Artist

Thanks for the information everybody. I gather that Vietnam is more difficult (or impossible) to enter with a car. I have several friends who say Vietnam is a great place to visit.

It sounds relatively easy to take our pickup into Lao. Many of our guests say they want to visit Vientiane, but I generally lower their expectations as in my (limited) experience it is a very boring city.

However the one trip I did into the Lao countryside was great so maybe I should encourage them to go outside Vientiane and maybe drive them somewhere not too far from Vientiane?

In the back of my mind I am thinking of the geography of ASEAN and I think Nong Khai is bang in the middle of mainland SE Asia and it should naturally be the meeting place of road travel around the region as the community becomes more economically integrated. I think there is considerable tourist potential for Nong Khai. Lets face it Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket, Chiang Mai are all on the periphery.

What do you guys think?

laos is a great country to drive ur own car, make sure u have your purple passport for the car a buy insurance at the boarder,

Have been from the far north to the Vietnam boarder an as far south as Savanaket

You will not get your Thai car into Vietnam

Nong Khai- is a long way to water :-)

you could head south to surin, (7 hours) cross over into Cambodia at Osmach (1 hour) head to SR than Phnom Penh ( 8-12 hours) Watch those pot holes, than south to SHV another 3-5 depending on how fast u drive.

Thanks for the the information and idea about Cambodia, we are very close to the water in our Phon Phisai guest house (about 10 metres) as we are on the banks of the Mekong but a long way from the sea in Thailand.

Part of the year we live in Nong Khai and we like to visit beaches for a week or so. Its a long drive to the Thai beaches and Google Maps shows me that its shorter to drive to the coast in Vietnam. I have been told that its difficult to take your own vehicle into Lao though.

Does anybody know if its realistically feasible to drive from Nong Khai to the coast in Vietnam?

It seems very straight forward to me. If Suthep fails to stop the election and remove Thaksin from Thai politics the last opportunity for Thailand to have a clean start will be lost.

Thaksin's power base will strengthen as nobody will try to destroy him again. We can look forward to many years of corrupt government and the return of Thaksin to power.

The royalty will lose power and the move will be towards a republic with Thaksin as president. Marcos in the Philippines started out as the hero of the poor and initially he did a lot of good but he became a dictator.

While Suthep's tactics are anti democratic, I can't see what other options he has. You can argue that we should wait for the electoral processes to remove the Shinawatras from power, but by that time it may be too late.

If the Thaksin problem is not resolved now, it will fester and go underground leading to ongoing violence.

Careful what you wish for, you may come to regret it.

Hang on..Am I being thick? The content doesn't seem to match the headline. Did he really threaten to kidnap them or is this just trolling.

It has been very effective in producing a vitriolic response

Personally I think that this is the last opportunity to rid Thai politics of the Shinawatras and if it fails the whole country will lose. That's regardless of the rights and wrongs of it and the individual politicians involved.

Without the Sinawatras there is some chance of reconciliation between the two sides and a return to democracy, some law and order with the traditional level of corruption.

As my phone is a Nexus its running KitKat

I noticed a rather annoying thing about Google Music's Android app on my tablet on my recent trip, which led me to using Spotify more.

Traveling inside Thailand and using hotel wifi, I could stream songs from my own collection in Google Play Music just fine without any VPN required. But then what I noticed was, for some reason, the normal 1 GB of ROM space available on my tablet had suddenly dwindled to almost nothing.

After checking around, what I discovered was that even though I wasn't selecting to download those songs to my tablet, the streamed content from Google Play music was being stored on and eating up the available ROM on my tablet, and the only way to clear it seemed to be a command within the app to clear all stored content. Just doing a "cache clear" from an app like App2SD didn't get rid of the files.

And what's worse, as best as I could tell, there didn't appear to be any easy way from within the Google Play Music app to set a setting to say NO... please store the streamed content on my SD card, and not on my ROM. Google also doesn't make it easy to find just where exactly the app stores the streamed songs once they're deposited on your Android device, if you had the idea to go looking for the files manually.

So, after dealing with all that for a while and checking about solutions, I ended up spending the rest of the trip listening to music via Spotify.

With Google Music, I wouldn't care if it's taking up space on my PC... But for smartphones and tablets, ROM space is often at a premium. And streamed song content will begin eating it up very quickly.

That's interesting. I don't have a similar problem on my Nexus 4 phone, Google Play Music is using 2 GB of cache but I still have plenty of spare space.

I said previously that I thought that GPM was buffering some tracks and I see from the GPM settings that I have set an option to Cache during playback and Automatically cache music while charging and on WiFi, so obviously it is caching some tracks. There is an option to Clear the cache but I haven't needed to use it. For me it works perfectly without any issues.

The biggest problem I have had has been understanding the menu structure but I am beginning to get the hang of it now.

I generally try to stay within the Google ecosystem as the more Google knows about my interests and tastes (including music) the better it can anticipate my needs.

^, I haven't been able to get access using TunnelBear. Spotify I now can, but haven't gone too far down that path yet.

Did you set up your Google account in Thailand initially then?

It looks like it may only be available in the countries where Google Play Music is available. But I haven't tried All Access, so I can't speak to that for certain. In any event, it's not so much the IP location that's the issue, as having a Google account based in the right country that makes the difference.

I set up the free trial of the All Access Service while I have been in Thailand and it works fine from here. The whole question of whether Google allows you to change your home country or access the Play Store from another country is very confused and messy. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2169261

^ You say TunnelBear has Australian IP addresses now. I see on their site the Aus flag has a little dollar sign. Are you paying to get Aus access??

Yes I used it a lot for a while and went over the free limit so paid $5 for extra time and since then I have a choice of Australia, I wasn't sure if I paid for that or they just added to the free list.

I have been using Google Play Music for some time. I uploaded several thousand tracks in my music library from my Windows PC, most of which had dubious origins. It accepted them fine.

I replay them from my Chromebook and Android tablet but mainly from my Nexus 4 phone. I love it.

What has made the biggest difference is being able to play music through my phone at any time any place. I have a very good set of Sennheiser bluetooth earphones and the sound quality is great. Its amazing to be able to sit and watch the sunset on a deserted beach and listen to music.

If I want to share with others I use a bluetooth Beatbox which for its size has great volume.

What has surprised me is that it plays perfectly over my phone's data link almost anywhere, so I don't need WiFi for it to work. They must be using some really smart compression techniques. I recommend it.

does it play from the cloud or does it download the track each time.. i tried it a few days ago and it would just hang up.. maybe it was the phone i was using.. it is a bit crap.

The Google Play Music website says Thailand is not on the list of countries where it works..

I don't know exactly how it works. You can opt to store tracks on your device, but I haven't done that. As far as I know its streaming but buffering the music so that a short outage of the data link doesn't stop it playing.

Yes it works fine in Thailand, I never have a problem. I set it up months ago when I was in Australia and there might be a problem is setting it up in Thailand. If I get such regional restriction problems (or Thai censorship) I use https://www.tunnelbear.com/ which is free unless you use it a lot, very easy to set up and allows you to spoof your IP address to a choice of the English speaking Western countries USA, Canada, UK, Australia etc

I have been using Google Play Music for some time. I uploaded several thousand tracks in my music library from my Windows PC, most of which had dubious origins. It accepted them fine.

I replay them from my Chromebook and Android tablet but mainly from my Nexus 4 phone. I love it.

What has made the biggest difference is being able to play music through my phone at any time any place. I have a very good set of Sennheiser bluetooth earphones and the sound quality is great. Its amazing to be able to sit and watch the sunset on a deserted beach and listen to music.

If I want to share with others I use a bluetooth Beatbox which for its size has great volume.

What has surprised me is that it plays perfectly over my phone's data link almost anywhere, so I don't need WiFi for it to work. They must be using some really smart compression techniques. I recommend it.

Without knowing age and status Thais are unsure how to properly address others. Once they know, age determined titles are used all the time. Brother, sister, mother, daddy, uncle or grandfather do not bear the negative connotations they might in the West.

It is quite common for couples to refer to each other as mommy or daddy. My wife and I do it all the time. It started by playing with our dog, asking her “Where is mommy?” or “Go find daddy.” I assume parent with real children do the same thing. The word association begins to stick after a while.

We know several couples where the husband is much older and referred to as uncle, without sounding derogatory or out of place. It is simply common practice for couples to have pet names for their partners and in Thailand “daddy” is one cute option.

Believe it or not, love, caring and humor is more often the motivation behind the things a paranoid few read as sinister, at best. Until one understands things, it is best not to overreact and assume the worst all the time.

villagefarang has it exactly right, my wife calls me daddy all the time. She is a very smart uneducated village girl from a poor lower middle class family (shopkeepers) and I am old enough to be her father, but that has nothing to do with it. When she meets another Thai lady for the first time she has to assess whether she is older or younger so she knows how to address her as 'aunty' or 'sister'

The problem with all this visa stuff is that its very difficult to express the rules clearly so there is always confusion and misinterpretation. Somebody should do a flow chart of the rules or better still an interactive web program (or Android app:) to explain the rules unambiguously. Maybe it already exists? But then there wouldn't be any need for thaivisa. Don't take the last point seriously, I appreciate thaivisa and its a great help to me understanding this strange but lovely country.

If the visa is multiple entry. every time that you renter Thailand you get another year permission to stay. So if you leave and renter on 3 Dec 2014 you will get another year. During that year if you want to travel abroad, you will have to purchase a re-entry permit to keep your permission to stay alive. The cost are single, 1000 baht, multiple, 3800 baht. So effectively you get 2 years with a 1 year visa.

If you have single entry visa ( doubt that you do), your options are different and will be explained if you say that that is what you have.

This is news to me. I came in on a multiple entry visa at the beginning of October and went to Lao at the beginning of November. I will leave at the beginning of February less than 3 months after I re-entered from Lao.

I will be coming back at the beginning of October 2014. If I understand you correctly, I don't need to get another multiple entry visa to come back in October 2014 as its less than a year since my last entry?

Does that mean that I can stay through to Feb 2015 provided that I report to Immigration or do a border run within 3 months of my entry in October 2014? That is the multiple entry visa is fully extended for a year?

Or have I got it wrong?

Ta

Do you have a OA visa and getting one year entries or a multiple entry non-o that gives you a 90 day entry?

Both can be used up to the enter before date for another entry. The visa expiration date does not mean that you cannot be in the country after that date.

I have a multiple entry non-o visa, with the entry date to be before August 2014 as it was issued in Perth in August 2013. So I take it that I can use it for one year of multiple entries provide that I come back to Thailand before August 2014?

As I won't be able to come back until October 2014 I will have to apply for another multiple entry non-o visa?

Thanks for you help

If the visa is multiple entry. every time that you renter Thailand you get another year permission to stay. So if you leave and renter on 3 Dec 2014 you will get another year. During that year if you want to travel abroad, you will have to purchase a re-entry permit to keep your permission to stay alive. The cost are single, 1000 baht, multiple, 3800 baht. So effectively you get 2 years with a 1 year visa.

If you have single entry visa ( doubt that you do), your options are different and will be explained if you say that that is what you have.

This is news to me. I came in on a multiple entry visa at the beginning of October and went to Lao at the beginning of November. I will leave at the beginning of February less than 3 months after I re-entered from Lao.

I will be coming back at the beginning of October 2014. If I understand you correctly, I don't need to get another multiple entry visa to come back in October 2014 as its less than a year since my last entry?

Does that mean that I can stay through to Feb 2015 provided that I report to Immigration or do a border run within 3 months of my entry in October 2014? That is the multiple entry visa is fully extended for a year?

Or have I got it wrong?

Ta

Our daugher is in school, she is age 12, I guess I will consult the school about the visas for my wife and daugher. NYC office told me that their visas were dependent visas and did not require leaving Thailand.

I agree with ubonjoe. My understanding is that they don't fine children under 15 if they overstay. I hope so as our 6 year old will have overstayed by 3 months when we leave. I am not sure if one of the parents has to be Thai.

Useful for people on the go but for retired folks/not working, probably an additional, unnecessary risk. Risk vs. reward decision, not same for everyone.

I, and probably like-minded expats abroad who resist the temptation to jump into the scrum of every new gadget that comes along, have, nevertheless, incrementally increased our IT risk exposure over the years. Email, using government services on line, Turbo Tax e-filing, internet banking, shopping/purchasing online. These are all "clouds" saving and storing our data in one form or another and they can, have been and will again, be hacked.

I am astonished at the amount of FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) there is about this issue. What are the awful risks of the cloud?

I am a professional artist. I have had a web site since 1995 and my email address, and most of my personal details (DOB, Phone, Address etc) have been published on the web for nearly 20 years.

I get a lot of spam but I never see it as gmail filters it out. I also get a lot of Phishing but I can smell it a mile away and just report it to Google. Once I had somebody bill my credit card from Italy $1,400 but that was nothing to do with the cloud as far as I know, it could have been an ATM skimmer, just a carbon copy of my card at a restaurant many possibilities, the bank picked up the fraud and credited me automatically. I also had somebody bill a small amount to my card every month from a dummy business. It was several months before I noticed it and I had trouble getting the money back because it was too old for the bank to recover it. Again nothing to do with the cloud.

Facebook is inherently insecure in my opinion. I have posted private messages which have turned out to be public. If you are using Facebook you should expect anything you post to be made public. A few years back somebody somehow got access to my Facebook account and contact all my friends saying I was in Manilla and had had my wallet stolen, please send me money. Fortunately one of them checked with me first and I was able to warn people.That is completely different from storing files in Google Drive or DropBox.

What is the great risk you are taking by storing files in the cloud? Don't store your credit card details I guess or you bank account password. My passwords are all in LastPass and I trust them, my bank requires a password drawn on the screen which is pretty secure. If somebody hits your credit card the bank will reimburse you anyway. I am not a criminal or a terrorist, just boring really. Who is going to be interested in the files I store.

What is the risk? If you have a Google account you should use two step verification which makes it pretty safe. Google encrypts much of your data I understand. They weren't encrypting transmission from one data centre to another and it appears that the NSA may have tapped into those pipes. My understanding is that Google are working to encrypt transmissions between data centres to stop the NSA snooping.

Your greatest risk is Phishing, somebody getting access to your home computer though a virus or spoofing your bank etc. Your weakest link is not the cloud but your home computer.

Unless you have really big secrets don't worry, take advantage of the new technology. If you are truly paranoid about security and privacy disconnect all your devices from the Internet.

Surprising path of thought for someone who claims to have led an IT-department!

1- nature of data stored

You talk about DOB, address... Peope like me who store documents digitally also store passport copies, all kinds of official documents including birth certificates, contracts of all sorts, social security number, work permit, tax filings, etc. Easy to see how vital and dangerous this data is and how easily my identity could be stolen using it.

2- attack vectors

Your own computer might be your biggest risk, not mine.

My computers are behind two firewalls (the first sitting on the router and doing the usual NAT and port filtering/forwarding stuff, and the second sits on every machine) and running software that asks me before other software is authorized to perform anything significant on my systems (I have to approve or decline requests for every change in the registry and access to system components if I wish), and software that filters I/O, be it local (thumb drives, disk access, etc.) or network based - there also I can approve or deny every request.

The software is a pain to teach about what requests are ok and which not, but once it's running correctly, it's almost impossible for malicious requests to get past.

3- biggest risk is phishing

No, seriously... who falls for fishing mails? 5555

4- biggest risk: computer or cloud?

Flawed logic on this one.

When files are stored in the cloud, then your computer is also included in possible attack vectors.

So the risk of storing files locally is solely determined by the vulnerability of your computer or your network.

When storing files in the cloud, the risk is determined not only by the vulnerability of your computer and network (because anyone that gains control over your computer can access your cloud storage), but ALSO by the vulnerability of the cloud itself - the risks are additive, so the risk of storing files in the cloud are at all times higher than for local storage.

5- who is talking?

- you have been frauded twice on my bank card

- someone hacked you facebook account

- you say the greatest risk is phishing

- you have all your passes in lastpass, you trust them

LOL

Take it easy mate you will have a stroke. If you are so afraid of the cloud I strongly recommend that you do not take part in any new technology. There will always be people like you who are afraid of change. Give it time and you will get used to it.

In the meantime don't use the Internet its far to dangerous. Hang On what are you doing here? Quick delete your account before somebody attacks you!

This is pointless, it is close to religion for some people. I just can't get over how emotional this subject is. Why are you so upset? Its not a big deal.

I nearly forgot why I came back to this conversation. Read this if you are interested in cloud futures, imo its fairly accurate. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/12/why-google-drive-has-become-microsofts-worst-night.aspx

Useful for people on the go but for retired folks/not working, probably an additional, unnecessary risk. Risk vs. reward decision, not same for everyone.

I, and probably like-minded expats abroad who resist the temptation to jump into the scrum of every new gadget that comes along, have, nevertheless, incrementally increased our IT risk exposure over the years. Email, using government services on line, Turbo Tax e-filing, internet banking, shopping/purchasing online. These are all "clouds" saving and storing our data in one form or another and they can, have been and will again, be hacked.

I am astonished at the amount of FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) there is about this issue. What are the awful risks of the cloud?

I am a professional artist. I have had a web site since 1995 and my email address, and most of my personal details (DOB, Phone, Address etc) have been published on the web for nearly 20 years.

I get a lot of spam but I never see it as gmail filters it out. I also get a lot of Phishing but I can smell it a mile away and just report it to Google. Once I had somebody bill my credit card from Italy $1,400 but that was nothing to do with the cloud as far as I know, it could have been an ATM skimmer, just a carbon copy of my card at a restaurant many possibilities, the bank picked up the fraud and credited me automatically. I also had somebody bill a small amount to my card every month from a dummy business. It was several months before I noticed it and I had trouble getting the money back because it was too old for the bank to recover it. Again nothing to do with the cloud.

Facebook is inherently insecure in my opinion. I have posted private messages which have turned out to be public. If you are using Facebook you should expect anything you post to be made public. A few years back somebody somehow got access to my Facebook account and contact all my friends saying I was in Manilla and had had my wallet stolen, please send me money. Fortunately one of them checked with me first and I was able to warn people.That is completely different from storing files in Google Drive or DropBox.

What is the great risk you are taking by storing files in the cloud? Don't store your credit card details I guess or you bank account password. My passwords are all in LastPass and I trust them, my bank requires a password drawn on the screen which is pretty secure. If somebody hits your credit card the bank will reimburse you anyway. I am not a criminal or a terrorist, just boring really. Who is going to be interested in the files I store.

What is the risk? If you have a Google account you should use two step verification which makes it pretty safe. Google encrypts much of your data I understand. They weren't encrypting transmission from one data centre to another and it appears that the NSA may have tapped into those pipes. My understanding is that Google are working to encrypt transmissions between data centres to stop the NSA snooping.

Your greatest risk is Phishing, somebody getting access to your home computer though a virus or spoofing your bank etc. Your weakest link is not the cloud but your home computer.

Unless you have really big secrets don't worry, take advantage of the new technology. If you are truly paranoid about security and privacy disconnect all your devices from the Internet.

Don't get paranoid about the cloud guys. Like it or not its the future of computing operating systems like Windows have seen their day, the next decade will be almost entirely cloud.

By all means keep local copies and backup copies. The reality is that your backup drives will probably be out of date quickly as you won't get around to doing the backup. When they are out of date you and you need them you will have the whole messy business of trying restore and update them.

I have used Windows as an IT professional since it started and RAID and all that jazz, but Windows consistently screws the files up after a time.

What happens if somebody steals your machine, or it gets burnt, flooded or whatever. The chances are you will find that recovering is a nightmare.

If its in the cloud Google or DropBox or whatever backs it up for you. The guys who run these systems are professionals and they cant afford for files to go missing so any glitch which made you lose files was most likely user generated.

So keep a copy on the cloud and a local copy. Then you can access your data from your phone, tablet, laptop and desktop. Personally I access my Drive files from my phone the whole time, I couldn't do without it.

At the same time you have an identical copy on your local machine synchronised with the cloud plus and out of date copy kept in a fireproof safe in your wardrobe.

no.

confidentiality alone is already enough a reason to not put everything on the cloud.

Where on earth do you get these ideas from? Why are cloud files not confidential? You have total control over them. If you are worried about the NSA you had better go back to using stone tablets.

There we go again.

Nobody will be interested in your cloud storage until your person becomes interesting.

Running for public office? Are in an important position or will get into an important position? Are you a journalist? The net won't forget anything - if your rivals have access to it, you are toast.

The big thing about the NSA leaks isn't so much the surveillance as the ability of sysops to gain access to anything. If data is stored anywhere, the sysop has access.

I'm a webmaster and programmer by trade. And I do assure you that NONE of the online storage solutions can be trusted. None. One way to use them would be to encrypt the files using a 4096 bit key if such software existed.

Sure, use the cloud to store porn movies and other unimportant stuff, but I would never trust any important information to the cloud.

Better to ruin the cloud business models right now than to let them take over.

The NSA scandal came at the right time to prevent businesses from going on the cloud. Now there is zero chance that European businesses will use the cloud for anything important. Good.

I agree that if you are involved in criminal activities then its probably not a good idea to store information about them in any digital form and avoid the phone.

Sure don't post information in Facebook that you don't want others to see. Thats what Facebook is all about.

If you are saying that files stored in cloud service providers are open to anybody then you are wrong. The companies that run cloud services have to be secure or they would go broke.

Of course the guys who run the system have access to everything but the same applies to the company you work for. If you want total security don't use digital media at all. Somebody can steal your laptop, or your phone. If your computer breaks down the repair guys can access it. If you are using WiFi somebody can access it. To say that sysops can access your data in the cloud is true but so can people access it in many different ways.

Google and DropBox can't afford to have their sysops posting people's data everywhere and they are probably a lot more secure than the NSA

If you want to trade credentials I ran a an IT shop for a major oil company with 70+ staff and I was Director of IT Consulting for Ernst and Young for 10 years specialising in technology futures.

Sure the Luddites and Troglodytes will stay away from cloud computing but eventually they will be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st C. You can't stop it. Learn to manage it.

Don't get paranoid about the cloud guys. Like it or not its the future of computing operating systems like Windows have seen their day, the next decade will be almost entirely cloud.

By all means keep local copies and backup copies. The reality is that your backup drives will probably be out of date quickly as you won't get around to doing the backup. When they are out of date you and you need them you will have the whole messy business of trying restore and update them.

I have used Windows as an IT professional since it started and RAID and all that jazz, but Windows consistently screws the files up after a time.

What happens if somebody steals your machine, or it gets burnt, flooded or whatever. The chances are you will find that recovering is a nightmare.

If its in the cloud Google or DropBox or whatever backs it up for you. The guys who run these systems are professionals and they cant afford for files to go missing so any glitch which made you lose files was most likely user generated.

So keep a copy on the cloud and a local copy. Then you can access your data from your phone, tablet, laptop and desktop. Personally I access my Drive files from my phone the whole time, I couldn't do without it.

At the same time you have an identical copy on your local machine synchronised with the cloud plus and out of date copy kept in a fireproof safe in your wardrobe.

no.

confidentiality alone is already enough a reason to not put everything on the cloud.

Where on earth do you get these ideas from? Why are cloud files not confidential? You have total control over them. If you are worried about the NSA you had better go back to using stone tablets.

Don't get paranoid about the cloud guys. Like it or not its the future of computing operating systems like Windows have seen their day, the next decade will be almost entirely cloud.

By all means keep local copies and backup copies. The reality is that your backup drives will probably be out of date quickly as you won't get around to doing the backup. When they are out of date you and you need them you will have the whole messy business of trying restore and update them.

I have used Windows as an IT professional since it started and RAID and all that jazz, but Windows consistently screws the files up after a time.

What happens if somebody steals your machine, or it gets burnt, flooded or whatever. The chances are you will find that recovering is a nightmare.

If its in the cloud Google or DropBox or whatever backs it up for you. The guys who run these systems are professionals and they cant afford for files to go missing so any glitch which made you lose files was most likely user generated.

So keep a copy on the cloud and a local copy. Then you can access your data from your phone, tablet, laptop and desktop. Personally I access my Drive files from my phone the whole time, I couldn't do without it.

At the same time you have an identical copy on your local machine synchronised with the cloud plus and out of date copy kept in a fireproof safe in your wardrobe.

I use the cloud to store all my files, mainly in Google Drive and Google+ for photos. I have been doing this for over 12 months without problems.

I am not sure how your files got deleted but they should be in the Trash folder. You can get your files into Drive by synchronising a Windows folder, uploading to it or creating a file (doc, spreadsheet etc) in drive. These are accessible from all my devices including most importantly my phone.

Photos in Drive can automatically appear in Google+ if you select that option.

Google+ is a fantastic place to store photos for many reasons including full sized original images, free storage (up to a limit), great photo manipulation, automatic generation of HDR, animated gifs, panoramas, fixing up and selecting your best images for your review. Best of all you can use Google's search capabilities to find photos with automatic or manual tagging. If you want to find that sunset you took in Pattaya 3 years ago you should be able to find it without setting up the tags yourself.

Google is American is NSA... Don't fool yourself

Rubbish

Come to Nong Khai on the banks of the Mekong, the river itself is a huge stretch of clean air and for us at least a breeze comes down from the mountains of Laos on the other side of the river.

Incidentally, we haven't had any significant rain for a week or more and its relatively cool.

thailand-painting-holidays.com

I came back yesterday from driving through Loei, Chaing Khan along the Mekong to Nongkhai, down to Udon Thani and back to Uttaradit. I loved the area but the most disappointing thing about the trip was that it was not possible to see more that 2 kilometers in any of this area due to the heavy thick dense smoke covering the entire area. It was just not possible to see the beautiful scenery. I thought the smoke was bad in the north around Chiang Mai etc in the first half of the year, but this was worse. It lead me to suspect that the only period when they do not burn heavily (I also saw fires everywhere) was when it is actually raining in the rainy season and even then I have seen them trying. My students here in Uttaradit are aware of the problem and do not like it but it appears the farmers are a law unto themselves.

Did you go through Phon Phisai? I live here and there is absolutely no smoke from burning off rice fields. Everybody is clearing up for the Naga Festival and they have cleared the grass on the banks of the Mekong in some areas of the town but very minor smoke from that. I travel from here to Nong Khai several times a week and I have not seen any smoke along the road either.

You must be talking about some other area!

Possibly it was the mist your saw? In the mornings it has been hazy due to mist over the river and we now have light rain for the first time after being dry for over a week.

There was heavy smoke in the whole area I described. On the banks of the Mekong and in the rural areas to the south. The mountain scenery around the river and further south was only visible up close. It was there all through the day and was definitely heavy smoke haze. It has decreased in Uttaradit because it has rained again in the last couple of days.

Sorry I got my geography wrong, I thought the route you took went through Phon Phisai which is on the main road to Nong Khai but from the east not west. Certainly we have had no smoke here in Phon Phisai and there has been no smoke between here and Nong Khai but you were on the westerly route into Nong Khai and I don't know about that.

We are in the middle of the Naga Festival which is centred on Phon Phisai and we have thousands of visitors letting off hot air balloons. They make a wonderful sight flying high over the Mekong and night and on into Laos. The weather has been very clear and the mountains of Laos look lovely in the distance.