billp

I wish the Unico Grande Silom had advertised its free lobby wifi TO ITS GUESTS when I stayed there in January.

I didn't know about that and ended up searching for a connection in the area. Found a café with free wifi nearby in the area between Silom and Surawong (maybe on Th Decho?), then the pub on Soi Convent mentioned by Stickman, then the Om Yim.

Coffee shop (and ground floor) of the Landmark Hotel has free wifi.

On the budget side, Om Yim right beside Chong Nonsi BTS station has free wifi throughout,

Bangkok City Suite on Petchburi Road offers free wifi.

The Sanawan Palace seems to be collecting a fan club.

someone posted on YouTube (not me I swear!).

Sananwan Palace. Small family-owned place with pool & A/C for under 500 Baht, just south of the airport. Taxi drivers can't find it but if you ask ahead, they'll pick you up at the airport (for a fee). Everybody staying there says it's really nice.

What you need to do is download Mac the Ripper (free), then rip the DVDs onto your hard drive and burn them them onto new disks (use DVD-R for the most universal use). They will automatically come out as "Region Code 0". Then you can watch them on any DVD player, including the Mac's DVD Player application (which has some advantages over VLC).

Maybe you could ask to use the pool at the

Novotel Bangna?

Is it possible to buy borax in Thailand? Maybe in a pharmacy. Mix borax and icing sugar and put it in their path. They eat it and the borax makes them blow up.

Say "Chai meter dai na khrap/ka." - Use the meter please.

What the OP failed to mention is that it was the Thai embassy which told her that. Could there be a new policy that you can't mix & match tourist visas and 30-day visa exemptions?

Im not sure but someone was telling me they mite turn that area into a market? like a chatuchak kinda thing, but bigger and better built or somthing..anyone have any ideas?

They're going to turn it into an elephant race course! Vroom Vroom!

In the film they forgot to include what you should do when the men's room attendant gives you a back massage while you're piddling.

How much should it cost for a group of 4 adults to get from the new airport to a downtown Bangkok hotel? What are the available and popular options?

Thanks in advance,

Steve

Airport Express bus costs 120 apiece and stops at major hotels.

Taxi costs around 300 Baht all inclusive but may not have enough room for all 4 of you and all your luggage. Bangkok taxis often have a big natural gas cylinder in the trunk/boot.

Limo about 700 Baht and will have plenty of room.

If you only have carry-on, you might consider taking public bus 553 to On Nut BTS/Skytrain station and changing to the Skytrain.

Sounds to me like they didn't have appropriate servicing or the needed spare parts at Hangzhou. This would have resulted in a stranded aircraft and they would have had to fly in parts and maybe even personnel to get airborne again. So they decided to turn around and fly back to Bangkok, where they have everything available.

I agree they could have told you more, but maybe they were afraid they might get people alarmed.

An interesting "reader message" this morning in Nation. A guy who took a flight at Suva.

From what he wrote :

-taxis stand at arrival : OK

-fee of 50 THB for driver (like Don Muang)

-plus... a new fee of 100 THB for AOT

A few pages before : thai association of exporter complains : AOT has created a new fee of 1 THB per kilo for outbound airfreight. Why ? Mai ru. It's just "new".

Etc. etc.

Suva looks like the new cash machine...

Nonsense.

Anil of Suk 11 Guest House made the taxi trip yesterday and posted in on his webspace. Total cost 306 Baht from airport to soi 11 including 50 Baht dispatcher charge and toll charges. No 100 Baht extra charge.

I don't live in Thailand and up to now there've been few occasions where I've ever had to wear a suit there, so please tell me how DO you cope with a suit in that climate?

Even tropical weight suits are, in my opinion, just way too much fabric to be wearing in hot season temperatures of 38 degrees. I mean, it's OK when you're in an air conditioned office, but the minute you'd go outside, even for a few minutes, you'd be drenched, wouldn't you?

The classic lounge suit which became the present-day business suit, was designed to keep men warm in drafty 19th century English offices during the winter. Plenty of layers of wool and cotton, tight on the body. Necktie closed tight to keep the throat covered.

I find it just absurd that people are wearing this costume in the tropics. Think how much energy could be saved in air conditioning if everybody wore something nice and loose and airy to the office in keeping with the climate. I think it's a shame that the Thais, who do have a climate-appropriate national dress, have adopted the western business suit as a sign of prestige and authority.

If you want to have a bit of a giggle, check out this thread on the FlyerTalk Forum. It's a breathless trip report by a guy who was staying at the Sheraton Grande when the coup went down. He cut his trip short and checked out of the hotel in the morning, took a limo to the airport and boarded a plane first class. He reports on it as if he got the last seat in the last chopper leaving Saigon.

The article can be found here by the way.

I just made that trip a few weeks ago for the second time. Best way is to break it up in Vang Vieng overnight or you're going to arrive in Luang Phrabang exhausted and miss the best part of the trip in the late afternoon/early evening dusk. In Vientiane, you can book a tourist bus from your hotel. This could be a minibus or (as in my case) a larger bus. They'll provide transportation from your hotel. In Vang Vieng, your guest house will book you onto a van for Luang Phrabang. The most spectacular part of what I think is one of the best drives in Asia is about 90 minutes north of Vang Vieng when you start to get into the high mountains, with little villages, potbellied pigs and naked children, kharst mountain vistas and verdant valleys. You can spend 3 or 4 days or 3 or 4 weeks in Luang Phrabang, but I guess the 3 or 4 days would be enough to see the sights in the city and the surrounding area too.

Has anybody lately gone from Vientiane to Luang Prabang?

I know there is a bus, I have taken that to Vang Viene but the lonely plant says there are also min buses that make the trip

Has anybody done this trip? Are they the same type of mini buses like here in Thailand. That seems also small for a 9 hour journey (is this about how long it takes? How about by boat)

Lastly, how many days is needed to see most things in Luang Prabang?

Thanks in advance for any feed back.

It'll be at least another 6 months. They're still landscaping the golf course between the runways.

Sep 28, 2006 is now official:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=71855

I guess this is fast enough. But my connection is supposed to be 6 M/bit. If the test is accurate, what's happened to the other 4000 M/bit?

I've also been playing with the idea of buying something, in my case a higher-end condo in Bangkok which would not be rented out, but my own place to disappear to whenever I want to escape there, particularly during the European winter. I'd like some of the amenities like fitness room and pool on the roof and a view, but mainly I want the ultimate selfish luxury of being able to have my own nest in one of the world's great cities, and to be able to travel back and forth light.

I already have a condo that's rented out in Vancouver, British Columbia, and is almost paid for, and my primary residence in Berlin. My thoughts are that the condo market seems to be heating up in Bangkok and maybe if I wait much longer I won't be able to get into it at the same level as now. Even in the 3 years or so I've been playing with this idea, the market seems to have strengthened considerably and now the Baht has also just made a major move higher.

I'm not that interested in resale value, because the object would be to just keep this as a second residence for the rest of my days, although of course I'd like it to at least maintain its purchase value. Still though, I also think there's some strong possibility the Baht will continue to go up as the Thai economy gains strength, and that it's currently undervalued. And property prices most likely have some ways to go before they peak in the current cycle of recovery after the 1997 crash.

So, you guys who are in the know, what do you think? I'm perfectly aware of many of the pitfalls that many of you write about here and I've heard my share of the horror stories. But I do think that if you get a place from a reputable developer and employ a good lawyer for the deal, your chances are probably as good as any other place in the world. Or am I being naive? What about the secondary market? One of the posters above mentioned that the market is weak for "second hand" places. Does that also apply to condos in Bangkok? Could I turn that be to my advantage? What do you think I should expect to pay for a nice, central 2-bedroom place anyway? What are the monthly maintenance charges like?

Oh and by the way, one of the posters mentioned being able to rent a house for 6500 Baht. Sounds good, but I don't think you can get a price like that on a short-term furnished rental, can you? More like 15-20,000 minimum for a half-decent place, it seems to me.

New Empire Hotel, 650 Baht. First House Hotel, 999 Baht. Bangkok City Suite Hotel, 650 Baht. Bangkok Centre Hotel (near Hualamphong Station - has a pool!), 900 Baht.

For Thai "Music for Life": Po Kungpao, opposite Pranakorn University in Bangkhen Luksi in the north of Bangkok. Spey Royal whiskey by the bottle....

Try the main branch of Asia Books on Sukhumvit near Asoke. I think they'd order it for you if they don't have it in stock.

Raro,

For your information, "Mucke######" actually refers in German to chicory coffee substitute, which the Napoleonic army called "mocca faux." The local German-speaking citizens couldn't get their tongues around that, so they came up with "Mucke######," which came to be used for all kinds of coffee substitutes, but not real "Bohnenkaffee." In German it's not a nasty word at all. The company supplying coffee machines where I work calls itself that, and has it printed in big letters on its trucks.

There is no such a thing as "good" instant coffee. The correct German term for such witch brew is "Mucke######".

edit: Your automated bad-word-eraser is quite strict...this has nothing to do with that evil English word starting with an "f" with the same spelling....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>