Make sure your vest is made outside of Thailand.

Here is something else anyone thinking of coming to Thailand should consider--Thailand has no real consumer protection laws, something I've learned the hard way.

Read on:

1. A 'Sony' portable CD player I bought at a bus station for almost 50 US bucks lasted about 2 hours before burning out. Culprit: Defective capacitor. Could I return it for an exchange? Nope.

2. An L.A. Bicycle-brand mountain bike I bought has needed two new tubes and five patches after riding it only about 200 miles. Culprit: paper-thin OEM tires.

3. A Nokia phone I bought my fiance brand-new lasted two weeks before the speaker failed. Luckily, it was under warranty and was repaired for free.

4. A Thai-made pair of shoes I bought three weeks ago for almost twenty bucks are already coming apart. Can I take them back for an exchange or refund? HA! A similiar pair of shoes I bought at Pay-Less in the USA are still going strong after about four years.

5. A pair of sneakers my fiance bought for about five bucks lasted maybe 7 days before the side split out of one of the shoes.

6. Last October, a brand-new Toyota car began to give a lady in Bangkok problems even before she left the dealer's lot with it. The problems got steadily worse, but the dealer refused to fix the car. The lady protested by taking a sledge-hammer to it in a highly-publicized act to 'force' Toyota to repair the piece of junk. It was all in the Bangkok Post and on the T.V news. Toyota caved from the bad publicity and gave her a refund. She bought a Honda imported from Japan.

Thailand is a dumping ground for inferior imports. Domestically, the situation isn't any better. As piss-poor as the education system here is, I wouldn't ride the subway or the skytrain in Bangkok if not for this fact: both were designed and built by engineering firms from Germany and Japan. Thais, with their ##-brains, were left out of the process, thank God.

More two cents for your piggy-banks.