sudo

Going back to the original question, which is why there seems to be so many missionaries here. I believe one of the main reasons is that thailand is surrounded by countries that are hostile to christianity, and here in the north it is easy to travel to their main target countries, while keeping a home base in Chiang Mai.

Burma, Lao and China as far as I know do not allow missionaries to enter their countries, so missionaries to these countries often live here in thailand and travel to and from regularly. This provides numerous advantages, the main one being that they don't have to setup a front to be able to get visas and permission to stay in the hostile countries, and live in fear of their whole family being arrested, etc. So once you factor that in, along with the numerous western schools, churches, food available in Chiang Mai, it makes it an obvious choice for a mission home base.

Now on to the side issue, thats been brought up about the missionaries just living here to benefit themselves. As a christian myself (I'm not a missionary), I too often have trouble trying to stomach some of the behaviour that I see from a small minority of missionaries, but almost all I have met in my shortish time here, live a comfortable yet simple life, and focus their efforts on the communities they are working with.

Jingthing and some of the other self described cynics and 'hopeless cases', I will pray that god will be working in your lives, and that someday you guys might come to understand and believe in Jesus.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/budgie_smugglers

Australian Slang

Thanks Farma

It's a series 14 note. Haven't noticed one before. Probably wouldn't have noticed it either if the guy didn't give me the change slightly suspiciously.

Sudo, can you please describe how the guy gave you the change slightly suspiciously.

Well, he fished 3 notes out of one pocket, checked them closely, then gave them to me to count, then fished another 4 notes out of another pocket and gave them to me and waited for me to count them. Just struck me as a little odd, so when I got back into proper light I inspected the notes more closely, thinking back to this thread about fake baht.

Thanks Farma

It's a series 14 note. Haven't noticed one before. Probably wouldn't have noticed it either if the guy didn't give me the change slightly suspiciously.

Just got given a different looking 100B note from the pizza company delivery guy, is there a website where you can view the security measures to check for?

It doesn't' really look anything like the normal 100B notes, so im thinking it might be a old or maybe special edition one? If its a fake, its not even really trying to look the same as the normal ones.

I was speaking to one of my thai friends the other day, and they said they had joined the Tourist Police, mainly for the reasons of that they provide English teaching and English learning opportunities for free.

Just another angle : )

Perhaps because its only 200B? I always choose to wear my helmet, but the fine has absolutely no influence on that choice whatsoever.

Agreed..the fine needs to be much higher like 2,000B and that will change the behavior of these future brain injury waiting to happen folks.

CB

I think 200B is about right, it represents the average days work for a thai. About the same for speeding fines in australia which average about $80-$120 I think. But maybe they need some sort of demerits system, that stops rich people just accepting the fine. But of course for that to work, the need for a valid licence would need to be enforced, and to do that effectively you would need a portable computer and or radio base that can run the license checks. Doubt thats gonna happen any time soon.

Possibly a good idea would be to hand out 100B vouchers when people pay the fine, that can go towards the cost of purchasing a helmet at a store local store. Might appeal to the Thai sense of getting a bargain?

Just passed a helmet check at the at the start of sutep road (just as your turning off the moat). Incredible at 9.30pm, I've never ever seen one after 5 or 6pm.

Someone must have actually worked out how to get police to do something? Maybe they reduced their wages, so they have no option to fine people to get the money lol

Yeah it was cool, I saw them filming the part on the bridge as I walked past. But I didn't realise it was powder finger until I heard about the new album later.

Pretty good song as well to go with a great film clip

Im not a huge fan of wearing just speedos. Just wondering if board shorts are allowed at the 700 year stadium? I noticed they have a sign saying swimming costumes only. Not sure what that means in thailand. Anyone know?

Yeah the accidents I saw were pretty minor really, just a sideswipe that jammed someone into the side fence, and a tap on the rear that caused a spinout. Both cases the cars involved continued driving after extracting themselves from the barriers, without the need for a safety car.

I didn't spend a lot of time on the dangerous corners and when I did I made sure there was something solid around, like a big tree or some concrete to duck behind if something started heading my way. While the barriers looked solid enough most of the time, it doesn't take much for a car or tyre to skip over them. The danger zones were pretty well marked considering this is thailand, personally I would have made them a bit bigger, but im no racing safety expert. I was a little concerned by the barrels marked with the words "acid" that were in place to cushion wayward cars. I was hoping they were just used barrels that had been filled with water lol.

@khybigv They didn't use the highway at all. It was confined to the north western side of the stadium, the pits were sort of infront of the velladrome. Reasonably small track, but that was good cause u didn't have to wait to long to see the cars again.

I went out there this arvo aswell, I was very surprised at how well it was organised. I didn't get to see the stunt driving, but got to see a number of the races. Pretty cool to have a free event like that, and even the food prices where normal street prices : ) Beats a lot of the sporting events you get in Australia.

I did end up with a headache though after a couple of hours. I think it was the noise of the commentators, being blasted out at the usual thai volumes lol.

Got to see a 2 crashes as well. All in all a pretty good outing.

I recommend people go if it happens again next year.

Nice song.

I assume most people know about this video clip as well, shot in CM

Sure the songthaews are convenient, but arn't they pretty expensive, in local terms?

I haven't caught them very often, but it seems to be 20baht to most places, say for example from nimmenhaimen to thapae. Usually about a 15 min ride, for 20B. So if I local worker wanted to get to and from work work by catching a red bus, then it would cost them almost 2 hours of work to do so (20-30B an hour is roughly a normal wage from what i can work out). Seems pretty high price to me. Commuting in Sydney most people would probably pay about half an hours wage to pay for the bus/train/ferry to and from work. I suppose in Australia where the cost of petrol compared to wages is alot different here and causes the discrepancy. But it still seems like normal Thai people should be a bit more upset about the transport in CM than they are. Do thai people just accept the high price of the red busses and buy a motorbike? and the people that can't afford a motorbike don't matter anyway? Is that the way it is? Or am I missing something?

Thanks for the feedback guys, Singa-Traz I have implemented your suggestion. It now displays, how the tone was calculated.

JohnIrish, I have included some 200 of the 1000 most used words.

I hope to add more words soon, and also I will look at adding support for multiple tone words (multiple syllables).

I haven't included the meaning of the words, I suspect that if someone is using this, then they probably already have a pretty fair idea about the most used 200 or so words.

Please keep the feedback coming. Also please report any tone errors, I introduced a new tone calculator, and while I have tested it as much as I can, there are bound to be a few bugs, because there are so many different possibilities when working out the tones.

Tone Test

I also recommend the IMM hotel (Thapae) (895B a night if you book online.), its in a great location, and the price matches the standard of the rooms nicely. It's a shame that McD's is downstairs instead of a nice thai restaurant, but there are plenty of them around. (3-4 within 200 meters.)

Special rate of Imm Thaphae Hotel, Thailand | hotel budget | hotel in Bangkok

I strongly suggest, learning to read and write, as well as speaking. Imagine if someone told you they were learning english, but they weren't going to bother to learn how to read? How smart would you think they were?

I was thinking the same way about not learning to read until I hit upon that train of thought.

Also being able to read gives you a lot more opportunity to practice, even just riding down the street, im practicing by reading the signs/menus/numberplates/whatever and thinking about what tones they are and stuff. Don't even need a thai speaker to start your practice.

Good luck finding a group.

Any reason you need to go to Lao?

Air asia direct from CM to KL is another option. I think its usually about 300USD return, but if you book further ahead you might get cheaper.

Might be slightly more expensive accommodation/living expenses once your there though. But no visa fee : )

Hey guys,

I found it frustrating that it took me a long time to work out the tones of words that I read. I know all the tone rules, but the time between reading a word that I didn't know and me actually mentally working out the tone was to long. I want it to become natural to see a word, and instantly know what tone it is. So over a couple of hours on a couple of weekends, I created a simple website to help me get better. I think it is helping me get quicker, so I thought I'd share it incase someone else found it useful.

I can't currently post URLs, because I just started using a new account. But if you go to http:// thai-tone-test.heroku.com/ (Take out the space after the http://)

The idea is just to click the correct tone as soon as you can. Then it will show you the next word. This will hopefully test ALL the tone rules, so this is not for beginners. The screen is designed so you can use it on the iPhone mainly, but you can use it on the computer fine, also works fine on an iPad. It works best on the iPhone I think, and you can even add it to your homescreen and it adds a nice picture.

Feel free to suggest new words (include the tones), I would like to eventually build up the word base to about a 1000 or so. Atm there arn't enough of some tone rules and some tone marks, but I havn't really had time to sort it out yet. Also feel free to suggest features, but I wont add any old feature, I would have to want it aswell, and it would have to be pretty easy to do. Atm the next feature for me to add is local caching of the words, so it can be used when you don't have internet access.

It works with firefox, chrome, and safari. Please do not tell me if it doesn't work in IE because I don't care, the solution is to use chrome or firefox.

PS: If you are a user that can post links, please post the proper link below. If you are an admin then, maybe you could give me the ability to post links?

Type in "iphone dev team" into google, and the first result is what you want to read. That blog will have updates about when or if they have been able to crack the 3gs yet and how to do it yourself.

READ EVERYTHING relating to the 3gs on that blog (including every post about 3gs in the archives) so you have a full understanding of where the unlocking is at, and how or if it even works for 3gs atm.

These guys seem to be the main guys working on unlocking, im not aware of any others anyway, everyone else just seems to be trying to sell what these guys give you for free.

Ah sorry, yeah i misread the OP. Another option may be if the landlords computer is not moved around much ie a desktop or laptop that is always used in the one spot. would be to get a extension USB cable, and hang the dongle up as high as you can, the higher you get it the better range it will have. Even just bluetacked a meter or 2 up the wall will probably make a reasonable difference.

Maybe just making a basic antenna would be helpful, my router is in a far corner of our house, so this helps direct the signal somewhat. I found it had about a 10% increase in signal strength after I made one, and if you already have a signal most of the time this should make it strong enough to give you signal all the time. But youd need to ask your landlord if you can put it on their Access point.

To find the plans for one type "Ez-12 Parabolic Reflector Template" into google, the first result is what you want. Sorry I can't post links atm.