I'm an expat in Bangkok. I have been driving a long-term rental here for 2+ years.

1.People are blaming the train driver rather than the broken crossing system. It makes zero sense to me why anything is allowed on the tracks. Why is there stuff on the tracks anyway? The driver is the victim.

2.Motorbikes are still running the signals there today. I thought the authorities would at least pretend to care about safety for a few days. Classic. RIP to those who lost their lives. I hope this never happens again

I've lived in Thailand for over 14 years, and I thought I'd seen most kinds of expat behavior by now. Apparently not.

And then something happened on Mother's Day.

My wife's relatives, adults and children, came to visit. We were splashing around in the pool and singing karaoke. It was 5 PM.

Suddenly, a new neighbor (he's in his 60s, moved in next door a couple of months ago) runs in and starts yelling. His words went something like this, but I'll simplify:

"Stop yelling. Turn off your music. You're disturbing me."

And he runs home.

My wife and I went to talk about what was wrong, since it wasn't 1 AM, and it was a holiday.

His wife, a Thai woman, came out and was also shocked by his actions. Meanwhile, he ran out at us with a mop. ))) But when he saw me, he changed his mind and put the mop away.

Unfortunately, the whole thing was so unexpected that nobody even thought to pull out a phone and start recording. So no video evidence of the Great Mop Incident. )))

But after asking me where I was from, he started yelling:

- Fucking Russia, go home. Fucking Thai, fucking Thai.

Then another man rode up on a bicycle (it later turned out to be his brother, also visiting) and started screaming even louder at everyone. A couple of minutes later, he disappeared, apparently his wife had taken him away.

We were shocked. ))) And you have to understand that his wife has two Thai brothers, and "fucking Thai" isn't exactly a pleasant expression for them...

While the first guy ran back home, we talked with his wife for a bit, and suddenly... he came back and apologized... saying he overdid it, was in a bad mood, and wasn't feeling well.

We shook hands, but the bad feeling remained.

The neighbor, by the way, turned out to be Australian. )))

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Cagey special point different meeting spoon upbeat boron

Apparently this is the post they used to recruit them, they were paid €3000, 15000 baht, flights and hotels covered all under the pretext of transporting phones. I knew they weren’t rocket scientist but damn

They interviewed one of them on the phone who had backed out after finding out she would be carrying drugs (who would have thought)

The traffickers apparently threatened to burn her passport, get her arrested and hurt her family back in France.

Seems the ones that got arrested went through with it with full knowledge of what they were carrying

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."

Taste like pepsi with pistachio flavor coming out of your throat.

6/10 Available in a 7-11 near you.

He (around 40) chased me (24) and my sister(26) down on a skywalk while we were half walking half running in Chidlom area. Because we were in a rush ! Mind you, this guy is tall around 180cm+. We felt intimidated and scared for some reason. I’m 164cm and my sister is 159cm.

He stopped us and said to my sister “ Why are you walking so fast? Please don’t run next time… next time bc it was difficult for me to catch up. Are you from Singapore?”.

We’re not from Singapore. We thought he needed help or wanted something to do with Singapore so we stopped and waited to see what he wanted.

Her: “No”

Him: “Where are you from?”

Her: “Here”

Him: “I just saw you walking and had to follow you because your hair look so beautiful...”

I interrupted them saying “I’m so Sorry, but we’re in a rush and we gotta go.” then smiled. I had to admit I was already annoyed bc he didn’t cut to the point and my sister just froze knowing we really needed to GOOOO, otherwise we won’t be walking so fasttt!

He just scoffed “oh haha” and kept talking to my sister which I can already tell made her uncomfortable even though he was complimenting her.

He said something along the line“ You look beautiful. I like your hair and the way you dress.” My sister just smiled and stood there.

Then he asked her if she had a boyfriend or not in which she replied “yes” and smiled (and it’s true, they’ve been tgt for 7-8years now). He looked disappointed but he still grabbed his phone and ask if he can have her contact. She said “no” again and shakes her head smiling politely. She’s a sweetheart and she never wants to piss anyone off 😭.

But he kept pursuing that’s when I got really mad. I figured he wouldn’t let her go, blocking our way so I lied to him “Sorry, she’s married”. He still didn’t leave us alone. So I added “She’s currently pregnant. 4 weeks now.” And that’s when he freaked out and left.

Why can’t people just take “NO” for an answer?😩

Edit: We talked about it later and my sister said she was scared. It was already dark, not many ppl passing by. And the way he ran all the way chasing us was too much? I kinda felt bad for lying too. I felt like I could’ve handled it better bc he was giving her compliments? But on the flip side, I thought if I was him, I’d already left when the one I’m approaching said “no”.

Edit 2: For more context, he approached us alone. He dressed somewhat decent. Not in elephant pants and tank top like tourists. He was wearing a polo shirt, denim shorts, clean white trainers, and had earphones on. He wasn’t carrying any bags.

Edit 3:

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. For folks who asked or said “Why didn’t you just leave?” “I would’ve just left /walk away.”

My answer: But I needed to get through him to go into the building so I can get my car and drive us to our next destination asap. We were late. And I was trying to get my sister moving but she just stood there. I guess she completely froze and freaked out because she rarely encounter situations likes these.

So I tried stating my peace politely and asked for an open walk way, since he was “blocking” our ways into the building from the skywalk and he showed that he was indeed clingy. I don’t want him to suddenly become aggressive. Who knows what could’ve happen? And I can’t leave my sister behind just like that. I was trying to get her out of the situation too. We are tiny compared to him.

“It was your mistake for being nice/ engaging in the convo/ smiling to him.”

My answer: We are a people pleaser. Growing up, Me and my sister have hard time saying no and setting boundaries so I think what happened was a big step for us, especially for me sister. We don’t like causing scenes but I learned now that I shouldn’t have smiled now and shouldn’t have been so nice to these type of people!

“So blaming foreigners now? Thai men are worst.”

My answer: I’m confuse but because I encounter a foreigner that night. I’m not pointing that it’s just foreigners who are like this. All nationalities, all gender can be happened to be like him. I’m hustling telling what I’ve encountered.

“How did you know his age?”

My answer: No, I don’t know his age. I guessed it roughly. I should’ve added that. My assumption could’ve been wrong but from my perspective, he didn’t seem to be in his 20s anymore. Definitely a grown man and much more older than us.

“Why the abbreviations?”

My answer: I get lazy writing long stories so that’s why…I’ll go back and fix them.

“What’s TDY?”

My answer: Tdy= today. I starting writing this post on the day it happened but forgot so I finished it 2 days later. Sorry for the confusion.

“If he was handsome you would’ve already been in his bed.” (It was commented by @/fourmi but already deleted)

I never once mentioned about his appearance so why is this brought up in the first place?

There’s this fucking bird that sounds like a car alarm going off every day starting 4AM that drives me crazy y’all.

I never in my life heard a more annoying bird than this bastard and I’d love to punch it’s dumb loud ass beak.

I was wondering if anybody else shares the same feelings about this dumb mf bird.

EDIT: thanks guys now I don’t feel alone anymore. Also to the edgy mfs telling me to leave if I don’t like A BIRD go touch some grass and get a grip

This was on Thairath News today.

I don’t know what flair to put, but this morning I saw a songthaew with a big Bin Laden painted on it, didn’t had time to take a picture but it really surprised me for sure !

I found this picture on google, it’s not the one in my street but I can see it’s a pretty popular design, is there any reason for this ?

So yesterday me and my misses went to see the big Buddha in Phuket, we rented a moped and thought nothing of it, on the way back our maps on the phone played up and we went under a tunnel (apparently not allowed on a scooter) as we went through and came out the other side we were met by a police officer that pulled us over, asked for licence ect and showed him but no international so he asked us to follow him back, no problem. When we got to the police hut, he searched me and found the vape on me (I had no idea they were illegal, my fault for not checking) I was confused as he was talking about jail and showing me pics of people in cuffs with vapes infront of them, he then continued to tell me I’ll go court tomorrow after being held in a jail for the remainder of the day and then will have to pay £50,000 baht at court anyway so he “helped” us out and said to get 20,000 baht out and pay him cash to forget about it, I done that as didn’t want to leave my misses on her own obviously, after giving him the money straight faced he told us not to tell anyone and go back to the hotel after putting the vape back in my misses backpack, im just wondering if anyone has had this experience before, 2,000 for no license, 4,000 for going under a tunnel and 14,000 for having a vape on me. We are only 3 days into our holiday and it’s not been a great start, onto koh samui soon, would love some tips on what to not do to avoid any further fines🤣

TIA.

TL:DR - First time back to the US in nearly 7 years and both prices of everything and attitudes of (most of) the people here freakin' suck.

I came to Thailand in early 2018 and have only traveled to surrounding countries since. I intended to come back a few years ago, but Covid made that unfeasible for a number of reasons, and now I'm back. Brought my wife for her first trip to the US and to meet my family. That part of it has been fantastic, but most everything else about the trip has not.

The price shock has been terrible. With the amount of money I budgeted for this trip, I could have flown everyone we'll visit here in the US to Thailand (10 people), rented pool villas for a month to house them all comfortably, and purchased all groceries, snacks and food necessary to keep everyone well-fed for a whole month. Meanwhile, here I paid $200 for four people to eat a meal at a restaurant. A burger joint here cost $92 for four people and... this has been particularly frustrating... the clerk didn't greet us, offer us menus or anything, I ordered from a tablet and paid by tapping my card before he even acknowledged we were there. I selected to not give any tip (as I got 0 service of any kind) and the jerk gave me attitude for it.

Most of the people here are at least overweight if not obese, and many of these morbidly obese. More often than not, people act annoyed when you enter their business and do little more than point to the tablets provided for ordering and paying. And everyone expects tips despite providing little to no service at all, and showing annoyance with your presence.

WTF?

This first part of our trip has been to southern California. We got excellent service from a little hole in the wall Mexican food place, excellent service at a convenience store (the lady was super kind and friendly to us), and the people at Chik-Fil-A went out of their way to make my wife feel welcome. That being said, 3 places out of 20 or so is a piss poor ratio and it saddens me.

This is what my adult children deal with on the daily. I'm mad that they've grown accustomed to it, but proud to see they retain their manners and politeness anyway.

We were excited to go to a street-food market here near San Diego, but two tacos cost $18 (610 THB) and two Gyro sandwiches with two sodas were $28 (950 THB). In fairness, they were delicious but I thought my wife was going to choke. Street food...

You can visit the San Diego zoo for just $74 per person (2,514 THB).

I'm thrilled about seeing my (adult) kids, my sister and parents, but I'm already anxious to return to the land of smiles.

I've seen this a few different times now over the two weeks I've been on the island so far and I'm at a loss as to why Thais are doing this. It's only Thais. Foreign riders are behaving how I'd expect in this scenario.

I'm at a corner and I'm going to turn left. I have my left turn signal on. There's a bike that is going to turn right into the lane adjacent to me, they have their right turn signal on, but they start to come into the lane I'd be turning left into and then go around me as depicted.

Why are they not just going past me a bit and turning right? What am I missing here? Both times they're kind of looking at me quizzically like "why are you not going?", but I'm not going because they're coming across me in front of where I'd be turning left.