dddave

Perhaps try for 6 months on a multiple entry tourist visa. Travel from place to place; Southern beach cities, Northern mountain cities and Bangkok-Pattaya. If one suits you, try that location for another 6 months. One thing you have is time. By the end of that year, you will have a pretty good idea if Thailand long term suits you.

Recently, I let my niece order the pizza from Pizza Company. What arrived had these awful "crab sticks" wrapped into the crust. Totally revolting. I made do with a sandwich.

The sad reality is that most such places are now swarming with "influencer" wanna-be's vying to be the first to tell the world and bring the Chinese busloads. The province of Pitsanulok has some surprisingly beautiful areas. Already popular among Thais but not too many international tourists, yet.

I don't have them bookmarked but there are a number of videos showing the hand forging of huge iron and steel machinery parts in Chinese foundries using century old methods.

I have never had this happen on You Tube. I've had it happen on other sites but never consistently.

I like playing YT music videos, sometimes more than an hour in duration while I do other things. Recently, YT has begun pausing the video after about 45 minutes, no explanation. This on both my LR & BR TV's. Anybody else experiencing this? Did I accidently activate some hidden setting? Just plain You Tube. I don't subscribe to any of the paid versions. I do use an ad-blocker. They recently announced new anti ad-blocker measures. Perhaps connected to that.

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