stephen tracy

13 hours ago, Redline said:

It’s not illegal to talk to people yet

It can be, It just depends what you say.

Relocate asap and delete any social media accounts, and change email addresses. Forget Thailand for a couple of years and go somewhere else. By then she'll have hopefully moved on. Sorry to hear about your situation. But she sounds beyond reasoning with. 

I'm inclined to agree with fellow posters here, in that I expect the teacher's English is so poor that he/she could not understand anything your son wrote in English so marked him down. (sorry about the underline here, it wont switch off!)

My name is Steve but here it's Stiyab. I've gone used to it and often introduce myself as such. 

I saw all of SE Asia doing those 3-month runs from BKK for about 6 years. You can go cheap like Cambodia or Laos, or go expensive like S'pore. I enjoyed visiting all of them. Try and look for hotel/flight deals about a month in advance of when you need to go. 

On 4/20/2019 at 7:07 PM, Liverpudlian said:

Victor meldrue lives !!

Never thought he'd end up in Pattaya

_{excessive drinking can cause numbness in extremities.} 

15 hours ago, cornishcarlos said:

 

If one guy in a floating shed is a threat, they gonna need more than a couple submarines to protect their coastline !! 

What a load of sh ite 

Perhaps they can dust off the aircraft carrier?

On 4/14/2019 at 11:16 PM, transam said:

You been there...?  

 

Do you know anyone that has been there..?

Yeah, it's in Cheang Wattana

On 4/14/2019 at 7:16 PM, GinBoy2 said:

I struggle with this

 

What I would say however, that religion, whether or not you believe as an adult, as a child it provides you with a moral compass, which at least for me, has served me well through my life

Fair enough. Although I've never required a deity to understand what is morally questionable. It's fairly straight forward in most cases. As in, would I want someone to hurt me in any way, shape or form? No. So I've always taken it as a given that others feel the same, therefore I wouldn't hurt them either. 

I think as a number of posters have mentioned, there's a difference between believing that perhaps there's some sort of creative force behind the cosmos and believing in an organized faith, such as Judaism, Christianity or Islam. Those faiths feature a deity that is so insecure it demands to be worshipped, and if you don't, you face some sort of punishment. I find that rather silly. And as one poster here pointed out, if there is indeed some sort of creative force that manufactured the universe, what or who manufactured the creative force. Interesting thread all the same. 

There's a good student type bar on Suan Plu just after Soi 1 if you're coming from Sathon on the right. It opens at around 4 or 5 pm and is great for people watching as it spills onto the street from inside. I also quite like Viva Aviv in River City as I enjoy sitting on the river on a Sunday afternoon with a good book and few cold ones. For that same reason Also like the Mandarin Oriental terrace but that's a bit of a different kettle of fish. But you're right, a lot of places have gone over the last 5 years or so. My favourite place used to be an outdoor terrace in Siam Square but it's also long gone. In fcat Siam Square doesn't bear any resemblance to its former self at all. They even took away the Siam Radio that used to permeate the area. 

11 hours ago, Lupatria said:

Owned by whom? ????

Prawit?

On 3/22/2019 at 5:56 AM, JordanJones said:

Looks impressive. Motivation can be harder with a home gym.

I'm like that. I actually need to go to a gym with other people there to get in the swing of it. I think if I had a home gym, it would just gather dust. I go to Fitness First in Q House in Bangkok. Question to OP as you seem experienced. I've been doing a full body workout for the last few months every other day but have "plateaued" as they say and am bored with it. Do you do that kind of a routine or do you do a different muscle group on consecutive days and then rest a day? I ask because I think I need to change things up a bit. 

3 hours ago, samran said:

I’ve got kind of the opposite happening to me. I’m doing some external work at the moment for a very high profile organization where all of the Thai staff are just about fluent in English. 

 

Naturally when dealing with the Thai staff I speak Thai to them and they deal with me in Thai.

 

Except for one lady. She flat out refuses to speak Thai with me. She is very polite but if I ask her something she’ll just come back to me in English. It’s bizzare.

That is a little weird. I wonder why she wouldn't encourage you to speak Thai. I'd help anyone who was having a go at improving their English by taking some time to speak to them in English. 

I put it off for years, just knew enough to get by, and then I took the plunge. Went to a school for a year (part time but did a ot of work alone), and then did another year with private teachers. It wasn't easy but after two years I was finally able to have normal conversations with people on pretty much any subject. I had no Thai g/f to practise with and my two Thai friends at the tine spoke English with American accents (that's how fluent they were/are) so had little patience to speak with me n Thai at first. So, I had to really go out of my way to engage people regularly every day to practise. I started taking a lot of taxis and became the annoying chatty passenger!! But it all paid off. It changed my life here leaps and bounds but I can understand anyone being reluctant to take on a second language with the aim reaching a high level of fluency. It's tough, but is rewarding in the end. 

With Cathay Pacific it's always been roughly the same price regardless of how I do it, and I've done it often (BKK-Toronto), but when I've booked it in person at their office in Bangkok, it has always been free to change the return date, which is not the case booking it online through expedia etc

'Bangkok 8' by John Burdett and 'Private Dancer' by Stephen Leather. 

20 hours ago, CharlieH said:

Dont drink the stuff, wouldnt bother me in the slightest, each to their own. I can never understand those that get upset/bothered when for one reason or another they close for 1 or two days and they seem to almost panic!

I think the sentiment is that a government doesn't have the right to tell adults of legal age whether or not they can have a drink more than anything else. Like on election days or religious holidays. If people want to drink, it should be up to them. 

I recently spent 2 weeks in Mexico City and it was great and very affordable. It's worth a look for anyone thinking of that part of the world.