Kostia @ 30

There are some pretty good deals on tailoring in Thailand, but many of the ads are very deceptive, especially in Bangkok. For instance, while you will probably be measured for your dresses in the tailor shop, by a professional seeming tailor, almost all of the actual tailoring work in Bangkok is conducted in sweatshop style factories. Many of the fabrics are misleadingly labelled. You also have to be very very resistant to (often valueless) upsells, or what you thought was going to be a $200 purchase can end up at many multiples of that.

Then there are the places that ask for money up front ("just a small percentage"), then either vanish, or simply seem to have never heard of you the next day.

If you want to take advantage of tailor-tourism in Thailand (not a good enough reason to visit, but it's a fantastic country for tourism otherwise, so there's plenty of other reasons to go) I recommend looking for a tailor in Chiang Mai, or in one of the other regional capitals, or even in a smaller town, rather than trying to sort the genuine from the conniving in Bangkok.

I was in Thailand in January, and most signs were still in dollars, many stores had signs in both dollars and euros's. (I was also in Cambodia, where the US Dollar seems to be the defacto national currency, which was weird, but is probably another story.)

If this article is factual, then it seems like a very rapid change, and the tourist season explanation offered above does seem much more plausible.

I think with just a few more tentacles, it'll be a dead ringer for Great Cthulhu. Which would explain alot about the current Republican party, come to think about it.