Everything posted by thaiophilus
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E gates at Suvarnabhumi!
Tell them it's Buddhist Era. That earns you an additional 543 years of seniority 😄
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Chiang Mai Off Season September 2026 Updates
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Chiang Mai Off Season September 2026 Updates
If you're interested in unusual temples, visit Wat Umong, a forest temple a couple of 2 miles west of the city with some unusual underground architecture. The forest setting means the whole place is very peaceful but if it gets too quiet there are lots of monks who are keen to practise their English.
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Olddaddy and floridarob
They also use mercury amalgam...
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E gates at Suvarnabhumi!
What's wrong with Broadmoor?
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Russian men dodging military draft prefer stripping in Pattaya
You might very well think that; I could not possibly comment.
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Russian men dodging military draft prefer stripping in Pattaya
This is The Sun we're talking about. "The reporter", or his AI, probably never left his London office.
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This time bit different - trip to Thailand in August 2024
The first four words are "The Sun has reported" so everything that follows may be sheer fantasy.
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Forum Look
That's better. Thank you.
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Questions regarding upcoming Cambodian trip
A 777, apparently. https://www.emirates.com/english/destinations/sai/bkk/flights-from-siem-reap-to-bangkok/
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Is there a problem adding photos after the latest "update"?
Works for me (Firefox, Windows 10). See the attached screenshot. I clicked choose files..., and loaded from a local file on my PC.
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PP massage scene updates (08/26)?
According to https://sotwe.world/ Sotwe is a web-based Twitter viewer that lets users browse public tweets, trending topics, and user profiles without creating or logging into a Twitter account.
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Adventures of a Bangkok Rookie August 2026
[duplicated post]
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Adventures of a Bangkok Rookie August 2026
[cough] You might not want to live in CM year-round, particularly March to April.
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Scam ?
How about... running away from the scammers?
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Is it quiet right now
Ha. I acquired all Mary R Haas's books on Thai nearly 30 years ago. They were for a long time the definitive English-language scholarly resources on the Thai language, though naturally the language has changed in the decades since she compiled them. (Her main academic field was actually Native American languages, not Thai, which she only took up during WWII to help the war effort. Nothing if not thorough, she also acquired a Thai husband 😀) Incidentally, don't be fooled by the title of her Thai-English Students' Dictionary. On opening its 634 dense pages you soon realise that "Student" was intended to mean "PhD scholar", not "beginner" .
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Is it quiet right now
Nothing tricky about that. When Pali is transliterated into Thai script, no tone marks are used because Pali doesn't need them. Thai readers who don't speak Pali therefore automatically pronounce the Pali words according to the Thai rules for default tones, not how a native Pali speaker would say them. Yes, thank you, I have studied the tone rules (for a definitive work see Chapter III of The Thai System of Writing, by Mary R Haas, which I have in front of me right now) so I'm well aware that there are many syllables for which no modifying tone mark is needed. That's obvious just by looking at any typical bit of written Thai. (For example: อย่าสอนจระเข้ว่ายน้ำ has seven syllables but only four have tone marks.) Nevertheless, many other syllables do need a modifying tone mark. But I think you've missed my point, which is that when you see sixty-four consecutive syllables with no tone marks at all something is going on, and the something in this case is that the language isn't Thai.
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Is it quiet right now
One clue is that กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยามหาดิลก ภพนพรัตน์ ราชธานีบุรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์ มหาสถาน อมรพิมาน อวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยะ วิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์ has 64 syllables but not a single tone mark. Thai is tonal, but Pali is not.
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Is it quiet right now
... the city so good they set it to music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ux8POF8eMk (That's their original "Bangkok then and now" video from 1989,with a mix of 1960s and 1989 street scenes.) I can say it, but couldn't write it down as Thai has too many homophones (and not many people know this but this name isn't Thai anyway, it's Pali or Sanskrit 😄.)
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Trip Report Bangkok March 2026
No. The BTS Senior Rabbit Card is only for Thai citizens (https://btsbangkok.com/rabbit-card) but the MRT senior card was available to anyone over 60 regardless of nationality or residence (it must have been, as I had one!) As a lawyer you may be amused by the minutiae: those over 65 were entitled to the discount, while those 60-65 were merely privileged to receive it. (E&OE)
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Questions regarding upcoming Cambodian trip
There are Asian publishers that Amazon has never heard of. Next time you're in Thailand (or a friend is!) you might find books from those publishers in some of the more academically-oriented Bangkok bookshops. For example: Asia Books https://www.asiabooks.com/en/search.html?query=cambodia&source=all&page=1 Kinokuniya https://thailand.kinokuniya.com/ Dasa Books https://dasabooks.com/search Chula Books https://www.chulabook.com/en/categories?text=cambodia
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Indians in Pattaya
HR... Hormone Replacement? (yes, I know. Now I'm having nightmares abour Dame Edna having hot flushes 🥵)
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What it was like to pilot the supersonic Concorde jet
My guess would be "no", but one would hope that the instructor did. 😈
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Bangkok Visit - June 2026
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Bangkok Visit - June 2026
By the way, a prospective visitor might ask what's the difference between the three museums. I'd say the Death Railway Museum by the cemetery is a well-funded modern museum and visitor experience up to modern international museum standards. The other two are essentially one-man (or one-monk?) projects - labours of love but sadly underfunded. The JEATH War Museum has reconstructed POW huts housing press clippings and original art works made by POWs, and a memorial to one of the Japanese soldiers, who stayed behind to help with reconstruction. The museum near the bridge (if it's still open) is a miscellaneous collection of stuff vaguely related to Thai life in WWII. Obviously the visitor experience will be very different for people who lost loved ones here.