Hal65

We are fortunate to have so many local options in thailand, my favorite so far is Penang Curry and I'm looking forward to trying the Masmala (sp?) curry blend next.

 

Is there a good local store or Thai website that sells foreign spice blends as well? I am finding Indian Curry and Chinese Fice Spice at the stores, but that's it. Curious what other interesting asian blends are out there.

They have so many here! I'm experimenting with them at the moment with soups (trying to shave a few lbs). Knorr vegetable broth cubers were a 5/10, quite bland.

 

I tried a Panag Curry one and loved it.

 

Also on my list:

 

Chinese blend (packed said 72% sugar though!)

Massaman curry

Green curry

Quietest Songkran ever in my 4 years here.

 

Maybe I'm forgetting when it picks up / dies out each day. But at 11:30am there was no music, no water fights, not much of anything really in any of the party streets.

 

Last year there was booming music and never ending water splashing during the daytime around my Buakao apartment. I didn't even need to venture into 2nd road / Beach road to get drenched.

If you suspect a package slip has not been left or there is a sorting error, is there any value in calling the Bang Lamung Post Office or going in person? Or is it a wasted effort with them?

Good to know, will take a look!

Do Thais understand what a Hackintosh is? I want to have one pre-built by a guy at a computer shop in Pattaya.

Are there any places that sell Miso in Pattaya? I've been on the lookout but have some up short.

I'd think a store the size of Walmart would need ground level for the tons of products going in and out. How do Big C and Tesco manage to put an enormous, high volume store on the 2nd floor of so many buildings? Seems they'd need something like a port loading dock to manage their stock room.

49 minutes ago, JSixpack said:

 

Everything is relative. But you're seriously thinking that riding a bicycle w/ no lights in Pattaya in the middle of the night is as safe as riding a car on the same route? Not to say motorbike--at least it would have lights. 

 

Better stick to taxis and baht buses man. Go to bed early.

I would think a car with no lights is much more dangerous. I once saw a motorcycle around that time, also near tuk com. Must have been going 60 km/h and no lights. I could hear it but it took a second of focusing to see it. That guy is going to have a very expensive episode at some point.

 

Bikes are at least slow and off to the side. Except of course, when they're not (as in my case)

35 minutes ago, InMyShadow said:

Next time it might be a truck with a different outcome. Why would any sane person ride a bike at NIGHT in Thailand?

 

There are a couple interesting implication from this post:

 

1) Cars/motorbikes are safe at night

2) Bicycles are more dangerous than cars

 

Not saying I disagree but it would be interesitng to know if either of these is true. I've aeen an accident in Bangkok, and heard the noise of one in Pattaya. For 4 years that's a lot events.

25 minutes ago, balo said:

So you're on a bicycle without lights at 3.30 am , sorry you asked for it. I also ride my bicycle daily here, but I invested in a laser light that warns car drivers at night so they will see me. No guarantees of course, but I would not dare to ride late at night anyway , too many drunk drivers.

 

Where did you get yours from? I assume it looks like this?

 

24 minutes ago, woofwoof said:

 If she's making a right hand turn and her turn signal is on and you want to go straight you should have been on the oppsite side of the car . Your at fault as she is and why would you want to be in a driver's blind spot and you had no lights.

The first sentence you wrote isn't what happened

48 minutes ago, Hupaponics said:

 

I recommend you to take a drive in a car with tinted windows in dark hours. You'll be amazed how difficult it is to see bicycles and motorbikes with no lights.

 

Cheers

 

You're probably right, it does fit how the accident happened.

The irony is that I had a back light too, just not a front one. Well, time to get that fixed today, under the protection of the sun.

In your cases, did the Thais also refuse to give their information? I'm not sure if that is common or not in Thailand.

It was at the south side of Tukcom, I'm going straight and she makes a right into me, starting at a crawl but accelerating.

 

She checks up on me, on the ground. 2 Thais in the area also check up, a guy and girl.

 

Guy thinks my arm is harmed. I flex it. It seems fine.

 

At first the other side sounds reasonable

 

"Sorry! What you want? Hold on I come back"

 

She disappears for 5 minutes. Hit and leave? No, she comes back on foot.

 

We talk. She offers to take me to a shop to fix it. This is 3:30am, I need a Thai to translate her chopped up English.

 

She refuses to give her information though. That sets me off. I'm not willing to hand over my bike to her if that's what she was thinking. I get ready to call the police.

 

She gets angry.

 

"No you not take picture me"

"Ok I tell police you hit me"

 

I check with the other Thais to see if I have backing. Guy says he saw nothing, girl says she turned into me.

 

"You need light on your bicycle!"

 

She's right on this point. Sure, she should have saw me (headlights and a street light were there). But that's no excuse for me not having lights on my bike. At this point I realize this won't be a clean victory if it comes to an actual legal fight.

 

I call the police. An answering person struggles to understand that I'm not on a motorbike. At one point he refuses to take information down from the witness I hand the phone to. He says a police officer may come soon. I am nervous about the non-committal tone.

 

My eye witness tells me she'll be gone for a moment as I discuss the police coming. My heart sinks, I think she's apprehensive about getting involved, but there's nothing I can do. She's gone for 5 minutes and then returns with a cigarette in hand.

 

The lady who hit me is now stuck on a loop:

 

"I not give you my information."

"I care about your body. Not bicycle"

"I take you to shop, right there"

"Why you call police?"

"Ok fine, they check your visa, you leave Thailand"

"I from Melbourne, where you?"

"Why you not ask about my car?"

"Ok I leave now"

 

I was just sitting there, a bit shaken but otherwise quiet. I guess people process stress very differently.

 

At some point she offers 1,000 to settle the matter. It's been 20 minutes and no signs of police coming. I take the 1,000 and put out my hand. She shakes her own hand with "no" and says "I angry with you"

 

I ask "Are you we done then?"

 

She gets stuck on another loop.

 

I thank the Thais and walk 300 meters home (got lucky in that respect) with my bike, that now has a bent handlebar area. Hopefully the bike shop can bend it back and there aren't other problems, we'll see

 

At the 35 minute mark, after I get home, I get a call. The police confirm that it's settled and I have money in hand. I thank them and conclude the episode.

 

 

Lessons learned

 

-- I really should have lights on my bike

 

-- My deepest concern was the Thais would turn on me in support of the other Thai. But as you can see, it didn't happen that way. Ironically the 3 of us were calm and silent, next to this beligerant woman who kept aggressively repeating the same things.

 

-- The police are very slow to respond, at least at this odd hour. One positive is they made damn sure there was no language barrier and I had the money in hand.

 

-- I went back and forth about whether I was right to call the police after she refused to give information. Was I being naively Western in thought? My final call is that calling the police was the right thing to do -- in my specific circumstances. It would have been impossible for an SUV to claim that a bicycle hit it, especially at the angle of damage caused to her car. If I was on a motorbike, this calculus changes drastically. But even then, I had an eye-witness. In a motorbike + no witness situation I think calling the police would have been more of a gamble and possibly a disadvantaged situation based on other reports posted here.

 

-- It was really disturbing that the lady who hit me threatened to deport me repeatedly and wouldn't shut up. Now that it's all over though, I understand them to be idle threats and am glad I did not explode on her myself.

 

-- Had I given the bike to her, or walked it to the shop it would have been interesting to see if they would have fixed it properly. The witness who also translated for me, said that the lady knew the owner. In that case I'd expect an expensive repair to possibly "get missed."

At first i thought a burger flipping robot arm was a goofy example of excess technology. Why not just design the grill to extend upwards and let the patties fall onto a lower deck?

 

But no. The patties would get stuck. And you lose precision. So this really does need a high tech solution.

 

Fascinating now that I think about it. A burger that stays at $1 in 30 years time may cost about .30 in today's money. Now imagine that scale of savings for buying a car, or a condo. Even with the threat of losses in production (jobs), everyone has to be an optimist when you see those reductions in the cost of big ticket consumption.

17 hours ago, Basil B said:

Does it have robots that makes prostitutes redundant??? 

 

Thailand will probably be too rich for sexbots to harm their tourism numbers, especially from the low brow segment which is a small fraction. But imagine some African version of Pattaya in 50 years suddenly going into recession due to sexbots! It will happen, only question is when.

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Yes, a few respected people have been saying similar, but no one that can actually do something is taking any notice.

 

It's not so much that AI will replace the programmers, in a Terminator sort of way, but programming will become unnecessary as a human will tell the AI what it wants the computer/ robot to do and the AI will make it happen instantaneously.

 

I do some programming and the field is actually head in the other direction. Think of it like law, everyone knows the words but at the edge of human knowledge there is still quite a bit of complexity. Programmers will still be needed to develop the things that can not be easily articulated without heavy human/machine understanding ("Give me a cream soda" vs "design this robot to shoot the bad guy, not the hostage")

1 hour ago, simoh1490 said:

Queuing is a Western trait that is still being learned by people in Asian, not everyone fully understands the concept yet so be patient. If you try and point out nicely and politely that there's a queue, I have yet to see any Thai react negatively.

Isn't it intuitive that if one person is waiting behind another, it is unfair to step ahead of that person?

 

Also the Thais seem to know what to do at the big stores. It's the little ones where a percent of them (not a majority) can have trouble

I'm venturing further out onto the back roads of East Pattaya. Dogs at night seem to get much more hostile and aggressive and I have been in tough spots in the city. Having a pack emerge from a farm area at night, no one around at all, would sound like hell.

 

How do you guys deal with dogs on foot? I have heard pepper spray is effective, but also that it is illegal in Thailand. I guess that would rule out biking with a staff as well.

I notice this behavior happens in the convenience stores, less so at a big store. Does anyone have a Thai family member who mentions why the Thais do this? Seems to go against their culture, but what do I know.

4 hours ago, jerry921 said:

There's a little company out of Seattle you might not have heard of that's been doing a bit of experimenting with automated sales for a few years now. They seem to think it's going pretty well so far. Of course what does Amazon know?

Amazon is part of the retail industry. Sales is a profession.

5 minutes ago, bkk6060 said:

A problem I see here is over employment.  The unemployment rate is 1%.  Its a joke you walk in the mall or dept. store and way too many employees doing nothing.  I think the worst place is Home Pro.  Literally 100's of employees in some stores.

You look at something in an aisle and 3 employees are standing behind you. Just annoying for me and of course noone in the entire store speaks English.

If they managed it with smarter business practices, the unemployment rate would probably be near 10% I believe.

So, bring on the machines lets see what happens.

 

I asked about the Homepro overstaffing a couple years ago. Others said the manufacturers send agents to the stores, hence what looks like a massive overstaffing. 

 

Sales is one field with a very low automation risk.