JCauto

The Pub normally has a few

Last three times I've gone they've not had the Guinness or Kilkenny. About given up on them. You can get draught Guinness at Beer Box and it's properly maintained. And a very nice selection of other bottled beers and some other draughts.

Was with my kids too. Even hungry teenagers were not impressed.

I saw a previous topic for this, but it's been archived so I guess I'll just have to restart it.

This place has always intrigued us, as we regularly passed it on our way elsewhere, and it always seemed packed judging by the many cars out front. My wife finally remembered it when I asked what to do for dinner, so off we went. As usual, there were many cars out front and we expected to have to wait for a seat. This feeling was confirmed by the waitress asking us in a concerned voice whether we had reservations - we didn't, but a quick glance let us know that either everyone must have been arriving at 8 pm (it was 7.45) since there were only five tables occupied. We sat down and perused the menu.

They have one of those massive menus offering everything including Thai and Western food, which is always a warning sign to me - restaurants offering everything seldom make anything special in my experience. Unfortunately, my premonitions turned out to be prophetic. Expecting some good Thai, we ordered the following:

1. Tod Mun Goong - these are deep-fried breaded shrimp cakes for non-Thai speakers, typically served with honey. This was, without a doubt, the worst version of this dish I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. It was more like a slightly shrimp-flavoured donut. Amazingly, I could not detect a single piece of actual shrimp in any of the three I dissected, the rest having been roundly rejected as disgusting by the remainder of the table.

2. Pak Boong Fai Daeng - this is stir-fried morning glory, one of the most basic and standard Thai dishes. This was both not spicy and had far too much fish sauce applied so that it was too salty. My wife, who loves this dish, couldn't eat it even with her guilt about leaving food on the table.

3. Pak Kana Moo Grob - this is stir-fried Kale with crispy pork. Similar to the morning glory, the dish was prepared with the seeming goal of getting you to consume more beer so that you could wash the salt down. The crispy pork had no crispness to it whatsoever. Dreadful.

4. Gaeng Khiow Waan Gai - this is green chicken curry with eggplants. Definitely prepared with canned coconut milk, giving it that manufactured sweetness and blandness that destroys any vestige of the glory that this dish can be. Pity too, because the round eggplants were very fresh and nice. I presume that a packaged curry paste was used, as if someone had taken the time and effort to prepare it using fresh ingredients then they wasted that time and effort. Seems they were short on chicken too.

5. Poo Nim Pat Pong Karee - this is soft-shell crab fried with yellow curry. This was the best dish they made, mainly because the vegetables were fresh and the curry tasted good. Would have been nicer with more than one tiny soft-shell crab, but given that this was the only edible thing we ordered, it was snapped up poste-haste.

The service matched the food, despite the large number of staff and lack of customers. The meal was around 1,100 baht with two large Heinekin beers. While eating I had to check Thaivisa for reviews, and was astonished to find only good ones on the forum here. This means that the place has either gone completely downhill since the last review in March 2013 here, or the reviewers also owned the place.

I remain intrigued however - who do all the cars belong to, since they weren't there eating unless there's a massive complex behind it that we didn't see? So if you pass this place and see it packed out, I recommend you keep driving. There's more than enough great food in Chiang Mai to waste your baht on this place.

Salsa Kitchen needs to undergo a serious hygiene overhaul IMHO.

Just wanted to add to what I hope are the rave reviews for 3 Little Pigs. If you're at all familiar with Southern US cuisine, then you'll love the place. It's authentic and well-prepared, and the fellow running the place is a real character right out of a Harper Lee novel.

We had the ribs (superb, far better than Duke's or other places in CM) which came with a wide range of authentic sides while my son had a po' boy sandwich, also excellent. Service was good, price was very reasonable, portions were American. Highly recommended!

Maybe a moments pause for reflection.

He said he was staying on and got pilloried.

He says he might not , pilloried again.

I think the very first thing he needs to do is be quiet and let his actions speak for themselves and for the people.

But he needs to keep fishing for support from the people, including his 'trash'.

That is a classic behavioural problem from someone with a complex.

So let's pause for a second and consider the achievements of the last year and a bit.

Well apart from cleaning up a few beaches, arresting some potential political critics, hindering a free press and stopping me blowing my nose in public, not an awful lot really. The big issues have not been dealt with.

The real problem is he's lost this 'hearts and minds' battle and I think he knows it.

He will not convince the majority he is the right man. That job was always going to be tough but many of his proclamations have made it even tougher.

He knows that unless he can find some way of stopping the populist vote he and his cronies have had it.

They will lose an election and we are back to where we were until the army move in again.

There was another way of course that would have shown him in a better light in that he could have gone to Yingluck and said publicly, let's work together to stop the violence.

Like her or not she was the 'elected' representative.

But his backers chose not to do that and committed what is after all treason.

So here we are. No government, no one who appears to be able to unite the people and the same old cronies making the same statements( when they are allowed to).

To win an election he has to:-

1. Either make sure that some of the population are dis-enfranchised...or

2. Ensure that the only people who can stand for election are 'his' people.

A very dangerous course of action.

Civil wars have started for less.

What this country needs is a good man or woman, free of corruption and self interest, who is not scared to take on the power brokers in Bangkok, take away the power of the army and say enough is enough. I am giving Thailand back to the people.

Is there such a person?

Is Aung San Suu Kyi available for a few years?

It's not going to happen is it.

Democracy is not perfect. It often fails. But it's all we've got.

And until someone comes up with an alternative principle that is better that doesn't include an army, another North Korea or a Putin then that's what we've got.

There is no democracy here. Never has been and never will be I fear.

But maybe that's what Thai people want.

It has been going on so long now it must feel like the norm to them.

It is their country after all though and we are just guests.

It shouldn't be that difficult to take such a beautiful place and create some form of sanity should it?

What a bloody shame.

Your rant is so obviously biased that a blind man could see it.

Your list of achievements lists nothing of substance, obviously on purpose or do you live in a cave? The major things that have been done and WIP are known to all except the few who want to close their minds to them for their own agenda, whatever that may be. However, nothing is perfect and to turn this country around is a massive undertaking and will require years of sustained effort and determination. You also show your perverted views by being totally negative. A fully paid up member of the 'glass half empty brigade' and moaning about everyone and everything, at length. Not one word of praise even for paying the farmers what they were long overdue. Suggest you should get out a bit more and observe or if not just shut up.

Finally do you really believe that YS would have been given permission to work with the military to start solving corruption for instance? lol

So you should then be easily able to list these achievements. Railroading big deals through without any outside scrutiny I'm sure is not prone to any kind of abuse. Preventing the previous government from paying farmers so that you could then take power and pay them is hardly much of an accomplishment to my mind. But I'm open to hearing about what they've done, so feel free to enlighten us.

Some of those are available in LOS:

Careful Hanno! It's probably illegal to post pictures of bottles of beer on the internet because people could be looking at it at a bar/restaurant! You may end up fined millions of baht like that one fellow in Pattaya who seems to be the only other violating that particular law in the LOS...

Whoah! Hold your horses mon ami!

I have been traveling back and forth to Thailand for the last 15 years and about half the time with two passports, the cancelled one (with holes punched through the cover and page that has my photo and other information on it only) and the new one. I go through passports every 18 months or so because of all the one-page visas I have to get from regional countries I work in, hence I've had two passports around 50-60% of the time. Nobody has EVER questioned me about this, or suggested that I should go to Immigration and get the visa transferred.

So if you want the easy option, just carry the two with you. Easier still, staple the front cover of the old one to the back cover of the new one, then you won't forget it.

Just to follow up, I finally got a response for the application that did complete upon my return from Songkran - Rejected! No idea why, so I guess I'm headed to Immigration to try to sort it out. Would be nice if they might let us know WHY we were rejected, but step by step I guess.

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So I tried the system today using Internet Explorer. I had to make the 90 day reports for my two kids.

First kid, went fine, system functioned as it should, provided me a printed receipt etc.

Second kid, no matter what I do, ends up giving me the "report to immigration office" error message.

So perhaps only one per computer is allowed? Has anyone been able to register more than 1 person at a time from their computer?

Did you get a verification number or the actual 90 day report receipt that should take a few days to get after you submit the report?

I don't think there is any limit on how many reports you can do with one computer.

I suspect there was some small error in their records that does not match what you entered is the reason for the message to contact your local immigration office.

Thanks for the comment Ubonjoe. I got the form with a Transaction Reference Number (TRN) that says the application for the first child is "Pending". So it looks fine and in process.

The second child is the form that won't go through, and simply provides a popup box in English saying "For further information regarding The 90-day Notification Report Service, please contact the Immigration Branch Office in your residence area." The webpage behind it is completely blank when this popup box comes up, and there is nothing you can do but hit "Okay" at which point it returns to the first page submission it came from.

The only issue I can think of is that my son's 90 day report is due on 11 April, whereas my daughter's is due on 15 April, hence there's more than a week before the one that went through, but less than a week for the one that didn't. Any ideas?

So I tried the system today using Internet Explorer. I had to make the 90 day reports for my two kids.

First kid, went fine, system functioned as it should, provided me a printed receipt etc.

Second kid, no matter what I do, ends up giving me the "report to immigration office" error message.

So perhaps only one per computer is allowed? Has anyone been able to register more than 1 person at a time from their computer?

Amazing how cynical the responses are to this poll by TV readers.

Definition of a cynic: a person who shows or expresses a bitterly or sneeringly cynical attitude.

I wonder what the respondents' opinion is of the popularity rating of most Western governments. In some of these "models of democracy" the approval rating is under 25% - ironic given that these freely elected governments are ostensibly elected by the same people who give them a bad rating.

Let me guess - this bilious bunch equates western democracy with a universal religion.

Or, perhaps, we're skeptical since the people in charge have explicitly said that they would only allow polls to be taken and published which put the regime in a good light? Which pretty much guarantees a positive result. Which we therefore feel makes it a pointless exercise. It could be that.

Sounds like a plea bargain, not an amnesty.

In Berlin this summer, we were charged 1 Euro for each large bag we loaded into the car for the trip to the airport. It was listed as a standard on the cost chart in the taxi and I had no issues with it, as the guy was professional, the car was clean and large, and the bags all fit into the back of the taxi no problem. The seatbelts all worked (when was the last time you had any seatbelt work in a taxi in Bangkok) and the driver drove safely and professionally while making pleasant conversation in English. We had five large bags, so the costs were around the same as what these guys are proposing. But that was before the drop in fuel prices and plummeting of the Euro.

What is missing is all of the above except for the money.

BTW, has anyone ever seen a taxi in Bangkok that would be able to load 7 large bags safely?

Hi All - just wanted to update you on how things are at CM immigration these days based on this morning and afternoon's experience. We were getting two Educational visas for my kids and two Guardian visas for my wife and I.

First, fuggedabout the online queueing system unless you're exactly 100 days before the date you need to go as others have stated. And for a family of four as we are, it wouldn't be relevant anyway since at best we'd tie up the entire morning for four separate appointments as well as depriving everyone else of the opportunity. So we had to do it the old fashioned way and line up.

Got to the office at 5.40 AM - and was eventually able to get queue position 46! It's Valentino Rossi's number in MotoGP, but that is about the only fast thing that I can relate it to. When we finally got called inside the office, we were given positions 40-44 (240 to 244) for the type of visas we needed, and told to come back around 2 PM. So I left and was able to get back home on Nimman by 8.30 AM.

Back to the office at 1.00 PM and they were still working through the queue - seems no lunch break like they used to take before. By the afternoon anyone wanting a tourist visa or re-entry visa was able to just walk up and submit them, but the longer and more complicated stuff was backed up and moving slow. We finally got called around 3.10 PM, and were able to get my two kids' paperwork done by 4.30 PM, with ours having to be sorted tomorrow morning. The nice guy who speaks really good English took pity on us and processed our kids' Re-Entry Permits and 90-day Reports even though they properly should have told us they couldn't since it was already 4.30 PM. But we're back again tomorrow morning for my wife and I's. By the time we left at 5 PM, they were on number 53.

So they're basically able to do about 53 or so people in a day for Retirement, Educational or Guardian visas, and if you're there at 6 AM you'll be lucky to get the last few numbers. After that, might as well not even show up. I feel sorry for the people working in that office, who started arriving for work at 6.30 AM and were still all sitting there with lots of people to process when we left at 5 PM. They're doing the best they can, but with the changes in the rules, it's clear that there's now a mismatch between the capacity of the office to process the needed long-term Non-Immigrant Visas. Great for those on a Tourist Visa or needing a Re-Entry Permit though. Very frustrating and long day and not finished yet.

Just shows how competitive it is out there. The race to the bottom is intense!

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Sorry for not being able to wade through the bickering to find this information, but I would appreciate it if someone could clarify this for me.

1. The owner of the AC Bar and other relatives of the person in Bangkok who has just been cleared refused to provide DNA for testing, correct?

2. The one in Bangkok has been cleared because there were witnesses placing him in Bangkok at the time, correct?
3. There's been no mention of the guy in Bangkok or any of his relatives having given any DNA for testing yet, correct?

So, basically, they have only one bit of unimpeachable evidence, that being the DNA found on the poor girl's body. They've managed to contaminate the rest or it is of dubious value (blurry pics on a security cam, planted evidence by the local police, hearsay). So they've basically DNA tested everyone EXCEPT the prime suspects in the case who happen to be local influential figures. And despite not doing so, they've now declared them innocent. Have I got this scenario correct?

As far as I know, the police have not confirmed that they took any DNA tests from this family, or if they did, they have not confirmed whether the results eliminated them or not. And my previous posts, along with others, keep pointing to this blatant 'omission'. I think everyone on this forum should demand the truth.

Thanks, that's what I thought. In which case, this is well on its way towards being a stitch-up. Yep, things sure have changed!

It doesn't look good for NFL on ASN/Truevisions.....

So, is it off for them then? I tried watching from Laos, yesterday but nothing on. I presume nothing was being broadcast in Thailand, correct? So frustrating. I would be so delighted to cancel my Truevisions subscription over this, but the wife wouldn't have it. Baaaaa.

How241 explained it exactly for you including a picture. That's exactly how the type of missile said to have been fired by the Russians works. What more do you need?

Friendlier for foreign investors

She added that the amended law should make the environment friendlier for foreign investors and streamline business regulations. Moreover, Thailand should be able to compete under the coming regional integration, which will allow other Asean countries to hold up to 70 per cent of some service businesses.

For non-Asean foreigners it is better then to open a company with 100% share in Malaysia, Philippines or Cambodia and then become active as Asean LTD in Thailand.

I believe Cambodia still doesn't allow 100% ownership in a company. They only in 2010 started to allow foreigners to own condo and apartments but not the 1st floor.

Cambodia absolutely allows 100% foreign ownership in a company. However, said company would not be allowed to own the property their office sits on since there are similar land ownership laws to Thailand in that regard.

JCauto---how worldwide is this term 1st floor as in Thailand this means ground floor-

Wherever I have travelled in general this is the accepted layout. Basement then ground (reception normally) above starts the 1st 2nd 3rd 4th and so on.

I think this is the North American way of describing building levels, whereas Europeans call the first floor the ground floor.

Friendlier for foreign investors

She added that the amended law should make the environment friendlier for foreign investors and streamline business regulations. Moreover, Thailand should be able to compete under the coming regional integration, which will allow other Asean countries to hold up to 70 per cent of some service businesses.

For non-Asean foreigners it is better then to open a company with 100% share in Malaysia, Philippines or Cambodia and then become active as Asean LTD in Thailand.

I believe Cambodia still doesn't allow 100% ownership in a company. They only in 2010 started to allow foreigners to own condo and apartments but not the 1st floor.

Cambodia absolutely allows 100% foreign ownership in a company. However, said company would not be allowed to own the property their office sits on since there are similar land ownership laws to Thailand in that regard.