keestha

Sounds almost like you are a McDonalds franchisee

Quite a few simple Phuket natives got into money by selling their land. Easy to call this lady stupid if your English is fluent, you are internet savvy and you are educated up to at least high school level. Ask yourself, would you still be such a smart impossibly to be conned guy if 90% of the information on the internet would be in French, and you would have been educated only up to primary school level?

Was a bit puzzled she writes:

" Tip: A seven per cent government sales tax is applied to all purchases."

Probably she only eats/sleeps in upmarket places that add 7% VAT and 10% service charge to the regular bill. This "tip" wouldn't be of any use to the regular downmarket tourist who will never notice the VAT.

Depends also where you live in Thailand. In Southern Thailand Fords are quite common and spare parts are easy to find, but in the North and the Northeast you see very few of them.

Rooms in Thailand are always meant for twin occupancy, and will have one double bed or 2 single beds. The charge will be the same no matter if you stay alone or with 2 people.

Sometimes bungalow resorts have some 2 bedroom 1 bathroom type of bungalows, meant for families. It might be you have to walk through one bedroom to get to the other bedroom, which might be awkward if a visitor is already present.

Most likely you guys will end up usually taking 2 separate rooms, will easily fit into your budget.

I would check our agoda.com

Or select a place through agoda, booking.com, hostelworld.com or whatever, and then google the hotel's own website and contact them. Might result in a wider range of options and more attractive offers.

Tried salted herring once, because somebody told me it was a good hangover cure. Don't wanna repeat the experience. True in Holland they're selling it from outdoor stalls. Eating it, you're supposed to grab the herring by the tail and tilt your head backwards. I almost ended up vomiting upwards.

The guy the OP mentioned is a bit of an extreme example, but there are plenty of people living in bubbles here, who hardly get in touch with Thai people.

I ran across examples like a German guy running a restaurant in Pattaya for 15+ years. He doesn't speak Thai, he hardly speaks English. All he does is speaking German to the customers. All communication with the staff, and with suppliers, government officials, repair men and you name it goes through his Thai wife, with whom he communicates somehow, or maybe she speaks German.

Out of curiosity, is it illegal to collect bits of totally dead coral that you find on the beach? I remember seeing that they arrested a Thai guy selling bracelets or something with tiny bits of them. I had thought about bringing a few pieces home once from a local beach for decoration but am scared it would be asking for trouble....

Yes, technically this is illegal. You are also not allowed to take plants from the forest or stones from a stream. Anything from nature.

Tourists recently coming back from the Similan Islands told me all the coral there was broken. One of the reasons being that too many people booking a cheap one day snorkeling tour harvest free souvenirs. Once even guests of mine took a giant double shell, the animal inside still alive, back to the hotel. Soon the room started stinking terribly. I refrained from calling the police, but wonder what would have happened if I would have done so.

MAybe buy a small pump......

To get the water out? My first idea would be to siphon, using a plastic hose. If there is a level difference making this possible.

Rooms in Thailand are always meant for twin occupancy, and will have one double bed or 2 single beds. The charge will be the same no matter if you stay alone or with 2 people.

Sometimes bungalow resorts have some 2 bedroom 1 bathroom type of bungalows, meant for families. It might be you have to walk through one bedroom to get to the other bedroom, which might be awkward if a visitor is already present.

Most likely you guys will end up usually taking 2 separate rooms, will easily fit into your budget.

The e-mails don't bother me so much, but phone calls do. I am a small business owner, and sometimes I do get investment phone calls from boiler room farangs.

Most cold calls I get though are from Thai companies trying to sell goods/services, Thai girls who have the script in English at hand to read from.

Have been a cold caller myself briefly, so somehow I sympathize and try to dismiss them in a friendly way.

It is good the foreign police volunteers are there, but I think they should only assist tourists/intervene when tourists are in trouble. The iguana thing they should have left to be handled by Thai officers.

Don't know how I would react if in my country a obviously foreign police volunteer who doesn't speak my language (or only haltingly/heavily accented) would stop me for say riding a bicycle in a street where this isn't allowed.

If you have time, it is easy enough to do it yourself. I used Dreamweaver, there is a perfect step by step online tutorial.

Taksina Driving School Tel. +66(0) 76 224144 11/18 Sakdidej Road, Muang, Phuket 83000

Taksina, in Phuket Town. Was satisfied about that driving school, but it is already a good number of years ago.

This is confusing, did any rule change? Maybe this could better be moved to the Thai residency visas and work permits forum.

The road right next to the runway is the last road I would want to use in Phuket. They used to direct Phangnga bound traffic from the airport to that road, and I hated it. The road is so narrow that it cannot be used safely by cars.

If they are paid like many expats whereby there is no income tax and you are on a full expatriate deal, the place is heaven.

Exactly, that's probably the type of people they surveyed. Not foreigners struggling with their own small business, or people doing like hotel jobs for a local 30.000 Baht salary.

Wouldn't dare to pay utility bills late in Thailand. When I was still living in Hua Hin, once I was confused by the new design of the electricity bill, and I understood I had to pay ultimately on the 8th, though it really was on the 6th. On the 7th they came to cut me off when I was still sleeping. Fortunately the housekeeper was there, and she convinced them to wait one more day.

I hope the detonations won't take place in the planes.

Don't know if this has been pointed out before, but the article says "The lady then went to grab Milly and called her by name and said, 'Come on Milly, let's get in the taxi', with a Danish or Dutch accent. " Not such a credible clue, a Dutch accent is much closer to a German accent than to a Danish accent.

Katsikorn Khao Lak requires a work permit, but a friend of mine managed to open an account nevertheless telling them she had found a job and that the work permit application procedure was in motion.

In 1999, I arrived in Nongkai knowing nothing about the festival which was going on. Searching more and more desperately for a hotel room, we were soon ready to spend thousands of Baht on it (not my usual thing), but no luck. Finally we ended up in an incredibly decrepit downtown hotel (no private bathrooms), which was nevertheless full of Thais who looked like they had money, bearing their fate and grinning at each other.

Wondering if there is anything left of Godzilla, the restaurant in a separate building on the grounds of Supercheap. I had lunch there the day before yesterday.