Gsxrnz

I see the anti-racist racists are out in force today.

On topic - when paying for anything at a market stall in any country including your own, show the money being tendered but do not hand it over, allow the stallholder to gather change from their bag/pocket, exchange your money for the change.

I thought this was on page 1 of Lonely Planet?

Corner of Pattaya Klang and Beach road, southern side.

Not sure what it's called, but it specialises in educational and technical books in multi languages.

You know it's cold when the Thais ride their scooters slower to cut down on the wind-chill factor.

OP, listen to your GF, she's the proverbial Roman in Rome and knows a dam_n site more than you. The percentage thing doesn't work here, so forget your methodology.

Here's my general procedure:

Noodle Stalls and similar - 0

Average Restaurants - 20-40B, zero if they piss you off.

Bar Beer - 20B, zero if they piss you off.

GoGo - 20B for the bar, up to you for the girls that talks to you. Don't be a two week millionaire.

Barber - 0-20B. Zero if they cock it up.

Fancy Restaurant - up to you, but many will have a service charge included anyway. Zero if they piss you off.

MB Taxi - 0

Roadside bottled petrol - 0

Gas Station - 0 (unless the chick that washes the windows gives you a really big smile, then 20B)

Taxi from airport - 0-100, zero if he pisses you off.

Fuji and similar - 0 because they already have a service charge

McD and BK - 0, but put the coins in the donation box

Gardener - 0

Golf Caddy - 300B for 18 holes

General R&M dudes - negotiate the fee before they start, 0 tip unless they do something exceptional.

Massage - I don't do them, but I guess 50-100 is in the range. Zero if they piss you off.

Security Dude - for ensuring you always have a good car park, for lugging your golf clubs to the elevator, for making sure he knows your mates and allows them access, and for generally watching your back - a 6 pack every month, and a 24 pack at Christmas.

Anybody who goes "above and beyond" and saves you a lot of misery - 100B

OP, Can you spot the trend?

Newbies should realise that those members who have posted a lot have read zillions of topics and replies and over a period have built up a lot of information within their grey cells and will hope to pass that info on.

Take me for instance, if you are rebuilding a Pontiac V8 engine, I am your man.............

not to mention fine tuning SU carburettors

Ah a jag man.....at last we have something in common

Ah....but a Jag would have SU Carburetters, both being from the land of Blighty an' all.

I have Thai friends that grew up in the UK. They have Thai families and connections, including business connection and family, back here. Yet the ones from my generation (40s) and below speak Thai with a poor accent (Thais here pick up on it straight away - even I can hear it) and can not read or write at all. They simply have not needed to - in fact one of them, a good friend since my school days, is actively learning how to read, write and speak Mandarin - but not Thai, his parents' native tongue!

I remember about a year ago there was an article here on TV about the HiSo kids going to English programs at school not being able to speak proper Thai.

Maybe it's time Thais modernized the language. Vietnamese seem to do fine with their roman alphabet and tone marks. And spaces between the words.

I recently heard a couple of Luek Krung kids (8 or 10 years old) speaking perfect strong northern Yorkshire accented English on a viewing deck of Central Plaza - (Ay oop Dud, tha' can see f' miles 'n miles art t' see from oop eer can't tha'). And they spoke Thai with a heavy Yorkshire accent that I had to really concentrate to understand even a few words, as did their Thai Mother by all accounts.

They therefore couldn't speak English or Thai.

Just don't open "iffy" emails or attachments, keep your security software up to date and functioning at its highest level, don't use public computers, keep off FB or any other social type sites that interact with each other or have potential to pass on viruses, change your bank passwords frequently, put transaction value limits on your internet banking, get sms alerts if possible, check your balance daily, don't visit dodgy websites, enable pop-up blocker, set security to disallow all cookies.

Have I missed anything?

I'm reasonably well grounded, so don 't feel the need to earth myself. But if I was so inclined I'd do it with some panache, as is my usual style.

Suggest the OP consider the following option - gold being an even better electrical conductor than copper. And this is way cooler IMHO

Yep, traffic lights will definitely work at that intersection. Traffic will back up all the way to Pattaya Klang on 2nd Road, and that's before the BIB at the corner decides he can do a better job and start playing with the sequence.

I guarantee that Beach Road will not have a single car on it, whole 2nd Road and Naklua will be gridlocked.

Why do the BIB continually try to manipulate traffic with adhoc barriers, closing off U-Turns and the like. They defeat the purpose of smooth traffic flow in most cases.

Number 20 is me - not being able to read the labels at the shop. The only product I recognise for sure is Super Glue.

A bank cannot reverse an interbank transaction at the simple request of a customer, or at its own whim. If that were possible, the whole worldwide banking structure would be in a shambles.

Once cleared funds are transferred, it's a done deal.

There is a process for making a request for a reversal in the case of an error. If the customer makes a mistake and funds go to an uninvolved third party, the receiver of the funds must be asked for permission to reverse. If the receiver refuses, then a charge of theft can be lodged against the receiver through the police. Neither bank has any liability or responsibility, although most would assist their customer if practical. (They would in NZ, not sure about the rest of the world.)

If the bank make a mistake and send funds to the wrong customer, then the sending bank is liable for the loss and must reimburse the sender and claim from the receiving bank/customer. That is provided that the sender provided correct details to the bank, and bank made the balls up.

Edit: I'm talking about normal transactions. No doubt in the case of proceeds from crimes, laundered money etc, than each country will have it's own laws about reversing/recovering cash.

Is that a lit area of beach at night? Gotta be careful.

Yes it's well lit, and in the day and evening it's quite a busy tourist area. But at 3:30am all the restaurants are closed and is usually populated by ladyboys, ladies of the night, and their prospective customers. It's also a popular place for Thais to hang out a bit further south, blast music from their trucks and generally party. There are also a few resident Thais (and a few Westerners) who seem to live on the beach as down and outs in that area around Soi 2 - Chang is the basic diet.

Cannot draw any conclusions as to why he got assaulted, but I would be reluctant to walk that area anything past 1:00am when it starts to quiet down. Even riding a bike you risk ladyboys actually following you on their bikes and doing the "I go with you" pickup line.

Just hang on a bit...will hit 60=£1...VERY VERY SOON

I hope not - I just transferred 12,000 quid and got about 52.5 to the pound.

(Only joking - I hope it does get weaker and I'll Xfer some more )

Edit:

Amazed by the speed of the SWIFT transfer - 22 hours!

when i was living in the U.S. i received "same day" SWIFT transfers from my bank in Singapore.

I can do a little better. On Monday I emailed my bank in NZ with an IMT request at 8am Thai time. Got a phone call from them confirming the request (normal checking procedure) at 8:30am. Was driving to golf at 9:12am and got a confirmation sms from Kbank that the money was in the bank.

One hour and 12 minutes from start to finish but that's the fastest ever. I guess the 6 hour time differential is advantageous, but to be fair I nearly always get the cash the same day as long as I get my request to NZ before 3pm NZ time, being 9am Thai time. That gives Kbank nearly a whole business day to process.

Gathers

Because of the numerous blanks or grey areas in the story that you are not prepared to discuss I was thinking about what you wrote in post-53

“ Normal 10 baht bus ride. I paid 10. He demanded 20. I only said mai chi sip and walked away.”

Perhaps he interpreted your gesture of walking away as “ take it or leave it “ whereas if you had just spent a few extra seconds explaining where you had got on and why he was asking you to pay more now than what you normally pay he may have backed off? There must have been something in the attitude you conveyed to him that set him off.

OP said, "I am not pissing. 10!" and didn't use khrap. Mai chai means 'no, it isn't' [in this case]. Mai chi means 'I am not pissing' or 'I didn't piss' or any other tense.

Could that have been what really annoyed the driver? Or the failure to use khrap. It really does make a difference.

The OP simply mis-transliterated "Chai" and spelt it "chi". I'm sure he said Mai Chai and pronounced correctly meaning No.

I doubt the OP would know the Thai word for urinate/piss "chee" as you are suggesting.

And if he did somehow say "I'm not pissing", I doubt if adding the kap/khrap would have endeared him to the driver in any way.

As said, injectors failing at 70k is verging on ridiculous. There's bound to be some other contributing factor. Get it checked by a decent mechanic with the right equipment.

At worst, get them taken out by a mechanic that is prepared to check seals etc and not just do a swap out of the injectors. If the seals are at fault, it would pay to replace all seals at the same time as a preventative measure.

Any auto accessory place on the side of the road or at a Tesco or Big C car park will have them. Can probably match the colour or just plastic chrome.

They'll have the options for indicator lights as well, and they're well worth considering. They make it a lot easier for motorcyclists that hang off your rear quarter to see that you're indicating. Often they ride in a position where they can't see the rear lights or the side lights in front of the drivers door, but they'll see the ones on the mirrors as that's where they're focused on looking.

Got some fitted to my Vigo and noticed that the near miss ratio of bikes and cars has reduced considerably.

Gsxrnz - he's having a not-so-subtle dig at Jingthing and his misadventures with baht buses. See JT's most recent post.

High season tip to stay safe? Wear a shirt and I won't direct my most evil sneer at you, you pot-gutted, matty haired, drunken slob.

Or fart in your general direction.

Um.......yeah, maybe my ironic comment about the Jingle Bells re-write was a bit too subtle itself.

Cherry Mistmas

JT - The driver obviously believed you breached the 10B travelling distance.

I don't care what he believed. Nobody has a right to physically attack a person, unless you are attacked first. In this case there was not even verbal insults towards the driver.

Im curious, where do you draw the line.

What if the driver had consumed more yaba than his regular daily dose, and he decided to kill the OP. Would that also be acceptable to you?

I am really coriuous, maybe you find the time to reply! It is a sensible question, I feel. Because after vicious assault, the only step further is killing a man.

Happy to reply.

You're an excellent "snipper" of quotes to justify your point of view or twist the context of a post.

Go back and re-read my post #159 that you snipped, and you will see (in bold letters) "The violence is not justified...."

My post in no way supports any act of violence.

I am in full agreement with you that nobody has a right to physically attack a person. Your questions to me are therefore irrelevant, as are the misrepresentative assertions you are making.

I really don't know why you chose to snip one line of my post to imply that I support violence, or endorse the act of violence against the OP.

But then, this is TV where the facts should never get in the way of a good rant.

Cheers

don't wear a red or yellow shirt...

Kings Birthday tomorrow ... so, for 1 day ... the gold/yellow shirt is OK.

Come Friday ... all bets are off.

MB1 ... nice OP BTW ...

.

Thank you David, if this thread can help just one person over the high season/festive, then it's job done, incidents where people are beaten up (alledgedly) for no reason are not good for Thailands image...

Anyway as it's nearing Xmas here's a jingle for those tourists and residents in Pattaya...

Jingle bells

Jingle bells

Jingle all the way..

Oh what fun it really is

Riding round pattaya for ten baht all the way...

Jingle bells

Jingle bells

Jingle all the way

Please don't get beat up

on a blue baht bus

On a sunny Christmas day..

Now where are the xmas emoticons when ya need em Admin,....

That is just so subtle, I'm not really sure what you are on about?!

Stuffing the pockets with folded up newspaper to look and feel like a wallet is a new twist to this scam though.

Reminiscent of London (or anywhere really) pickpockets who can bang against you, lift your wallet and slip in the newspapers. You tap your pocket to make sure the wallet is still there, and it feels like it is so you move on.