Litlos

I used to do it from my K-Bank online banking. There is also a facility from some ATM's. There are also the Top up machines around the place, but never figured out how that one works.

I had a quick look at the AIS site and I think this is the link you need http://www.ais.co.th/12call/en/topup.html

Though you will have to blindly follow some of the links as it is in Thai not English in the screens. Very frustrating really. The online from K-Bank was easy to follow and in proper English.

Cheers

Similar one a couple of years ago in Pattaya. Basically the wife (or TGF) went to the bank and explained the circumstance with some evidence. The bank very quietly closed the account and gave her the funds, possibly minus a "handling" fee. The more people who get involved the larger the "handling" fee so good idea to try and keep it simple.

Thailand is no where near as strict in law as the west and this is a good opportunity to utilise the difference. Better to be quick about it though.

If he had no will in Thailand the funds will be consumed by lawyers and government charges. Hence I have a will in Thailand as the only person I wish to purchase a BMW with my funds is me, not a lawyer after my demise.

Cheers

When I am working in BKK I have to get one from Mo Chit up the road a bit in the morning. I have now learnt how to say straight up the road. This mornings driver initially not interested until I said straight in Thai. Then had the cop holding up traffic near work. No problem I will walk the last 150m and here k. Somchai is a 15Baht tip because I would really not like your job. End result a taxi driver who had a 15B tip and could cut across 3 lanes of traffic to do a u turn and get back to Mo Chit for the next fare. Hopefully I raised his impression of the local expats a bit. Might be working as when I have trouble with the first driver in the queue I am regularly seeing one of the other drivers waving at me. A bit of courtesy and a small tip goes a long way it seems. And I still would not like their job.

When I wish to go to the airport the TGF rings a friend who owns a taxi. Pickup on time and no hassle and a bit cheaper than the taxi mafia outside the door. Yes I overpay, but for on time pickup with no hassles I will do this, and all happy.

Around town for venues always a mixed bag and they will refuse if it is going the wrong way, that is their privilege in the Thai system. Only had to revert to a m/cycle once and that was end of month Friday (payday) and everyone was going somewhere, so not a vacant taxi to be found.

Cheers

Another vote for Invadeit as very positive experience with them,

Cheers

You should have a GFCI rather than an ELCB as this checks the current imbalance in the circuit rather than monitoring earth leakage, things like a Safe T cut work this way, a much better way of doing things with respect to the Thai supply system. The Safe T cut is probably the best local solution to this. Not sure of your budget, but pretty sure a 3000 Baht good quality breaker has got to be cheaper than the hassle of a dead relative on the premises. Sorry if this sounds flippant, but is a good basic way of thinking about it, prevention is miles better than a cure, and probably cheaper in this case (and/or the long run).

I work with industrial stuff all the time and rarely see plastic, so no real problem here concerning metal and plastic. If from a reputable manufacturer will probably be OK. Chinese are not reputable manufacturers!!!

If you are not sure how to use a VOM or how to interpret the results, honestly, put it away and rely on the test button. That is why the button is there. Not being disparaging, but horses for courses etc. Also less likely you will accidentally connect yourself to something nasty while trying to get a reading that you will probably not understand.

Cheers

Google "Samsung refrigerator problems" and then do the same for Toshiba, Hitachi etc. I think you will very quickly go off the idea of a Samsung refrigerator. I know of two people with Samsung fridge's in Aust, and both have had service calls in the first year.

Samsung for TV's and mobiles seem OK, and I have had both trouble free for a few years so I am not a Samsung basher. May be different sections of the same company have different ideas on quality?

Cheers

Well done on moving in As they say in the classics all is well that ends.

Totally jealous as that is somewhere to live in and enjoy, and done as a design and construct, albeit with a few hiccups along the way.

Maybe a few more years in "Beautiful Bangladesh" and I can do the same as yourself.

Sit back and enjoy, whilst wifey starts planning the next stage.

Cheers

Litlos

Such news breaks four and a half hours after the incident?

And how should I read this "the blast was about 500 meters from the scene"?!

There is not much oil so people should not panic," said a local Bangkok fire fighter on Thai television.

The Bangchak oil refinery, which employs around 600 people, is located in a large industrial estate in a sprawling suburb.

It is among the country's biggest refineries and 120,000 barrels of oil are processed at the site every day, a company official told AFP.

Exactly I liked this part?

Please someone correct me if I'm wrong. But Isn't a barrel 36 Imperial gallons?

jb1

42 gallons = 1 barrel

That is 42 US or short gallons. About 159 litres or 35 real gallons. Before the defending the US gallon as correct answer this. Which has more volume, a barrel of oil or a barrel of water?

Cheers

Cheers

If you have towels that will not absorb water due to excessive "dressing" or cotton shirts that stay shiny then a cup of vinegar mixed in about 5 litres of water will sort them out. No joke just soak the material for about 10 minutes in the vinegar mix, then turf the lot into the washing machine with a bit of powder and give a good long wash. After that should be no problems. Particularly effective on things advertised as "Egyptian" cotton as they seem the worst types for not absorbing water.

Cheers

The bit that tickles my funny bone is it sounds like they were off buying more rope for another attempt when nabbed. Got to give them high marks for persistence it seems. Not so many for intelligence in covering your tracks though, I mean guys going back to the same shop, again, again and yet again. I get the feeling they will have a protracted period to contemplate this basic error in one of Thailand's famous lock houses.

Cheers

Try RS Components Thailand for an industrial quality item.

www.thailand.rs-online.com

Cheers

Something to think about before investing in things like Australian dollar bank interest at 5% is that at some point in the very near future the Australian dollar is probably going to depreciate. Whether this is due to government incompetence or the fact the Chinese stop buying the raw materials remains to be seen. It was reported reasonably reliably a while ago that the Aust government was aiming to get the currency worth about 1AUD= 75 cents US compared to parity today, based on previous Aust government performance it will do a reasonable overshoot and my theory is hit about 1AUD= 65 cents against the US dollar.

So you need to be careful that the 5% by the banks is not devalued by about 25% on the capital compared to say the Thai Baht due to currency movements. You need to work out where you wish to be ultimately spending the money, and ensure that relativity is maintained with that currency, plus gains if possible.

By the way if someone knows where there is a rock steady currency (vs THB), that also has investment potential for expats I will be all ears.

Cheers

Well to throw my arrangements into the mix. My TGF gave up work (quite happily) to look after me when I moved here, not sure I was part of that decision, or was it late one night!

Anyway based on what I have read and my take I put her on a salary, allowance, gratuity or whatever you wish to call it. How it works is I worked out all the regular bills plus her allowance plus a family allowance of 5000baht per month. The deal is she pay all the bills, has enough to feed and clothe herself reasonably comfortably. The most important part of this arrangement is that if she does not spend the 5000B on the family then it is hers. But I do not want to hear from members of the family trying to pump the old falang well.

As I work away and have had very irregular rosters this arrangement works very well. The bit that works even better is when the family approaches her to ask me for a "loan" she informs them that they have to deal with her, end of story and I feel no pain. I do know though that she finances payments on a nephews motorcycle so he has transport to attend technical college, up to her. In fact the day for her payment to be deposited is the 27th aka tomorrow, and she is joking her salary is due. In the meantime I have shown her how to lower the cost of mobile etc, still no discount on the monthly stipend though.

Works for me pretty well, but others will have different arrangements that work as well.

Cheers

a big, well known O&G company in Sarawak has made me an offer to work on O&M (primarily maintenance)@ USD17000 per month and a 4 on 4 off rotation...my background is in new power generation projects and the offer was made only on sight of my CV with no phone interview or nothin' and I'm almost 62 y.o....they said that they'll train me up for what they want me to do...

sounds attractive but a bit weird...any of you O&G folks care to comment?

I have just come of a contract in GOT as a construction superintendent at about 22000USD per cycle offshore on 4 x 4. Probably paid a bit more as not a black trades background, so in in the realms of reasonable to high. Joking on the black trades, honest,

Cheers

Well to throw a couple of different things into the mix from recent experience.

Where I used to work the facilities were designed to US Standards (?). As such we had 220V single phase distribution boards supplied by delta/delta 3 phase transformers, so no real neutral to earth. When I questioned the single phase bit as was obviously 2 phase the local US personnel sort of looked at the floor and said is single phase, sort of? Not in a bulls roar is it single phase is a 2 phase setup, well we call it single phase in the USA, enough said. Anyway we had some ELCB’s installed and requested from CH what to do with the white pig tail wire, nothing was the answer as the unit will work out current balance and what is going “elsewhere”. How does elsewhere even work from our project department, easy through leakage it ends up with a semi earth (imbalance) reference point. Ok, so it appears the units will detect the current imbalance between the legs and not really care where it goes.

The second one is more interesting as happened to a friend while I was away offshore and he was trying to work it out. Post floods he was renovating his house and got a boot when touching the curtain rail, turns out he had taken my advice to put in a Safety Cut, but was set to override by installing sparkie, about as much use as a concrete parachute. Long story cut short he worked out a screw for the curtain rail had touched a wire for a power outlet below. Got another sparkie in who filled hole with silastic and all was good. I asked if he could smell vinegar during the repair, yep sure. Well dig it out as Acetic acid will eat out the copper and that was what you could smell. Oh <deleted>.

The point of the above is that when there are problems with RCBO’s etc tripping it might be real and something not obvious. But a western standard set of tests would have quickly identified a damaged cable insulation to earth leakage. If the RCBO’s cannot be rest due to mechanical failure then this is obviously different.

Cheers

In Thailand 7/11 the coin counters wear short skirts and lipstick. Last week in Oz I dumped about $400 into a mechanical version within the load limits and it promptly jammed. I know which type I prefer.

Cheers

7/11 or similar about 1/4 a kilo at a time during a non busy period and they will love you. Simply drop on the counter to count and wander of to pick up the beer or whatever from the fridge while they do it. Just saw it happen while getting refills.

If you want to make it easy break up into different denominations, but they will count anyway. The TGF empties her piggy bank of my change (women the same the world over) and sorts it into little bags of different denominations, which they then count, probably makes it a bit quicker and easier.

In Oz the banks have coin counting machines, but you have to have an account with that bank to use them or some ripoff fee applies. Possibly the same in Thailand, though I have never seen them here.

Cheers

Cheers

Well I just spent 9 days in overpriced and ripped off Australia, in the worst area for rip offs, Western Australia. While there I heard a classic line from a retailer. "We will price to whatever the market will stand". Never heard a truer line in my life.

So basically we as consumers are exposed to the greed of the retailers or your basic avarice. Do not mind some of the other sins, just this one is pain in the wallet without the side benefits of the others like sloth, gluttony or lust for example. Also it is not just confined to Pattaya or Thailand at large. So basically the consumer will be ripped off until he takes his business elsewhere, or Yingluck legislates otherwise.

Cheers

LIKE THE GENERAL WHO DROVE OVER THE FEMALE DOCTOR AND PUT HER IN A COMA WHO COMPLINED ABOUT HIS PARKING IN HER SPACE OUTSIDE HER HOUSE ETC

police and army matters are kept quiet always ......

It was his daughter who was driving, but he took the blame as he was in the military and knew litlle would happen to him.

Careful there as that is getting awful close to naming names, defamation etc. Also did the military not offer up a colonel as the driver in this case? In the case of the female doctor it is unlikely to go to the general as the only person who actually got a look at the driver was the lady injured, and she has no recollection of events. This information is from a friend of mine who is a member of the family involved.

To OP, depends on how much influence the soldier has will decide what happens. As he was riding a motorcycle it does not sound like he is a member of the elite. There have been cases before where both military and police have been prosecuted and jailed for their crimes, so hopefully the law will take its correct course this time.

Cheers

^yes I've changed the BIOS to boot from the Windows CD, I'm dumb with computer but not that dumb!!

I'd guess the windows version does support SATA HDD becuase that's what's on the old one it was originally installed on.

Not having a go, just trying to work out where you are. Used to do some specialist software support a long time ago and learnt to never assume.

So at this stage it looks like there are two potential sources of the problem.

A/ The CD is corrupted, a few years old so a possibility, maybe a visual inspection, also can you put into another machine and see if you can open folders and view file details with explorer?

B/ Windows setup does not like your HDD format. Maybe boot from the disk and see if you can escape into command line, then see if you can view the HDD. Somebody else mentioned some specialist tools which may be the way to go if you need to reformat the HDD.

Cheers

Are you booting directly from the CD/DVD or are you going in through Linux? If going through Linux that could be the problem and try setting the Bios to boot from the CD/DVD first assuming it is a bootable disk. That should then give you an option to reformat the HDD.

The other suggestion above that the version of Windows you have does not support SATA hard drives is also valid. I have an old machine that had this problem so I ended up putting a IDE disk in for booting off.

I have done the going round in circles with mismatched hardware and software before, very frustrating and even when working never 100%. So now I just get both new at the same time, and get the shop to load it so if it does not work it is their problem. It is amazing watching the guys in the shops do it and they seem to have all the answers and software available as they are doing it every day. Plus they may slip a couple of freebies on.

Cheers

Windows 7 is pretty good and you will find that XP is getting a bit dated and shortly will no longer be supported and there will be problems for drivers for newer devices. If buying a proper version of Windows 7 then go back to whoever supplied the PC and you should be able to get OEM price, which is a bit discounted from full retail. I use XP and Win 7 Home premium. I skipped Vista, but the company I work for got it, Win 7 much better and faster. From Invadeit site Win 7 Home Premium 32 or 64 Bit OEM is 3990 Baht, full price 4250 Baht.

Cheers

Have a look at rethai(dot)com This is a portal and has listings from individuals and agents.

Cheers

I tried growing Thai chilli, to good a soil and to much water and so not spicy, I can eat it like sugar snap peas so an epic fail on the spicy scale. It appears there is an art in growing Thai chilli.

Green Papaya is something I have not found in Perth. The main supplier I use in in Perth is Kongs and sort of generic asian, has all sorts of asian supplies, I will bet there is something similar in QLD. The only time my TGF has been really interested in eating crabs is after I introduced her to curried crab a few months ago, like tinned tuna though. Not counting the black sour crab in Somtam.

If you want some hints or a least how I approached the visa issue for my TGF send me a PM. It may take a couple of days to answer as I will be in transit and then busy once back in Oz. Just not in the mood to put that sort of info on public and have the detractors etc.

Cheers

For what it is worth Shane I am heading back Aust tomorrow with TGF in tow for the second time. I applied for a 3 month single entry for her last year and they gave a 12 month multi so no excuse for not taking her . Some of the things I did before her first trip was find a couple of good asian supply stores, my area has a lot of asians at university so no problem. First thing was take her to asian supply store after a quick look around the house. Well it was a new wok, rice bran oil for cooking, real Thai chilli's (in freezer?), favourite brand of oyster sauce etc etc, she had a ball buying this and that and even got some mama noodles. So then off to butcher, green grocer etc, 3 hours later she has everything she wants with very little input from me and even found some kapow (Basil), most of it cheap as chips as well. That night cooking Thai food and smiling, OK it is not Thailand, but she can prepare food she likes. I already had a rice cooker so no need for one of those, which got me a nod of approval, also you can find Thai jasmine rice in most supermarkets as well, I just had to show that is was Thai Hom Mali and no problem.

Must have been happy as she insisted on coming back for second trip. The other thing I did was ensure she had some female friends she knows for meeting or phoning, some Thai, some wives of my friends. I use Italk for ringing back to Thailand for the calls, maybe not the cheapest, but reliable. Also get her to get some Thai music CD's/DVD's to bring with her.

Cheers