jerrylee

New to living in Bangkok. Will soon need to buy some software, but I want to buy REAL software, not pirated. Where do you all prefer to shop for things like that?

contact software distributors and order direct using courier service

Buy a Mac for your daughters and turn on "Parental Controls".

I'll second this good advice.

The parents need to dig up all the interesting, meaningful and exciting sites for you kids,

you cant expect kids to google themselves, and the WWW is not childrens daycare?

Hi......like many other expats, I am searching for an alternative to the insanity that Thailand presents, along with its anti-foreigner visa and business rules (and, no, I don't have a visa problem in Thailand).

Penang, Malaysia is catching my eye. I would like to hear from expats--especially those with experience living in both Thailand and Malaysia--what it is like living in Penang.

Any input on lifestyle, safety, schools, beaches, malls, housing (types/costs), food, visas, nightlife, and xenophobia (anti-Western attitudes) would be appreciated.

Thanks.

The Chinese, Indians and Malays don't mix, they just tolerate each other with pent-up anger, and sometimes even fear.

Because of the religion thing the women can avoid using make-ups or keeping their figures in shape as its all covered-up ...

The upside for Penang - Georgetown is world heritage site, if they do it right! the new tourist route will be Penang, Angkor, Hailong Bay and by-passes LOS.

Hi All

I am looking at setting up a low speed leased line 64Kbps (not internet connected or vpn) between 2 offices approximately 10 Kms apart in Bangkok. Can anyone suggest any good telecommunication companies and would anyone have any idea on price?

Thanks

You'll need a private communication line?

Have this persistent shoulder pain and was wondering if there is anyone out there that knows of an acupuncturist, chiropractor etc that could help. I went to Ram and was told to just take painkillers......I am looking for an alternative..

Thankyou in advance

You'll need to differentiate between muscular pain and carpel tunnel syndrome induced effects.

Examine and adjust your daily postures, avoid repetitive actions such as working over computers,

examine and adjust the ergonomics of your furniture setup, height of chair, lumbar support, etc.

Most tables and worktops are suitable to eat on and not meant for computer keyboards,

this raises our arms while typing and causes more stress on the shoulders ...

Accupunture will give pain relief within minutes. Talk to your doctor, they have visiting accupunturists at the big hospitals.

Hello all.

I was hoping that you can help.

I will be visiting Bkk shortly and am looking for good places that would be both suitable and fun for a 5 year old.

Can you please help.......

please add to this list as these are the only two places I can think of, not knowing BKK.

1) suan siam

2) dreamworld

Thanks slippery

Ancient City - Muang Boran - <a>http://www.ancientcity.com/?q=/en/index </a>

a short trip out of Bangkok, a step back in time, well worth a day or even two ...

Hi,

I'm planning a trip Chiang Mai to learn (beginner) Thai in December for a couple of months. My family is originally from Issan, so I'm able to speak conversational Laotian/Issan. Are there large poplations of Laotians living in Chiang Mai? Would it be difficult for a westernized twenty-something year old to find someone to do a language exchange with?

(Not to tout my own horn, but I'm also fluent in Mandarin, are there are a lot of Mandarin speakers in Chiang Mai as well?)

Thanks

Chiangmai gets packed with chinese tourists during golden week, and they're also into learning golf, tennis, extreme sports, eco tourisim, elephants and so on ...

From the States, I like to look at a few dozen models of computers before choosing one. Doesn't seem very possible at Pantip. Yesterday I tried looking at Fortune Plaza. Not impressed there either.

I will be looking for an HP computer in about 2 months. Any good alternative "show room" type of stores?

I have yet to see View Sonic monitors. Are they available here?

I do believe that HP users have global citizenship ?

http://welcome.hp.com/country/th/en/welcome.html#Product

(which Chinese lacks, but Japanese has)

No true, lots of the abbreviations now have become chinese language symbols

An English friend is the proud father of an eight month Thai born boy and is thinking about his educational future.

He's keen to ensure his son gets a good start at a primary school which specialises in quality English language classes as well as Thai.

Can anyone recommend a suitable, presumably private, school in and around Udon Thani?

He'll also need to know what kind of fees would apply.

I suppose the options could be an integrated (English/Thai) scholl, or a quality Thai school & seek external English classes.

The wife and child currently live in a village in Isaan and would need to move to a suitable apartment or home close to school.

Are apartments or homes expensive to lease in Udon Thani?

Any assistance is appreciated.

cheers.

There's Don Bosco Withaya one of the better ones and couple other Christian Schools in Udon Thani.

There's also no problem to rent a farang house for Bht 10-12,000- p.m. however few kilo out of ring road,

but IMHO if one has to rent - you'll get much better deals in places like Chiangmai and its a lot prettier?

Yes, they do teach English in primary schools, according to thai standards, there's no understanding to the requirements of bi-cultured students, and real teaching starts 2 years later than rest of the world, there's hardly any equipment or apparatus in playschool/kindergarten - they sleep on the floor and watch TV, they get to eat issan food for lunch, and the teachers will tell the kid that farang spaghetti are like worms and ugly to eat !!. Its backwards and far from adequate, statistics shows that Issan graduates working or studying in Bangkok are from Khon Khaen and not Udon Thani.

For the above reasons, my american neighbour have bought a second house in Rangsit, and will move with his seven year old to Bangkok. Actually, to give you an idea, the newer International Schools are outside of Bangkok in Chonburi, Eastern Seaboard, such as ISE or Northbridge and they even have Japanese food on the lunch menu and mosts teachers are expats ... they have networked computers that 5 year olds can learn on! Softwares, eLearnings ...

I need more storage for my laptop.

I'm thinking of getting a 1.0 TB or 1.5 TB external USB hard drive. My PC has a FireWire 400 port, but my other 3 drives work OK on USB, so I'm happy to stick with USB.

I will be upgrading the lap top to a desktop in about 6 months, so whatever disk I buy now I want to ultimately install internally in the desktop. This may influence the type of drive I get now as I would want to get the best performance out of it when it's in the desktop and not connected by USB.

I've seen some very nasty reviews of Seagate's 1.5 TB disk that they use in the "FreeAgent" product, but hopefully the problems only relate to revision 11 of the disk and the problems have all been fixed.

However, it does add a level of uncertainty when buying one of these... I'd have to demand to see the drive to check what revision it was before buying it. So if there's something better out there anyway, it would be simpler just to forget about Seagates for now.

I've also looked at "My Passport" & "My Book" (Western Digital), "Buffalo Drive Station" (Buffalo drive), and "WD Elements" (Western Digital).

Any recommendations?

Firewire and not Seagate, Western is better.

You can get stir fried or sizzling iron pan black pepper dishes in many, many THAI restaurants. One dish I really miss that you didn't mention are BLACK BEAN SAUCE dishes. You also forget egg foo young and shrimp in lobster sauce.

The peppers here are good, but the local black beans are not fermented long enough, so therefore hard and less tasty.

If, like me, you are a fan of Westernized Chinese food (eg. Kung Pao Chicken, Broccoli Beef, Sweet & Sour) please take the poll/survey and share your answers to the following questions of mine:

1) Where in Bangkok might I be able to find such Americanized-Chinese food? Any clean and convenient places?

2) Do you prefer truly authentic Chinese food -OR- the the modified tastes that you'd find in Chinese restaurants in the US and Europe?

3) Would Chinese food be better as fast food/takeout -OR- sit down and dine-in restaurant

4) Would you travel across town for the sole purpose of eating such food in a clean and comfortable Chinese restaurant similar to "Panda Express"?

5) If so, would you dine alone or with friends, colleagues, family? Do you have any local Thai friends who might appreciate such food?

Thanks for your help!

The Americanized chinese food that I've seen in the states were flourescent in colour, and they had things like pot-stickers, well gyoza and guizi are eaten everyday, but few will sell under pot-stickers, so answer is that you probably wont find the same americanized versions elsewhere.

Chinese food in say Vancouver uses better standard beef, salmon etc. food in Hong Kong or China uses authentic/original soy-sauces, vinegars, the flavouring ingredients are different, hongkong now is into a lot more nouveou/fusion kind of dishes. Chinese food in Bangkok will never be same as in china, e.g. ducks in china are forced fed and raised in cold climates, real Peking ducks are dried by the gobi desert wind.

Theres great chinese food for breakfast soy bean milk (sweet or savoury), fried bread (phad tong guo) congees of various condiment, steamed rice sheets rolled up, and of course pots of hot tea.

Lunches - bbq pork/duck/suckling pig over rice, wonton noodles, these can even be takeaway boxes or fast-food sit downs, the famous "yung kee" roast duck restaurant in Hongkong sellout 1,000 lunch boxes each day. It's good that one can buy takeaways at good restaurants.

Chinese foods that calls for high temperature cooking/steaming are often better at the streets, while foods that calls for special ingredients or preparations are better in restaurants, chinese restaurants dont get to survive if they're not good at something?

Sathorn Area - Ivory Palace - The Bangkok Club, very good dim-sum

Sukhumvit Area - Inside Soi to Ambassador Hotel - ex hongkong chef of Ambassador - good noodles,

Sui Sin - The Landmark Hotel - well known for sunday dim-sum lunches

Soi Thonglor - Mandarin - small restaurant. Best roast duck in the mango, weekend evenings always full of "celebrities".

Every year in Bangkok, they fly in some chinese cook to do a tour of all the chinese restaurants at the hotels, unfortunately, they only advertise about these in the thai language newspapers.

outside of Bangkok, I've found good chinese cooking in Lampang, and up in Mae Salong, Chiangrai.

Chinese dinners are more enjoyable with a large group of friends, then you get to order more dishes to try, the thai-chinese descendants of Hainan or Shantau dont have knowledge of the finner city cuisines.

I went back in the archives and found posts about this, but when I mentioned the recommendations to my SO there was a quizzical look and a why would you go to an eye hospital for a regular eye exam. So for clarification --

It appears that many think the best place to have a thorough and professional eye exam in Bangkok is the Rutnin Eye Hospital.

Then take the prescription to one of the Top Charoen Optical shops for the glasses themselves.

Thoughts?

Accuracy and vision health overrides price.

I've worned glasses for 50 years, all the pairs cut in thailand were problematic, I've tried various shops and something about Thai accuracy that they can't get the centering correct (which makes you dizzy)- they do stupid things like taking the centering measurements off the old frames to be used on a new ones etc.!, this part of the process happens at the shop and not at the hospital, also it was difficult to choose frames, they tend to stock brandnames frames of smaller sizes that fits thai faces and not the wider size ones.

Best results in my lifetimes were from Vancouver, B.C., Hong Kong and Singapore.

.. the range of new generation plastic lenses in Vancouver was amazing - it's about coatings,

My current "light weight" titanium frames have lasted 8 years of daily wear and have have not distorted out of shape

Hi,

if you have had success in selling your land (or house) in Thailand, please can you let me know how you went about it.

Word of mouth, local ads, internet, employing an estate agency...? What is the most effective way of selling land here??

Thank you very much for your advice,

James

Bangkok Post or maybe also the Nation

If one buys a condo unit and wants to modify the single unit design - are there rules and laws to follow? I imagine interior design changes must follow some safe building code and exterior must not detract from the overall appearance of the condo building? Also must building construction noise to neighbors follow any legal guidelines? Who controls this if anyone?

The contractor is supposed to put up a deposit bond against any damage to public properties, such as lifts, stairways etc., and to provide photocopies of ID cards of each workers, so check with management first and inform your contractor of the restrictions and conditions, all works can only be conducted between 9 and 5, building materials and debris cannot be placed in public areas.

I'm in a small town in Issan, here on a retirement extension. The choice of banks in town is Kasikorn and the Government Bank, and I use Kasikorn. My overseas credit card expires in September, and I don't know if they'll renew it based on my move to Thailand. I applied for a credit card at Kasikorn last month, giving them all the information required/requested: copies of passport, yellow tambien baan, US social security, private insurance pension, bank references. I bring in over a million baht a year in Kasikorn; that's not a lot of money for TV folks, I know...but it's a heck of a lot of money here. Yesterday, the bank calls my wife. They are willing to give me a credit card if I can show them a work permit (yeah, right, on retirement) and place in a separate savings account, frozen for one year, the amount of credit on the credit card - the princely sum of 30,000 baht. Seems to me that's not a credit card, it becomes a debit card. And for 30k baht, I can't even pay for the 10 days' of rental car when I visit the States in 2 months! Never mind the air fare. I asked my wife if I were a Thai showing that income, would they only offer me 30K credit against 30K frozen funds...and she just laughed, no, they would extend lots of credit.

Ok, so this is just a rant. Rant over. Guess I'll contact my existing card's people and see if they will simply extend it. Planned on doing that anyway, but wanted a plan B. That certainly won't happen at Kasikorn.

Try American Express Thailand, I had one issued back in '93 and thats when i was living in bangkok.

I'm about to take in in again for the 3 LCD replacement. Also had the DVD/CD drive replaced and a couple trips back for power supply problems.

Least they can do is to change the motherboard, dealers in LOS are tricky and they never hold stock ( lots of grey market stuffs ) - think you should contact Apple Center directly ..

Noppadol Lertussavavivat, General Manager

[email protected]

................................................

Macintosh Center at Siam Discovery Center

989 Siam Discovery Center, Room 404, 4th Floor, Rama 1 Rd., Bangkok 10330, Thailand.

Working Hours: 10.30-19.30 hrs. (every day) Tel. 0-2658-0476-7

My iMac has been in the repair shop 5 times and the 1 year guarantee is about to expire.

Any recommendations regarding extending the warranty?

Thanks.

5 times within first year sounds like a lemon to me,

was it same problem each time, and do you know what was repaired/replaced?

sure its been asked... but info changes...

recommends for best dentist/ facilities in BKK for general work...

thanks

The Bangkok Hospital Dental Center -

you can choose the doctor or team of doctors online

http://www.bangkokhospital.com/eng/Bkk_Dental.aspx

In the process of having a home built.Had a contract drawn up initially which gave a time-frame(180 days)and certain financial penalty clauses if this time-frame wasn't met(1250B per day).

We are now 12 weeks overdue,the builders have buggered off,basically because i've refused to give them the final payment(the contract states the payment is to be given when house is 100% complete).At present the house is about 85/90% complete.

Also the contract states only quality materials are to be used,on-site evidence suggests otherwise.

I'm curious to know has anyone taken legal action under similar circumstances,and if so what was the outcome/costs involved?

The golden rules of construction contracting: "On Time", "On Budget" and "To Specs" -

the client can have any two (2) of the conditions - but <b>NEVER</b> all three,

on time and budget but not to specs?

on budget and to specs but not on time?

to specs and on time but not on budget?

I have to check in for a flight on United tomorrow and I don't want my gf, who will be going to the airport with me, to know my destination city. Do the check in counters have the names of the destination city flashing above them? I can print my e-ticket in my house... but can anyone think of good excuses to prevent her from accompanying me to the check-in counter?? (e.g., go change my money for me, go get a seat at the restaurant, i don't want you to have to stand in line, etc)

TG has special e-ticket checkin counters/section, dont know about other airlines.

Is raising land necessary when building a house? What about a fence to keep the raised land from flowing away due to rain? Just wondering because this is what my wife wants me to pay for.

Its' standard practice to raise the land when they're building on a "rice-field" or the road was raised when they paved it.

This presents numerous problems such as -

taking 2 years for the refill to settle or the structure will subside,

origin of refill soil - jungle soil spreads termites and insects,

integrity of contractors not to include rubbish during the fill,

proper perimeter drainage on stable foundation,

you often see these old house and gardens in rural town centers and the

whole town and roads are half a metre higher around it, all those

antique sunken properties are not on raised grounds...

moat & bridges ?

I am living in Chiang Mai but travel sometime thru the Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpar airports. Does anyone know if I can purchase an affordable airline ticket at the Hong Kong or K.L airports to fly to a viriety of places in Asia? I know I can purchase cheap tickets like this at the Chiang Mai and Suvarnabhumi airports.

Thank You kindly

Joe

Of course you can, most airlines have these last minute standby prices, just got to take your chances.

I have this old lady that does accupunture in Udon Thani for 250 bht, but I believe that they have flying doctors that visits the lights of St. Paulo, Bangkok Hospitals etc. all over thailand on a weekly basis.