Wow! That's a lot of information! Thank you very much. Ideally, the best moment to visit Thailand for me would be during summer.
Regarding the scam of tourist, we have our fair share of problem, trust me. Living here, I have never experienced them first hand because of course I'm not the target, and usually i know how to deal with strangers approaching to me in streets, but for foreigners it can be pretty confusing. What helps here is the fact that police usually isn't corrupt and policemen who have an agreement with criminals are almost unheard of (of course we also have corrupt policemen but they aren't corrupted by scammers). The golden rule of the tourist should be never pay attention to someone who you haven't talked first, and be wary in every other case. Especially don't accept help, neither help anyone. Worst places here are train stations and airports, and thing get worse around big cities, in other places you are pretty safe.
Mafia here actually is practically invisible. They do their work mainly corrupting the politicians, asking money from the retailers, selling drugs, buying companies. There's nothing a tourist has to worry about, at least in Italy. But smaller scam can be annoying!