dddave

This is one of those times I wish they still had cauldrons of boiling oil.

Absolutely! It would NEVER happen in the West with it's crack governmental oversight and bulletproof accounting practices. Oh, wait! Enron, Lehman Brothers, Silicon Valley Bank, Bear Sterns, Arthur Anderson, Worldcom.......

I believe there is still a package express office immediately inside to doors of Lotus (2nd floor) from the On Nut BTS walkway.

A friend who had lived in Malaysia said the Piri-Piri at Terminal 21 was a big disappointment. Said it was bland and not authentic. "Hemmingways" chain of Pubs in Bangkok and Pattaya have Piri-Piri on the menu but when I tried it I thought it very bland as well.

Over the last 3 years, my dealings with Jomtien Immigration staff has never been other than polite and professional. When I see the daily tide of disrespectfully dressed, entitled and ill prepared scruff that they have to deal with it's a wonder they are as polite as they are.

They seem to have instituted some new kind of system to defeat "Ad-Blockers" If you are using one, whitelist the site and you'll get connected. You will also now be innundated with so many layers of ads that the underlying text is often obscured.. You Tube is doing the same.

Sooooo much easier said than done. There's this little catch-22. A country can not deport an individual unless they know that persons true country of origin and in addition to that, that country must agree to accept the deported individual. Most of the Africans around Sukhumvit have either questionable or no documentation. They know the rules. When asked where they are from, they say one place one day, another place another. There is no known test to determine where a person is actually from. The country you may want to deport them to really isn't to anxious to have them back, thus they can and usually do demand positive proof of that persons origin. Sure, Thailand can arrest them and toss them in IDC indefinitely but IDC is already packed beyond capacity and new prisons cost a lot of money to build and staff along with the expense of feeding and caring for them. The last statistics I saw, there were more than 300 Nigerians incarcerated in Thai prisons already. When Thailand did a big oil purchase with Nigeria about 8 years ago, part of the deal was that Nigeria would send aircraft to pick-up and repatriate 300 or so prisoners at that time. They made a similar deal with Iran. Europe has the same problem. Most European nations are overrun with illegals but what the hell do you do with them? You cant jail them all.

Sadly, from the 70's on, "orphans" became an international commodity and adoption "agencies" (brokers would be more accurate) became hugely profitable businesses, especially in Asian countries, particularly South Korea & Cambodia. Tens of thousands of children, from infants to about 8 years old were essentially sold to wealthy Westerners, sometimes to the benefit of the kids but way too often, to what became very unhappy situations. As the scope and abuses of this flesh market became more apparent, many nations, including Thailand passed stringent laws to prevent their children from being trafficked in this way. The sad side effect has been that many deserving orphans and rejected children never find homes and many potentially great parents never get to raise them. There is no known way to discern who will be a good and loving parent and who will turn out to fall far short of that. The kids pay the price.

I've been taking Bangkok city buses for 20 years. They were supposed to transition to an cashless payment system a few years ago and a lot of the new buses look like they are equipped for it but so far, it still seems to be cash. To confuse things more, over the last year they re-numbered a number of primary routes so figuring out which bus goes where can be a challenge. Some of the new buses have electronic destination signs alternating Thai and English script so that may be more helpful. One of the really hard parts for non-Thai readers is many of the main routes have express routes for certain buses, jumping on the expressways and bypassing many normal stops. figuring out which buses those are is not easy as it is usually just a small sign in the front. Some new private companies are now operating central city routes, "Thai-Smile" for one. It will be interesting to see if any innovation comes out of it. I've noted that many former "Red" non-AC routes like #71 & #305 are now using new, blue AC buses.

Thanks for the reply's. I'm a bit embarrassed to say the issue turned out not to be my internet service but the position of the router in my apartment. Even though it looked to be central, for some arcane reason, the signal apparently had a null at my TV location. I tried moving the router 6 feet and everything improved immediately.

In Jomtien, stuck with TOT. Previously, I had 1GB down and everything ran great, but expensive. This year I tried downgrading my speed to 300mps, less than half the price. At first OK but now I notice many HD YouTube videos do not play smoothly, kind of jumping. 4K Netflix TV also very uneven with some buffering. I did several speed tests and am getting about 360mps up/down so I am getting what I'm paying for. Would upgrading to 500mps likely solve my playback issues or do I probably need to bite the bullet and go back to 1gb.? BTW, I live alone so not sharing the signal with others.

Customs might very well be doing their job. Like any other government department or business that has to deal with a huge task volume along with complex rules and limited manpower to process it all, they may make agreements that while not assessing every single item, follows a process that guarantees customs close to the amount of revenue they would expect to generate if the processes were enforced. A percentage of items will get through not paying what they would have paid but overall, everybody gets what they want.

You'll see Marshall and JBL knock-off's at most electronics kiosks at almost any BIG-C or Lotus's shopping center. Noticed a few yesterday at the Sukhumvit Rd Lotus's in Pattaya. Thing is, you can probably find even better sounding speakers at an even lower price at the same kiosk. If you have music on your phone, just test any speaker they have with your Bluetooth.

Ten plus years ago, a majority of the Sukhumvit vendors were deaf non-speakers. It was a large community and as Thailand has no support system for persons with disabilities, a very practical solution to their support needs. Then the BMA decided to clean out all the Sukhumvit vendors and they were thrown out with no assistance plan. It was pretty sad.

Thanks for your well considered reply and not taking my question as a hostile accusation. Your birds are beautiful. I remember reading a few years ago about a flock of Parakeets that nest around one of New York's busy airports. They are all escaped domestic birds or their descendants. Not a great environment for a tropical species but they appear to be pretty tough and adaptable critters with definite New York attitude as anybody who has tried to trap them has discovered.

Sorry, but I have to ask. Are these birds born and raised in hatcheries or are they trapped in the wild, then sold to collectors?

A month is going to be too long. You quickly find there is a definite sameness to almost all Isarn Cities and rural areas. I would pick three or four distinct provinces and then do them one or two at a time, maybe going by day bus from Bangkok and renting a vehicle locally. Were I to pick 4, it would be Nong Khai, Loei, Petchabun and Nahkon Phanom but not in one trip.

I bought a similar Infinix at Advice for my niece as a graduation gift a year ago. No issues so far, seems a good machine though the manufacturer specializes in low-end phones and other devices

Mine already had 6gb ram so I didn't upgrade it as it seemed sufficient for Windows-10. If yours has only 4gb currently, probably worthwhile to upgrade that also. Also, while it was open, I gave it a really good cleaning, Lint really packed around the processor. EDIT: Just realized you already said you have 8gb ram so no issue

Don't be surprised if you start receiving some low value CODs you never ordered. That happened to me after a similar scenario. They count on a small number of people who cant resist paying to see what it is or maybe believe it's something another family member ordered.

I have a 10 year old 15" HP Pavillion "Sleekbook" Like yours, some keys weren't working, it was very slow on it's best days and the battery was long gone though I actually rarely needed the battery in the first place. I was going to bin it but a friend suggested it was still basically a good machine for what I used it for. He showed me a few YT videos on upgrading my specific HP and since free time is something I have in abundance, I decided to give it a try. A new keyboard on Lazada was less than B1000 as was a battery. An SSD was about B1500. I bought a set of small size screwdrivers at a B20 store. It took a few days but with the YT video to guide me step by step, it went surprisingly well. Used free Macrium software to copy the old HD and Windows onto the SSD. Shockingly, it booted up first try and has run very well since. It's five times faster than it ever was, no sticking keys. The battery I bought was crap, died after six months but I really never need it anyway as the old laptop is too bulky to lug around. Even if you take yours to a shop and have them do the work, it shouldn't cost more than B5-6000 and you end up with a good working machine you are familiar with.

Dramamine, nominally for motion sickness has always been a dependable sleep aid for me with virtually no side effects, no morning fuzzies.

Well then, as a singularly youthful thinker, Perhaps a session on ChatGPT will provide the answers you seek.

The Thai Embassy/Consulate in PP has never been a particularly welcoming or helpful place. Agency fees are cheap and well worth the hassles avoided. It's been many years since I used one so I have no recommendations.