Lemsta69

It's not very interesting to be honest. I'd prefer to see something like a street race between American muscle cars and a stripped-out Tesla in Ludicrous mode. Can you drum that up please? 😁

I guess you don't fly from the States very often.

How do you figure that given the OP has stated that he was given grief by ill-informed check-in staff on his previous trips?

Section38 app has gone the way of the dodo according to recent reports.

Of course you can mention that newspaper, you're just not allowed to post links to it (the BP's stipulation, not AN's).

you asked for a superb alternative and I gave you one. what the problem is?

True Fast70 SIM, currently around ฿1,500-฿1,599 on Lazada. 12 month SIM, 5G, "full speed", 70GB per month data allowance. Just pop it in to your second SIM slot and Bob's your uncle.

Not gonna happen dude, you're just p1ssing in the wind. Relax and enjoy your life and stop worrying about stuff you can't control. Might as well go and tell a lion to become a vegan and stop eating its prey alive 😅

Why is it that BMs who have been here for almost two decades still ask such basic questions?

What will you pay us for our answers? I don't get out of bed for less than ฿10k.

I arrived in the night time on 1 December 2021 and was released from isolation the following morning. Holiday Inn 24th floor, Bayview room. Hotel is pretty generic being an American chain but the view was across the bay was awesome. The first thing I did after breakfast in the room was go looking for a beer. I walked down the beach to Soi Post Office or thereabouts then went up to The Avenue and out the back to Soi 15. First bar that was open, Korando's, wasn't serving booze but when I got further up the road I noticed that some of the punters looked like they were drinking beer on the sly so I went in and had myself a couple of nice cold Heinekens. Cloud 9 I think it was called, got shut down a few weeks later and Moroccan owner allegedly deported for staying open too late. After that I moved down to the Soi Honey part of Buakhao and found a Norwegian place that was open, serving beer, and who do (did?) a very nice salami and swiss cheese baguette. No 50 baht slop on a plate for me. A few days later I was in Cloud 9 and ironically a well-dressed English chap in a pink polo shirt 😂 suggested that we visit a small bar just around the corner on the Cow that was known to stay open all night behind the shutters and you could even get a plate of spag bol made by the Italian owner if you were desperate for a late night feed. So I ended up spending quite a bit of time at both Cloud 9 and 'The Italian' in my first few weeks in Pattaya after a 7 year absence. I had a great time, even meet a couple of Scottish fellows at the Italian place and they took me on an excursion to Ban Chang where we had fun sneaking under the shutters or through the back door and into some of the bars that were open on the sly. So yeah, no lockdown for me, well except for a few days in self-isolation after I caught Covid in one of the speakeasies (as expected).

They wear cheap drab clothes because they're cheap drab people. That, and they're probably afraid of being called gay if they turn up in anything other than a well worn Singha wife-beater. It'll be a cold day in Hell before I subject myself to such lack of imagination ever again.

Went there once in December 2021 just to see what all the fuss was about. Totally dispiriting experience. Cheap decor, cheap "fallung" in their Pattaya uniform of cheap drab wife-beaters, cheap drab cargo pants and cheap drab shower shoes. My waitress also looked thoroughly dispirited, perhaps because the of the drab black and white Cheap Charlie uniform she was required to wear. No desire to go back and even less desire to interact with the clientele, even if they are all salt of the earth, diamond in the rough types (allegedly).

That's a bad thing, right? 😅

I use agent for extension of non-O. Can mail passport but I like the occasional trip to my beloved Pattaya 💘

The name is wrong, the clientele are wrong and the ambience is wrong. That's the "Soi Bukow" location, I couldn't bring myself to visit the "Jomtiem" branch on my last visit there from Bangkok to do my TM47. Give me Sportsman on Soi 13 or give me death. Or Mama noodles 😂

Yes, that's what I said and what your translate example shows, although you have to click on the Thai audio to actually understand it as the English subtext is unitelligible for most people. I'm assuming that the Thai audio audio is correct or at least as close as possible. The second syllable clearly says with a "W" sound. If I had never seen the garbled official English translation and only heard the audio, if asked I would transliterate it as "Suwannapoom" and not "Suvannapoom" as you stated earlier. There's no "V" sound in there at all so I'm not sure why it is used in the official name, I guess it looks more "dignified", like adding "S" to the end of "Lao" just to confuse everybody. Or so we'll call it "Louse" and sound totally stupid 😂

It's better to have loved and lost...😉

Well at least you're man enough to admit you can't afford the good stuff, unlike Baby Bird who says that cheap street food tastes better than Kobe beef because it all comes out the same way anyway. I can't afford the good stuff either, that is to say I'm not prepared to eat Mama noodles for a month (two?) to make up for the prohibitive cost of a few bits of meat and a decent bottle of wine. I live in Bangkok so there is no end of Japanese joints flogging the primo stuff for a king's ransom. The closest I get is the "Australian Wagyu" cheeseburger at Roadhouse BBQ in Bangkok. That's the best I can offer you if you're in town and it's probably a crossbreed. They do a nice lunch special, I like the seafood chowder for starters then the cheeseburger. Not cheap but not super expensive and definitely a better culinary experience than 50 baht slop on a plate (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Why in God's name would you even eat that muck in the first place? What's wrong with good old steak and potatoes and cookies and milk? Eating bugs and grubs and rice and noodles won't put hairs on your chest.

Boring. I've used a couple of GNU/Linux distros including your precious Mint and found them sorely lacking in many respects. Especially when it comes to using then with a TV or trying to set up a VPN properly. The native tools just don't cut it and the alleged help forums are complete garbage. It was fun for a minute or two to try a few terminal commands but eventually I hit roadblocks that couldn't be solved without a computer science degree or couldn't be solved at all. You keep banging on about how GNU/Linux distros are free and why would you pay for an OS. Yet you can but a Win 10/11 Pro OEM key from a reseller for next to nothing. I'm not an M$/Windoze fanboi but despite its flaws it's still streets ahead of any GNU/Linux-based OS in terms of ease of use and feature-rich third-party software.

Yet the Thais say "Suwannapooom", as you can hear when you click on the audio button in GTranslate.

He doesn't need to as he already knows everything about Thailand even though he never leaves Ubon or Udon or whichever backwater he lives in.............................

In which part of the body is the "bowl" located, near the "spoon"? 😉

Yes. Some drivers will turn the volume down or change the channel from IsaanFM to some foreign garbage because they racially profile me and think I want to listen to Britney Spears (not that there's anything wrong with that.) I ask them politely to change it back to the previous station and turn the volume up. Most times they don't understand why I want to listen to Thai/Isaan music, I guess they've had too many whiny foreigners who insist on playing their own music.