xandreu

Hi guys

I'll be in Pattaya just for 10 days next week and was wondering if anyone knew of a good pay-as-you-go gym I could use while I'm there?

Obviously going to be a waste of time signing some of contract...

Thanks

Xandreu, go ahead. You're unlikely to have any problems from one of those Apple resellers. I've bought quite a few Apple items in BKK for other people and never had any issues.

Make sure you take your passport to the shop because they will need to to complete the VAT refund form. Check it before you leave to make sure all the details like passport number are correct.

The VAT refund counter at Suvarnabhumi is just inside the entrance to departures quite near to either door 4 or 5 (near Thai Airways check-in). Customs will probably want to see the laptop. After that it is pretty quick.

If you're nervous about UK customs, make sure there isn't any obviously new packaging with the accessories etc. Personally I wouldn't give the customs thing a second thought.

A sensible reply from someone who bothered to read my post properly before replying.

Thanks. I'm going to go for it...

I also said I was buying it from one of the iBeat stores here which are authorised Apple resellers. You talk as if I'm buying it from a guy I met in a bar. Obviously I'd make sure it had the right keyboard before I bought it. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a US keyboard rather than UK but for the money I'd save it's not a big deal.

Sorry I got my sums wrong a little. It's actually (if you take into account the 7% tax refund) £400 cheaper than the UK price which means the actual laptop is the same price as everywhere else in the world but I'd be saving myself the 20% VAT I'd be paying if I bought it in the UK. (assuming I wasn't stopped in customs)

Just take it back with you. UK customs wont bother you, think about it, they would be asking for proof of purchase for every laptop, piece of gold, rolex watch.. etc etc they will not be interested,

If the custom isn't too dumb, they easily will see, where you bought it:

Minimum they know, you didn't buy it in the UK or elsewhere in Europe!

I said in the post that they have them with only UK keyboards (not thai and US combined as your picture)

Sorry I got my sums wrong a little. It's actually (if you take into account the 7% tax refund) £400 cheaper than the UK price which means the actual laptop is the same price as everywhere else in the world but I'd be saving myself the 20% VAT I'd be paying if I bought it in the UK. (assuming I wasn't stopped in customs)

I'm thinking of buying a MacBook Pro while I'm here on holiday as its about £700 cheaper than the UK.

I've never bought anything so expensive while abroad and was just wondering if there was anything I need to watch out for?

It's from one of those ibeat stores (apple resellers) and the guy said he has them with a UK keyboard and I'd be able to claim 7% tax back at the airport. How easy is this? The guy said he'd give me the form. Is it just a case of handing it to them at the airport and they give you the money in baht?

Also I'm guessing I'd have to make it look like I took it with me when going back through uk customs else they'll charge me some sort of vat? I really know nothing about this kind of thing.

The guy also said the apple warranty was international in case it developed any faults.

Seems like a good deal to me but just thought I'd get others opinions before diving in...

Thanks in advance

I once went camping with my Thai boyfriend to a camping site in the middle of a national park. We were walking back to the tent late one night in pitch darkness and he decided he wanted to use the toilet. There was a toilet near our tent but as it didn't have a light installed, he made us walk (what seemed like) half a mile in a different direction to the toilets with a light. When we arrived I told him I didn't need to go and would wait outside for him.

I waited a good minute or so then tip-toed into the toilets and into the cubicle next to him where I just stood in silence. After about a minute I made one single very loud bang on the cubicle wall. There was again silence for a few seconds before he called out my name. I remained where I was and in total silence for a good couple of minutes. There was also no sound or movement from his cubicle and he didn't call my name out again. After a couple of minutes I repeated what I did, making one single very loud bang on the cubicle wall, then slowly and silently made my way out of the toilets.

There was no sound or any sign of movement coming from the toilets for a good five minutes after this and I eventually shouted into the toilets innocently asking him what was taking so long. When he emerged I was stood in exactly the same spot he'd left me, casually playing with my phone as if that's all I'd been doing all the while he'd been in there, only to look up rather frustratingly and ask why he'd taken so long. I then noticed his trousers were halfway round his ankles and he was crying, half with fear and half with anger. I showed concern and asked him what was wrong, where he half accused me of playing tricks on him but I could also tell that he was very incredibly genuinely frightened that it might not have been me after all.

I soon realised that he was so upset over the incident that had I admitted it was me playing a little joke on him, there was a possibility that he would kill me while I slept that night and I was left with no choice but to continue denying all knowledge of it and accuse him of exaggerating what was probably the branch of a tree hitting the outside wall or roof.

To this day he still believes he had a paranormal experience that night and still talks about it with genuine fear that the spirit may still be following him and can re-emerge at any time.

Maybe if you're with your Thai boyfriend you may have a nicer experience than me.

Oh tnks Xandreu. that's not so nice news. Now i scare to go there

how u know my bf is thai?

A lucky guess?

Thanks for staying at one of our apartments. Here's your deposit back in full.

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Have to agree regarding deposits in Thailand. Every place where such has been given it has been a battle to see how much I get back.

This is only the second apartment I've rented in Thailand. I rented one in Chiang Mai for six months from a Canadian who held 24000B deposit and gave me every baht of it back without a problem. I've also rented cars and motorbikes here and not had a problem getting deposits back.

I may have just been lucky but I find a good trick I always use is to make out I plan to use them again in the near future. With my condo in Chiang Mai I told them I had to go to Bangkok just for a month but would be returning to Chiang Mai and hoped he would have a condo available I could rent again. Same with cars and motorbikes. Always make out your returning it reluctantly because something has come up but will be back soon to hire it again.

Like I said, I may have just been lucky but up until now (which is the the only time I haven't used that trick) it's always worked for me.

building owners pay very little for water and eectricity and internet connection + phone

they are sold on to tennants at a much higher price

why doesnt everybody already know this ??

I did already know that. It's not about the money they charge per unit of water that I actually use. I knew that when I signed the contract. It's about the extortionate profit they're making out of me for water that I haven't technically used because of one of their poorly maintained facilities.

I just went down to ask to see the meter and low and behold the manageress has gone home and the girls behind the front desk won't let me see the meters without her there. She won't be back today and I'm checking out at 7am in the morning. How convenient.

I'm starting to wonder if 100% of the bill is in fact 1300 Baht and they've decided to double it so that they can say they're doing me a favour by only making me pay half, when the bill was 1300 Baht all along?

My little portable food stall with red hot charcoal embers seems to be right in everybody's way here. It's an accident waiting to happen. I think I'll move it a bit further down the road.

I'm staying in a room in an apartment building and due to leave in the morning. For the last few days I've been hearing a dripping sound from my bathroom. It was barely noticeable to begin with and I assumed it was just coming from the drains from the room above and didn't take too much notice. By this morning however, it had got quite loud so I went in the bathroom to investigate and it was coming from my toilet so I turned the water off from the main tap underneath it and planned to go down and let them know a bit later.

I got a call to my room shortly after and they said my water meter was reading extremely high and wanted to send an engineer up to take a look. When he came I told him about the leak and that I'd turned the water off.

I didn't think too much more about it until I went down to remind them I was leaving early in the morning. They asked me about the leak and I told them that it wasn't until this morning that I realised it was coming from my toilet.

They've just called my room and told me that my water bill for this month is 2600 Baht. (Last month it was 200 Baht) But because it was due to the leak, they were prepared to pay 50% for me and I would have to pay the other 50% (1300 Baht)

I told them I didn't see why I should pay for their leaky toilet. They told me that I should have informed them when I first heard the water leaking, but I said I didn't know it was my bathroom until this morning. I asked them that if I had not been staying in the room at all for the past few days (which I frequently do) and therefore would have had no idea about it at all, would they still be charging me? She didn't give me an answer.

I asked to speak to someone higher than her and she said the only person higher than her was the owner and there was a good chance that if he knew, he would charge me the full price without any discount. I said I wasn't happy about it and thought they were being very unfair, but considering they have 12000 Baht deposit of mine and are going to deduct it from that, what can I do?

Although she was polite about it, she clearly wasn't going to budge and even tried to make out that she was doing me a favour by letting me know now rather than me finding out when I go down to check out in the morning.

Am I over-reacting? Is this normal in Thailand? Seems very unfair but what can I do?

Very sad, how somebody can come to do that to the elderly is beyond me.RIP.

Hmm, so if the victims were younger it would somehow be less atrocious?

I don't think that's what he meant, and neither do you. This would be an atrocious murder no matter who it happened to, but the thought of it happening to a defenceless elderly couple is particularly nasty.

Alright me ol' china? How ya diddlin'?

I went with a straight friend to Chiang Rai a few months ago while I was living in Chiang Mai. He went off to do his straight thing, and I my gay thing for the night. I didn't think much of it as far as gay life was concerned. I only found one "gay" bar, I forget what it was called, but the guys there were as far removed from gay as you could get. Most of them were pretty obviously straight, and maybe it was just me but I felt a bit of an atmosphere in there too. I didn't feel all that safe taking one of them off, so I ended up chatting to a guy from Malaysia who'd bought some Thai friends from Pattaya up North for a few days, and we all went for a drive and something to eat together.

The next night, after doing a bit of research on the net I thought I'd found another bar but when I turned up, it turned out to be the same bar I was in the previous night. I went in anyway and again I felt a bit of an atmosphere in there. One guy who was obviously some kind of mamasan type of character forced a boy to sit next to me but the boy couldn't have looked less interested in me if he tried. I went outside for a cigarette and tried to talk to some of the boys who were also smoking out there but my Thai wasn't so good at the stage, and they didn't seem to have any interest in talking to me anyway. I had been told by the Malaysian guy the previous night that most of the guys were from Burma anyway and didn't even speak Thai.

At one point the mamasan character came out and was talking to the other boys, clearly about me as he was looking at me while he was talking. I couldn't work out exactly what he was saying but I recognised the word "boxing" before the other boys started to laugh. By the way he said it it seemed to me that he was referring to having some kind of fight with me. Needless to say I left shortly after and met up with my straight friend who was having just as bad luck trying to find a girl for the night.

We ended up in a girly bar (not my scene obviously but it was either that or go back to the hotel) but we were the only two customers in there. A couple of very rough looking girls started talking to us and wanted us to buy them a drink. My friend obliged to the one that was talking to him but I refused the girl talking to me as I didn't want to give her any wrong impressions. Shortly after that a couple of very rough looking Thai guys came in and they all went outside for a talk. The atmosphere changed dramatically and I told my friend we should leave. Shortly after the guys came back in and started hassling my friend for money in quite an aggressive tone. He politely refused and we decided to pay the bar bill and leave. The bar bill was extortionate considering we''d only had one beer each and the one my friend bought the girl, but we weren't going to argue and were glad to leave the place in one piece.

All in all I didn't really enjoy my time in Chiang Rai. Outside of the sex scene (gay and straight) it's a nice and relaxing place. There's a huge open air restaurant/bar in the center of town which has live acts performing, which I enjoyed, and the town itself is nice to wander around in. But there's very little for the gay man to do. Maybe if you're with your Thai boyfriend you may have a nicer experience than me.

What a truly horrific and terrifying way to die. My thoughts are with the family.

I'm not sure however, where people who say crimes like this are on the rise get their figures from. The only official figures relating to crime are held by governments and no government anywhere in the world would ever admit to crime levels going up while they were in charge. In the UK for example, when the crime rates rise, they simply change the way the statistics are collected to make it appear that crime levels have actually gone down. I'm sure all governments use similar tactics, which makes it impossible to tell whether crime rates have actually risen or gone down.

What with the internet, crimes like this are reported a lot more than they ever used to be, and from what people say, Thai press are now more inclined to report these stories than they were before, so it's understandable for people to assume that crime is on the rise, but is it really?

I'm not saying whether it is or it isn't. I'm just saying nobody really knows.

analised

xandreu Did you really mean this? or did you mean analysed?, I think your word is better, shows where the phrase might best be put

I had a big argument with my spellchecker who wanted me to use "analyzed" and wouldn't take a British "no" for an answer, This was merely a compromise while I moved on before I forgot what I wanted to say.

Well, suits you I guess.

I find too many things about my "home" country unappealing to return. Like cold, overcast weather, fat women and the nanny state to name a few...

Your "home" country sounds a lot like mine, and I have no intention of staying there any longer than I have to. For me it's simply an ATM. Make a few deposits and withdraw enough to go exploring again...

Last year was my 1st trip there and I will be back in a few months. I am still in the awe struck phase and am trying in earnst to move my life over there. I should probably heed your words as you speak from experience but despite that I still really want to live there.

I genuinely hope my words don't put you off coming. My attitude when I came out here was to stay for a while and see how it goes, and I'm glad I came, and I'm glad I came with that attitude. Many, many people come here and make a success out of it. My post was in no way a negative insight of Thailand or Thai culture. I was simply saying that it wasn't for me. But it is for many people, and I don't regret coming here for one minute. I've had a great time. I just don't think it's the place I personally want to settle. But I'd have to have come here and done what I did to have come to that conclusion. You may come to a different conclusion.

I'd say living in Thailand for a extensive period is always a positive experience. Just come with an attitude like mine, at least for the first year, before you make any final decisions. You'll enjoy your time here either way. But get to know the place before you put down any roots.