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I was watching Steve Rosse's new video last night and he mentioned that having wealthy police (before they took the job) makes people think they are not as corruptible because they don't "need" the money

sounds like blackmail... For a guy who wants to be the top cop the idea that he's going to sit on incriminating evidence seems a little odd.

definitely some sort of police in-fighting/rivalry going on. But why does he have so many houses?

and of course there are still the Soi 4 gogos. Tawan and Moonlight still in their locations.

I agree with the caveats listed above re: location of your destination and amount of baggage. But I also typically book a car service. Yes it costs more. But you are in a very comfortable vehicle even when traffic is heavy. After a long flight it's nice to just relax and not have to worry about anything. And it's door to door service. I've been using SP Limousine for years so they give me a small repeat customer discount.

I presume you understand the potential side effects, etc.

given the huge percentage of handsome Thai guys it's interesting that anyone ever goes viral

December is a great time to visit. I would choose a hotel inside the old city which makes touring around on foot or by tuktuk easy. I was there in December several years ago now (in 2012), I'd have to dig to find the hotel I stayed in. It was a nice traditional decor sort of place. Indeed lots of temples in the city and Doi Suthep. There are also some interesting caves if you like that sort of thing. The Royal Park Ratchaphruek is very pretty. This cave is called Mae On.

So it could go up, or down, or stay the same. Got it.

that's such a sweet story

I had never heard of the place but it does sound fascinating! I read that experts and archaeologists are concerned that the place has no infrastructure to handle the number of tourists who will be trying to go there now. And that it was the most looted site in Thailand during the 70s and 80s so they are worried that this new attention and lack of planning is going to make it a target all over again as there is a large part of the city that has not been excavated.

He already has plants in China that make a large percentage of his cars. I think they might even have a plant in Xinxiang https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/teslas-china-made-ev-sales-july-down-31-mthmth-2023-08-03/ https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/05/business/tesla-china-sales-surge-intl-hnk/index.html China's government offers subsidies for electric vehicle production which is helping reduce the price of the cars.

Actually he means all users. He's claiming again that most users are bots and that the weed them out he wants to charge everyone a few dollars per month.

did they fix that? Because a couple of months ago they started requiring you to be logged in to see anything

See I thought about the bankruptcy angle as well. But he has lots of powerful investors who underwrote all of those loans he took out and they might not be so excited about lighting all of their money on fire. However they had to know the odds weren't good that this money-losing business he was overpaying for was going to be a good investment in the first place.

Bangkok Pat takes us to some vanishing places, including Soi Twilight and Babylon

Maybe they mean those Visa stickers that take up a whole page of the passport?

He's a good con man, essentially. He built a cult that has made him very wealthy. He did see the importance of electric cars and managed to muscle his way in to running Tesla. And promised all kinds of things he never delivered. And he was smart enough to corner the market on satellites and taking astronauts to the space station.

I'll miss the porn, but I suppose I'll find it somewhere else

They also followed up later to indicate that things like US retirement income that's taxed in the US is exempt because of treaty obligations. It seems that the aim is to go after Thai tax avoiders

you can't do it with checked luggage. Asking them to only check your bag to LHR is just asking for them to investigate. The only issue you might face is for your next trip if they flag you. Here in the US a kid in Florida recently tried to do this and ended up getting all over the news because they canceled his ticket altogether and he had to pay for a last minute fare to where he was trying to go. If you do it more than a couple of times you could apparently get blacklisted by the airline.

be careful about skipping legs. US airlines have really been trying to crackdown on it since it technically violates their contract of carriage. But I suspect Europe has more sensible rules about airline regulation.

I've had my eye on the boy in the AC/DC shirt for a while now

of course this attitude is not only limited to Thailand. I think all of those skin whitening creams originated in India. And places like Korea value pale skin

travel between the regions should cost the same number of miles in either direction. The beauty of alliances is that you can credit your miles to any member of the alliance. So I can credit my ANA flights to Avianca or Air Canada or United or whoever. Although because things change so fast in this world crediting to the "best" program today may not be the best choice in the future. There's an old saying in the points and miles game that you should "earn and burn" i.e. use your miles and points as fast you can. But it's not practical for most people and it takes a while to accumulate enough miles for an award redemption. These days most of the programs will sell you miles and frequently offer bonuses. Avianca for example often offers 150% bonuses. So if you buy 100,000 miles you get 250,000. The catch is that you will pay about US$3000 for those 250,000 points. IF you can find a seat this could be a decent value. For example my 90,000 mile business class award essentially costs about $1000 in such a scenario. If I were paying cash for this ticket my guess is that it would cost $4000 or so, maybe more. However I will say that if you are willing to fly in economy there are a lot more available seat options. The Lifemiles program for example seems to always have plenty of economy seats on the route I search most (IAD-BKK) for 47K points one way. But if you want business class your options will be more limited. Fewer flights and more people willing to pay cash for fewer business class seats means they don't make as many available. If you are flexible enough to travel more last-minute there can be better availablity options. For example if I wanted to fly to Tokyo next week there are many business class options on ANA and United for 90K miles.