ollylama

Anyone know a place in Chiang Mai that can etch a drinking glass? There's a couple of threads on this but they all lead nowhere.

This old 2018 thread suggests a place but lacks clear directions. 

I went today and can't pick up my sticker until March 16. Three months from now! If you're interested getting a sticker, act fast. I'm not sure how much farther they will push it back for those who apply in late December. At this rate, you might not get your sticker until one month before the expiration! I wish I had known this. I would have done it in November. 

One of the officers said I can use my receipt to get through but I'm skeptical.

Thanks! Strange that London is so fast and Los Angeles is not. But it does show how different the speeds of overseas servers are. Are you also on the 200/100 package?

Can any of you please do a speedtest using a server based overseas? For those of us who don't access Thai websites, the readings using the default (local server) settings are meaningless.

I notice a lot of you are getting fast speeds when you use speedtest.net, but I'm curious what kind of speeds you get when you choose an overseas server. I have the 100/30 package with True and have been getting about 60/30 via the default Chiang Mai test server. But anything overseas (US, UK, Japan etc) tops out at 20/10, sometimes much less than that. Does 3BB do better in this regard?

At the Tesco in Hua Hin they carry a nice selection of "Tesco Finest" products - chutneys, jams, teas, coffee, etc. Really good stuff. Apparently on Samui and maybe other beach places as well.

My question: Do any of the Chiang Mai Tescos stock the Tesco Finest line? I haven't seen it at any of them.

Is there anywhere to pick up something like Google Cardboard (a simple box that can convert your mobile phone into a virtual reality headset) in Chiang Mai? It's possible to order from ebay or aliexpress but shipping takes a few weeks. Thanks!

sorry about that. already pmed.

sounds great. i'll almost surely buy them. where are you located?

Where is the best place to buy a set of dumbells in Chiang Mai? They seem uniformly overpriced here. I need each one to be adjustable and come with at least 12kg of weights each. Thanks.

Thanks for the website. Which of these would you recommend? http://yunnansourcing.com/en/6634494-pu-erh_tea

Anyone know a good place to buy puer tea in Chiang Mai for home use? I'm also interested in buying some of that jasmine tea rolled into tiny balls. Also, japanese tea like genmaicha or gunpowder tea. Thanks for your help.

i tried to log in on that site but it kept rejecting me. then i saw that the url was wrong. i hope this isn't a way to steal passwords.

Does anyone know when this will be available in Thailand? Me likey.

This article sort of misses the point. 90 percent of the people who migrated to the number four city (Bangkok) are of Thai nationality. The migration is of rural Thais to Bangkok. There's no mention of Thailand being an especially important country to attract foreigners. Maybe that's just a bit of speculation thrown in to appeal to Coconuts' expat audience.

Anyone know anything about Houston?

That papaya leaf remedy keeps going around on Facebook. I can find no data to suggest it works. Only anecdotal evidence that after taking it, the fever went away, and given that Dengue always goes away after a week or so, it seems to be a case of "medicine distracting the patient while nature cures the disease." If it were otherwise, big Pharma would have isolated the active ingredient and sold it as a pricey pill.

Tests and public safety announcements will do about as much to curb reckless driving as pictures of cancer patients on cigarette packs has done to curb smoking. Fines and jail. That's the only thing that people will pay attention to. Not just in Thailand, but the whole world. Well, except for places like Sweden and Germany.

They can easily implement the one hour free wifi system that Wawee imposes. If there is unlimited wifi then they obviously don't consider it a problem.

If you want to play policeman, then why not try a more useful target? Like shirtless farangs. Or tourists who have no business on a motorcycle. Or chinese tourists who think the middle of the street is a normal place to walk. Or foreigners who make out in public. Or Thais who wear swastikas. Or clueless tourists who stand in groups blocking the sidewalk or the street and don't get out of the xxxxxxx way.

Anyone who runs a coffeehouse should be prepared for slackers taking up space. This is an international problem, not just a local one. I myself try to order a cup of coffee every two hours at least, plus something sweet. But I'm now unable to sleep at night and am getting fat. I wish Wawee and Doi Chaang would serve better food. It's just too nice to work in a coffee house. Maybe they should make the chairs less comfy.

There may be no better forum on earth than this to publish an April Fools story and watch as hundreds of grumpy expats complain about the government's incompetence before realizing their own. Or perhaps, incontinence.

Jeezus. Lighten up fellas.

Actually it was a different America Restaurant. It was on Tha Pae (not Ratchadamnoen), just around the corner from you, Ulysses. It then became a jewelry store or a gift shop but still had the sign for a long time. They had amazing enchiladas. The owner was a blonde guy from San Francisco I think.

Actually you may have read me wrong (or I wrote unclearly) - I think Miguel's is great. The closest thing to Los Angeles style Mex in Chiang Mai. Haven't tried the other place on Canal that everyone's raving about though.

One of the nicest things in CM are the sonoran style tortillas you can get in the supermarkets. Very elastic and tasty. Easy to make your own mexican food. Just pick up some Danitas sauce, some chicken, tomatoes onions and cilantro, sour cream avocados etc from Makro and make a feast. Mexican is super easy to make so long as you have good tortillas and sauce.

mexican food is a strange animal. people have even more divisive opinions of it than of burgers or italian. you can't begin to compare burrito house to miguel's. according to old legend, burrito house was started by a thai who used to work in taco bell in the US. i love taco bell, but it's not reallly mexican food, rather an american fast food interpretation of mexican food. burrito house basically takes the taco bell recipes and uses higher quality ingredients, sort of a "homestyle" fast food. if you tried to make a big mac at home it would surely taste better than the ones at McDonalds. You get my drift. At the old location near the University they even had ripoffs of other US dishes, like Denny's Grand Slam breakfast. So surely it was someone who was familiar with low end US cuisine and wanted to bring it over here. I'm pretty sure there's a new owner now, though.

One gripe with burrito house is that they're really stingy with cheese. They barely dust each dish with the tiniest amount. You can buy a huge brick of cheddar in Makro for very little so there's no excuse for this (though true mex should have a mixture of cheddar and jack).

One recommendation - the taco sauce at Burrito House is amazing. You can buy a small bottle from them for 50 baht. It has no preservatives so goes back quickly, or I'd suggest getting a bigger bottle. Maybe you can freeze it. It's superb, goes well with everything. Except maybe ice cream.

Miguel's is much more authentic mexican food, of the sort you'd find in real mexican restaurants in the States (and parts of Mexico). But there are many types of "real" mexican food. I find that most Europeans don't like this kind of mexican food and consider it "inauthentic" because they're used to some other interpretation which is more prevalent across the pond.

The mexican food at Art Cafe is absurd. It's sweet and sour sauce in a tortilla. Or at least it was the last time I tried it. Not even close.

There used to be a great place called The American Cafe (or something like that) on Tha Pae road that did the best mexican in town, but it's been long gone.

Okay, that's my anuncio de servicio por la publica regarding Burrito House, et. al.

coffee is generally expensive because the espresso machines are expensive. anything with a big up front investment will clear away the entrepreneurial bottom feeders. also, same as in the west, people tend to hang out for hours with one cup of coffee. so you pay for renting the chair as well. plus there's perceived value - a mocha caramel soy latte can cost four times as much as a regular cup of coffee and cost only a few cents more to produce.

i'm surprised to hear everyone so lovey dovey about the songthaews. a few years ago everyone thought they were the spawn of the devil, impeding progress, causing accidents and polluting the air. i guess they must have stepped up their PR campaign. What happened? Are they running TV commercials showing a sweet old guy driving a girl to her home and giving her a flower, soft music in the background as the tagline "Songthaews. We go all the way for you" flashes over the screen?