cooked

Where do I think? Not my brain, that's for sure, but interpreting street signs is pretty informative so I do my thinking in the car. I got 'KM' for Kilometers nicely and started working out the neighbouring villages' names, even my own village. Look at a beer bottle and ask yourself deep philosophical questions, like 'alcohol content', what's that in Thai? Leo? Chiang?

You certainly need some basic instruction before you start, some of the vowels are in the wrong place, right guys? I generally ignore inconvenient stuff that I don't understand and somehow get there anyway. Many moments of delight when you realise : sounds like, looks like... can't be... my goodness, yes, it is: it's 'icecream' transliterated into Thai!

Everybody needs motivation, generally based on acknowledgement that you are actually the most amazing person in the universe, so you need a supportive girlfriend or wife to help you along.

Pointless thread?

My long unused Hotmail account got hacked, I couldn't sign in (did this about once a month). No big deal, however my contacts all got spam mails and some of the old maids weren't at all happy with what seemed to be coming from me (mmaake eet biggerr...)

Oh no, not another one...

go to hell, thanks for answering my original question, 'should I wait until I get to Bangkok before trying to fix this?' I tried various recommended methods to get my phone jail breaked, they succeeded, but the unlocking didn't work. I since found out that my carrier has put safeguards in place to make unlocking particularly difficult in my case.

I am quite intelligent, really, set up a few websites in my time and helped various people without having to tell them that they are stupid.

Right I feel better now, same as some of you guys do when you embarrass them anonymously.

I was a door to door salesman of brooms, confession. Brooms like this are near useless and hard work to use properly. Why you see them all over the western world is a mystery to me.The 'witches broom' is much more effective and that's what I have been using for the last 40 years before I bought a leaf blower. Maybe you need a training course? ฿800.- an hour plus beer..

Apparently the whole of Buriram now knows that I advocate living on ฿10 000.- a month and a few 'nice girls' are annoyed with me.... my wife was nagged as was her daughter who went to market this morning.

how the hell this misinterpreted rumour got out so quick I can't imagine.

Next time I'll be saying sure, ฿5000.- is plenty, that'll stir things up.

I shopped around the different websites of individual airlines when I had lots of luggage recently. Not all will accept Kg32, on some airlines it will cost very expensive (Thai Airways charge an exorbitant price / Kilo if I remember right, I had to ask twice if I was hearing correctly). I rang up the info desks of the few airlines I found that looked ok and got incorrect information, but it was payable.

Sending by freight didn't seem to be an option and I wanted to be near my precious suitcase, not to have fun with customs, storage charges and whatever if I sent it separately.

I would have said a bit more than ฿5000.-, I live in my wife's house, so no rent, but she reckons without beer (! without beer !), internet, car, and eating mainly off the farm, we could live well enough on ฿10 000.- a month. You can get a room in Buriram for ฿1200.-, food another ฿3000.-, utilities on top of that.

I would hate to live like that but many Thais do it. However they speak Thai and have a family to help.You also need to have emergency money for bus fare/air fare /medical expenses.

I would be nervous even about trying it on ฿15 000.-, let alone ฿5000.-.

happens everywhere, not a Thailand problem.

yep, and people who never smoke get lung cancer too...

people who wear seatbelts die in car accidents too..

you could lock your car and still have it stolen.

Bill Gates dropped out of college, so you should too..

Try reading my other posts on this topic, you'll see that I don't propose doing nothing by any means. I was saying that you see acts of violence everywhere. Apparently it is against Farang rules and regulations to answer when someone says hello, so why should guys like that go and help someone? Or is that too complicated for you?

Try mixing buffalo's bile with osprey's offal.

Sorry, I think that the best mosquito spray varies from person to person, they drop dead from alcohol poisoning if they try to bite me for example.

Or did you mean the best spray for attracting mosquitoes? Same recommendation as above.

Try to stand back a little. I have seen whole families sitting at home in a hovel, absolutely no attempt to improve their conditions apart from buying beer and a TV with the proceeds of the daughter's earnings. Or losing the earnings on cards.

I have seen a charming young girl turned in a few years into a hardened prozie by the actions of some horrible expat farter that just saw her as a source of jollies.

Easy to judge when you haven't been there...

Similar to what Surin Steve says, I would have become a communist fighter if I had been born in S. America 30 years ago, and so would any red blooded male ... woops going way off topic...

The girls that go working in beer bars to get a farang or just to get money to help there family I can understand I would probably be doing the same the girls that really boil my piss though are the girls who get a farang bleed him dry then go get another I know girls in my village who have 2 or 3 farang all sending them money every month to stop them working the bars yet there they are working away trying to con more gullible farang it just turns it all into a joke and makes us look stupid

dunno, some of the girls get burnt as well, these are probably the ones that go on to exploit Farangs.

Living near Buriram myself I can confirm that there are many lazy girls here that 'want a Farang'. Hardly a day goes by without my being asked. They are the ones that occasionally make the trip to Pattaya and sometimes ring back home for their bus fare back to the village. There are also many attractive, honest, hardworking girls that would never even contemplate this.

Street food: you ever see fried grasshoppers and all that Isaan stuff on a street corner? In my limited experience this means that you are entering a red light district, certainly for Nana Plaza and Kanchanaburi.

Asalha Puja Day Commemorates the Buddha’s first sermon in the Deer Park in Benares and the founding of the Buddhist sangha.

I'm afraid that people do just stand around and watch. Anywhere. What's it called? Bystander effect? I was at the front for a few years, dragged one guy out of a pool, stopped to help at accidents while others were just gawping. Don't judge so easily, until it happens you can't know how you will react. I was trained so I knew what to do, that's what military training is about, in a stress situation you follow what you learnt.

a really tough one and i think has also been discussed many many times on many different forums.

a natural reaction from a real man is to intervene and stop the guy from bashing on a woman.

the problem in Thailand is many times it can turn against you and not only with the guy and girl involved but also the on lookers, as well as police.

for some reason even police does not take domestic violence too serious here, unless its a high-so case.

i have intervened twice in my 10 or so years here, one time girl was very thankful, so thankful that she insisted on staying with me.

second time, both the guy and girl turned on me, making it rather hard to defend myself, which in turn made me the "basher"

i was lucky (2nd time) the on lookers, saw the incident and advised the police that i was trying to help, otherwise i could have been arrested,

i think best is to keep out, but if looking really bad, call the police

happens everywhere, not a Thailand problem.

I think you need a priest

Oh boy I look like a right piece of sh**

I wrote the posting because I didn't understand either, why one time with an AIS card it worked, but apparently only in Thai. As you don't understand either.

I didn't do nuffink. I just decided to go back a day after and accept the same card that had been physically cut, language settings Thai, and change it myself. When I got home I discovered that the phone language was English and that I had no service. In the meantime my service in Switzerland had been stopped, which is why I went to buy a new card in the first place.

iPhone 4, 5.1.1. I went through all the jailbreak, unlock procedures today in two different versions, didn't get anywhere and my phone looks the worse for ware. Nice concrete wall outside waiting for the next step. Ill buy a new one in Bangkok.

I lost a whole day trying to unlock my phone and I ain't stoopid, can't be done with my phone.

I was asked ฿7000.- to unlock... I'll try in Bangkok next week.

You'll find few people under the age of 40 prepared to do this work and I don't blame them. At the moment I am scouting around for alternative crops on my wife's farm but I am beginning to realise that the rhythm of work implicated by rice farming is not compatible with another crop that needs constant attention (like pepper or chili which were my first ideas). Cassava and sugar seem to be other equally low price crops with equivalent work patterns, same problems.

There are alternative methods of cultivating rice, utilising much less chemicals and pesticides, but like farmers the world over, the Thai peasant is resistant to change. It may look romantic to the outsider, and it is well that photographic records are kept. I think that unless the authorities get their act together soon, this style of subsistence farming will soon disappear.

One crop a year: my wife refuses to eat rice that come from biennial (if that's the correct word) cultures (most street food) and with time I have come to agree with her about the quality of the product. She and her family harvest a good quality rice, sell most of it for a pittance and have 50% of their food for the coming year provided for. ฿20 000 a year, that's how they do it - we have fish, chickens and ducks I Guess I could do it too, but don't intend to. A long way from Bangkok, huh?.

You pay around ฿20 000 a year and it isn't really legal, although some people seem to have been doing it for years. If immigration discover that your visa is false you may be deported without the option to return.

Well no, I didn't try to fit a simcard into my iphone with a hammer and chisel, and yes, the girl said she couldn't change the language as my phone wasn't unlocked. That's why I didn't take the card home the first time. Maybe she didn't know the difference between unlocking and jailbreaking either. A day later I drove the 20 Km back to get a card fitted anyway (thought you might be interested in the fact that this I don't just walk down the block every time), and this time she managed to get the English language going, but no service.

So basically I am now in the process of jailbreaking the phone and then unlocking it.

The Sim I used before was not prepaid and the phone was locked by the service company.

As usual I'm afraid I muddied the issue.

First visit to shop (20 Km away): they put in a Sim card I have service but the language is in Thai. They don't know how to change the language back without unlocking the phone. Which they can't do. So I don't buy the card.

Second visit: I tell them to give me a cheap card, I will unlock the phone myself. This time I have the English language but no service. Unlocking has proved more troublesome than I had imagined. I'll get back on that.