db1tau

The interesting details are missing: Why did the arrest warrant show up on the computer? Is it linked to the name, picture or other biometric data in the passport, like fingerprints?

The last post was from me (db1tau), don't know whos account it is it ended up under...

Marco.

In thailand I played around with a small coaxial helicopter (3 channel, cheap one, toy class) but it crashed quite often and it was not easy to get the spare sparts. Look at the two shops here: http://www.mapjack.com/?PpUyUMegacxA

They also have the big helicopters that are not toys anymore, for 20K-40K but they are not easy to fly.

Here in europe I bought a 4 channel coaxial heli with swashplate, it was better but still crashed a lot (the rotors always touched each other and broke off, if you do more than just hover).

Now I built one of these: http://www.mikrokopter.de/ and it never crashes, has GPS support and is very easy to fly (onboard computer controling the attitude)

I ran away from the smoke on a holiday trip chiang-mai - mae sot - phitsanulok - bangkok - kanchanaburi - koh chang - pattaya

during the last 2 weeks. To keep it short, only koh chang and pattaya have decent air quality.

Kanchanaburi was disappointing, we ran away after 2 days. Looked exactly same like in chiang mai.

Tak and phitsanolok is definitily not out of the smoke. The big surprise was mae sot. there was a local hole in the haze with clear blue skies for about 20 km between Tak and Mae Sot. Strange...

Going south definitly increases the humidity of the air. This can ease the symptoms the smoke causes. But for clear air pattaya or the far south is the best choice.

http://www.mapjack.com/?q7ZyUqQfaczC

Thats the electronic store in chang moi road. But unlike in amorn, you can't look for the parts for yourself and the staff couldn't tell the difference between an N- and a PL-connector.

Better than nothing though...

Does anyone know what happened to the amorn store near s&p north of the moat? I was there today and the shop was empty.

Did they move and/or is there another amorn electronic in Chiang Mai?

It is a hybrid between swimming pool and lake. They use tiles and walls in the middle (but under the surface) but outside the pool area it has a shore like a lake.

The water is very clean, I think they use limestone for nutrient retention and prevent growing algae that way.

I'm usually used to european mountain lakes and would never go into water like huay tung tao, ping river or even the moat. But the pairadise swimming lake is ok for me. At least it was some years ago when I was there last time.

On the lower end I can recommend the Pairadise Guesthouse in Pai www.pairadise.com for about 600 THB. Nice swimming lake.

On the high end there is veranda resort chiang mai, very expensive but only a 5 min drive from night safari direction samoeng and lots of pools http://www.verandaresortandspa.com/chiangmai/ about 6000 THB.

Both won't take you out of the smog though, because for that you have to be over 1000m in the mountains or south of nakhon sawan.

I saw the blood today on the floor and wondered what happened. Here are the pictures from the accident the night before:

http://www.cm108.com/bbb/index.php?showtop...rt=#entry449035

Be careful at night!

It depends what you want to do. Things that can't be done here will take at least a week if they have to be done in BKK. having to walk to your condo in the 12th floor for nearly 2 weeks because the lift can't be fixed by a local company can be quite annoying.

For personal shopping you can spend a weekend in BKK though, it's only 1 hour by plane. But this is usually only necessary every second month.

I want to see the new central shopping mall built as soon as possible ;-)

And CNX could be less dependant of Bangkok. Everything here has to be done in Bangkok, like buying furniture from index or homepro, glass for the shower cabin, spare parts for the elevator (and the crew installing them), fixing notebooks and videogames, antenna cables for WIFI, even spare parts for a honda wave have to be ordered in BKK.

Seems like nothing can be done here without the help of Bangkok...

There are cameras for a long time at intersections like rincome (look at the black domes overhead) and they enable the police in the cabin to see the roads in all four directions without getting up and looking out of the window.

They use it to switch the traffic lights by hand e.g. turn them red if noone is coming from that direction anymore or turn them green if there are a lot of cars waiting or an ambulance is stuck in front of the lights.

Most of the time the lights work in automatic mode though and there are different automatic modes for daytime and nighttime (faster switches at night).

But I doubt that the resolution of the cameras is high enough to read license plates.

Red light cameras as known back in europe usually flash and take a high resolution picture necessary to read the plate and identify the driver. They are automatically triggered when a car passes a red light and usually take at least two pictures to show that the car really passed the light and not only stopped a bit too late. The camera also has to be synchronized with the lights to show the state and the time passed since the last state change.

The left lane hast to be exempt, because left turns are always free but there has to be a sensor preventing motorists going on straight in the "turn left" lane.

Installing and calibrating all these devices requires a lot of skilled work, so I think if they wanted to go live with it on 1st april, they should already be working on it (can't see anything about that till now).

Concerning the speed checks on the superhighway, I never saw anything like that. I don't even know what the speed limit is there, I guess the default 90km/h in thailand? Sometimes on the second ring you can see ridiculous signs showing 30km/h or 50km/h, I guess they forgot to remove them after a construction.

But the speed itself is not the dangerous part. It is the big speed difference on cars using the road. there are walking pedastrians or old people with wheelchairs at 5kmh, then cyclists at 20kmh, motorbikes and slow cars at 40-60 kmh the normal traffic at about 100kmh and of course the really fast ones at usually 120-160kmh.

Back in europe of course a road like that wouldn't exists, but if it did, there were hundreds of speed limit signs everywhere and maybe even a minimum speed for the use of the highway.

They should just make the water more expensive instead of selling it out cheap till nothing is left.

Only a slight increase should be enough, since industry and farming are the ones who use big amounts of water and they will calculate again if wasting water is worth the money.

In the long term, authorities have to invest a lot of money in the toilet-to-tap technology, since it uses far less energy than desalination and is available everywhere, not only on the coastlines.

Ice chic is between soi 11 and 13. If you go Nimmanhaeminroad southward, turn left at the bike shop (soi11) or salad bar (soi13).

The ice cream tastes best in daytime when it's hot ;-)

Giving them signs to drive more slowly, more carefully, turn on lights at night or simply turn on their brain won't work.

The only sign you should give drivers like that is to let them pass and get as far away from them as possible.

Driving in chiang mai is not so bad, in fact it is much more efficient for small cars and motorbikes than back in europe (at the expense of pedestrians of course). Most drivers here are ok, only a few crazy ones cause the problems. But that's the same like in europe. The difference is that in the worst case in europe you will lose your license and some thousand euro fine/lawyer bill.

Here you can lose your health or life.

I just tested ice chic and it's ok.

I didn't eat much ice cream since baskin robins closed, only occasionally a tiny, expensive cup of haagen dazs from rimping or frappucinos from starbucks.

So i sure will eat ice cream there more often in the next weeks. If you buy a small cup you can get one free before 28th Feb, so you can get 2 scoops for under 50 THB, thats ok.

I still remember the time when one scoop was 1000 LIT in italy... that would be around 20 THB ;-) long time ago

The color of the light is less important than the fact whether you are alone or in a big group with other cars.

If there is a big group passing the lights together with me, then I just go with them or stop with them. This usually means jumping the first seconds of red light.

If there are no other vehicles around me, I carefully look for the traffic crossing my way and go if I can, no matter if the lights are red or green.

This also applies when I'm the first one who starts after the lights turn green. Sometimes there are still cars crossing who jumped the red light. Be careful!

Yes you can buy the condo from your girlfriend at whatever price you want and then register the purchase/sale at the Land Office, but you will still have to pay tax on the fair value of the property (some Land Offices in Thailand have a register that they use fro pricing purposes).

Ok, but I guess the seller has to pay the tax. So I can just send in the equivalent of 1000 THB from abroad and get the letter from the bank? It won't work without that, if we declare the transfer as a gift? (of course the tax amount is the same, but I want to avoid paperwork, not taxes)

You can sell a condo and transfer the funds out of Thailand as long as you can (1) prove that the money you used to buy the condo were brought in from overseas, and (2) the amount of money you want to transfer back out of the country again does not exceed the amount shown on the Land Office (blue) tax/sales receipt.

If I just put it on a account and send it out by swift, who will stop me? Lets say I put it in as cash before. the bank can't even know it's money from a condo sale.

We bought a condo already on name of my thai girlfriend. Is it possible to transfer it to my name without any money flowing? (Like giving it as a gift?) Or can she sell it to me at a symbolic price of 1000 THB or something like this?

And what is the problem with transfering the money out of thailand if I ever wanted to sell a condo on my name? Why is that not possible? Can't I just put it on a thai account and then send it abroad via SWIFT?

If you need (or like to drive) a big SUV, take northtwheels with their ISUZU mu-7. Really cool cars and they got a lot of them.

For a cheap toyota vios try journey www.journeycnx.com.

For two people a motorbike is still the best to go sightseeing in the city, but of course not as comfortable for the elderly.

driving here is no problem and it's fun compared to BKK. You never can lose way here because the city is easy to navigate.

take a $10 bill. sometimes they accept that instead of 500 THB (take both and try the $10 first). you can save some Baht.

If you don't have $, you can change $10 for about 400 THB on the thai side. I think better some thai guy earns it than the burmese government.

You can get a 30 day extension at the local immigration for 1800 THB without having to travel.

So you can actually get nearly 270 days out of that triple tourist visa (minus overlap).

the princess is in town and maybe wants to attend the graduation ceremonies. so there will be occasional roadblocks in addition to the traffic jam.

but nice to see that you found a positive aspect in all the inconvenient events ;-)

My wife told there was a love movie about art students who took pictures on that bridge. So like after "Pai in love" when there were more couples annoyingly taking picture than real customers in the "all about coffee" shop and around on the streets.

Yeah the dogs in lakeland are terrible. Even if you go in with a motorbike, you will get attacked quite often. Forget about cycling or walking. But maybe if you live there you can befriend them by feeding... don't know if it works, but I would definitely try it. Sometimes a guard is cycling around there, so maybe if the dogs know you, they aren't so bad anymore.

Its a pity that tang-k closed, we used to eat seafood there and they even had a children playroom. Without it, lakeland even looks more deserted.

For the map on jasminehomes, I don't want to register there since they will start annoying me and I think even if you are registered they won't give out the exact location (unless you make an appointment with the agent). But without the exact location I don't even know if I'm interested in the object. There is a cremation oven next to the front door. And the structure in the "city view" seems to be royal flora or night safari? I would say that picture is taken from wat doikham but they tell it's the view from the house, so I still wonder where it is.