brummiebob

This article in Pattaya News Clippings might be of interest to you.

Hi Yeah I subscribed to that topic. thanx. I was there in January 2013. The water is comparable to Pattaya beach. But the sea view is long and nice.

I couldn't understand why people from BKK flooded here during weekends. perhaps it has been a nice beach once in the past. or its very close to BKK.

If I was from BKK and wanted to go for a swim I would go somewhere else. But The Bang Saen Car Race was really great to see

Before the motorways and good road, Bang Saen is the limit of where you can drive out of Bangkok and back in a day, now Pattaya and beyond is within reach too, but Bang Saen is still the 'go to' place for a days out.

You start seeing the same crowds from Bang Saen in Jomtien now too, bunch of kids parking their Songtaew Baht Bus with massive sound system(Like the ones that turns up during Songkran) that they chartered from Bangkok, running to the nearest 7-11 for more Leos, and the road being much narrower in Jomtien, the chaos is far worse.

Also, people in a hurry to get somewhere, on the road, on the escalator , older people especially, are they so fearful of their remaining minutes on earth that they have to spend every minute like their last?

It's a resort town, who here has a multi-million Baht business that absolutely cannot wait a minute in traffic or whatever?

If I want to be stressed out in traffic, I'd stay in Bangkok.

To be fair, I'm guilty of this too, hurrying down the road trying to catch a movie in Central, and even though I turned up 10 minutes late, the endless ads in the cinema still hasn't finished.

I've seen many people that after years of interacting with Thais using simplified English, has reduced their vocabulary to 'Me Tarzan, you Jane' level even though they might be speaking to compatriots or well educated Thai staff in 4+ stars hotels, it's patronizing.

The Thai daytrippers on weekends will drive you nuts

A lot of people from the UK seems to look for 'Balti' style, and proper Indian is too different

Some tourist do come here for the rain, especially the Arabs, rain here to them is probably like snows to the Thais when they go to Europe

As for the issue of embassies/consulate offering help to their nationals, when taking out a Thai passport, the application form has a section where you agree to repay any cost incurred should the embassy need to repatriate you, but in practice say if a girl from isan was lured by human traffickers to europe and managed to find her way to the embassy, they would put her on a Thai airways home straight away, and probably wouldn't chase up the cost afterwards.

Sarn som (large alum crystals) in your local market.

Cheap as chips, best deodorant you will find.

(Rub the sharp edges off on concrete etc before using. Not doing that could be a bit rash)

you can get the crystal that's been formed into deodorant stick -shaped these days, a bit more expensive than the rough stony ones from the market but one stick will last nearly forever

never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity

If you ever went 'back home' the Thai Consulate office in your home country will certify the translation with their seal and stamp for you, I've gotten marriage certificates translated and certified from Thai consul in the past.

Requiring all teachers to have Bachelor of Education is probably too much, but it sure helps to have a few teachers with those around,

Post grad Diploma of Education is enough in most cases

Ok, just found out the Pattaya City School goes up to 11

I am still on the case looking around. The Maryvitt School is impressive from the outside, yet to make an appointment to talk to them.

Where is the Pattaya 1-5 School you mentioned, I Googled but no success.

Thank

Sorry if I worded it a bit confusingly, Pattaya City-run school just number the various schools from 1-8? I think 1or2? is the one on corner of South and Second road, attached to and administered by the temple I think. School 5 is on Sukhumvit just after Central road, next to the old Petronas Petrol station, School 8 is opposite Makro on Sukhumvit road.

I'm not sure where the various numbered ones are, but these are the basic education run by Thai government/Pattaya City Hall. If you can afford it, don't send your kids to these school, on that same level of government run school the Photisamphan...longname school in Naklua on the sois to Wongamat beach http://www.pho.ac.th/index.php has better results academically

What's the deal with Thais inventing names for the Sawai, which is for a while 'Dory' and now after much confusion, some places still labels theirs Pangasius Dory

Does it even remotely resembles John Dory fish in shape, texture or taste?

True and Tot maybe on a different infrastructure, using their own cables and all but they might go down at the same time since there all seem to peer out of Thailand at the same point with CAT

http://www.cat.net.th/map/internetmap.html

Maybe if you speak but aren't understood, you should adjust your attitude and expectation when speaking to locals a bit.

You can't get worked up with them not understanding you on the first try, repeat s l o w l y and make sure to add that ผม พูด ไทย (Pom Phood Thai) and let it sinks in to their head; if after the fourth attempt they still don't understand, go back for a refund from wherever you studied your Thai.

Cafe Ritz in Jomtien complex does pretty good lamb too, but the bookings are a bit tight

You don't need to taste to see the difference between blade and burr grinder, at the fineness needed for espresso machines, blade grinder will produce dust too fine for the filter that will be in your cup, and you will see sediments at the bottom of your cup.

If I want to eat coffee grounds with my coffee, I'd brew it Turkish style

This sort of thing makes my blood boil, pity someone does not take them up on their offer, invite them round to collect and arrange a surprise bash for them, or should that be bashing?

But they turn up in droves, 10-20 burly men just to check music licence or computer softwares in internet cafes,

it is protection racket and extortion pure and simple.

Finally, a straight answer to why the garbage trucks aren't coming regularly. I've been on the phone with city halls for months and the excuse they gave changes every time.

Well the people living by the dump site aren't helping themselves, the more they keep barricading the site, the stinkier the garbage will get by the time it gets there.

I've been driving around that are a few years back and seeing moo bans going up and can't help but wonder that these people that's buying all these developments don't realize that they will live next to the tip? sure on nice days like when they viewed the property it might be fine, but in certain seasons or when it rains, the smell's gonna waft your way

The sludge may be gone but who knows about all the invisible contaminants like lead, mercury

"That's even less than what the Thais gets deducted from their salary for the 'free' healtcare,..."

For 'free' healthcare, there is no deduction. For that matter, many don't even have a salary.

Perhaps you're thinking of Social Security, which is not free.

I have to agree, though, 2500 does sound too good to be true.

Yes, sorry, I meant the social security

Social security is the scheme where employer and employees each contribute half, for self employed people,

or for self employed people, like the somtam vendors and motorcycle taxis, they can pay about 400 Baht a month at 7-11 to be on the scheme, the coverage for certain illness is a bit less than the free health cover (used to be 30 Baht per visit) that's available to the general population.

Once you are on the scheme you have to select which hospital you will belong to, some hospitals, like Banglamung are oversubscribed, but in emergencies you can go anywhere but might have to pay out of your own pocket first and be reimbursed later.

The contribution is not much, but each patients the hospital has on their register, the hospital gets some amount of money from the government, and for every visit, some private hospital manage to build separate wings just to deal with social security/free health care alone, usually with the same doctor and level of care as their private wings, the only difference is hefty wait.

Perhaps they just made the scheme available to Foreigner?

That's even less than what the Thais gets deducted from their salary for the 'free' healtcare, even if you have to wait three to six hours to see a doctor, that's a good deal

I know many of us can't/won't get credit cards but there's alternatives.

Many debit cards/atm cards can be used as a credit card too, I've used KBank's debit card number for many online shopping place that doesn't accept debit cards.

KBank also offers a virtual credit card called K-Web Shopping Card that's tied to a debit card/account, and this card number will be recognized as a proper credit card, and even has credit card facilities like charge dispute that affords you more protection than just using debit card alone.

granted, when buying things like flight tickets or hotels that will require you to present the actual card when checking-in you won't be able to since the card is virtual. But in my uses so far, I haven't got into trouble booking hotels with the virtual card yet.

Bangkok Bank debit card's supposed to be able to be used in this manner also; but I haven't found them to be 100% accepted at the places that I use