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As I said on another message board, I wonder why they were so quick to rule out suicide. It is possible that he put the bag over his own head in order to suffocate in case the hanging didn't work. I saw a program on television recently that dealt with hanging and its use as capital punishment. They mentioned that if you didn't have the right length of rope or the wrong sort of knot that decapitation is quite possible. Apparently it used to happen all the time until they figured out the exact right length of rope based on the body weight and the noose knot has to be arranged correctly to kill the person pretty much instantly. And yes, indeed, Saddam Hussein was decapitated by his hanging.

most airlines are cutting back flights and scaling down aircraft on routes that don't require the number of seats that some of the more comfortable planes have. ANA has changed the aircraft on their NRT-BKK flights from a B777 to a smaller B767.

perhaps the police agree with the thugs

Airfares can change very quickly. Since you have some time for sure it is worth keeping an eye on fares and jump on it when it gets cheap enough. Perhaps they changed their fare rules. Often times the cheapest fares have 30 day maximum stays, so if you are planning to stay 3 months you may end up having to pay more.

And if that doesn't work and you don't mind paying a small amount you can ask how much it would take to get an upgrade or make an offer. Airlines are struggling and an empty seat doesn't make any money at all. How recently have you been upgraded for free GB? Did you buy the cheapest possible ticket and ask for an upgrade or were you on a full-fare ticket?

Well, there you go! If you don't need the money now it is probably worth holding onto the gold. I know some gold boosters are predicting the price to soar over $2000 per ounce as currencies become devalued due to the fallout from today's crises.

Perhaps that is true in the UK, but in the US you can save a fair amount by using a travel agent that specializes in discount business class fares. It just comes down to whether the agency you pick uses an airline(s) that you prefer. I contacted a few online agencies here while planning my trip for this year. They were offering me the lowest cost on United for about $1700 less than what I would have paid on UA's own website. They also had deals on Korean Air and some others. Ultimately I chose a ticket on Qatar Airways which was not cheaper than what the airline itself offered but I preferred their product so it was worth paying a little bit more for.

What class of ticket did you get? One nice thing about Thai is the ability to buy an upgrade at the airport. Not sure if you are allowed to do it on an award ticket though. I bought an upgrade when I flew BKK-JFK. I had a premium economy ticket and paid about US$700 at the time to upgrade to business class. I think it costs a little bit more now. If you are interested just ask at check in if "stand by upgrades" are available.

That is definitely true about calling more than once. If the first agent isn't able to find something you like just call back another time to try again. I wouldn't make blanket statement about the Indians though. I had had as much good luck with Indian agents as any other kind. It does help to know some of your options. And it also helps if you have flexible dates. It is definitely true that they can come up with convoluted routings. If you are on a few different airlines they have to get supervisor approval but I have not been denied at that stage.

I don't think we will see the JFK-BKK nonstop come back. It's been gone for quite a while already. It was just too expensive to fly that route. TG keeps changing its mind with respect to the LAX-BKK non-stop. It was supposed to change last year to a different aircraft which would have required the technical stop at KIX (Osaka) for re-fueling. But they were never able to unload the A340-500s that fly this route and used to fly the JFK-BKK route. So they are still using it on this route. I think they sometimes substitute an A346 around Songkran when they need more capacity and I believe that ends up changing the route to require the stop at KIX. If you are using miles you should have plenty of options. Whose miles are you using? If it's a Star Alliance carrier you should be able to fly on partner airlines. I know United has increased the amount of miles needed for their award seats. I used to always call them up and got pretty much what I wanted. I flew the past two years on ANA using UA miles for business class awards going Washington-Tokyo-Bangkok. I think ANA must also fly from JFK and Chicago, so you might have a good chance of getting a seat with them. Depending on your starting point it might be better to change planes in Asia rather than going to LAX. I personally don't like LAX so I would avoid it. A good source for news and tips on frequent flier miles is flyertalk.com. They have very active forums there.

"where did the money go?" Most of it never really existed in the first place. It was all just numbers on a page. Real estate prices got overinflated. Property was never worth what people were paying for it. And people who were buying it didn't have any money and no prospect of ever paying the money they borrowed back. So, when sanity finally started returning to real estate values (or they just simply couldn't go up any higher) the people who couldn't pay the money back also couldn't sell their house to pay off the loan. The banks bundled all of these bad loans together and sold them to greedy investors in a con game. For a while the "value" of those things went up. And I suppose if you managed to sell out of them you would have made a killing. But when the "value" dropped all of those paper gains disappeared. And when you look at money in general, what is it really worth? The US dollar for example has nothing behind it. In the old days when we had the gold standard there was shiny metal behind every dollar. Now it just sort of exists. They call the system "fiat currency" because its value is determined simply by fiat...an arbitrary decree. It's all a big con game. And with all of this "stimulus" the Federal Reserve will have to start printing money which will drive down the value of the dollar because there will be more in circulation without anything more of value behind it. The Chinese have been buying up our bonds so we would have money to buy their manufactured goods. So they are going to be left holding bags full of American money that will be losing its value.

I agree no one really knows for sure. I swing between the two extremes depending on what I have just read or heard. If you want to see real pessimism check out The Daily Reckoning http://www.dailyreckoning.com/ It's put out by a bunch of economists who have a fairly good track record of prediction although they tend to repeat themselves a lot and spend a lot of time telling you to buy gold. I am most depressed after I read their newsletters. They are definitely on the side of "this is a worldwide depression that is going to really hurt a lot of people." They recently produced a film called "I.O.U.SA" which is about American debt and how it will cripple our economy. Then I talk to people like my financial planner who is more on the side of "this is a cyclical downturn that happens on average once a decade". Sometimes it lasts a year sometimes longer. This one is longer. Of course he has a vested interest in the current system so that likely colors his opinion. So no one really does know. But I think the Daily Reckoning guys make a lot of logical sense. Their basic take, with regard to the American economy anyway, is that we have too much debt to be sustainable and that the value of our currency is wildly inflated and must at some point go into free fall. That makes sense to me. Hence their drumbeat of "Buy gold! Buy gold!" They also talk a lot about how the consumer is doing what the consumer has to do given the situation, which is to cut spending and increase saving. Which seems to be feeding into a self-sustaining downward spiral. If you are living on a fixed income in Thailand I think you are probably in better shape than you would be if you were living on a fixed income in the UK or USA because your expenses should be lower. Unless your fixed income is so low that you are struggling even in Thailand. In which case you may want to move to the countryside and start growing your own food. :-) I did notice that the USD is now fairly consistently above TBt35 for the last week or so and seems to be gaining.

maybe they don't need to. I have been reading lately that Ambiance has been quite full through the "high season". Perhaps their bookings don't require them to offer any incentives.

Thanks, then Hanoi it is. :-) Yes, I will be flying between places.

I am planning to visit Vietnam later this year for 9 or 10 days. I am pretty certain I want to visit Hue to see the imperial sites and also Hoi An for a couple of days. I will not have enough time for both Hanoi and HCMC. SO, if you had to pick one or the other which would it be? I like ancient history and culture most of all. And cute boys of course, but I assume they are everywhere. :-)

That airport line keeps getting pushed back. But the stations seem to be coming along pretty far construction wise. At least when I was driving along the highway they looked far along. Wasn't the reason why it has taken so long that the original piers for holding up the tracks were sinking in the soft ground? I wonder if there is really a way to fix that or if the whole thing will fall down once it starts running.

Enjoy 35 while you can. I don't think there's much of anywhere for the USD to go but down in the future. We've got too much debt and it's only going to get worse. Eventually the world is going to catch on that we are never going to be able to pay back all the trillions we owe already.

I don't want to say too much... however I had a Lao invite me to his home. Certain things may or may not have happened there. And I invited my tour guide into my hotel room briefly without any repercussions.

I will be very interested in hearing about your trip. I have been trying to decide where to vacation this year and Vietnam is on my list of possibilities. I have heard some conflicting reports about it though.

I think people are excited and optimistic after what we have suffered through these last 8 years. Everywhere I went in SE Asia last month people were asking about Obama. People were excited about him. Although one guy who was a little older was also a bit skeptical. I think he basically said "But he's just another politician, right?"

As you say, "what compels them"? I believe it is just that, a compulsion. As such there is little or no rationality to it. Clearly any rational person would steer clear. But I think it is a sort of mental illness almost. There was a popular TV program here in the US a couple of years ago in which a TV crew would wire up a house with all sort of cameras. They would lure an unsuspecting guy to the house with a decoy pretending to be an underage boy or girl. Then once they were inside the TV host would come out and start interrogating the guy about what he was doing there. After he finished with them and told him he could leave the police would swoop in and make an arrest. One man they lured two or three times. He was clearly mentally ill or I think borderline retarded. He was simply unable to stop himself even after he had been caught a couple of times before.

wow, poor guy. Just $500 million!? That's barely enough to last a lifetime.

well, I think it's true that the whole place isn't crawling with little boys being chased by old drooling men 24/7. However, I must say that I have seen some rather shocking things in Sunee that I have never seen anywhere else. So it is not difficult to see how the place comes by its reputation. Those who think there is nothing bad about Sunee must not be looking very hard, because I have not been digging too hard to see the things I have. But I do agree that there are plenty of places that are on the up and up that are perfectly fine businesses. So, as with most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Thanks for those awesome photos. I really need to visit Sukhothai one of these days. I am enjoying your adventure from the comfort of my sofa as well. :-)

well, they will need to keep up around 50 miles a day to do the trip in 30 days.