instead of what you read. I asked if you would choose to visit or live in a country where people didn't like you. Check the record above. What I don't get and I was hoping you'd reconcile or at least give your opinion about is why for 50 years or whatever millions and millions of Muslims come to Thailand for holidays/pleasure when in your opinion the Thais show hostility towards Muslims? How come the word never got out or the Muslims never smartened up or whatever? You and I agree after all that we wouldn't CHOOSE a country where the folks felt that way about us. BTW you don't know (it seems) my nationality but I can assure you I get bad-mouthed.

Haven't we all? I'll certainly match you one-for-one there until one of us quits. But the ones you chose to vacation in while knowing the locals hated your axx were....? Heh. A wise man once wrote: Many a 'yank' hater who hasn't been anyplace outside Cobbletown except Benidorm.

In the unlikely event you get an offer to do implants in a week, my advice is to pass it up - unless you plan to be making a LOT of return visits in the next year. Bridges should have follow-ups but implants absolutely NEED follow-ups. Unlike a bridge, you can't take implants out and put them in your pocket if they're not just right.

Any hard trip requires a stopover. How could anyone expect you to travel straight through? Thank goodness there is an oasis in that long, harsh desert trip from Songkhla to KL. I'll tell ya, though, I'm so old that I can remember when Ipoh is where you stopped for a bit of R&.. er, a non-alcoholic refreshment. Ooh, that's harsh.

Agree. The problem is not finding a dentist but in the time. A week is REALLY pushing it. Almost any dental clinic or hospital can do what you want without language problems. Dr Aree is a big favourite of Pattaya-goers.

Now I didn't know that. The connection in Mrs Sombat's mind between those so-called "people" who cut off Bigley's head in Iraq and the south of Thailand is? The thing is that almost all tourists in the South of Thailand except for Phuket are Muslims. So why do you think that Muslim tourists BY THE MILLIONS are welcome in Thailand and yet there are no really important anti-Muslim sentiment towards those MILLIONS of Muslim tourists and the tourists are not at all put off by the Thai attitude towards them? For example: Would you visit or live in a country where people openly and frequently despised you in the manner you insist Thais show towards Muslims? Why (in your opinion) do Muslims BY THE MILLIONS visit and spend their money in such a country? Or, giving you an alternative explantion for your error, do you think that all Muslims are Indians and Arabs, and you are failing to consider for example, the Muslims who live in a country bordering Thailand and the Muslims from the world's most populous Muslim country? For example. For example: What in your hearing do Thais say about Malaysians? For example. Not Malaysia - Malaysians. Lump them with "kaek" (Indians) do they?

I don't want seem to be beating a dead pig but yes, of course Thais are as stereotyping and prejudiced as anyone, even including me. "Did you hear the one about the Indian, the Paki and the Arab?" is as Thai as slapstick. I don't deny what you write, and in fact I back it up, because I've heard them too. (And not only Thais.) The problem: You've put up a strawman only to burn and trample on it. No one (least of all me) claimed the Thai Buddhists and agnostics don't speak ill of Muslims. Only your straw man made such a claim. Everywhere else, the claim being discussed was that the Thais don't like Muslims (highly questionable, that) BECAUSE of what Muslims have done in the South. That claim, made several times above, is what I deny. You figure Thai Buddhists should be like American and European Christians with the sort of respect they give to the Middle East? But no, I don't see why it's at all hypocritical, any more than it would be hypocritical for anyone to slag off African just because that's where humans originated.'

FYI the Buddhist swastika is backwards to the Nazi one. It is NOT used in the mainstream Theravada Buddhism in Thailand, and the swastika is very, very rare. But it is used in other places as close as Vietnam, which has a different form of Buddhism. What is wrong with selling German helmets and Hitlerian swastikas etc??? Just because Germany and a few other countries ban it doesn't mean everyone should. You're sounding very American with that sort of xrap. Was that why you changed? What are you now?

A smart man realises his limitations Bid-D. One of yours is not knowing very much at all about Thailand. I don't have enough pity to cover the people who would be innocent enough to take your advice -- such people shouldn't be venturing out of their homes except for fearful trips to the grocery store anyhow, let alone overseas -- but you should be knowing enough not to be offering du... er unhelpful advice like this to those people. If your little homily applied to posting in an Internet forum, you'd be broke from running through so many pairs of shoes and reduced to limping along on bloody feet, dragging your bag of bovine-processed grasses behind.

Took the words out of my fingertips. Nothing to do with the airplane. Any airliner these days is big enough for a gym and a king-sized bed, certainly including the really excellent Airbus models. It's up to the airline what to do with the space.

LAX is circular and there are constant buses which circle and stop at each terminal. I'm not positive, but I think re-checking is in the same terminal as international and I think you walk to United gates. Check the airport website they will have full details, as will united.com The big problems in LAX are whether you get stopped in Customs, and the length of the security lines as you MUST go through security again for your domestic flight. You simply cannot predict both of those. Passport isn't usually a problem, either the US/Canadian line or the foreigners' line. Two hours may be twice as much or half as much as necessary. I think you could say the same about the three main US airport gateways, really.

Yep, in the end, Thailand is pretty much like everywhere else. Except for the hot season and Songkran of course.

Or, to put it another way: The greatest strength of the immigration procedures is that nothing is chiseled into stone. The immigration officers have terrific leeway on how to handle any given case, and that lets you bargain, negotiate, get a little pity maybe, and end up with what you want instead of what some pointy-headed junior civil servant decided you would get whether you like it or not. Some of us like Thailand. Others want it to be exactly like the countries they left, which I personally think is weird.

But you were advising on the cause of the racism and then when faced with challenges, you dissembled. My follow-up to your post was about WHY the Thais have attitudes about Muslims. You said it was because of all that stuff Muslims do in the South. I said it was not and provided some proof to back up my point. You can back up your point and continue, concede, or do nothing. It's just an Internet forum. But you were the one who brought the "why" into the convo. It *is* a valid point to discuss, I think. You were definitely in context when YOU raised the issue. But I definitely and strongly think and know you have the wrong take on it.

The handout of cheques of 2,000 baht each began on Thursday. It was in the newspapers and everything. Example: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/14043/ It is a ONE OFF payment to members of the Social Security fund - basically meaning salaried or hourly employees, and civil servants earning under 15,000 baht a month. Nine million people get the cheques. You may be mixed up with a very separate jobs-training programme that began last Sunday, which will pay up to 4,800 baht a month during training and for three months afterward. There is no connection between the two.

Ah yes, well indeed you brought that up after refusing to discuss the previous given - you seem to feel you know that the Thais have a negative feeling about Muslims because Muslims do such terrible stuff in the South. And I say such a claim is ridiculous. You don't know at all what Thais think about Muslims OR the South with such a statement, that the Thais rather obviously do NOT have such a feeling about Muslims given their rather obvious and observable action towards people from the world's biggest Muslim country and Malaysia for starters, not to mention the roughly 10 per cent of Thai citizens who are Muslim and have ZERO problem about it, where by "zero" I mean none at all in any form, ever. You DO know there are quite a few Muslims and actual mosques in Pattaya, right?

Unlikely. But irrelevant. Let us again revisit the actual claim and see if this time you choose to address it or admit you were wrong: no Arabs, Muslim or otherwise, have been (involved in) bombing the south of Thailand.

"The Muslims of the South" do not have bomb making equipment any more than the Muslims of the US or the Muslims of Saudi Arabia. Therefore, they aren't taking help or money for the bomb making equipment they don't have. You seem to be mixing up the idea that terrorists and extremists of the South are Muslim, with the idea that the Muslims of the South are terrorists and extremists. By that logic, the English are football hooligans and the Americans are searching for schools and malls to shoot up. They aren't. Nor would you find ONE BG in Pattaya who shared your lack of logic in any of the above cases.

Oh my God!! I was counting on this board for my scholarly research. And I have told my children, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren they could count on Pattayatalk as a living Record of Everything! Now what? That said, my sympathy to camus and I hope he had a copy of what he wrote. That truly is a bummer.