Kaoboi Bebobp

Non-bar observations: Big C Extra food court is thronged in the afternoons now, with Euro nationals in full argument mode. Big C supermarket upstairs has busier aisles than only a few weeks ago. The moto park along the food court side extends well down the lane now. Friendship market busier now when I go in between 9 and 10 pm. Benjamit coffee, always busy, has been busier. And here in my Darkside complex, familiar Euro faces have reappeared and there's a little more noise.

This happened to me twice at Pattaya Inter Hospital. Took up a doctor's time, but there was no treatment. And another was my urology specialist. He gave me some information. No charge in either case. None.

I guess I need to get down to Pattaya International Hospital. It seems the health care is free if nothing is wrong with you and no treatment is prescribed. I've been using Memorial and Bangkok Pattaya, more because of location and reputation than anything else. However, you can't beat free check up's at an International Hospital. It's never been free at the other two. I do recall one follow up visit being at no charge at Memorial, but that was after paying some 15,000.baht the week prior.

I think the no-charge has something to do with being a resident (and not a tourist to fleece) and being a regular patient at PIH so having contributed mightily to their bottom line. But who knows. I didn't lodge a complaint. Your mileage may vary.

This happened to me twice at Pattaya Inter Hospital. Took up a doctor's time, but there was no treatment. And another was my urology specialist. He gave me some information. No charge in either case. None.

My understanding, BAKERS correct me if I'm wrong, is that if your fresh bread doesn't go very stale in TWO DAYS, then it is pumped with processed TRANSFATS. Transfats are extremely harmful to health and are rare in nature. That's the information I want to see on the bread labels here (also the sugar content) and it is NOT there.

It confounds me that western-owned bakeries don't put decent basic info on bread labels. What is it with these people? They've completely abandoned home labelling practices. I want to know what percentage of whole wheat is in whole wheat bread, for example. Foodland's is a pathetic 18%. I also want to know the sugar content so I can stay away from the product made for the sugar-crazed Thai market. Most bakeries don't even tell you what bread is in the bag.

You are going to get thumped well and truly at the three private ones at the sheer expense,couple of cheaper ones outside Pattaya, state hospital in pattaya not so bad

If an emergency get stabilised in state hospital then VOA to Calcutta,two hours away Accident and Emergency Christian hospital and utterly brilliant care ,saved over £1400,last time $13000 time before that

Like Topsy,it just grows and grows the cost of medical care here in Pattaya and so the insurance premiums

What does "VOA to Calcutta" mean, please?

New to me was the Danish Bakery breads at Friendship. (But I'm fairly new to Friendship, which I ignored for years because it's so far away from me.) Liked their whole wheat bread; their multi-grain, not so much. But it was a breath of fresh air to see informative labels and product dating. Almost no other bakery does this. You aren't even told what bread it is on many fancy (mostly French) products.

how to check is my sim card 3g compatible ?

Thai SIM? Put it in your phone. Your phone will tell you what signal it can process. The answer is at the top of the phone screen. It will say E (for slower Edge network), 3G or 4G (if phone can use a 4G network). Sometimes, it will switch from slower to faster or faster to slower, depending on mobile traffic.

Why would people shop there its the same price as seven eleven, but bigger variety

Not everyone's diet consists of junk food and beer.

Well, if you wander beyond the counter area, you will see lots of things, beyond junk food and beer, that you can get at Big C for the same price. And service is very quick at 7-11. Generally, though, I shop at Friendship, with most things cheaper than Foodland. I've converted, even though Foodland is much closer to me.

Got off the Bangkok bus around 2:45 this afternoon and got on my motorcycle to head to the Darkside from North Road. Southbound Sukhumvit was virtually blocked, even for motos, through to Klang. But I turned onto Soi Siam. Seems to me it was like this last weekend too. But I was informed this was a bit of a holiday weekend, unbeknownst to me. Chulalongkorn Day, which means at least a government holiday.

just sharing my experience in Pakse at the Vietnamese consulate

its located in the touristy area where most of the hotels are, no need to get a tuktuk

open monday to friday, AM and PM but they have a long lunch break

I walked in. no one else there. no queing

they asked me where i was from, i said UK he explained about the new visa waiver for 15 days, but i reply that i want to spend longer time in vietnam than that

i though i could get a 1 month visa and asked about that and if i could extend it in country. he told me no problem, but i could have either a 1, 2 or 3 month visa, and then said they were all the same price

of course i asked for a 3 month. it was $70 to get back in 2 days, or $80 for same day. gave them $80 and walked out with 3 month single entry visa, after 5 minutes wait

theres an overnight bus BKK to Pakse, and an overnight bus from Pakse to Danang, so you could get to Pakse in the morning, get visa in afternoon and be on the overnight bus into Vietnam. or pakse has an airport,

all in all it was a very easy visa to obtain

Good report. You didn't happen to ask the cost of a 3-month multi-entry visa?

Aggressive Thai motorcycle drivers are hopeless. They simply will not stop if there's an opening anywhere and even if there isn't. Car drivers are a little more considerate. Overall, it's a complete disaster and any positive changes will require a deep change of attitude and massive education campaign. Which the country seems utterly incapable of doing. It may take generations and trillions of baht to start the change. As I said, hopeless. You're welcome.

There is no grinds going into cup. I use both screw down style and one without, can't tell difference.

Same here. I use a gravity tamper, rather than screw type, although I press it down firmly. I use french press grind, roughly lightly coarse. No grinds really to worry about.

I've yet to find a better coffee maker than the Viet stainless steel filter cup, called a Viet phin. I buy them in Cambodia when I'm in need: $2.50US for 6 oz. I once checked that Viet oriented shop in the Trendy building (right side entrance). They wanted a silly 250 baht/$7 for the exact stainless steel brand I bought in Phnom Penh for $2 to $2.50. Otherwise, I've never found these filter cups anywhere else in BKK.

OP, sounds like you've got a very nice GF there and hard working, educated step daughter. Your monthly income, I think, is very generous. So no worries there. I lived on much less than that with a GF of two years. My GF was very good with money and very undemanding. She understood very well my position of not having a lot of money. Now, a story as short as I can make it:

She owed her aunt 20,000. I paid it off over 2 months. She owed her mom 100,000. At the 70,000 baht point, paying 10K a month, I said, OK, you owe your mom 30K, right? No, her brother had called (unknown to me) and needed money so she gave him that 10K and somewhere else another 10K disappeared. So she still owed her mom 50K. I could have lived with that if she hadn't added in the same breath that her father owes someone 50,000 but doesn't need it till the new year.

So, in one evening we went from owing only 30K to facing the need to fork over 100,000 in a short time. It's always the outside pressures (usually from family) that come out of nowhere and bite you. So be prepared for that. Or, cut back on what I consider an unnecessarily complicated set of financial promises that, combined with surprise demands, could sink your boat and ruin your retirement.

And yes, two days later, I ended the relationship because those surprise requests Are Never Going to Stop.

I make delicious coffee with the freshly roasted Benjamit Coffee. About 7Bt. per cup.

Why do places insist on serving crap when real good coffee is cheap?

Same here. There's no reason why Witherspoon's can't serve a decent espresso-based drink from its fancy machine. Or offer the option for 20 baht more, not the full 60 (?) baht price.

It's mostly English/Irish pubs that serve that crap instant coffee. If they serve machine coffee, it's frequently watery and thin on flavour.

A story like this comes out just about every week. Don't believe it until the decree is signed by the PM.

I've read that even after 3 months of visa waivers for the select Euro countries, tourist arrivals went up but they're still way down overall. If it were easy to to just open the tourist gates, they would have done it by now because tourist arrivals have been sinking for more than a year now. The problem is, too many third-party services, probably owned by immigration officers, make a lot of money off these 30-day tourist visa sales.

I used to go there a lot for several days at a time. But I won't pay the $65US anymore until they cut the fees or establish free entry and, most important, make it easier to get a visa, especially at the expensive embassy. You can't even find the visa fees on a Viet embassy web site anywhere that I've looked. Actually, the Viet embassy web sites are appallingly bad.

On top of all that, it's gotten harder to get longer visas, with 3-month ones being the best you can do through normal channels ($130US/4500 baht in Cambodia). So most resident expats have to pay through the nose -- $350 to $500US ($12,000 to $17,000 baht!) -- through back door channels for long term visas. Makes Thailand's 1900 baht look a great deal.

Lots of pictures of her before and after if you Google her images. Clearly she's made up with a lot of skin whitening creams based on her FB fan page photo, which shows her with darker skin. As they all do. I don't see her as particularly beautiful.

Just had the morning breakfast special yesterday. It's 150 baht. Wished they offered something other than Nescafe instant coffee with the meal. Ugh!

Do they sell beers other than Thai?

Every beer under the sun

They had Old Speckled Hen on draught last year.

Still did a few weeks ago.

I like Witherspoons. Big beer and whisk(e)y choice, good food (although limited experience so far) and good service. And prices are comfortable -- not cheap, not expensive. Considering the place has at least 17 TVs for the sportaholics (I'm not one), there's not much to complain about. But, I do agree with another comment about the close proximity of heavy traffic. But hey, it's on Buakhao.

Hello,

I met one American and one Briton in VN last year, both of whom entered VN on

a 3-month visa first and had a local travel agency extend their stay every 3 months,

enabling them to stay in VN for a total of 1 year without even leaving the country.

I don't know how much they had to pay for the extension.

However, the immigration rules changed last January, so I don't know if you can

still do this now.

Yes, it seems almost impossible now to get anything more than the VN 3-month one. Certainly true among Phnom Penh's travel shop services. From a little bit of reading recently, it seems the VN visa extensions have gone from the front to the back door.

From American Family Physician:

Moderate to severe traveler's diarrhea, including dysentery, can be empirically treated with a three-day course of a fluoroquinolone such as ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin (Noroxin) or ofloxacin (Table 4).

From WebMD:

Treatment with an agent that covers Shigellaand Campylobacter organisms is reasonable in patients with diarrhea (>4 stools/d) for more than 3 days and with fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, headache, or myalgias. A 5-day course of a fluoroquinolone (eg, ciprofloxacin 500 mg PO bid, norfloxacin 400 mg PO bid) is the first-line therapy.

For every recommendation you provide, I can provide a counter view. And vice versa.

I wasn't trying to prove you wrong, I was just interested enough to do a Google search, and none of the sites I looked at mentioned anything about norfloxacin as a treatment for diarrhea, obviously I didn't look at enough, so my question was an innocent one, so no need to get defensive.

My tip-off source on norfloxacin was a friend with years of experience in treating debilitating abdominal stresses that only occur in Thailand. I searched to confirm this and got the same info you did. But I kept digging with different search terms and up came confirming usage for norfloxacin. Anyway its treatment effects started to come on within half an hour to an hour. It worked.

Sorry if you thought I was being defensive. I replied in a hurry before dashing out and the reply came out rather short. But what I said is true for just about every drug. Then again, neither of us is a doctor. If my symptoms were as severe as the OP's, I would have gone directly to hospital. Mine were fairly light and seemingly quite treatable by visiting the local pharmacy.

From American Family Physician:

Moderate to severe traveler's diarrhea, including dysentery, can be empirically treated with a three-day course of a fluoroquinolone such as ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin (Noroxin) or ofloxacin (Table 4).

From WebMD:

Treatment with an agent that covers Shigellaand Campylobacter organisms is reasonable in patients with diarrhea (>4 stools/d) for more than 3 days and with fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, headache, or myalgias. A 5-day course of a fluoroquinolone (eg, ciprofloxacin 500 mg PO bid, norfloxacin 400 mg PO bid) is the first-line therapy.

For every recommendation you provide, I can provide a counter view. And vice versa.

I had the OP's early symptoms this past Thursday. It was my first food of the day around noon. The first half hour to an hour after the meal from a Thai/farang resto (omelet and vegetables, no meat), I felt the abdominal cramps and gas emissions. Got persistent and worse. About hour 2, I got home and hit the throne. Light diarrhea effects. No vomiting though and no more throne work the first day. Odd, I thought.

However, I started feeling a light fever through the afternoon and well into the evening. Horrible sleep, wake-ups, weird dreams and cold chills. In the morning, some throne activity. Once. No dehydration or headaches or pains.

Went to pharmacy and got some norfloxacin (5 days, 2x a day) after talking with the pharmacist (a real one). Started to feel better within the first hour and much better the second hour. Fever almost gone (no pills) and got a big appetite boost late afternoon. Definitely diarrhea effects days 1-3. Much better now, day 4.

A visa allows you to enter a country. You cannot buy another visa inside the country because you are already there. But you can buy an extension through a travel shop (they send it to immigration). However, at a travel shop you can buy a visa inside Cambodia for another country (they send your passport to the appropriate embassy). Which seems obvious to say but indeed, people need to know the difference.

What? 6000 baht plus all meals and incidentals covered for 6 days work over 12 days? I don't see anything wrong with that rate.