Thai Food in Thailand isn't as special as you might think :) (I have been to Thailand 3 times while in the Service, once to Phuket twice to Pattaya). It is good, but you have to be more careful where you get it from (some areas you do not want to eat anything that may have been 'washed' or prepared with local water). I do miss good Thai food though :/


To the OP - hope things cool down quick there (Keep your head on a swivel). I know that the King is sort of a forbidden topic, but hopefully calmer heads and his influence will prevail. If not then I hope everyone can get out of this in one piece (emotionally and physically) though I fear the worse.

If you can leave the country for somewhere safer do so; though that will only fix your issue, the issue of the people who can't leave is a whole other story that I hope isn't ended in tragedy.

Quick update and then I'm off to bed.

Military has now shut down all TV and radio stations and say they will be 'military run' when they come back on the air with only approved military programming.

They've arrested the chiefs and news chiefs of several radio and TV stations, particularly those who refused to stop broadcasting and arrested another news chief because his TV station got shut down so he moved to YouTube and was live broadcasting there.

Everyone is being threatened with arrest if we say anything against the Thai military or the coup (Can I say, fuck the Thai military!).

They've already said Twitter, YouTube and Facebook will likely be shut down tomorrow (time to fire up the VPN) and every ISP will be told to shut off the internet to their users completely if the huge wave of posts against this coup continue.

Meanwhile, the coup has been condemned by the US, the UK, the EU, France, Germany, Holland etc etc, and the US has already announced they're cutting their normal $10 million of foreign aid to Thailand to zero, as under US law they cannot give money to governments that are operating under a coup d'etat.

it's a bloody mess and likely to get a lot worse in coming days.

Like I said, I would not recommend anyone come here, or do business with a Thai company - if you'd not like to lose your money that is. Not until the dust has settled and, according to several Thai friends who are quite high up the social ladder and support the now-ousted government, their guess is it won't settle but will instead move into yet more bomb attacks and grenade attacks, (we've already had several in the past couple of months) with a possibility of a full blown civil war within the next few months.

Thanks for the update. Stay safe and I hope you can sleep well, regardless.

Well, ours worked out pretty well, in the end. France's polled well in the 18-35 demographic, iirc.

I was hoping to stop by BKK on the way home but that's now off the table. =( I hope all Thai residents, GOGlodytes and others, stay safe.

BloodyGoodGames, if you're not set on returning to Europe, you should consider moving to Vietnam. As a westerner, there's more bang for your buck than Thailand and the political situation is much more stable, even with the friction with China.

We usually go to Thailand every summer, but I was thinking of skipping the trip this year (due to saving money for a bigger apartment). And now I have all the better reason to skip it. Fortunately we hadn't bought any tickets yet, we usually buy them pretty close to the trip anyway.

I don't believe for one minute that "buying votes" (as in, handing out money if you vote for someone) matters that much. The poor rural Thai people at least seem to believe they've been better off when the "red shirts" (Thaksin etc.) have been in power, ie. more money spent on poor rural areas (schools, hospitals, pension money etc.). One complaint I've also heard is that the "yellow shirts" (Abhisit?) put an upper limit on the price of rice, meaning the people working on rice farming in rural areas made less money while e.g. the people in cities of course benefited from the lower prices.

It is hard to tell how much of it is propaganda and how much is true, but then that's politics in any country. Would Finland have benefited more if it had stayed out of Euro (like Sweden and Norway did), or joined it, like it did? The heck I know, yet many claim they do. On the other hand I believe Euro has granted Finnish people quite low interest rates, but on the other hand strong Euro may have damaged exports, as well as forcing Finland to participate in bailing out German, French and UK banks from Greece, Portugal etc.

All I can say is I feel very sad for the poor people of Thailand. Try to stay safe and I hope you can keep posting on the net.

The government bought rice above market price, subsidizing the farmers and building a huge stockpile of rice.

Well usually they simply not call it a coup,instead label it "constitutional crisis" or something and then silently or openly continue to support the military, like 2009 in Honduras, 2012 in Maldives or recently in Egypt.
So I think this should make you very hopeful!

Coming out of hiding to wish you well, BGG. Stay safe and good luck getting back home soon.

I'll be sending positive thoughts your way.

~Leucius

I have a feeling that this is a conflict with villains and imbeciles on both sides. Like any other country, when one faction comes into power through election, the other side gets pissed off.

I'm going to be politically incorrect here and say that I am not against military coups in a general sense. I do believe there is a time and place for rebellion and that a military should be loyal to its country and to its people but not to its government no matter how much the politicians claim to be the "representatives" of the people. Hell, I've been wanting one in my country for the past three years just to clean out Washington D.C. and people on these forums probably already know I consider the 1973 Chilean military revolt as a liberation.

Revolution is also a good thing from time to time as demonstrated by the American Revolution and the revolution that took place in the late 1980s to early 1990s in Russia which brought the end of the Soviet Union.

It might be controversial, but I think I'd rather be governed by military men than by politicians, they at least are professional and generally trustworthy people, if a tad harsh. "The People" and the morons they elect cause nothing but trouble. From what I've seen on the news of Thailand, representative democracy has basically crippled the country, once one side of politics gets into power the other side takes to the streets claiming the one in power is now a dictator and they are for "people power", then the side in power gets ejected and others get into office, and it starts all over again.

It needs to be said that people have become very wily about how "democracy" works, and they use it for their own selfish gains, they claim the moral high-ground and then occupy international airports or places of commerce to bring the country's economy to a standstill and get featured by foreign journalists all over the news. Neither side care about freedom or democracy, they just use them as "buzzwords" to try and make themselves look like the "good guys" on international news. This kinda of behavior greatly damages the economies of developing countries because tourism and international trade is a large part of revenue, and because "democracies" put such huge restrictions of their governments in the name of freedom, generally legally there's very little a government can do to prevent protestors occupying economic areas, because if they shoot at them the protestors have essentially "won" and can claim the moral high-ground.

It's sad when you see situations in developing countries where less than 0.1% of the population takes to the streets, gets on the news with huge crowds claiming to represent the anger of "the people", and then do huge damage to the countries economy/tourism/trade by projecting a vision of "chaos" to the outside world, when in reality the vast, vast majority of the people are at home and not protesting and do not care.

I do not think military dictatorship is good, but I do not like political systems that are so weak and vulnerable to being manipulated to the detriment of millions of people by selfish minorities who just want money.

Many, many thanks for the update, but holy shit, please stay safe okay? Seriously, best of luck to you and everyone else over there.

Ok, then I'll be controversial and say that the moment a military man decides to give a coup, he should be shot in the head right at that moment. I don't care what their motives are, nothing justifies people with guns using force to make things go their way. Specially so if they are in the know that a civil war will be the result, civil wars are the most fucked up kind of wars and that's saying a lot.

I doubt civil war will result, or even significant unrest. In most countries the military is too powerful and respected an institution for anything to threaten them forcing order on the streets.

Now I'm not saying I like military governments, I don't, I like individual freedom and civil rights, but I do hate representative democracies that are so weak and easily exploited for personal gain that a few thousand people on the street (in a country of MILLIONS) can sabotage the economy and the country and cause economic damage on millions of the common people.

The military in Thailand in my opinion SHOULD reinforce peace and law and order. Western countries in general can "handle" democracy because the political system is so old and stable that it can handle protest, but always the government only changes hands through peaceful elections. Developing nations can't because the government has money, and the people are poor, so many many people will protest and carry on just so they can get their buddies into office and hand out cash to them, that's all it is, pure greed.

I don't think the armed forces of a country are perfect, but in developing countries they're way more trustworthy than some random politicians who are corrupt as fuck.