jamesbrock

Ill take speaker vans over stupid, loud motorcycles any day of the week.

Not me. Although stupid, loud motorcycles can occasionally scare the bejesus out of you, they're gone before you know it. The speaker vans spew their monotonous inane drivel at 5km/h, so can unnecessarily pollute your life much more than stupid, loud motorcycles.

It's just a matter of time.

beef being grain fed destroys the health of the animal (much like grains do to people) and the grain fed beef is no longer healthy, the difference is pretty amazing . Would love to find a local grass fed source.

Grains destroy the health of people?? 4:29am - I assume you were drunk when you wrote that tripe? As far as I have always believed grains provide a number of important nutrients, including dietary fiber, B vitamins (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and folate) and minerals (iron, magnesium and selenium). And, as part of a healthy diet, whole grains can help with cardiovascular disease, diabetes and weight management.

Do you have any verifiable, non-nutjob, sources for your claim?

I never did either until 16 days ago; we took a random one this afternoon from McDonalds to home (all 1900 meters) and they obviously don't have a set price for that one, as he extorted us for 300 baht! Even stood there and watched as my gf struggled to get the wheelchair into his boot! Gels with what I said yesterday: there are some good people out there driving taxis.

Lol, although the taxi-mafia are probably more benevolent than the above mentioned organisation, I meant 'some organisation involved with putting that out' (as in 'the condition or manner of being organised'). Considering they all have one (or they show you when you walk up to a rank), I assume there's some collusion there.

Was that with any sweeteners? Insurance, etc.

Geez, however they get them down here, it would work out a lot cheaper if they just posted them!

Since taxi drives will not use the meter, it is up to them to decide what they can get. I don't think there is a secret committee that sets the prices. I think there is an established mindset that "this is the price," much like the noodle vendor who will not sell a dish for less than 40 baht. Of course there might be a noodle gang out there....

All taxis have the same laminated A4 sheet with fixed prices from one location to another, so there must be some organisation to get that out!

If you are spending that exorbitant fare, helping you out of the car seems superfluous.

My point is, he doesn't have to do it, and others wouldn't; it's the little things that count.

Of course he comes hopping when you call. At 800 baht a pop I'd take you.

I have to go back at 1:00 today; see you about 12:30?

By the way, you can rent a small car/jeep for 800 baht for 24 hours.

My gf doesn't drive, and I still can't use my legs properly...

I'll believe it when my Mac gets infected.

Not gonna happen if you do two things:

- Update or disable Java (if you even have it - OS X Lion doesn't come with Java per default, smart move as it turns out)

- Don't update / install anything from within the web browser. If you get prompted for your admin password from your browser, something is wrong.

The point about 'not updating from within your browser' is a good one. As you pointed out on Saturday, the official Adobe automatic updater actually does just pop up a dialogue box, regardless of what app is filling your screen, so it could actually be the official updater, but if you're looking at a browser when it does pop up, it's better to be safe than sorry.

14? Really? I expected larger rims than 14's!

Yes, your passage about the Thai postal system was pretty tangential, but very informative nonetheless! Thanks for that information!

found the check on Cnn. run two scripts and it tells you if you have the virus or not. Im good

http://edition.cnn.c...tml?iphoneemail

I can picture pxlgirl hitting her head on the keyboard at reading this...

Have too many days passed for mw to chime in?

Like samuijimmy pointed out, there are some good people out there driving taxis. The guy who took me to Bangkok Hospital after my accident, has been fantastic the past two weeks. Every time I need to go back, or get housebound and have to just get out and about, he is here at my place within minutes of my gf calling him; he gets out and helps me down the stairs, into the car, and deals with the wheelchair, and waits for me while I'm at the hospital - today I was there over two hours and he waited.

Sure, he charges me 800 baht for the round-trip, but it's not him personally that sets the prices, so I don't begrudge him. If anything, it has changed my attitude towards the individual taxi drivers somewhat; I still despise the loathefull taxi-mafia cartel though!

If you see an unshaven farang in a wheelchair eating fish & chips, it's not me...

Keep in mind no matter how much you pay for a TV it will never be better then the source material.

That is arguable. While it is true that to get the full impact of true high definition viewing (from a disc format), you'll need to have a Blu-Ray player connected to a Full HD (1080p) TV via an HDMI connection (and be viewing actual Blu-Ray disc content), you can get an approximation of the high definition viewing experience from upscaling.

The upscaling process, if implemented properly, can do a good job of matching the upscaled pixel output of a player to the native pixel display resolution of an HDTV, resulting in better detail and color consistency. I was initially a sceptic on upscaling, until I got my TV & Blu-Ray player, but after testing in various lighting conditions and with different source material - with the upscaling on and off - I prefer the upscaled the image I get from DVD's.

In that case I think KRS1's suggestion should seriously be investigated!

Out of interest, what price are they quoting in Nathon?

Lol at the surname! He must have loads of dosh if he's flying into USM!

Edit: BTW, I meant 'you do have a point there' in my previous post.

Hmmm... You didn't mention this here!

well that logic is ridiculous, if i walked into a car dealers and asked to buy 3 cars for the price of 2, he/she would simply say no, no loss of face just what a stupid offer. In india i have noticed they now have 'fixed price' signs so they dont have to deal with Del Boys, if you dont like the price just move on. If it isn't logical in your head consider why thailand has a better economy than America and the whole of Europe then say who the stupid ones are,

No, your analogy is ridiculous! As ydraw says, the car dealer has to pay for all his cars, therefore he makes a direct loss selling three for the price of two; the fish-spa lady's costs are the same no matter how many people are dangling their feet in the water. She went home that night 500 baht poorer out of pure stupidity.

The fish spa example is pretty weird too because it costs the establishment nothing to accomidate an extra customer. The only downside for them is that word will quickly spread and would-be full price payers will also demand a discount.

While that is possible, it is not so much as 'demanding' a discount, rather than haggling - which is almost expected in touristy areas such as that. You'd be a fool if you went up and bought your Leo singlet from any of the street vendors in Chaweng and blithely paid full price (even if you were only saving a buck!).

But, back to the bar buying idea, if a tourist from the west sees it for sale at U$20,000 and thinks that it is cheap because he would have to pay at least $100,000 for same thing back home, he isn't going to bother too much if the price goes up to U$25,000 is he? Only when he has been here a couple of years will he perhaps understand that the business is not worth that. But the buyers of bars on Samui, are generally people who do not already live here. So the price can be lifted to U$30,000 next time and probably still sell. And on, and on, and on ......

Maybe/perhaps/I think.

Yeah, I do have a point there - it takes some time to adjust to the baht, so when you first get here and you buy a Singha for 100 baht, you're texting your friends back home bragging at how cheap the beer is; after the adjustment occurs, you wouldn't go back to a place that sells them for 80! (Another example could be the full rack of ribs at Bondi - initially, you're amazed you can get such a meal for under $15.00; afterwards you're castigated for daring to be such a spendthrift!).

In my initial months here, I went and looked at a place here in Lamai - not a bar, but a cafe/restaurant - and at 2,000,000 baht would have bought it had the terms been better, (and the customers he said were regulars ever showed up again - the place is empty 99% of the time); now, after the adjustment (and of course several months of watching) I wouldn't pay 300,000 for it. It is still for sale, although the price has been taken off the ad on Baht & Sold, and still open, but must be losing a shit-ton of money every month! But that the free market for you: he wants X, I want to pay Y; he loses money every month, I move on and continue livin' the dream...

A few bars (and others) for sale in Lamai. Not an exhaustive list by any means. There are many shops empty in various places. I think these are the kinds of things the OP was thinking about.

And, dare I say it, the exact kinds of places that I wouldn't touch with a barge pole!

At least one of these bars (Eden Bar) was a successful business providing a living for 3 owners and 2 staff, until the landlord suddenly decided to double the key money and lease when it came up again last year. At the time we all thought it was because they had got a better offer from someone, but there it still sits, another business ruined purely because of the greed of landlords who are basically farmer's children with no business sense of any kind and dollar signs in their eyes.

It's fair to say that the reason that most of these bars are for sale is not because business has gotten worse (Although a lot of them went to the wall after the Floods/Volcano/Redshirts triple whammies last year), but because the landlords have increased the lease prices on the existing tenants and forced them out. Thai landlords would rather have their properties sit empty than lose face by negotiating a lower price than they originally demanded.

How sadly true your words are.

On my first visit to Fisherman's Village last year with a visiting mate and his daughter, we walked up to an empty fish-spa and enquired about the prices. They were 250 baht per person; my mate, who had lived on Samui for seven years before returning to Melbourne seven years ago, says to me, "watch this" and suggested 500 baht for the three of us; to which the woman summarily refused. Knowing it was pointless, he tried to explain that 500 baht is better than zero baht, and it wouldn't cost her one satang for us to sit there, but she did falter so we walked away. And thus was my introduction to Thai business logic!

We walked past a few more times that night, and each time the place was empty.

I am not being facetious, honest. But you obviously believe this bar is not reaching its' potential, so why don't you go in and make him/her an offer? Or, if it really isn't for sale and they don't show any interest, why not tell the owner how you think it could be improved? What have you got to lose? The bar isn't going to be yours anyway, and you never know, you may get free beers in a place you want to be in, in a years time? He's happy. You're happy.

That's one tack, but I figure if I show my hand, any figure he may have in mind would suddenly increase. I would rather watch and pounce, than unnecessarily increase what I'd have to pay. I don't need to buy a bar.

True, but this is what is on offer.

I'd like to see some shots of places that have that special allure (and are up for rent/sale) that have been rumored here as being prime.

And the fact that this is what is on offer is why I'm not a bar owner now.

Unfortunately, none of the places that I believe are failing to capitalise on their potential are for sale. I won't name any names, but I have been watching one particular place with interest for some months now which, as I said in post #74, if it went onto the market, I'd buy it in a heartbeat; but, alas I am forced to watch this wasted potential with despair, while selfishly hoping the owner falls on hard times...

Not really a big surprise. The reason that PC's have always been targeted over Macs is that PC's outnumber Macs by over 10+:1, so the virus/trojan gets a much bigger bang for the buck by targeting PC's. But as more consumers and businesses switch to Macs, especially on the popularity of the iCrap, that makes Apple a much more lucrative target. The key is that Apple keeps on top of this and issues fixes/updates quickly, as opposed to Microsoft, that really didn't seem to care about helping out their customers, probably hoping that the customer would just buy a new computer when their old one became riddled with malware/bloatware.

There'a another factor that no one has mentioned - Apple's Walled Garden. A lot of people complain about the restrictive nature of Apple's ecosystem, but it is that ecosystem that helps Apple products remain safer and more stable that their Windows counterparts.

The real area of concern for the future is smartphones/tablets, which is clearly where any smart hacker would be targeting.

Most threats will be directed at Android devices - simply because it's easier to get malware onto one, than it is to get through Apple's Walled Garden.

http://tabtimes.com/feature/ittech-security-privacy/2011/12/13/virus-watch-8-worst-android-infections-2011

A few bars (and others) for sale in Lamai. Not an exhaustive list by any means. There are many shops empty in various places. I think these are the kinds of things the OP was thinking about.

And, dare I say it, the exact kinds of places that I wouldn't touch with a barge pole!

Thankfully I only own a Hayate and not a PCX!

Rear bike need rare spare parts, more likely to get stolen.

Doh!

Yeah, I'm inside the moat at the moment. I have previously lived in this area for almost two years.

My other friend has an apartment free in Chomdoi, I rented it a few years ago. It's a bit older but it is double the size of the room I slept in last night.

I get to make the choice of living close to work out in Hang Dong and having a short commute but a long drive to anything else, or a long commute and short jaunt to most places.

Tough decision...