thaiophilus

Probably named after this town in Bavaria.. .

Pockets, plural. Like @vinapu I have many 😄

A friend of mine who died recently (UK) went for a natural burial. It took place in a nature reserve, with biodegradable (wickerwork) coffin, shallow grave, no headstone, just wild flowers.

Tails on for กุ้งแช่เย็นน้ำปลา, my favourite Thai dish, so you can pick them up without getting fish sauce on your fingers. https://www.sgethai.com/article/5-สูตรเด็ด-กุ้งแช่น้ำปลา/

So far as I can tell, the museum owner's alleged religion, ethnicity and nationality are irrelevant to a cooperative discussion of "Patpong comings and goings", but they are exactly the kind of thing often used as dog-whistle codewords by people not debating in good faith.

Maybe, but in most countries "transit" is not "entry", and passengers in transit to a third country are not required to go through immigration checks if they remain airside. Certainly I have passed through airports in France, Germany, Italy, Dubai, Jordan, Abu Dhabi and Qatar, to name a few, without immigration checks. Only in the USA was it different.

Not at all. Over here, billiards is perceived as a game for gentlemen, whereas snooker is something played by the lower classes (or even, shock horror, by professionals!) PS we generally refer to Ms Braverman as "Cruella".

Not that it matters, but that's incorrect. There's a big difference between true air speed and indicated air speed. True air speed (TAS) is the actual speed relative to the surrounding air. Indicated air speed IAS is (by definition 🙂) the speed indicated by the air speed indicator (ASI), which derives a speed from the pressure at the pitot tube, assuming sea-level air density. At altitude the density is lower and so the IAS reads (a lot) lower than TAS. Sorry, CNN.

Not "homosexuals"; that word couldn't stand on its own. It was always "practising homosexuals", "predatory homosexuals", "avowed homosexuals" or some such Homeric epithet 🙄. And they never had friends, only "rings" .

Try a different browser? I got the same with Firefox but Chrome displayed an animated GIF.

(ความ)กตัญญู. The nearest English word is "gratitude" but that lacks the Thai cultural nuance. My Google search on "katanyu" turned up a Bangkok Post article about it entitled Katanyu Complex

You are staying in a traditional Chinese hotel with rooms around a courtyard. Your friend's room is on the other side of the building but you want to talk to him. Do you: Walk round to his room? Use the room phone kindly provided by the management to call him? Yell across the courtyard?

The official TFL site quotes taxi fares £56.00 - £105.00 (plus Heathrow surcharge £3.60) for a black cab from Heathrow to Paddington. That's about 15 miles. By Elizabeth Line train it's £12.30, by Heathrow Express £25. Stansted to Paddington is nearer 50 miles and minicab websites quote around £100. The train fare is £25.10.

That has a direct translation into Yorkshire: "Tha 'thee' thisen".

There's an old saying that any time you see a newspaper headline phrased as a question, the answer is "no". 😄

Is that fair on the boy? 😄

Strictly, flat width in mm. Double it for the girth. (The diameter when circular is less by a factor 2/pi.)

"Cocks"? Plural?! 😵

Can't help with information about Korat, but you could combine your visit with a couple of nights in Khao Yai.

Footnote for non-Thai speakers: literally he says "older_sibling give younger_sibling already yesterday" which is a very Thai idiom - pronouns which literally refer to kinship are often used between people who aren't related at all, because they denote relative status, which is culturally important. So I think it doesn't have to be about "you" and "I" at all - it could also be talking about two entirely different people. Only the context can tell. (Personally I give up trying to translate when I see ให้ because it's used in so many idioms where word order can make a big difference, and often means "cause" rather than "give". Or something like that. ☹️)

It's like the argument over whose territory Preah Vihear is in. It's in the interest of the governments on both sides, because it gives them a pretext for some nationalistic sabre-rattling when they need to distract the population from something else they would prefer to hide.

On a more prosaic mote, it is technically illegal to export Buddha images from Thailand without a licence. Your statuette may be a monk, not a Buddha, but I wouldn't want to argue about it with officialdom.

... one who's prepared to "accidentally enter" the new terminal and miss a flight to find out what happens? Any volunteers?

It wasn't speculation before COVID. Back in 2016, if you can believe The ASEAN Post, "the Thai government decided to stamp out zero-dollar tourism, estimating losses of US$2 billion each year in tax revenue. Three companies were shut down, 2,155 buses were seized and several people were arrested for money laundering and operating illegal low-quality tours." If you want speculation about the future, the Bangkok Post has an explainer with a 2023 dateline.

If a Chinese tourist in China pays Chinese money in advance to a Chinese company for a package tour staying in Chinese-owned hotels, how much of that money goes into Thai taxes?