Gaybutton

While I have a feeling that other posters are going to come along and make fun of you for this post, I won't. It's the little things that can really get under your skin sometimes and really make people angry. I remember reading about divorces that began with disputes over whether the loose end of toilet paper should face inside or outside on the roller. A letter to the editor in this week's Pattaya Mail includes, "Where now is my ex Thai wife who left me fifteen years ago following a row over a hot dog?" For me, one of many peeves occurs when Thai boys insist on answering their mobile phones at, shall we say, the most inopportune moments. We all have our quirks and little things that really can make us fume.

Depending on one's use of the word "chicken," there are unfortunately a few farang around who seem to like the same thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

I guess that depends on what they want to eat . . .

It's mainly farang with Thai. Just go alone. People keep telling me the best time to go is between 5:00 and 8:00pm. If it's a halfway decent day, you won't be alone for long. You are very likely to be approached by a Thai young man. One thing people do is go to one of the privacy rooms, leave the door open, and just wait inside. If there is a good number of people in the sauna that day, your wait won't be very long. Don't be shy. It will take you about ten minutes, if that long, to catch on. Don't forget, everybody in the sauna is there for the same reason you are.

He also has "big money" compared to me. I shudder to think how he earned it.

You know what made me laugh? There's the new mall, with all these restaurants and food courts. Meanwhile, there is also a KFC and it was filled with Thais eating in there. Unnnnnnbelievable! Did you have any luck in that restroom?

That's good. I stand corrected. When I went they had it blocked off. Maybe they were repairing something.

The following, with quite a bit of detail, now appears in the PATTAYA DAILY NEWS: For photos, see: http://www.pattayadailynews.com/shownews.p...NEWS=0000008325 The photos alone may explain why this man neither ceased his behavior nor tried to leave Thailand. If one picture is really worth 1000 words, this guy is nuts! The article seems to confirm that notion. Just why the courts permitted him to remain free goes beyond me. That fact gets high ranking on my "I Don't Get It" list. _____ BRITISH PAEDOPHILE JAILED FOR 14 YEARS FOR CHILD SEX ABUSE IN PATTAYA Thailand‘s Supreme Court on Wednesday, 28 January 2009, ordered an elderly British man convicted eight years ago of abusing underage girls to start serving his 14-year prison sentence, a court official said. John Maurice Praill, 78, was arrested in Pattaya in mid-2000 on charges of sexually abusing the girls, aged 12 and 13, but has been free for most of the intervening years. He was convicted and sentenced by a criminal court in 2001, but released pending appeal. An appeals court in 2004 upheld the sentence, but the Briton was again freed on bail and allowed to take his case the Supreme Court, which Wednesday ruled that Praill must start serving his jail term. The Supreme Court has upheld the sentence by the regional Court of Appeals to sentence the convict to 14 years in jail. He was sent to Chonburi provincial jail Wednesday to start serving the sentence. Judge Charoenchai Assawapirya-a-nan confirmed a sentence imposed more than eight years ago. He said there was no way the child victims could have lied because they gave so much detailed evidence including how Praill cut up his Viagra tablets and his use of KY jelly. 'Paedophile - I don’t use that word,' he said. 'I pay to feel. The girls were paid'. He said he was stunned at the verdict and insisted that the elder of the two victims, aged 14, wanted to marry him afterwards. 'I expect I will die in prison if I do not get a pardon.' He insisted before being led away in a blue prison bus: 'I just like helping young people, sex or not, never mind, it was not the main thing’. For the first few arrests in the 90s, he just ‘paid fines ‘at the local police station, and paid the victims. But then he was sentenced to 14 years in December 2001 on the rape charges of two girls aged 13 and 14. He had been able to stay free by getting bail while petitioning the Appeal Court, which confirmed his sentence, then he went the country’s Supreme Court, a total eight-year process. Meanwhile Praill was arrested again in 2007 for the rape of two girls aged 11 and 9 and again given bail. That case has not gone to trial. Praill's latest arrest was on 18 March, 2008, he was arrested in Pattaya for abusing an eight-year-old boy, and that case too awaits trial. Praill, was nickname PEE or ‘The Ghost’ because of his frightening appearance, said Sudarat Sereewat, Director of the FACE (Fight Against Child Exploitation) Foundation, and a member of Thailand’s National Child Protection Committee. When he first arrived in Thailand Praill kept a diary, now with the FACE Foundation, which detailed his attempts to buy up schoolchildren as his ‘wives’. He fortified himself with the sex drug Viagra and Vitamin C capsules and trawled three locations in Pattaya, the Royal Garden Centre the Siren Bar and the ‘Made in Thailand’ market, where he knew young girls hung out and found a 12-yr-old called Lek. He wrote how he provided ‘lacquer’ for Lek and her friends , who sniffed glue in his front room, and of his desire to conquer her. But each time he tried she complained: ‘I don’t want to’ or ‘It hurts’. 'She makes me horny. How long can I take this?' he asked his diary. Then on Wednesday May 6th 1992 he announced in triumph that his grooming had been successful: 'About 10 p.m. I have the best session ever. She seems to enjoy it.' Praill went on to marry Lek and had employed the girl’s parents as his household staff but his marriage lasted only three months. Mrs.Sudarat Sereewat, director of the child protection group Fight Against Child Exploitation, welcomed the court's decision. "We are very pleased that the Thai judicial system is finally aware of the child sexual abuse and have handed down justice," she said, according to AFP. "This suspect should have been in jail for a long time."

At the moment, you can only enter and exit the car park on Second Road.

I haven't seen it and based on your review and other reviews I've read, I don't intend to. Have a look at the following: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1224455

I doubt I will ever try it. I know me. I'll pay 600 baht for myself and 600 baht for a boy. Then I'll promptly fall asleep.

I'm talking about the Central Department Store. As far as the aesthetics are concerned, it all seemed fine to me, but maybe I'm easier to please. When I go to a shopping mall, new or many years old, I'm really not concerned about tile scuff marks or whether the windows could stand a wash. I don't even notice things like that. It certainly wouldn't prevent me from patronizing the mall.

Of course they have to date it from today's date. Today is January 29. Suppose your old passport expires May 29. What would you use for a passport between today and May 29? That's why it has to be dated from today's date, otherwise you would be holding a passport with no validity.

Good guess. That's exactly what it means.

I don't know. Have you seen the price of booze lately?

We have no way of knowing whether this man had 'big money' or not. I have been told that in most cases in Thailand, if someone is going to be able to buy his way out of trouble the arrangements have to be made before his name goes on a court docket. This guy is 77 years old and he has been sentenced to 14 years, which is probably tantamount to a life sentence. And he still has those other six charges. I have no idea whether those additional charges are going to be pursued. I have no idea whether he will have to serve the full 14 years. Maybe his attorney told him he can expect some sort of clemency due to his age. Here's something else I know: Farang trying to figure out how things really work in Thailand, why things work the way they do in Thailand, or the logic behind virtually anything is an exercise in futility.

You can easily find out for yourself. Call the US Embassy, passport division at 02-205-4040. They will be glad to tell you how they handle it.

I wondered about that too. Maybe his passport was being withheld. Maybe he was convinced he would win his case. Maybe his attorney assured him he would only have to pay a fine. Maybe, since he had been getting away with it for eight years, he couldn't resist the urge to continue as long as he could. He was caught six times over that time period. The article doesn't say anything about whether he will be tried on those charges too. Lord only knows how many times he was at it and didn't get caught. Whatever his reasons, the fact that he was caught so many times and yet was allowed to remain free, apparently there is more to the story than the media reported.

My mom told me I would grow hair from my palms. I didn't believe her either. Now I find it rather inconvenient to have to shave my hands every morning.

I'm not sure that this really has any relevance. My father was a dentist. Many years ago, one of his patients was a high ranking executive with a high powered advertising agency. My father said to him that he simply cannot understand why television commercials are so insulting to one's intelligence. He finds them terribly annoying and makes a point of refusing to buy the products being sold. The executive told my father that the advertising business knows what it's doing and the way they do things really works. Otherwise, they wouldn't do it. He made a gentleman's wager with my father. He told him to watch television that night and make a written list of the advertised products he would refuse to buy. Then inspect the house. My father really did sit there and make a list that included every commercial that made him cringe. Later we looked around the house. Every single product that he would refuse to buy . . . all of them . . . were in our house, most of which he had purchased himself.

I suppose anything is possible, but I fail to see why customs officials would consider that someone's name, whether common or unusual, would have any relevance or bearing upon the likelihood that someone might be carrying something illegal. Whatever reasons they may have for stopping you, it's difficult to believe your name would have anything to do with it, especially since you didn't even choose your own name.

Under the heading "BUY," look at the subheading "Sight." That's the approximate rate you'll get.

As many of you know, when I post exchange rates I always use the Bank of Ayudhya web site. That's because they give you the exchange rate you'll receive when you exchange money within Thailand and because they're the only bank that posts updates several times each day. For those of you who check the rates, Bank of Ayudhya had changed the URL for their web site. Now it is: http://www.krungsri.com/en/foreign-exchange-rates.aspx

I'm a little worried too. My worry is if he was convicted on that kind of charge, and then was arrested on similar charges, several times yet, then why on earth was he allowed to remain free to do the same thing for eight years? That earns a spot on my "I Don't Get It" list. I can't help but take note of the fact that the same boy he abused is still under age eight years later. Well, I guess for the next several years he can look forward to midnight conjugal visits from some big mongos that he doesn't want one from . . .