Phil Conners

Bangkok Pattaya used to be good value up until about 12 years ago, now it seem to be about profit now. I will only go there now if it is for an emergency situation and then transfer as fast as humanly possible to another hospital. I did this recently and saved a ton of money. If you can get to Bangkok Christin Hospital up in Bangkok I highly recommend this place for fair prices and competent doctors as it is a private non-profit hospital.

That, and because it is just next to Chula University hospital a lot of the top professors/doctors from there have a private consultation in Bangkok Christian. HIGHLY recommended. Avoid BPH at all cost.

ebay.com

Try a few of the pawn shops. They might have something laying around. Also maybe that used shop on the second floor of Big C up off Pattaya Klang (the old Carre 4). I have seen some old electronics stuff laying around.

Do you mean Cashconverters? They closed a couple of years ago ...

Hi mate,

The only agent I will ever use in Pattaya is Alan Bolton Real Estate. They were in charge of the rental of my last condo, then they sold it for me, and then negotiated the purchase of my next one.

I have just listed another condo with them. Alan has been around for close on a million years, he is a gentleman, and all of his staff are professional to a tee. I would never personally deal with

another agent, especially unknown to me. here is a link. http://www.pattaya-property.net/

Call or email and ask for Toby or Steve.

Aussie John

I don't think Alan is still in Pattaya? I heard he has returned to UK, with someone else running the business here?

East Coast Real Estate.

I don't think I heard about them before, are they any good?

Many agents in Pattaya specialize in condos, so if you're selling a house on the east side, you need to find an agent who is good in that area.

Awful tragedy! Hopefully those responsible are brought to justice, and in the future the flight corridors are moved around such dangerous areas!

Alienware looks cool, but are actually not particularly high-endian. They have heavy graphics cards, which isn't something I particularly need - I'm not going to use it for gaming.

As for defining what is low-endian, normal and high-endian laptops, well of course these can be subjective labels, but when I say high-endian I mean relative to Thailand. If you disagree with that, fine, but it's really off topic. So is comments about how something is not possible and can't be found. Of course it can, I already listed something that was quite close and that I may end up buying, but I'm not in a hurry and will keep looking until I find the best deal. So, looking forward to more constructive ideas and suggestions, and will henceforth ignore the nay-sayers.

I know Thomas well and his service and product list is very strong. I was able to find a Lenovo Z410 with an Core i7-4702MQ that way surpassed my CPU requirement, for 23,990. Unfortunately it has the usual problem of only 4GB RAM, which would need to be thrown away to be able to upgrade to 16G, and a 1 TB SATA disk that also had to be thrown away to upgrade to an SSD drive. The trick is to find one that has these components out of the box.

Of course one could just go sit in a corner and whine "it can't be done", but that wasn't how humanity managed to land on the moon.

Could it be it has been a while since you have been shopping notebooks last?

Take for example this notebook @ 18,590 in IT City, Tukcom. With a better CPU, an SSD drive and more memory it would fit my requirement.

The price difference between an i5-4200U and an i7-4600M is about 3000 baht.

The price difference between a 500 GB HD and a 250 G SSD is about 3600 baht.

The price difference between 4 and 8 GB ram around 1400 baht.

Total around 8,000 baht, add the cost of the laptop makes 26,590, so technically possible. The problem this is about as high-endian as I've been able to find here.

I'm in the market for a high-endian Notebook/Laptop. Not too concerned with brand names as long as they don't include a fruit.

Problem is I don't really find anything I fancy in Pattaya, but maybe I'm not looking the right places.

- CPU: something like Core i7-4600M (~5000 passmarks) or better.

- Screen: Don't need touch screen, ~15" 13xxx7xx is fine, but preferably both HDMI and VGA connectors for external displays

- Disk: SDD, 250G or better

- CD/DVD/BR: Don't need.

- RAM: 16G, at least upgradable without having to throw things away (i.e. would probably have to have at least 8G standard plus a free memory slot)

- USB 2 + 3 ports, more is better

- Gigabit Ethernet port

- Wifi: 802.11n, preferably 802.11ac

- Price: I would think around 25,000 ought to cover something like this

- Availability: Thailand, preferably Pattaya, though not necessarily with Thai keyboard.

Any suggestions? What would you buy, and why?

Both Zen and Fuji offer better sushi than the sushi-train places, but at a different (higher) price.

I find Best at the dolphin roundabout have a good wide selection of booze, including tequila, from cheap plonk made in Vietnam to some very good (but expensive) authentic Mexican brands, including a couple of different types of Patron.

There are a couple more of those 3-400 baht all-you-can-eat sushi-train kinda places in town, at least 4 I know of: Tesco Lotus Sukhumvit, Central (2 different places), Royal Garden. Of course it's not going to be haute cuisine for that price, but it's certainly as good sushi as you'll get anywhere in Pattaya.

Best value must absolutely be Cherry's IMO.

Curious about Mantra, what's the deal? Lunch or dinner buffet? Only weekends or every day? Price? What's included, why is it good?

Thanks, yes they are very lovely! Never aggressive, always friendly. They're in and out, but tend to stay very close to home.

The Burmese is 5, the Persian 7 years old. They're actually relatively large cats. For comparison the tiles are 45 x 45 cm.

Our two sweet cats are looking for a new home. A female Burmese cat (the dark), and a male Persian cat (the white).

They grew up together and love each other very much so it would be best if they could go together.

They need new owners who will love them and take care of them!

Both fully vaccinated and neutered.

If you are interested or have any questions feel free to ask below or by PM.

I tried one of them, they were .. not interested ... to put it mildly. There wasn't any parking for miles around the other, but it also looked like it was mostly geared at selling very expensive new gear. I recall hearing about a place in Thepprasit Road, anyone know about that?

Anyone know of a shop in Pattaya that will take used golf gear in consignment? There used to be a golf shop on the east side 3rd road just around the exit from Carrefour/Big-C but it seems to be closed now.

60 baht on Ebay, free shipping. Only catch is the 2-3 week delivery time.

There is a guy who attends the Pattaya City Expat Club meetings on Sundays at the Tavern by the Sea at the north end of Beach Road who creates a card with the cover of your passport, the face page, and your latest visa. IIRC, he charges 200 baht, and delivers the card a few days later. I did it when I first got here, and now I just create them myself and take them to one of the private postal kiosks in the malls and have them laminated.

He's on a nice little earner then

Doesn't seem like much: scan the three components, reduce them to the proper size and line them up, print them, laminate the card, and deliver, all for 200 baht.Seems like quite a bit of work for the equivalent of $6.00.

Not counting the cost of buying a scanner, a printer and a laminating machine.

Regardless of what we call it, it seems to be how shipping parcels are measured, i.e. the total of L+W+D.

I don't think anyone was told lies if that's what you mean, maybe misunderstandings.

When they say 150 cm they mean the sum of the size of the box - width + height + depth. The 55 cm I understand you was told is probably the largest size of any one side.

Would you please clarify the 140 cm bit and your last sentence. I visited the post office yesterday and the lady there told me that the maximum size box (or any article size) for international delivery is their size 6 box. Their size 4 box (55 x 100 x 55 cm) is only for domestic deliveries. If I wanted to send anything larger than a size 6 box it would have to go by private contractor. So who received the right info?

I also checked out the unaccompanied baggage service at the airport. No size/weight restrictions (within limits I guess). To Australia 179 baht per kilo plus a once off fee of 3000 baht. Direct phone number is 66 (0) 2 134 2308. They will pickup for 1500 baht, BKK address. I didn't ask about outside BKK.

I don't understand your question - I said the max size for int'l shipping is 150 cm, which is larger than a box 4 which is 45 x 55 x 40 i.e. 140 cm. Essentially the same info you got.

Yes, if unaccompanied baggage to AU is 179 baht/kg it sounds realistic that EU would be 250 baht/kg with the longer distance. I asked, they will not pick up outside Bangkok. They told me 25 kg max per parcel, so you'd be looking at 3000 + 25 x 179 = 7,475. At that price I think you might as well take the Thailand Post SAL option, cheaper and more convenient I'd think.

I went to the post office today and had a few good answers.

The EMS World option is available from the Naklua Post office in Pattaya, but as I understand it it's a relatively small box with unlimited (or very high) weight. Maybe an option if you have something small and very heavy to ship, otherwise probably not.

The Int'l Parcel-Surface option is available up to a box size of 150 cm (x+y+z). They sell a size 6 box that's 45x55x40 so 140 cm and just under the limit.

Great thread! I need to ship some personal items to Denmark. The Thai Post website has a shipping calculator, where I got the following prices for shipping to Denmark.

20 kilo

30 kilo

It seems from other threads that the one world parcel is no longer available, and in any case a quite small box with a high weight allowance, so not very useful for my purpose, but the "Int'l Parcel-Surface" seems to hit the spot for me.

Anyone have experience with this? Is the parcel likely to actually arrive? I am not in a hurry and can wait 2-3 months, no problem. Any gotcha's ?