joekicker

It's kind of like being married, including getting screwed. I agree with your interpretation of the new rules. They haven't been signed off yet, but it seems unlikely they will be amended.

I think the correct plural for that word is "WE"?

No sir, with all respect your point was that you know what jokes should NOT be in the funnies section and all of us should share precisely your joke threshhold and sensitivity. And my point is that banning jokes is pointless, silly and if you want to press political correctness, please at least START in the political sections, not the humour one. Also, if you are going to post political stuff, can you at least add a joke? Speaking of nonsense ... I was at the airport, checking in at the United gate when a so-called "security" guy asked, "Has anyone put anything in your baggage

Can we have the PC police transferred to another section? If "that is not funny" then you should not laugh at it. Like, for example, the tasteless jokes you just posted above - I didn't think they were funny so I didn't laugh, my normal reaction to something that isn't amusing. Seemed to work out okay. You got to tell your joke, I got to judge it. Some jokes are gonna bomb, so what? What's the problem?

Ah. That brings to mind another rule. There are (basically) four prices in Thailand: Cheapest: Thai Just about as cheap or cheaper: Farang who speak Thai Bearable: Farang who don't speak Thai Most expensive: Thai + Farang It always annoys my old la... my lovely wife when I come home and tell her I got the cop for cheaper than she did. Which I have done. But if we're together and she insists on doing the talking, the cost of the ticket to the policeman's ball goes up. And up.

This is the most useful post on this thread. There are rules, but every single Thai government rule ends with a "... unless in the opinion of the examining officer.... " clause. Which means there are no rules. The only rule that never changes is: If you are seen to be acting like an asshole, you are phuocked. Otherwise, it'll be sorted out eventually.

Mine didn't. Is that a sign of intense intelligence or just far, far superior?

This is true, they are unlikely to chase you. But. But 1. They may have a second ambush just up the road, and if so, the second boys will definitely be ready for you. But 2. They may remember you. If so, you will be their guest for a hell of a lot longer, and a hell of a lot more expensively than if you coughed up the 100 or 200 baht at the first go. Running from a minor traffic stop is a silly thing to do.

The visa can be used any time in one year - "used" meaning you can present it to Thai immigration at the border any time during the one year validity. After that one year, if you do not use it, you no longer have a valid visa. When you use it (including on Day 364 if you wish), THEN the visa will be stamped to allow you to stay in Thailand for 60 days. It can be extended for 30 more days easily. It MAY be extendable again although probably not. You may (or may not) have a multiple-entry visa, which means you can go in and out two or more times and restart a 60-day stay -- but again, within

Absolutely second that. Extension of a proper visa (or "non-visa" airport stamp) is simple, efficient and decidedly un-scary. You need a mug-shot (passport) photo and photocopies of the pages in your passport that have the passport info (the page with your pic on it) and the page(s) with your visa/stamp/arrival card.

Yeah, everybody go ahead and laugh. Fact is you cannot take a step without breaking the law. Everything is against the law. When funds are needed to help the policeman's daughter with her school fees, you will pay it, or you will pay three to 10 times as much NOT to pay it. Those are your choices. It is a Thailand fact of life.

It has nothing to do with vacations, it's students going home - Asian students in the US, American-Canadian students in Asia. When schools are out is when families move. Just the embassies alone in Thailand move hundreds of employees and thousands of people (families) - in each direction. $875 from LAX is a very good fare indeed at the moment.

The non-immigrant visa is reallyonly for working/staying, and is really only useful for working/staying permanently. You want a tourist visa. To answer your question directly, you can claim you have a lead on a job in Thailand and will be interviewed when you get there, but when they start asking for details you may be sorry you didn't just ask for a tourist one. They have the right to, and often do demand a letter from your (prospective) employer or the paperwork for your retirement.

Well, you can have your take on it and we can disagree. But frankly when I saw the following line, that's where I thought they were just way over the on her. Just for the record, I don't believe they could make that "no relations" rule stick in the Thai Labour Court, either - and for very good reasons IMHO. I'm sorry this story got into the book collection. I don't think it belongs. And this is why: Although we were both sure that Pon was having a relationship with this particular guest, which is a sackable offence, she was not conducting it at the hotel. Besides, she was leaving us

Heh. A bar where the girls are dressed up in purple burqas and parkas. Now that *IS* an original idea for the fleshpot capital of Thailand. Am I missing something?

I have really enjoyed the Jasmine Mansion tales, and laughed my ass off several times. It's highly readable, and spot-on. But not now. I am frankly appalled you'd be so proud of being a busybody old lady. Your employee likes a customer. Totally and completely, she moves this into her private life, on her own time and does not affect your business or her working efficiency in any manner. You don't just go behind her back, you don't just gossip and giggle and yak over it with your wife, you claim no one can "get away with something". Then you brag about invading her privacy. You're not even

But then people from the small island off Europe would say you misspelled Arsed. You can't win. You also can't lose or quit of course.

This is still the most practical suggestion. From what I've seen, there's more money to be made there than in trying to keep your hands off the students in an English class for sure.

Let's just say that I have not served as the bag during muay thai lessons, ever. Seriously, I did take muay thai for quite some time, it's a hell of a .... um, sport. After you get into it for a while, you get to kick one of the boxers in the camp for five minutes on, one minute off for about 30 minutes. He does little but defend his vitals, the idea that you're working on your accuracy, and he's working on his callouses. It is a hell of a long time, but it's nothing to what happens when your 30 minutes are up, and he smiles and says, "My turn".

Heh. You are going to get into a fistfight with someone in Pattaya? Up on the balls of your feet, prepared to strike with your hands held outward, elbows bent? Let me assure you that between four and 27 young men will proceed to give you some basic self-defence lessons in muay thai and stick-wielding, using you as the example-opponent. The proper position to assume when you are about to get in a fight on the street in Pattaya, is: With your back turned towards the opponent, move your feet as fast as you can, assuming the gait of a stripe-assed ape as you (hopefully) disappear from

Because it's not the low season. It's the student season, which is VERY high. Low season is, oh, February to early May. (A lot of US schools are out in mid-May.)

This is the lower (not low) part of the midde-class scale. Six, maybe 10 years into a decent Bangkok job, a mid-middle-classer, semi- or real white collar, would probably average 50,000-to-55,000 a month. I'm just basing on acute observation, not on actual stats. As always, you can play with the numbers. As in the West, teaching salaries are a bad example, as teachers are under-paid compared with their counterparts in business and industry. Here's a possible rule of thumb. Buying a new pick-up (the cheapest four-wheel vehicle in Thailand) would take payments of about 13,000 to 15,000 a

Prices are up across the board. Whatever was cheaper last year is going to be more expensive this year. It's even worse going the other way, i.e. starting in Bangkok. My own 37,000 baht return ticket to middle America went to 53,000 last year and is currently "just over 61,000" my travel agent informs - PLUS the US dollar has tanked so in effect I've gone from about $800 to $1,600 in two years. That's not bargain hunting, but it is what's happening to fares to/from the US/Thailand and the Pacific. My daughter in the US informed me last week she will get a student-discount ticket to Ban

Yes. TOT servers work on Soi 6, and they go down. Seriously, it happens. TOT crashes occasionally. So does True. There are many possibilities and there are many explanations if you ask them. Sometimes the USP doesn't kick in. Sometimes a disk crashes. Sometimes they put in new software wrong. There's no such thing as an ISP that doesn't crash AT ALL, and TOT sure isn't in the Top 10. The question is why one site continues to work when all others are, or certainly seem to be, victims of that crash. I don't believe the email report. It's not possible to know where a reciepient of an

NOBODY and I would stress that if I could find out how the phuoc you do huge letters in flashing red bold, NOBODY does ghost movies like the Thai moviemakers. Hollywood totally sucks, the Japanese pale by comparison, the Chinese aren't in the game and Hammer Studios was comedy-central compared to Thai ghost movies. If you get scared by movies, Thai ghost movies will have you seeking new laundries and installing new banks of bright lights.