CrazyExpat

Tiger has always been one of my favorite athletes. He is part Thai and his winning streak in golf has been headed in the right direction for a long time. Now, it appears he is worth 1 billion USD. LOS ANGELES — Tiger Woods has become the first sportsman to break through the billion-dollar earnings barrier, Forbes magazine reported on Thursday. The 33-year-old American, who has won 14 majors, reached the latest landmark of his career when he won a 10-million-dollar bonus for his FedEx Cup victory last weekend. According to the magazine's calculations, Woods went into the 2009 season on 895 million dollars which included prize money, endorsements, appearance fees as well as money earned through his golf course design business. Even before picking up his end of season bonus, Woods had earned 10.5 million dollars on the USPGA Tour this year, winning six titles. Woods has been the top-earning sportsman since 2002 when he took over from former Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher. His most lucrative commercial deal is with Nike and brings him over 30 million dollars a year. Forbes estimated that retired NBA star Michael Jordan will be the next sportsman to earn a billion dollars. Jordan amassed around 800 million dollars in his playing career and continues to make 45 million dollars a year thanks mainly to a deal with Nike. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h-R59OgIdRQPpxImkgYp1AI1yrQw

When you post articles from online newspapers or sources, please don't just copy and paste the entire article without giving full credit. You can use several paragraphs of an article and then give the url from where you took the article from. This gives credit back to the original source and sends them links. Also, try not to just copy and paste articles without comment. If you find an article interesting, please tell us why you posted it. Thanks.

Pattaya, 29 September,2009, [PDN]: two tourists invited a couple of ladyboys back to their hotel room. While there, one or the other of the ladyboys is suspected of having spiked their hosts’ drinks, with the result that one man died and the other was hosoitalised. The case is under investigation At 8.50 am, on 29 September, Pol.Lt.Col. Chatchai Srisuwan, Pattaya Police Investigator, was notified by Mrs. Sopis Sungkakarn, [50] the Pattaya City Hotel Receptionist that one of their clients was dead in his room and his friend, who had been sharing the room, had been sent to hospital. The police went immediately to investigate the incident. In room 304, containing twin single beds, at Pattaya City Hotel, located in Soi Pattaya Klang 12, Moo. 10, police found a team of doctors from the Pattaya Memorial Hospital pumping the heart of Mr. Anand Amint, [25], who was lying unconscious on the bed, wearing only underpants. Unfortunately, despite their efforts, the doctors were not able to save his life because it is estimated that he had been dead for about 10 minutes before the doctors arrived. Police did not find any immediate signs of foul play. His clothes were on the bed next to his body and a used condom was on the floor. A few bottles of whisky and beer were also found in the room. Mr. Parwan Kumar, [41], his friend, had been sent to hospital. He was intoxicated from drugs; as yet unidentified. He was lucky to be treated in time and is now safe, but was still unable give any further information. Mrs. Sopis said the two men had checked in at the hotel on 28 September and had both brought lady boys back to the room at 4.00 am. The two ladyboys had left the rooms later on in the early morning. http://www.pattayadailynews.com/shownews.php?IDNEWS=0000010526

The prosecution on Tuesday postponed its decision on whether to proceed with a lese majeste case against People's Alliance for Democracy leader Sondhi Limthongkul to Nov 17. Kaiyasit Pitsawongprakan, director-general of the Criminal Litigtion Division, said permission for the postponement was given after Nitithorn Lamlua, Mr Sondhi's lawyer, submitted a request saying his client is now in the United States receiving medical treatment for sickness as a result of the attempt on his life in April this year. Mr Sondhi has been charged with lese majeste for repeating Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul's remarks about the monarchy to a PAD rally on July 20 last year. Ms Daranee, alias Da Torpedo, a United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) member, made her remarks in a separate rally. She was later found guilty of lese majeste by the Criminal Court and sentenced to eight years in jail. Mr Nitithorn expected Mr Sondhi to return to Thailand this week. http://bangkokpost.com/news/local/155552/decision-on-sondhi-case-deferred-to-nov-17

Done! We aim to please. Thanks for the suggestion. It was a good one!

I am rooting for Pattaya. I think they could come up with a much more interesting set of games.

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Adding a Travel sub-forum is easy and a good idea. Thanks. Beneath each forum we have a description. What would you suggest for this one?

If you go to a proxy located in the USA, you can view it there on their website.

NEW YORK — Thailand's Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva promised US investors to work for an open economy as he headed Thursday to the Group of 20 summit on the global financial turmoil. Abhisit, who is attending both the UN General Assembly in New York and the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, was paying his first visit to the United States since he took over in December. Speaking before the US-ASEAN Business Council in New York, Abhisit said he was committed to wooing US investors to Thailand, whose economy was taken a beating both from the global downturn and the kingdom's chaotic politics. "Thailand has always strived to be an open economy. We believe it is the private sector that drives growth, and I am committed to a transparent and consultative process," Abhisit said Wednesday in remarks released by the business group. He said he had heard the business group's concerns on smoothing out customs regulations and boosting protection of intellectual property rights. Abhisit traveled Thursday to Pittsburgh for the Group of 20 summit of leading economies, where he will have observer status as Thailand currently heads ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iNJ_HDQE62sqCMP5_jdtQsNl1nng

I'll check into that. What new blog postings started coming up?

A new AIDS vaccine tested on more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand has protected a significant minority against infection, the first time any vaccine against the disease has even partly succeeded in a clinical trial. Scientists said they were delighted but puzzled by the result. The vaccine — a combination of two genetically engineered vaccines, neither of which had worked before in humans — protected too few people to be declared an unqualified success. And the researchers do not know why it worked. “I don’t want to use a word like ‘breakthrough,’ but I don’t think there’s any doubt that this is a very important result,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is one of the trial’s backers. “For more than 20 years now, vaccine trials have essentially been failures,” he went on. “Now it’s like we were groping down an unlit path, and a door has been opened. We can start asking some very important questions.” Results of the trial of the vaccine, known as RV 144, were released at 2 a.m. Eastern time Thursday in Thailand by the partners that ran the trial, by far the largest of an AIDS vaccine: the United States Army, the Thai Ministry of Public Health, Dr. Fauci’s institute, and the patent-holders in the two parts of the vaccine, Sanofi-Pasteur and Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases. Col. Jerome H. Kim, a physician who is manager of the army’s H.I.V. vaccine program, said half the 16,402 volunteers were given six doses of two vaccines in 2006 and half were given placebos. They then got regular tests for the AIDS virus for three years. Of those who got placebos, 74 became infected, while only 51 of those who got the vaccines did. Although the difference was small, Dr. Kim said it was statistically significant and meant the vaccine was 31.2 percent effective. Dr. Fauci said that scientists would seldom consider licensing a vaccine less than 70 or 80 percent effective, but he added, “If you have a product that’s even a little bit protective, you want to look at the blood samples and figure out what particular response was effective and direct research from there.” The most confusing aspect of the trial, Dr. Kim said, was that everyone who did become infected developed roughly the same amount of virus in their blood whether they got the vaccine or a placebo. Normally, any vaccine that gives only partial protection — a mismatched flu shot, for example — at least lowers the viral load. That suggests that RV 144 does not produce neutralizing antibodies, as most vaccines do, Dr. Fauci said. Antibodies are long Y-shaped proteins formed by the body that clump onto invading viruses, blocking the surface spikes with which they attach to cells and flagging them for destruction. Instead, he theorized, it might produce “binding antibodies,” which latch onto and empower effector cells, a type of white blood cell attacking the virus. Whatever the vaccine does, he said, it does not seem to mimic the defenses of the rare individuals known to AIDS doctors as “long-term nonprogressors,” who do not get sick even though they are infected. They have low viral loads because they block reproduction in some way that is still mysterious. “If we knew what immune response did it, we’d be able to be a lot more efficient in targeting it,” Dr. Kim said. Also, the RV 144 tested in Thailand was designed to combat the most common strain of the virus circulating in Southeast Asia. Different strains circulate in Africa, the United States and elsewhere, and it is not clear that the vaccine would have similar results, even in modified form. The thousands of Thais chosen were a cross-section of the Thai young adult population, not just high-risk groups like drug injectors or sex workers, Dr. Kim said. One of the substances that were combined to make RV 144 is Alvac-HIV, from Sanofi-Pasteur, a canarypox virus with three AIDS virus genes grafted onto it. Variations of Alvac were tested in France, Thailand, Uganda and the United States; it was found safe but generated little immune response. The other, Aidsvax, was originally made by Genentech and is an engineered version of a protein found on the surface of the AIDS virus; it is grown in a broth of hamster ovary cells. It was tested in Thai drug users in 2003 and also in gay men in North America and Europe; it did not protect them against infection, and Genentech spun off the rights to develop the vaccine. In 2007, two trials of a Merck vaccine in about 4,000 people were stopped early; it not only failed to work but for some men seemed to increase the risk of infection. Combining Alvac and Aidsvax was a hunch by scientists: If one was designed to create antibodies and the other to alert white blood cells, might they work together even if neither worked alone? Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, which pushes for vaccines and other forms of prevention, was enthusiastic about the trial data. “Wow,” he said. “This is a hugely exciting and, frankly, unexpected result. It changes our thinking in ways we hadn’t anticipated.” “We often talk about whether a vaccine is even possible,” he added. “This is not the vaccine that ends the epidemic and says, ‘O.K., let’s move on to something else.’ But it’s a fabulous new step that takes us in a new direction.” Mr. Warren said the finding showed the need for large human trials, expensive as they are. Studies in mice and monkeys have not been good at predicting what would work in people, and small human trials in which researchers test results by looking for antibodies in blood have limited value. Dr. Fauci agreed. “This is not the endgame,” he said. “This is the beginning.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/health/r...rss&emc=rss

BANGKOK, Sept 24 (Bernama) -- Despite being on the run, ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra remains among the richest persons in Thailand, according to the latest Forbes Asia Thailand Rich list. Thaksin remains at number 16 with a wealth of US$390 million, down from $400 million last year. He was ousted in a 2006 coup and convicted in absentia to two years in prison last October for violating conflict-of-interest laws, when his former wife, purchased land from the government. "Over three million Thais have signed a petition presented to Thailand's King requesting his pardon," the magazine said today, adding that Thaksin is among 19 on the list who saw their net worth decline this year. The 77-year-old beverage baron Chaleo Yoovidhya, well known for co-founding the energy drink Red Bull, is Thailand's wealthiest person for the third consecutive time, with net worth staying flat at US$4 billion during the year. In second place is Dhanin Chearavanont, head of agri-business conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Group, one of the world's biggest feed and poultry company who moved two rungs as his wealth soared by a billion dollars to US$3 billion. At number three are descendants of Central Group's founder, Tiang Chirathivat, including families of his three wives and 25 children, with their combined wealth having increased by US$100 million to US$2.9 billion. Other tycoons in the food and agriculture businesses also enjoyed gains in their net worth. Among them are sugar barons Isara Vongkusolkit of Mitr Phol Sugar at number eight (US$900 million) and Khon Kaen Sugar Industry's Nantha Chinthammit at 18th (US$360 million) as well as seafood tycoon Kraisorn Chansiri at 28th spot (US$175 million). Bucking the trend however, was Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi of Thai Beverage, who ranked fourth. His net worth fell to US$2.8 billion from US$3.9 billion last year. The combined wealth of Thailand's 40 richest also saw no change at US$25 billion, said Forbes. It added that the Kingdom's wealthiest have proven to be resilient despite the global economic downturn and the self-inflicted political instability that has seen five Prime Ministers in three years. http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsindex.php?id=442122

Many people want to stay for 60 days at a time when their limit for Visa on Entry is 30 days. They can apply for this at their Thai Embassy or Consulate. During this Fee Waiver, that means there is no fee for this longer entry Visa.

I love my Iphone. Best apps for Thailand? What are your favorites? Mine are: Bangkok SkyTrain Bangkok BTS Bangkok Maps

Palace reports improvement in condition of Thailand's hospitalized 81-year-old king Associated Press 09/23/09 10:45 AM PDT BANGKOK — The royal palace says the health of Thailand's hospitalized 81-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej has improved, with his temperature back to normal and his appetite returning. The palace announced Wednesday night that the king was able to eat more and sleep better, so doctors had reduced the use of antibiotics and glucose drip with which he was being treated. He was admitted to Bangkok's Siriraj Hospital on Saturday night. Officials have not announced the cause of his fever and fatigue. In October 2007, Bhumibol was hospitalized for three weeks with symptoms of a minor stroke. The king is the world's longest-serving monarch. http://www.sfexaminer.com/world/ap/60714592.html

I subscribed to this thread and got the message to my Inbox. Here is what it said: CrazyExpat, smoker has just posted a reply to a topic that you have subscribed to titled "Notifications". The topic can be found here: http://www.thailandvisa.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=170&view=getnewpost There may be more replies to this topic, but only 1 email is sent per board visit for each subscribed topic. This is to limit the amount of mail that is sent to your inbox.

I will check into this. Are you watching specific topics or forums?

I have moved all the recipes to the Recipe section you guys requested. Take a look over there for the recipes.

Done!

Thank you all so much for visiting, joining and participating. We really want to make this a great community and are open to suggestions and help. We opened the site less than 2 weeks ago and we already have 75 verified posters and over 20 that are awaiting validation e-mail confirmation. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! Please spread the word!

This guy is great. Can you post some of his pics as thumbnails here so people can see and be interested in going to the link?

Lets just say, no screw at all.

BANGKOK — Thailand's 81-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-serving monarch, has been hospitalized, the prime minister said Sunday. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva told reporters that doctors at Siriraj Hospital said the king's health gave no cause for concern, but he did not describe the ailment. A hospital spokeswoman confirmed to The Associated Press that the king had been admitted, but gave no further details. She declined to give her name. The Royal Household Bureau, which is in charge of releasing news from the palace, had no immediate statement. The king's health is an extremely sensitive topic in Thailand because of concerns that the succession may not go smoothly. The heir apparent, his son Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, does not yet have the stature or moral authority of his father. In October 2007, the king suffered the symptoms of a minor stroke. Last year, he was unable to make his traditional annual birthday speech. His daughter, Princess Sirindhorn, said he was weak and suffering from bronchitis and inflammation of the esophagus. The king is revered by most Thais, but in recent years the palace has come in for unprecedented, though usually discreet, criticism because of allegations that the king's advisers interfered in politics, including playing a part in inspiring a 2006 military coup that ousted a democratically elected government. Open discussion of the matter is barred by strict lese majeste laws that make criticism of the monarchy punishable by up to 15 years in prison. It had been rumored since late last week that the king had visited the hospital, but the Thai press only reported the matter Sunday. The public television station TPBS reported that the king went to the hospital Saturday night for a checkup on the advice of his doctors. Tables were set up at the hospital for people to write their wishes to the constitutional monarch. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOgnQdKU722tj3NBZgrSPbA1t3bAD9AR1L580

Dear Beer Chang, I have been in Thailand for 7 years and am floored by your post. I can't believe someone would keep excel spreadsheets on the girls. I really cannot. EVERYTHING is OK but blood and scat. They have something for every taste I guess. I have no problem with bars and offing. I actually quite enjoy it. But, to me, this would seem like a bad business move for the owner. Detailed records? Spreadsheets? I have learned a lot today! Thank you.