pong

Not exactly and as you are aware, this is not the US. It mainly means the police and/or military have much more powers to halt/arrest people, with much less evidence needed as otherwise, put on roadblocks/checkpoints, forbid any big gatherings of people, etc. In fact much similar to that state in Europe, if it were needed there. As with any thing here in Thaild-enforcement or maybe even the will to do that, might be catchy or haphazard. It has nothing to do with getting extra money.

Having just returned to BKK myself, this is just another opinion: the army has hesitated to attack/halt the redshirts as they really feared the strategic knowledge of their old ally, Seh Daeng (means chief red). He was thrown out of his army post a few days ago-which must have been a first step. Here in BKK it is widely rumoured that the split in the red-shirt leadership (including the last week's ''agreement'' on the 5 step path) was bought off under the table-a very Thai way of handling things. This Arisman wanted more (as it is assumed he has enormous debts from his former career) so had the strategy to carry on in the hope of getting more. Just as the general idea of khun GB- the most likely explanation of anything unthinkable is often money-and more of it. Redshirt protesters say they have been told-when khun Thaksin comes back-they get their farms for free and 1 or 2 million baht. Again-just an opinion, for what its worth.

perhaps this may explain a little: 1,when that boy told he was 'free''-he most likely meant, there was no OFF to pay. 2.according to the law on minimum wage of the Thai govmt-BKK is more expensive as Cholburi (the district with Pattaya in)-some 10/15 bt or so/day. For me it would seem it hardly matters-personally I think that BKK-due to being a giant city with an enormous number of very low-paid workers and persons scraping by on a daytoday basis-offers more cheap bargains-even more as an average Isan provincial town. You can get very low priced ''rooms'' by the month-but you probably get better value for the same money in Pattaya (but thats the range of around 1000 bt/month). Tipical meals are everywhere-at 25 or 30 bt. 3.keep in mind that such Thai young people are glad to get a fixed job paying some 25/30 bt/hour-but 6 days/week and 10/12 hr. ''working''days. 4.personally I think that expected prices from rental boys reflect the chance of getting that client-those at Saranrom or @gayromeo know for 99% sure to have a punter. In bars its just a matter of wait and see. 5.I do not visit bars very much lately-but the last time I went there were for sure several Thai (yes, I can check the language) clients in HOTmail-and very interested in the offerings of the big c--k parade. And calling them over after it and offering drinks and making a kind of deal. They seemed like modern style katoeys (not the dreadful old-style clothes etc.)

It may seem a bit puzzling to some, but this is it: the old site www.thailandscene was mainly a listing of Thai Gay venues. There are many of those sites, but these seemed fairly comprehensive, neutral and was kept up to date as far as that is possible hre in Thailand. When wanted to search something the other day, I was a bit surprised to now find it linking into the www.dragoncastle.com site-also a well-known gay Thai-listings and more site. I suppose it has been merged or taken over. For some of you it may mean a delete from your favorites list.

Sorry-but this is not quite true. Famine or hunger is not very prevalent in Burma/Myanmar. Monotonous food-diets or some lack of some ingredients may be the case. As such this is not really any different from the situation in Laos, Cambodia or Indonesia. In fact, as seen from a distant perspective, Indonesia and Burma/Myanmar share a lot of common things. Part of problem/explanation with the army there is that its manned by the main/central ''tribes(Bamar)'' who are suppressing the various minorities, some of which closely resemble Thai. Nearly all news that reaches the outside world from/about Burma/Myanmar comes from those minorities and as such is at least coloured or a little biased. Not that I am defending the regime there-but it seems right to me to point at misperceptions. One not yet mentioned note about Thai army is that most of soldiers are untrained (and many would say so are most of the generals-except in golf-playing). And certainly they are untrained in situations like this in the midst of urban landscape. They have even been unable to isolate the redshirts in their Rajprasong stronghold from getting in/out and even for food and water-which would have been a fairly obvious measure to take. It also seems that any planned move is briefed over the the reds as soon as its decided on.

But then a fair lot of Indians come to Thailand-for medical treatment. Apparently they do not trust it in their own country or perceive it to be low quality. But in a well-renowned hosptial like Bamrungrat it seems over 70/80% of foreign patients hail from the Gulf-area. Some French health-insurance have contracts with some Bkk-Hospitals-so they send the bills directly (and probably under a discount contract) to the French office. But as such this is old news-about 99% the same was printed at least one year ago in various newspapers.

Access via fast-track lane is of course only relevant for international-most BKKair flights are domestic. But this privile is offered if the airline has some special arrangement for it-and thats usually limited to its valued status-customers. THAI/TG also offers it-but I am unsure as to which specific client-groups it is offered. BTW; it is also offered to some coming OFF the plane into Thailand. A dedicated site like flyertalk (forum miles and points) will surely give you a quick answer.

thats indeed breaking-just read BKKpost and thaivisa 3-4 mins. ago to get uptodate and did not yet read this.

as of today, tue 20/4. some flights are now going in the former closed airspsace. KLM send of 3 planes yesterday-eve, to NYC, Dubai and Shanghai. LH tries to bring back some 10.000+ of stranded germans and passengers from outposts, where planes have also been standing idle. Dont know if that includes BKK. You are best of for checking flight details by their websites or the flyertalk forum (with a lot of inside info). When IN Europe EU-direction say the airline has either give you a full refund on the whole ticket-unused portions OR a free reschedule-with keeping the orginal time out if so wanted. But there is No extra compensation. Here on the continent though the idea was that hotels were overflowing-the reverse is now the case, as no new visitors are coming in. As this thing just happened to coincide with the end of easter-holidays in the UK and France, there was understandably a much bigger as usual crowd waiting to travel. The biggest crowds seemed to have buil up at both sides of the Canal/Manche between GB and FR-this also due to some recent (but temporarily now lifted) bans on the nr. of sole foot passengers (who tended to be mainly drunk taxfree booze buyers recently-hence why). Embassies (to the utter surprise of many) are NOT there to help you out-that's why travel insurance etc. has been invented.

Your assumption does not hold-for lesser used valuta, like the HKD, the diferences tend to be much larger as for USD, EUR and JPY. You might also have looked the difference in rates offered for cash and TC (check)-and note that even for a 100 note, in many banks the slightly higher rate is more as eaten up by the 33 bt fee levied on TCs. For the rest agree-in BKK Vasu/SuperRich (they are much of a same thing) offer best rates for CASH-and cash only. They wont touch TCs. They are also very good at offering other Asian valuta at lower sell-rates-f.e. I had a better yearn on changing euro-notes into THB and on to CNY (chinese renminbi) as I got in China. S-Rich also operates a few windows trading as RAINBOW-recently also one on Silom-somewhere between sois 2-4. But their rates are lower (but still higher as other banks). There is also a private non-bank exchange at Suriwong, between soi Tawan and the canal (going away from Patpong) offering god rates-again cash only.

Well-you must have paved the way then. According to several reports, the leaders of the red shirts are also staying at (a?) HYATT-courtesy of its owner, a good friend of old Thaksin. But it may have been another Hyatt at that time-or there may now be several. But for the rest your remarks are right. Also learnt that today the BTS (aka skytrain) is only running on 3 outer ends-and not in the central section between rajdamri/Nana and via Siam till Rajvithi. The unserved section is right on top of the later red shirt protest site.

and there is a consul in Savannakhet-just opposite Mukdaharn-with the 2nd bridge in between. Thaivisa.com has all that info. NOK air has got a new strategy and wil not operate foreign flights anymore. The quoted prices are not outrageous for BKK-air, the other ones are domestic and low-cost.

I highly doubt if there are even forward-THB-swaps on offer anywhere in the west or at least for the general public. And If they were-it would only make sense for very large amounts- a few yearly salaries for a utter-well-paid CEO or so. This due to the high fees such swaps tend to have on both buying and selling. I (but this is simply reasoning by what I know of it) assume about the only banks able to offer it would be Thai banks-overseas. Thats not much more as Bangkok banks branch in the USA. The best strategy someone from the UK could do is open a Thai bank account and sending GBP (to be converted into THB by that bank) as much as you can afford -but not much more as you intend to spend locally in the next 2-3 years. At least that is what permanently in Thaild. living friends always tell me. OTOH the THB has also strengthened already to the CNY-last sept it was exactly 5 THB for 1 RenMinBi-and last week it was like 4,8 or 4,7x or so. Only the JPY has strengthened against the THB lately. Khun GB: this is a kind of option on buying foreign valuta at todays rate+ a margin to allow for any possible apperciation. It is much of a gamble-if that valuta will rise or fall against yours. Much the same as one can buy ''forward options'' in corn, coffee, copper or whatever commodity.

Effectively there are 4 AirAsia's-they have the same livery, but operate quite independently from one-another: its the original Malay one, the THAi one (their planes Do have THAI Air Asia on them!), the newer Indonesian, and the long-distance XL. There are firm plans to start a new ditto in Vietnam soon. I have flown on the Malay, Thai + once on XL (KUL-> LSN), some 9 or 10 times now-and have 5 or 6 flight booked for later, incl,. the Indo branch. Last flights on them were in early march-return BKK-KUL, on the Thai branch, booked for a grand total of about 1700 THB (no checked luggage) in a promotion. You cannot even go by bus for that money. Hitherto all my flights were more or less on time (some even early arrival), whithin 1 hour of schedule-thats a little better as my average on other airlines. All were eventless, the XL was even quite fine and ranked a little better as other long-dist flights on some airlines. Referring people to visit their offices is useless for complaints-the only thing they can do is an empty promise. IF it is not on their website somewhere-accept it cannot be done. (like the old T-ford: any coulur, as long as its black). But then as an European I am well used to the likes of RYAN and Easyjet-and dozens of others, operating on the low-cost model. Air Asia does stand out among these as being the best of the lot! People tell that their SMS-warning service is reliable and warns you of changed timings etc. It rather seems they organise their effetive flight-schedules a day or 2 before-to prevent any loss-making half-empty planes, fligths are ''consolidated''=merged, and obvously the latter in the day then loose out to the early birds. You canNOT through-book on them_ so if you wanted to fly BKK-(transit KUL)-Surabaya, you must reclaim luggage and check-in a new at KUL-and thus also get into Malaysia-and out 1 hour later again too!

thats still 4 weeks from now. Songkran-for those who have hardly been to BKK-and assuming it goes on as ''always'' even when there are still seua-see-daeng demo's- is FAR more entertaining, hilarious and endless chances for water-throwing as in rural Isan. It lasts for several days and its like all-out watersplashinggames. This might thus be far more appealing to the young. But I hardly see any young Isan-boys around. For 90% its hardy older Isan-farmer folks. With the rest for a large part being made up by well-coiffured, ultra-chic sunglasses and designer red-shirts wearing BKK-hi-so ladies.

The idea as I heard via their never ending loudspeaking systems was to find more support by inviting donations, and inviting people to join them. As you also know-there are thousands, if not millions, of lowly-paid Isan workers all over BKK, with a mild or strong support of their case. There are also some rumours they may try to also protest on the BTS and MRT -it will take just a few people on tracks to stop it all. As from yesterday eve fresh ''troupes'' with brand-new red shirts are being trucked/bussed in. It is expected that a lot of BKK's tuktuks and taximeters-for 99% known to be red-case supporters, will participate. I for me cannot think of a single Thai willing to walk for 10 hrs along that route. But all week you can see motocys and pickups with red-flag wavers riding all over town (well-the area I happen to be in). According to BKKpost and serious Thai newspprs (like Matichon), the demo carefully avoids areas where last year there were bloody clashes between demonstrators and locals (like the DinDaeng KeHa, which BTW mainly houses ex-Isan lowly paid workers)

this morning is was very quiet-but the music was turned on all night. All those tents along Ratchdamnen have been signed with provinces and dirstricts. All of Chumporn (south) turned out was 12 redshirts. Just by incident watched the Pattaya comrades arrive. About 1 busload-some 40. They had quite some trouble to find their assigned tent. There was a long row of tents for BKK's districts-many of them empty. When reading online newspprs from home this morning-yesterday also the Italians protested against machinations of the Berlusconi govmt-several 10.000s (in red+green)-so comparable to what we have here. No warnings from governments or other traveladvice we get here. The more worrying thing is that there seems to be no exit-strategy-no side will bow and admit defeat.

proper english please. WILL and MAY do not mean the same. It MAY-and that is wholly unpredictable. If you are really pressed for time-and can prove that with boarding pass and ''flight boarding'' etc-speak with a supervisor and they will let you on. Also: there are 2 main entry-areas-very often area left is crowdd-and right not at all-or reverse. But maybe a walk of 2 mins is too long?

one more not really that nice report though: also in the newspprs this morning (I thing some Thai ones) was that the protest might last for the whole week. Now I really hope that is not the case-2-3 days is OK-just let them have their right to demonstrate. But traffic off, things closed-and maybe even delivery problems for the whole week etc is getting pretty annoying. AGAIN: this ONLY applies to the old parts of BKK-city, where most of you dont even have a clue of where it is or what is there to be done or how to get there. The airport where anyone seems to extremely preoccupied on, is 33 kms away from here. Silom/Surawongse is 6-7 kms away. You may ever have read/heard about rental boys on Saranrom park-thats about 1 km away.

MIsspelt- its Pla (=fish) RA (raw), but ita a variation of the ubiquitous nam pla=fish sauce without which Thai cooking could not exist. A more or less Lao/Isan spoecial version of it, meaner, courser, more stinky etc. Some newspprs also reported that human (or buffale, or elefant, of whatever) excrement was being put in bags with the same purpose. There are annoying (in the eyes of the redshirts) safety checkpoints all along major highways into BKK-newspprs showed dangerous weapons like sling-shots that were being confiscated as abundant proof of mal intentions.

OK then-as yesterday-this is again (1 min earlier-8.59 now here)-from right beside Ratch damnern Ave. Yesterday afternoon I went to Sirikitti centre (the 3d travelmarketfair in 5 weeks...), then to dinner, Sukhumvit for some spa-treatment and came back by 21.00. It was unusually quiet on all streets-even more quiet as sundays. A few dozen redhsirts on Ratchdmnn-but at least 5 times as much riot police. There was also a gathering of redshirts at Lumpini Park/corner of Silom-but others told this had also vanished by 18.00. In the eve Ratchdmnnnalso barely had any redshirt. Spoke with a soldier (looked surprised-I tried to read what was on his shield). Lots of them standing guard. This morning there were tents erected all along Ratchdamnn-and some pissoirs that would delight the followers of some cfs-threads. Saw just 2 redshirted ladies-who were busy preparing meals. A little later that nasty and far too loud music was put on. I noted that a lot of bisnises had closed shop. Reports that various farang-backpack-tourist buses are cancelled for this period. It did seem also a little more quiet in farang nbrs as in this week before.

It is now 9.00. Of all those who post from time to time, I would be the one most close to the demo-site. I now sit some 50 mtrs from Ratchdamnern Ave in a www-shop. I stay in this area since a few monthes and have in the time I am here-also earlier-seen some 5 ''mobs'' pass by. The last one was the (also) red shirts on 10/12=Constutution day (in their call to dissolve parlmt once more)-right in a festivities week for the 5/12 KIngs Birthday (which was magnificent, by the way). Since the Judges verdict, there has been (and more and more once you start to look for it) Thai soldier/battle police (or whatever you may call it) on some spots-mostly ministeries. Schools have been closed-many are used to park Police-vans (riot gear etc.). The cleaning-out of Sanam Luang BTW still has not been done-only a few 100 pigeons caught. To give some reassurance: ''mob'' is a normal Thai word, that simply means demonstration. It has not the negative meaning it has in english. In this democratic country its a basic right for anyone to demonstrate. All this repeated hype about airport-if somewhere in EU or AU or US the luggage handlers or air-traffic control go on strike-that whole airport also grinds to a halt-very much same effect. Also very much same civil rights. What will happen? we'll see. Mostly I expect a slightly larger as on 10/12 sit-down demo (with overloud music, fuming speakers and the same-repeat ''poor Taksin and wicked yellows'' speeches for a day or so. Lots of stands for massages, food and selling of CDs and DVDs to put money on the coffins. Many reds somehow like to wear cowboyhats. As this area (Banglamphu) is the main backpackers-ghetto of Thailand, if not South-East-Asia, there are (and its still quite busy) some 10-20.000 young farang (incl. Yipun etc.) travellers. I gather that about 95% of them have no clue whatsoever on what may happen or even that it is in this area they are in. Many will get struck when they discover the taxi to airport cannot move-and then start to scream and shout (their usual way of dealing with any frustration). Khun GB I think is mostly right-even east side of BKK, and certainly 100 kms further on in PTY etc.-only the TV will show the sights-and daily life is as normal. And you beat me-I was up by 5.55.

1.assuming you are now not in Thaild-first check when back here-it may still work. 2.yes, any 7/11 sells them-dozens a day. needless to ask. 3.there are many packages-not just the 50 bt mentioned. Note that it may often pay off to pay a slightly higher rate/min and get much longer time-on the low rates you often have to use a minimum amount/day or use the fone at least weekly or so.

Khun GB-my answer to all of your 3 questions would have been no. But from what I understand, this Intern. Court of Justice in den Haag/NL does not deal with these cases-it handles serious conflicts between nations, like warcrimes and the like. IMHO I foresee a long-drawn out simmering ''smoking-out'' (dont know that in english-thats what we say) of both parties. The reds will propose new demo's etc by the month-and then withdraw them-as they would quickly bleed all money if they did hold them. The governing parties have no real method to stop all that. A more worse scenario would be like that has enrolled in the Phillippines.

that should be Don MUAng=near the old airport. You do not pose a clear question. You give the names of some 3d level ''schools'' that most out of Thaild would never dream of naming it ''uni''-this is about anything with technical in it. RamKHg is quite a different thing from that-the major (in size, certainly not in quality) uni in BKK-with the usual topics any world-uni would offer. The last few years it also has a sizeable proportion of foreign students-doing a half year semester. Rajamangala is an enormous country-wide chain of technical colleges (where you go to learn for electrician, car repairman and the like), I think in BKk there must be at least 20+ of them-spread out all over town. Their students mainly seem to engage in brawls and fights with the competition=KIng Mongkut same-same. But in all fairness, they also have some higher-graded colleges, aimed at hgher level and thus better paying jobs. Travelling on a daily base to attend courses over 150 km (that would easily cover BKk-Cholburi)-and with most ''uni's'' situated quite far away from main roads does not seem any practicle to me. So in this point; please also be a little more specific=mainly if that would mean BKK-big city or the Cholburi/Pattaya chiangwat. As for the study-specify what direction, what job is aimed for etc.