keestha

By the way, do bars and restaurants in Phuket sometimes sell Archa beer? It's the cheapest type of beer there is, to my knowledge. If I get the type of people in my place who complain that even the air you breath is expensive in Thailand, but who nevertheless want to drink beer, I always advice them to order Archa, I sell a big bottle for 90 Baht.

The Heineken in Aussie isn't the same crappy Heineken you get in Thailand which is brewed in Thailand for the Thai palate.

Isn't this some kind of a psychological effect? You expect beer brewed in Thailand to taste lousy, and therefore it does. A Heineken employee who assists in opening new Heineken factories all over the world, once assured me : "it's exactly the same owl piss everywhere".

In Holland, where Heineken comes from, Heineken is seen as a very low status chemical mass produced beer.

In the course of the years, I bought a lot of mattresses at a store called Penang. They have 2 branches: one at the bypass driving towards the turnoff to the left to Tesco Lotus, at the right hand side, and one driving southwards towards Supercheap at the left hand side. They also do home delivery.

There a quite a lot of snakes where you live even though its in the middle of Chalong

Sure, living in the middle of a heavily populated area doesn't guarantee a snake free existence. I used to live smack in the middle of downtown Hua Hin, and the British guy who had a guesthouse down the soi encountered snakes in his backyard a number of times.

It would be nice if people who actually acquired citizenship would comment.

In 2003, my old avatar which was a running tiger suddenly disappeared, and the present one appeared. I grew to like it.

Maybe "pavement in front of the 7/11 " would be a good name for a bar.

Do you know how much it costs from the Andaman Club? I assume it also goes to Victory Point?

It doesn't. The Andaman Club is on a small island just inside Burma, it is a casino with a 5 star hotel. They have their own pier at the Thai mainland, where there also is a Thai immigration checkpoint. On arrival on the island you have to pass through Burmese immigration, you don't need a visa.

Please be aware that because of the flood situation we bar/restaurant owners often have to buy our beer at a higher price then we usually do. This applies for most brands, like for instance Singha. My business (hotel/restaurant/bar/travel agency combination) doesn't depend on beer sales, so I kept my beer prices the same, just to avoid talk in the sense of "Keestha has become a lot more expensive" by tourist who have just come off the plane. But if I would have something like a bar or a beergarden, thus depending heavily on beer sales, I would have put up my beer prices for sure.

You're welcome to have a small bottle of Singa at my place, I make 3 Baht and 40 Satang Baht profit per bottle.

RIP.

Last summer, I checked out a somewhat upmarket resort in Pai, Mae Hon Son, but decided against staying there because I was afraid my infant daughter could fall from the elevated walkway in between the rooms and the swimming pool.

It is accepted everywhere in Thailand that businesses put tables&chairs, clothing racks or whatever on the road/pavement in front of their businesses. Don't think this is backed by a written rule of law, but in any legal system custom is also a source of law.

Maybe a rule should be made and enforced that they are only allowed to encroach on the road/pavement for maximally a certain distance from the premises. Oh well, I am dreaming, everybody knows expecting something like this to be really enforced would be unrealistic.

I used to be a frequent visitor to the soi this thread is about in 2005, it looks a lot more congested now indeed.

My laptop runs on Windows XP. All of a sudden, when I type just one letter in the Google search box, the gray pop up appears with a text running like " internet explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close". Any other website I can open normally, and using Bing's search box causes no problems.

Any explaination?

Will this terrific initiative also be given publicity through other channels?

Being not so much a hugging minded type of person, I'm glad I'll be at home anyway at 9pm.

There are lots of online shops specializing in back home stuff which is otherwise hard to obtain for expats.

For starters, the obligatory yearly check for motorized vehicles which are older than 7 years could be made stricter. A pick-up I owned a few years ago passed the test, and burned out completely a few months later, due to faulty wiring.

Certainly hope they're still alive, but I'm wondering if this would be the case, if the costly search action and the police involvement would have any financial consequences for them.

After driving close to 400,000 km all over Thailand in the course of 12 years, I was cheated at the gas station only twice, once buying 600 Baht of gas but getting only about 450 (meter rigged, Thai people say they can mix the gas with air), and once getting a mixture of diesel and lamp oil.

Not a bad score as far as I'm concerned, reckon in a country like the US it would have been about the same.

If the runway were to be swamped at 'Swampy', where would Emirates land its Airbus A380? My guess would be KL!

Very easy - can put down at Pattaya (U-Tapao) with no problem so saying Phuket will take over from Swampy is just silly

U-Tapao has just one runway.

OK, but first thing should be then improvising additional parking lot capacity at the airport. Let's hope Suvarnabhumi holds.

Everybody who depends on tourism business for a living: keep your fingers crossed.

Last year, after arranging a pick-up by taxi for a guest to be brought from a hotel in Phuket to my hotel in Khao Lak, I got a furious phone call from the owner of the hotel in Phuket that he should be the one to arrange a taxi (and pocket a bit of commission).

Since then, when a guest requests taxi service from a Phuket hotel to Khao Lak, I tell him to let the Phuket hotel arrange it, but not agree on more then a certain price that I know is reasonable.

After intensively using the roads in Phuket and Phangnga for 12 years, I can only confirm: Yes always the same, tourist vans and tourbusses driving much too fast. Long ago I developed a habit of allowing them to overtake me as soon as possible, slowing down for them. I wish everybody a speedy recovery.

I was at the airport yesterday and the day before yesterday, and I noticed it was considerably busier than last year at the end of october. No regular parking spots available even in the last row. Could this maybe be because of tourists changing their plans, deciding to skip flooded Bangkok and head for Phuket straight away?

Can confirm that lots of things that have to be sent down from Bangkok are already in short supply: yesterday Tesco Lotus didn't have sugar, tea, big garbage bags and so on. Can only be hoped the situation will be back to normal when the high tourist season starts.

Phuket Airport also serves Khao Lak and there should be a bus connection. Busses running from the airport to Krabi would probably also be able to operate profitably.