gavin310

Yeah, the camera photo at the top of this article is the actual camera. After the bag was returned they took one of the cameras to a professional studio and had it shot along with post-production, just for this article... How do people not realize that's just an illustration for the article? A full bag of professional camera gear can easily top 1 million baht.

Yeah the Thai business laws lag way behind technology. The purpose of requiring someone to have a company and to be required to hire thai nationals is to protect the Thais so there aren't any foreign-only businesses, taking all the possible work away from Thais. I can see the logic in that, but if someone is working remotely, taking nothing from Thailand and only pumping money into the economy, obviously there isn't a problem. Unfortunately the law doesn't reflect that. Perhaps if the law does change, if will be some sort of registration fee and tax on remote/Internet workers in exchange for a visa, but without land ownership, etc. Don't think that would happen though.

As far as I know Thai SIM cards are a different size then American SIM cards. Plus I just don't know if her phone will work with a Thai SIM card. It's an old Motorola Razr (the thin flip phone, not the new ones). Does anyone know if those should work in Thailand?

My Motorola Razr worked perfectly well in Thailand until I knocked a glass of water over it.

Recently at the airport I could not get a signal on either my 12Call or True sim cards. Pretty annoying as I had a 4 hour wait between flights and wanted to use the phone.

I'd tell mum to bring her phone and try a sim card she can buy from a row of booths on the ground floor against the outside wall.

Thanks for the specific information

I bought an under computer fan for my MacBook. It really didn't make a difference. Maybe a couple degrees. The MacBooks get hot on the top mainly, so that's probably why.

Do you guys know if the ice and fan method generates much humidity? I wouldn't think so, but who knows.

Gavin, do the decent thing and go and meet your mum off the flight at Swampie..... and buy her a phone too.

She has a connecting flight to my province. There's no need.

Ok, does anybody happen to know if the old Motorola Razr V3 phone from America will work in Thailand?

To the best of my knowledge, there are only two sizes of SIM cards.

The mini-SIM as used by Apple, and the full sized as used by pretty much everyone else.

I have bought phones in the USA and the Thai SIMs fit them just fine. Just make sure what you buy will work in Asia/Thailand.

Thanks. I didn't realize that.

In the tax free area they do sell phones btw, I forgot to mention that expecting you will be at the other side. Why not simply inserting a Thai simcard inher American phone ? Sent from my ME371MG using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

As far as I know Thai SIM cards are a different size then American SIM cards. Plus I just don't know if her phone will work with a Thai SIM card. It's an old Motorola Razr (the thin flip phone, not the new ones). Does anyone know if those should work in Thailand?

In the tax free area they do sell phones btw, I forgot to mention that expecting you will be at the other side. Why not simply inserting a Thai simcard inher American phone ? Sent from my ME371MG using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

I'm sorry but I don't understand these two sentences together.

Are you simply saying 'Why not simply insert a Thai simcard in her American phone?

What's the mularky on the end all about... letting us know that you use a ME371MG.....whatever that is?

uptheos, that line about which phone he's using is actually automatically added by the Thai Visa mobile app. Kinda stupid that they'd add that, in my opinion. There's probably a setting to remove it. Not sure though.

Far ad I know at Swampie no place where they sell pnones, sims you can get at the magazine shop near the exit. In the province there are lots of phone shops. In Thai they don't sell fake phones, just beware with second hand ones because Thais absolutely don't care and let phones fall out of there hands en into water. Most used ones have issues, some are new outside but old inside as covers has been changed.

Thanks rubberduck, maybe then it will be best for her to get once in America.

If she's just visiting you go into Tesco or somewhere....anywhere really and pick up a new Samsung or Nokia for 600 Baht. Buy a 12Call Sim and away you go,

The main reason for the phone is so she can call me when she's at the airport and once she gets into my town so I know when to come pick her up. Once she's with me it's not as big of a deal.

My mom decided to take a trip out here to visit me and have some R&R. I'd like her to buy a cheapo Nokia (simply meaning an old, durable phone) in Bangkok before flying to my province. She'll have an 8 hour layover at Suvarnabhumi. Are there phone shops inside the airport where she can buy a cheap phone and SIM card? How cheap can she expect the phones to be?

Edit: I should add I want her to buy the phone in Bangkok because if she buys it in the US she may run into problems with SIM card size, the phone not being an international phone, etc. Plus it'll give her something to do at the airport.

Actually 'return home' is กลับบ้าน, that is glab bahn. Different word - กลับ vs กับ

And now it all makes sense Thanks man.

"gap" can be translated as "with", like "maa gap puuan" if someone asks me who I came with. However, I hear people saying "gap baan" sometimes when they're alone and going home. How does that statement work, and is there another definition for "gap" that my dictionary isn't revealing to me? Thanks

It's obvious she has no understanding of the fisherman in Thailand. I fish, have many Thai fishing friends, and go out on their long tails all the time. Anything that is not needed, from cigarette butts to empty petrol bottles to badly damaged nets, goes overboard. I've seen a guy curse because his fish trap was filled with rubbish, then take it out and throw it back into the water an arms length away. I've lived on a few islands and there's no way they're going to keep them clean as long as people have that mindset. Plus most of the coral reefs are dead already from people fishing improperly.

Just a simpleminded thought: Have you done any attempts to change that mindset of the people you know? I mean, it has been stated many times that things cannot be changed by the central government alone (if at all). They have to be changed locally and from the inside.

No offense meant, just curious.

Honestly, I admire people who stand up for things like that, but picture my scenario. A Thai friend invites me to go fish with him and 3 of his friends. Talented fisherman who have been doing this daily for 40+ years with knowledge passed on to them by their family. I'm sitting on a small boat with 4 other people, almost touching the people sitting next to me, watching them jumping into the water pulling out their fish traps and setting them up again. I'm the only farang these guys have ever fished or hung out with. I'm being polite, respectful, and cordial based on Thai customs (not sticking my feet in anyone's face, properly greeting people, "krap pom", etc.), because I know many Thai people, especially the older ones, have a very skeptical view of farang that tends to lean negatively. These are good, genuine guys, and since I'm respectful to them, they're respectful to me. There is no way I'm going to tell them not to do something. What I do is put my trash into my pocket, which they all see because they're constantly curious about how farang do things, and show them a bit of my culture. Personally, I don't believe in Thailand it's going to work in a "grassroots" style. It's going to happen from television and laws. Do Thai people like wearing helmets on their motorbike? Doesn't seem like it. But put up signs that say helmets are required 100% of the time and have the police fine people 200 baht for not wearing one, and whaddayaknow, people are wearing helmets. Have the Thai police get out on the sea and check the fishing boats for a utilized trash bin, and fine them 1000 baht if they can't show proof they're not dumping all their crap into the ocean.

I found a few images of the black netting which is probably your best solution. It can lower the temperature by quite a bit because you are sitting in the shade. Most people in the countryside use these all during the summer in Taiwan.

Let me know if this works out well for you if you have a house with a yard. This is easily strung up with just a few lines/ropes by two people in a matter of about 1/2 hour. Buy as much as you need. You do not need any heavy structure to hold it up over your roof or yard.

That's actually pretty cool. I thought you were joking at first. I don't think there's any way it could work for my house though. It's a really big house. I actually only rent half of it (other half is unoccupied) and my side is still really big. Still, that's really cool. Thanks for letting me know about it.

Seal the room best you can, can get spray-insulation cans to fill in gaps, and then put in a properly sized split unit, place it so the downdraft falls right on your desk area and in that case don't use a fan.

Or if you're long-term resident and out in the countryside a small well-insulated purpose-built room will pay for itself and be most comfortable.

I've repeated the above, in my opinion nothing more needs to be said about the A/C issue, unless you can get used to be comfortable enough with fans.

I concur that your computer didn't break from overheating, you'd have to really try, actively plugging up the vents like letting it sit embedded in blankets - only very old/cheap motherboards don't have automatic shutdown triggered by the sensors built into modern CPUs and GPUs.

You shouldn't need a conditioning power supply (built into decent UPSs) for notebooks, as they run from the battery which is charged by the power brick, but DEFINITELY need one for any regular desktop/tower computer as well as any electronic devices you value, stereo equipment etc, or their life will be grossly shortened in Thailand by the normal mains power supply.

I do concede it is possible that even with a notebook, the combination of a UPS and air con may well extend its life, but the economics probably don't justify the added expense, you should be replacing computer equipment every 2-3 years anyway.

It lasted slightly over a year, and this laptop would have lasted me well over 4 years. The problems showed up right after the warranty expired. I think it was a combination of overheating and getting fried from bad electrical wiring. It would definitely overheat, especially when plugged in. I couldn't touch the area around where the charger plugged in. I replaced the charger and it helped, but then the video card went haywire shortly after. DVD drive and USB ports also went nutty even before the video card. So I think maybe it got fried a little inside, maybe from the electrical in the building or maybe from a faulty charger, and then started overheating because of that. Who knows.

Anyway, I'd still like to cool this room down with something other than a fan. From what I've gathered a portable A/C unit will produce too much humidity, so a properly installed A/C unit is the only option. Or a Home Depot bucket.

Honestly, I'm fine with just a fan blowing on me, but I need to keep the air cool for my computer. I just ruined an 80,000 baht MacBook Pro I believe from a combination of overheating and shoddy electrical wiring. I'm not going to let that happen again.

Looks like you are stuck with fans Gavin. The last thing you need in a small space is a refrigerated or mist system for the purpose of cooling. The water content in the air will very quickly give you major problems with your computer.

I would suggest a seperate small fan for your computer; it will not bring down the ambient temperature but will help with the airflow in the tower (or around the laptop)

Chris, so even the portable units create humidity? Does the humidity come from "exhaust" or from the cool air blowing out? If it's from the exhaust maybe I could run a large diameter tube from the unit out of the house? I'm only renting this house and I'm not sure how long I'll stay, so I don't want to invest in a proper A/C unit.

This house really heats up in the day time. In the evening it's comfortable, but the whole reason I want to do this is so I could work inside in the day time without worrying about my computer. Not sure if you saw my thread before about my MacBook's problems, but nothing would cool that thing down. I'm not sure if I got a bad laptop or if the cooling system in a MacBook just isn't powerful enough for Thailand's heat. I'm having to use a cheapo Tesco Windows laptop now until I can afford to get my MacBook fixed (probably a new logic board) that has a more robust cooling system and it doesn't heat up at all. The new MacBooks have a solid state drive, so I'm sure they stay much cooler.

Buy a cheap aircon and close your door !

It's funny how people are finding problems when they aren't any.

If you can burn a 80k computer you can also burn 15k for an aircon and few thousands a month for electricity.

There is no other solution, don't waste your time thinking and mine trying to explain you how it should be.

:-)

I'm so sorry to have wasted your time. Obviously you're an extremely busy man with nothing better to do than browse Thai Visa and make rude assumptions about people you don't know, in threads you haven't properly read.

Honestly, I'm fine with just a fan blowing on me, but I need to keep the air cool for my computer. I just ruined an 80,000 baht MacBook Pro I believe from a combination of overheating and shoddy electrical wiring. I'm not going to let that happen again.

Obviously, this guy is an outlier. He could probably drop a few million just on a weekend away, so, 100mil was probably just a weeks work, at the most. His now wife has been spending the last 9 years getting educated and most probably a shining example of a person. She has probably been a great support for him over the years and the money that he gave to her parents would have been worth every satang even if the marriage doesn't last a few hours. I don't think we will hear anything more over it because, you would think, after 9 years they would have a pretty good idea of what they are both about together. Good luck to them.

It's amazing how people take a nice, positive story like this and crap all over it. 9 years they've been together, she's 40 and he's early 50s, he's helping her get an education and helping her family, and people here still talk about her like she's a bar girl and he's some dirty farang roaming the streets of Pattaya.

I'm incredibly thankful for all the great advice I've gotten on these forums, but people like that really irritate me. They have an image of farang and relationships crafted by their own reflection in the mirror.

I think it's the "excess" that many people have an issue with. Nothing wrong with helping the gf/wife's family on a continuous basis as most here do anyway, but 100 million? Seriously?

I'd be more inclined to trust his financial decisions than yours

Yeah because we all know in Thailand it's only Thai guys that have relationships young girls... I guess the 60 year old retired farang with his 25 year old girlfriend doesn't count. At least the Thai guy and girl are looking for a somewhat normal relationship based on their cultural norms.

You can't simply find a few examples of houses in small cities in the UK that are cheaper than houses in Bangkok and say that validates your claim. If you want to compare small city UK to small city Thailand, there's absolutely no comparison.