Thai-Spy
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One of the things that gets missed in discussions about crime and life in Pattaya overall is the demographics of the local Thai population. There are somewhat more than 100,000 people aged 20-29 beyond what would be expected if the age distribution followed that of the nation overall. Compounding this further is the fact that there are 12,000 to 15,000 more males than females in this age bracket.
Pattaya, like any resort, serves as a jobs magnet. However the jobs are low-paid as a rule, impermanent and convey no meaningful skills. So it's a short leap to understand why there could be a drift by some into more lucrative criminality, either in organized crime or crimes of opportunity against the obvious tourist wealth. This is compounded by the tendency for higher rates of lawlessness and substance abuse in younger populations and those deficient of females.
Unfortunately it's a problem which doesn't permit an easy solution.
Hello Thai-Spy,
I'm not disputing what you say, but can you just enlighten us to the source of these statistics please?
Is it from some sort of census or poll? I would have thought it difficult to be sure of the demographics of the Pattaya populace as many are transient and are registered in other provinces.
More males than females! now that is a surprise. My eyes tell me that the females outnumber the males, but then again I probably take more notice of the females
National Statistical Office, Office of the Prime Minister. Population and Housing Census 2000.
Your eyes are probably not deceiving you. But when you only see the retail sector, you aren't seeing the whole picture.
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Having just asked 10 Thais here not one knew what it was
ask about argee moto ( sp ) ..................
In Japanese, aji no moto.
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Just speculating, but might it be that Bangkok is the least prestigious of a group of destinations (BKK, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, etc.) which that class or model of plane could profitably service? And that the passengers flying to and from Bangkok are viewed (rightly or wrongly) by airlines as less fussy about the conditions of the plane?
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One of the things that gets missed in discussions about crime and life in Pattaya overall is the demographics of the local Thai population. There are somewhat more than 100,000 people aged 20-29 beyond what would be expected if the age distribution followed that of the nation overall. Compounding this further is the fact that there are 12,000 to 15,000 more males than females in this age bracket.
Pattaya, like any resort, serves as a jobs magnet. However the jobs are low-paid as a rule, impermanent and convey no meaningful skills. So it's a short leap to understand why there could be a drift by some into more lucrative criminality, either in organized crime or crimes of opportunity against the obvious tourist wealth. This is compounded by the tendency for higher rates of lawlessness and substance abuse in younger populations and those deficient of females.
Unfortunately it's a problem which doesn't permit an easy solution.
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I doubt it's going to make that great of an impact, I still don't see all that many Luk-kreungs around compared with regular Thai kids. Look at the Phillipines sometimes there's plenty of mixed kids and mixed marriages running around there. It hasn't improved their lot in life one bit because most of the wives married to foreigners are smart enough to leave and never come back. In Bangkok I see a much higher ratio of available women to men so I doubt this bothers local men much either. Ditto for the bigger cities in Isaan.
Thais married to farangs are still a tiny percentage, if you look at the statistics I bet other asian nationalities intermarry with Thais far more than Thais marry westerners. I know a lot of Singaporeans, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese with Thai wives as well. It's just that they stand out a lot less so you don't notice it's a mixed marriage at all.
I agree as I remember reading a statistic in the papers showing Thailand having more women than men of reproductive age. I think so long as Young thai men continue to show off and drive drunk on their motorcycles there will be no shortage of available women.
In most provinces the sex ratio tips towards more females between ages 23 and 26.
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The Phra That Yasothon festival is held this month.
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Every airline has certain routes which are marginally profitable, break even or run in the red. The latter serve as loss leaders and are viewed as providing other benefits such as promotion and prestige, or are maintained as long term investments for times when other economic factors change. Suffice it to say that when the situation involves a flag carrier or national airline, the prestige angle weighs more heavily, especially for a country which depends heavily on tourism.
Thai's primary problems have very little to do with one or two routes. Bad management, corruption, corporate debt, and a bloated workforce all contribute.
As long as people are willing to be shoe-horned into aging 747s and spend an extra few hours in transit to save a few hundred bucks, the non-stop model has no real viability.
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Leading American brands want Thailand to be on Priority Watch List
Leading American brands Levi, Marlboro and LM, the Cable Broadcasting Satellite Association of Asia and the American Apparel and Footwear Association have urged the US government to downgrade Thailand to its Priority Watch List, citing worsening counterfeiting, according to the US Trade Representative's recent report.
Thailand is currently categorised in the Watch List as making limited progress in suppressing intellectual property violations. The USTR will announce its revision of the intellectual property violation grouping in April.
If Thailand is moved from the Watch List to the Priority Watch List, it would face difficulties when the USTR considers the country's status in the US' Generalised System of Preferences and other trade retaliation practices.
In the letter submitted to the USTR, Levi Strauss & Co, one of the world's largest brandname apparel marketers, said the piracy problem in Thailand is severe. The situation is hurting its local and international business. It said the Kingdom serves as a manufacturing base for imitation goods, and is a leading exporter of those goods.
-- The Nation 2007-02-27
It would be interesting to know how many of these products are made in Thailand. My firm in the UK sells (Realtree) clothing and they ARE
made here!The difference being that it's OK to exploit low paid workers if you have a big brand name, but it is not OK to exploit the brand name so that the low paid workers can afford to buy the products (or copies of them) that they make!!
It's in the nature of a business to make a profit, and further, to maximize that profit. This is done by selling goods and services at a price point that optimizes revenue and by controlling production costs. In view of the latter, it's common to move manufacturing to places where production costs are lower. While there are occasional high-profile cases of worker abuse, on the whole international manufacturing concerns pay a wage slightly higher than average for that trade and offer somewhat better than average industrial conditions versus local concerns. Whether they do this voluntarily as good corporate citizens or under duress from government, media and social activists in their home country and primary markets is irrelevant. It is not exploitation, it is opportunity, and the overseas workforce is (again except in exceptional cases of abuse) free to decline those jobs and seek other employment.
There is no absolutely no relevance in that to the misuse and misappropriation of a brand name. Neither is that exploitation; it is theft. Anyone holding the contrary view will find themselves opposed by the entire body of international copyright, trademark and intellectual property law. On a less esoteric plane, a major brand such as Levis, has invested literally hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide to establish a reputation for their goods and also to position them, in many cases, as a lifestyle choice. Counterfeiters who produce an inferior product undermine consumer good will and trust in the brand, and are free-riding on the investment in advertising and promotion the manufacturer has made.
As a larger social issue, can anyone credibly claim that the average worker will likely enjoy a higher salary and better workplace conditions in a shop that makes counterfeit goods? What is more, black market goods travel through an irregular distribution channel and thereby avoid most taxation, weakening the tax base and inhibiting social spending and development programs by government. Furthermore, large scale counterfeiting, at least as regards physical goods, is inseparable from official corruption and organized crime. To embrace or even defend counterfeit goods is to encourage a non-democratic and non-representative power structure which works against the good of the common worker as an individual and his society as a whole.
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Bu**er me if the hypotenuse is not bent!
Must be drawn on "graft" paper because something is crooked...
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An item from the paper today:
http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/b...s.php?id=117052
That 12.5% increase looks very good at first glance. But is it real growth? Doesn't it more or less correspond to the amount by which the baht has strengthened recently? If you are a foreigner and price (budget for) your holiday in your local currency, of course your holiday adds a higher value in the destination currency when your home currency weakens.Thailand’s income from foreign visitors this year should be on course to hit the 900-billion baht target, Tourism Minister Suvit Yodmanee said Saturday – the same day three western nations and Japan warned of possible terror attacks in the Thai capital. ... Mr Suvit expected the tourism industry to generate a revenue of 900 billion baht this year, growing from 800 billion baht in 2006. He said most visitors would come from Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Germany, Britain, Sweden and Norway.And further, since tourist arrivals this year will actually increase over 2006, doesn't this infer that spending per-tourist will actually decline on average?
Meanwhile, he said the government would set up a one stop service centre at Bangkok’s new international airport to help tourists who are cheated by dishonest traders. The centre will have multi-lingual staff.How does it help anything to have to drive to the airport to get satisfaction in a retail trade dispute?
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To further the discussion...
What minimum standard of proof is required? Physical ticket, e-ticket or merely a reservation?
And is an air ticket strictly required or would a train ticket to Butterworth, Malaysia suffice?
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Good idea Mahout,
I just got off the phone with the gf and she's going to send me the letter from the hospital so I can send a copy to the embassy with a covering letter explaining. Then we'll submit the original when we finally apply again.
jgbc
You may wish to include a copy of the hospital bills and of the child's identity card and birth certificate as well.
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The media knows very well what sells and what doesn't sell, and are specialists at writing stories with carefully choosen words to sustain sales volume - often with a bias that can be misleading.
And to maintain their government funding.
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Colpyat
How would you measure it:
- number of females on the game versus the number of females in Thailand of working age? (less than 1% - a government figure/research conducted by Chula Uni Faculty of Social Science in 2002).
- number of entire villages or communities dependant on prostitution versus number that aren't - I havent a clue, but with the above in mind it cant be anything large.
How else could one measure it?
Rather, any idea of it's relative role/size, is more a relfection of the attention given to it by media reporting and society's exposure to it (because it so blatantly open) than it is of any supporting statistic - which indicates the oppisite. Yes, there are villages whose income is almost entirely from young lasses on the game, just as there are some villages (in fact more) which derive most of their income from poppy cultivation or consumer goods smuggling, or counterfeit consumer goods manufacturing - but in the overall context of whatever the measurement is (i.e. villages or communties), against all Thai villages and communtities - it is small.
MF
Personally, i would very much doubt the figure of 1%. It also does not take in context the amount of additional people, such as family members, who financially depend on the income of that figure, and have to be somehow included in such statistics.
It is almost impossible to put a figure, or even a definition on what actually means "on the game" here in Thailand. For a starter, it is mostly an underground business which is not exactly forthcoming with facts in may areas.
Than there are so many grey zones that do break the traditional definitions of prostitution but work along the exact same mechanics. Such as the increasing trend of "mia farang" which also the Thai government acknowledges by trying to acces that economical volume, the "professional" mia noi which will never be on any radar, but will slip from one purely monetary based relationship to the next, the internet prostitution, the part time prostitution, the village based prostitution. Then you have hidden prostitution such as the singers and dancers in Thai cafes and the concert troupes, and serving girls in many nightlife venues. Have they been included in the government sponsored research?
For the lack of reliable figures this debate will always stay along anecdotal evidence. Based on the villages i know in depth, two in the north, one in isaarn, and one near Bangkok, i can only say that in all prostitution including its grey areas do play a massive role in the economy, the least though in the village near Bangkok where there are more opportunities for the local females available to make independently sufficient income.
Taken from the CIA factbook (https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/th.html)
Age structure:
15-64 years: 70% (male 22,331,312/female 22,880,588)
Assuming the age distribution is uniform would give you a potential pool of "prostitutes" aged 15-34 of 2/5*23,000,000 or 9.2 million. The actual distribution skews younger, so add a fudge factor and call it 10 million.
1% or 100,000 might just account for all those working in licensed premises -- bars, karaokes and massage parlours -- but even then it's probably too low by a factor of 2 or even 3. It's certainly too low when you include freelancers, brothels and the like, and probably low by a full order of magnitude when you add mia nois and all other forms of compensated companionship.
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The married couples will be taken on a tour of famous attractions and will be shown traditional activities in Roi Et, Khon Kaen and Maha Sarakham between March 3 and 4.
Can't help but wonder if the selection of those specific "attractions and...activities" has anything to do with their willingness to pay a back-hander or their familial relationship to someone in TAT.
Each couple will be charged 1,101 baht to go on the trip and translators will be on hand to help the foreigners.
Supposing the Thai wives aren't up to speaking their husband's languages? Or are these "translators" just typical government PR flacks assigned to put the appropriate "spin" on everything? How fun it will be when, after listing to a half-day's mistranslation and misrepresentation, one of the Isaan wives finally, loudly and in full ear-shot of the group says "that's not what they said!"
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I am a bit curious how one of these girls, who were both facing forward sitting in beach chairs, was shot in the back.
Only some of the news reports make the claim of the shot to the back. And in each of them, there's no clear attribution as to who is making that claim. It could just be the reporter on the scene making a guess or the police or forensic technician on the scene making a guess. The photos do clearly show what appears to be a bullet wound on her back, and blood on her chest. However, it takes an autopsy to positively confirm which is the entry wound and which is the exit wound; it cannot reliably be done at the crime scene in all cases.
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There are Russian hookers, and there are Russian hookers; this observation reflects a similar range of quality and cost as for Thai prostitutes or prostitutes in any country. One the one hand there are the heavily tattooed, foul-mouthed, do-anybody types. On the other hand there are model-quality escort types servicing a very select clientèle. The services of the latter can fetch many hundreds of dollars per night, even in Thailand, most frequently from Arab, Asian and African clients.
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Thai wiskey for two russian tourist. Guess they was on a budget but they were staying in the area
most russian's stay.
That bottle is a common feature of a mid- or low-range hotel mini-bar. There's no way to tell if it was their drink of choice bought from a store, or just the thing closest to hand when deciding to go to the beach.
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Hookers? Talk about stereotypes.
....after checking in there on February 16 and were scheduled to check out on March 3 What two week hookers?
A security officer of a nearby resort said he heard gunfire and saw a Thai man rushing up from the beach and fleeing on a motorcycle.
This and this indicate that citizens of the Russian Federation are not included in Thailand's Tourist Visa Exemption but can obtain a Visa On Arrival which permits a stay of 15 days. And this is exactly how the great majority of Russian hookers enter Thailand.
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You may wish to visit all the local pawnshops and let them know you are offering a reward.
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One of the reasons I posted originally was the banality of the report, which looked to me as a PR handout from the organisation and the fact that unlike the BBC broadcast streams which have diligently worked on the issues within and behind prostitution in many locations, the web site seems stuck in SE Asia, with occasional forays to Sri Lanka.
Indeed, it does seem to read that way from our perspective. The BBC's focus on the region may be in part due to recent high-profile incidents; you could call it the "Gary Glitter Effect" for want of a better term.
As others have noted there is a underlying 'peadophiliac' angle within this web reporting which also puzzles me.The mainstream press has never been capable of dealing with with sex-tourism and child-sex tourism as separate issues. Instead of dealing with the latter as a psychiatric issue, they are lumped together on a generalized spectrum of perversity.
When Pim finishes the vocational programme and goes out into the real world, and experiences the mistreatment of the typical for-profit jewelry manufacturing environment, how is she going to feel about Nightlight, their training programme and their Christian message?
Further, if Pim should later make a holistic decision, taking into account her working environment, her personal happiness, her income and other factors, and then decide to go back to the bar because it was better for her overall... Will the BBC and Miss McGeown be as willing to give us an expose of mainstream workplaces in Thailand and the inequities of Thai society? Will they tell us that Nighlight presents unrealistic expectations for the people they seek to assist?
We can only hope they would have the intellectual honesty to do so -- a characteristic largely absent from the article -- but this hope is probably misplaced.
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Just followed up on this with an Australian in a position to know. The words "credible information" and "significant concern" were used. The confidence level in the information they are working with is high; this does not mean an attack in Bangkok is imminent, only that the potential for one is real and somewhat greater than normal.
The period of concern includes not only today but also this weekend. However if the situation in the South, particularly Yala, remains relatively quiet, they expect to downgrade the threat to Bangkok.
Let's face facts: there are too many people with too many causes and too little respect for human life and property. We're all in somebody's cross-hairs no matter where we go. And though it may sound callous, while hundreds of people will be killed by terrorists somewhere today, your chances of being one of them, especially in Bangkok, are not very high. Considering that one of the primary goals of a terrorist is to sow economic and social disruption, going about your daily routine is an appropriate form of resistance.
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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/l...uspect0222.html
Old child-sex tapes wash up; man, 81, charged
Dennis Wagner
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 22, 2007 12:00 AM
An 81-year-old Sierra Vista man accused of filming sex acts with children in Asia decades ago was arrested Wednesday on federal charges after summer rains caused a septic tank to cough up the evidence, according to the FBI.
Deborah McCarley, a spokeswoman for the bureau, said Walter C. Stevens faces a single count of possessing child porn that was transported across state lines. She said it is unclear whether prosecutors can file additional charges based on conduct overseas.
The videotapes were unearthed in August when monsoon storms opened a large chasm above an old septic tank. Neighbors found the tapes and gave them to Sierra Vista police, who passed them on to the FBI.
The bureau's lab in Quantico, Va., repaired and enhanced the films, helping investigators identify Stevens, who had lived in the area for 20 years and managed the property where the evidence was recovered.
According to McCarley, Stevens acknowledged to agents that he attempted to erase the videos with a magnet about two years ago then threw them into the septic pit.
Investigators believe two films were produced in Japan between 1965 and 1975, showing Japanese victims as young as 5. Other tapes were produced in Korea from 1975-80 and in Thailand from 1980-86, depicting Asian girls ages 11 to 14.
McCarley said Stevens apparently filmed the sessions with a reel-to-reel camera, then reproduced them years later on a video recorder.
Stevens surrendered to authorities after being advised of a federal criminal complaint. If convicted, he will face up to 10 years in prison.
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Troll or not. If it's on the level, You're in Thailand....she's half a world away in the US. She won't find you unless you want to be found
...What's the problem?
The problems is that unless you came into Thailand on false documentation or snuck over the border, you can almost always be found.
The vast majority of people who are not findable in Thailand are no longer living here; emphasis on both "living" and "here". Of the remainder -- those actually in-country and still breathing -- very few have the resources to remain completely untraceable. To stay hidden you have to significantly outspend those who are looking for you.
For the rest who can't afford to buy that sort of cover, to find them is just a matter of persistence and funding. Straight cash "rewards", trading favors and even indirect threats work well with both the man on the street and those in what we should simply call "responsible positions".
No real advice to the OP other than to keep cool, avoid direct contact with the woman and let the lawyers sort it out. There are practical and sometimes even honorable reasons to avoid a process server, especially to keep the clock from starting on a legal process while your side does discovery.
made here!
What Social Effects Will Farang-thai Relationships Have On Thai Society?
in General Topics
Posted
If there were 1000 Farang-Thai couples in every province in Isaan, only in Amnat Charoen and Mukdahan would that involve more than 1% of all that province's Thai women aged 20-44. A rich source of amusement, speculation and gossip for the locals perhaps, but hardly a well-spring of social change.