Transcript of the above video: 

Well Surely! What are we talking about here? Well first of all, I have heard this a lot here recently from foreigners who quite honestly have had problems with either the Thai Immigration System or in some cases the Thai Legal System or the Criminal System in terms of the Law Enforcement System here in Thailand, and recently I have heard a lot in the vein of "well surely". It usually goes like this: "well surely it should work this way!" Well no and to quote Leslie Nielsen, I can't remember if it's Airplane, or I think it is Airplane, "don't call me Shirley."  

Hey all joking aside, foreigners need to put away their preconceived notions of how Legal Systems work, Immigration Systems work or Law Enforcement works when you get to Thailand. Yes there are some similarities with the rest of the world but as we have discussed in other videos, Thailand's legal system for example doesn't have notions of what we call 'equity' in the Common Law vernacular and what we are talking about there is notions of fairness which from the time of Henry VIII coming down to the present, have been sort of inextricably linked. They have sort of been wound into American jurisprudence. That doesn't exist in Thailand. Again, I am not a Thai practitioner; I can't comment on the deep nuances of Thai Law. but what I can say from a Comparative Law standpoint is where you have the notion of equity in one system and only the notion of law in another system, you are going to be looking at a very different type of system. Meanwhile Thailand doesn't operate an adversarial legal system the same way that Common Law jurisdictions do, where one person has their position, the other person has their position, and they sort of use the trial in whatever capacity it is, be it Criminal, Civil, whatever, to hash out what the truth is. Thailand utilizes an Inquisitorial System whereby they are simply trying to figure out the truth. These are two very different systems. 

Meanwhile, the judicial system works differently here than in Thailand and it is just something that people need to understand when they are dealing with the legal system here, that there is “surely” nothing to presume. That is the thing to understand. The Thai system is what it is; it operates the way that it does. If you have issues with the legal system, be it in a Civil, Criminal or even in an Immigration context, you need to understand that these are simply prerogatives and practices that have operated here in Thailand for quite a long time. Again there is no point in looking at it as "is this system better than that system?" No there's no point in looking at it that way. It is simply a matter this is the way things are done in the system here in Thailand; they may be different from elsewhere, that doesn't make them better, that doesn't make it worse, it's just different.