There were plenty in Bangkok and Vietnam when I was there in October but nothing in comparison to how many are in the UAE. Every resort was packed full of them
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After traveling all day from Samui I arrived at Nai Han in the dark. There were no lights anywhere, not even a moon. I stumbled around in the dark and found a fishing hut. I crawled in, dug a hole curled up and went to sleep. In the morning l was surprised to find that there were lots of people walking up down the beach, and there was a lean-to restaurant not more than 20 m away. I spent 6 weeks sleeping on the actual sand of Nai Han beach in early 1977, during which l experienced my first Songkran. I was living for $2 or so a day, just paying for meals. This was long before the yacht club was built. We had to do visa runs to the immigration office in Bkk. At one stage a guy come back and told us there had been an attempted coup (sound familiar?) over the weekend. Isolated on the beach we had not heard a thing. I remember thinking that the world could have come to amend and we wouldnât have known, but decided that if the world had come to an end, being on a tropical beach in Thailand was as good a place as any to be.
I now have an ex-trainee from the Philippines who lives on Nai Han with her 3 or 4 dogs.
A couple of people l met hired a fishing boat to take them to one of the outer islands, Ko Phi Phi. This was in the days when there was no one there. They went into Phuket town to buy food to take with them and like myself were simply going to sleep on the beach and hope the fishing boat didnât forget to pick them up. I donât have many regrets from my travels, but l should have gone with them when l had that chance.
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Way overtime. Chinese taking the absolute â â â â imao.
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It makes sense to me that data recovery was important.
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Letâs face it⊠itâs been a very embarrassing three years for them on so many levels. They are their own worst enemy though.
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Pretty sure this also embarrassing for the US.
They blocked it from detecting and transmitting data, scanned it closely and learnt substantial valuable information, shot it down over water so it doesnât harm civilians and can be recovered.
Seems a pretty solid approach to me.
Iâd assume future balloons will be shot down over the water on the west coast.
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Assuming I believe all of that is true (I meanâŠIâm not saying itâs Not true, Iâm just saying I know what I would say if I was in charge of comms on this), the transgression, the au-Farking-dacity, on its own is embarrassing.
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Iâll throw an interesting idea back at you. The main reason to shoot it down was domestic politics. People had seen the balloon, so action needed to be taken. Previous balloons hadnât been seen by the public.
If it had been a legitimate security threat the military would have advocated for an immediate strike, rather than hitting it in the 12 mile band of territorial waters. That they asked Biden for the delay says they werenât overly fussed.
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No, I get that.
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The timing is interesting. If the goal was to shoot it down all along, then why wait a couple of days, but I guess if they were able to hack into it first then it makes sense.
Iâm kinda disappointed a bunch of rubes didnât try to shoot it themselves and discover what a pointless, futile and dangerous idea it was. Oh well.
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Theyâre never going to not say that, are they?
I was hoping it was going to end up in Florida
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Think of all the important things they couldâve learned about Montana?
Such asâŠ
uuhhhâŠ
Of all the states in the USA, Montana is one of them.
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