keestha

When I learned to drive in Thailand (Phuket) there was a big poster on the wall at the driving school, explaining the traffic signs, rules about roundabouts, and so on. You would need somebody to translate, but it gives the necessary information in a nutshell.

I believe every time you open a subforum or a thread the google ads are different, or at least they change quite frequently.

Just now I got this one:

Meet The Beautiful

Ladyboys in Bangkok. Visit our websites now!

www. (URL removed)

Personally I don't care at all if they advertise for this or for real estate or whatever.

Does this apply for all ATM's and for all foreign ATM cards? If yes, this would be bad for tourism. Many tourists depend on ATM cards to get refuelled with cash, and they could very well need to make a withdrawal of over 10.000 sometimes.

Bdenner, you don't chance to be Icelandic don't you?

Does anybody know if it is possible at all to book railway tickets in advance, by internet or telephone, directly at State Railways of Thailand?

Please don't tell me to go to a travel agency. I have a resort and offer travel agency services myself. I also know that you can make advance bookings at railway stations.

It happened a few times that people staying at my resort booked a railway ticket in advance at another travel agency. The results were not so satisfying, they were kept waiting for several days. The closest railway station from here is Surat Thani about 200 KM away, guess the travel agency just accepted the deal knowing that a cousin or so would go to Surat Thani in a few days, and therefort being able to purchase the ticket at the railway station.

So is there a possibility to make advance bookings directly at the State Railways of Thailand, other than at a railway station?

Their website doesn't mention this.

To attract high spending tourists who are ready to shell out a lot of money to be pampered in a "boutique hotel" Thailand is at a disadvantage because of the language factor. The girl working behind the reception will be pretty and very nicely dressed, but her English will be shallow. There will be misunderstandings ordering food, and so on.

Being a Dutch expat, you will probably see your social life mainly revolving around English and German speaking expats. I don't know about Bangkok, but as far as the beach resorts are concerned, only in Pattaya there seems to be an area with a heavy concentration of Dutch people. (Soi Buakeow?? never known Pattaya very well, and haven't been there in a long time. I could find out though, if you are interested).

Usually expats sharing the same native language tend to hang out together, but there are simply not so many Dutch and Flemish around.

Je zal je sowieso wel amuseren in Bangkok.

LivinginKata, what makes you assume kanpo wants to BUY the bar? Maybe he only wants to go there because someone raved to him about their delicious charcoal roasted jellyfish sandwiches.

Kanpo, I also don't know where this place is. It is not that I am withholding info because I am afraid you will chat up my favourite waitress.

An acquaintance who has a tour agency has seen his bookings (mainly from Sweden) for the upcoming high season going down. He thinks that besides the obvious reasons (financial crisis, political unstability in Thailand, tension with Cambodia), this is also because Thailand is pricing itself out of the market as a holiday destination. He claims that now places like Bali, Vietnam, the Phillepines and Malaysia are becoming more and more attractive as alternatives.

For those of you working in the travel industry, what are your thoughts about this?

The OP asked a perfectly legit question. Everything you know you must first have learned at some point. The first time I participated in a Thailand focused forum, I didn't know the heck what they meant talking about LOS (land of smiles, Dave).

I remember a thread in which a Scandinavian poster became genuinely confused when somebody called him a troll, he also asked: "What is a troll?"

A friend gave me a laptop that he only used briefly a few years ago. I installed XP on it, and it does connect to my WIFI network, and I can use it to give commands to the printer. Originally the thing was running on Win 2000.

The laptop is old, but it doesn't really date back to the stone age. The hard disk has 14 GB of which only 4 GB is used.

The thing is maddeningly slow though. I did everything I could do: defragging, cleaning up the hard disk, and I uninstalled unnecessary programs. Also I restricted the programs that automatically fire up when starting windows to a bare minimum.

Do you have any suggestions what I could do to make the thing move faster?

On another note, thinking that maybe a limited RAM could be the problem, I decided to rum the MemTest that comes with XP.

It has been running for over one hour now, and the screen reads 28100% coverage, 0 errors.

There have been a lot of threads on here about forex trading. You might get replies from people who claim that they are making money playing forex.

What might be a good idea......use the search function, and try to contact people who claimed a few years ago to make money with forex. Ask them if they are still in the forex trade, and if they are still winning.

but at least you'll meet and talk to real people rather than 50-year-old blokes in Alabama pretending to be 18-year-old bi-sexual girls.

Haha...

So true, the old BangkokChat was classic for that.

I used to go into BangkokChat occasionally. Why did they stop?

Keep the grass short, and overgrown areas are a no no. Ferns for instance are no good, you wouldn't see snakes crawling under them. You should have a long and thick stick ready to beat a snake to death if you see one.

I live in an area comparable to Rawai, poisonous snakes that are most common here are cobras and green vipers. In case a snake bites you it is essential to know what type of snake it was. Be aware that when it is raining heavily, snakes will want to go to a place which is not flooded. When you have to go into the garden after dark, thread heavily so that a snake notices the vibrations and can get away in time.

Many hospitals, Red Cross stations and clinics have the antivenom, just ask places close to your home if they have it, so that you will have peace of mind.

I was told in Australia people sometimes put a certain type of round somewhat slippery stones around their garden perimeter, snakes don't like to go across them. Australians please chip in, I am also interested in this.

Having said all this, please don't forget the chance of you or somebody in your family being hurt in a traffic accident is is about 300 times as big a a chance of an incident with a snake.

A few years ago I had ICQ installed for half a year or so. People can look at your profile, and request to chat one to one with you. I was continuously contacted by women living in Bangkok, often they claimed to have graduated from university and looking for a job now. True or not, their English was always quite passable.

Club Andaman used to be owned by a Thai businessman. If it is correct what you say, at what point did the Burmese state become the owner?

Nothing new there. I am winning about 4 lotteries every day. I have had the same emailaddress for 9 years, and because of my business my emailaddress is mentioned at lots of websites. Interesting proposals from places like Nigeria or Sierra Leone I get 2 or 3 per day.

In my limited understanding, while THai's obviously do take out mortgages for houses, it's to nowhere the level or recklessness which has caused this mess in the US and Europe. The borrowing culture is different.

Could be, but bank loans gone bad was one of the major reasons of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which started in Thailand.

Another lovely place on the way is at the beach near the town of Muang Thai.

Reckon you mean Thai Meuang, 30 KM south of Khao Lak and 22 KM north of the bridge to Phuket. No real swimming beach there, but there are a few nice untouristy beach restaurants. As you say, there are also a few places to stay near the beach.

Consider spending the night at Club Andaman, the casino hotel just inside Burma on a small island opposite Ranong. You don't need a visa to go there. You are stamped out of Thailand at the immigration office at the pier ,and taking the boat back to Ranong the next morning you get your Thai entry stamp at the same office. Club Andaman has its own pier, and at the hotel you simply pay with Thai currency.

It costs roughly 2000-2500 baht to spend the night there (!5 star facilities, breakfast included), their number is 077830461, or for reservations 0818942583. They have a great swimming pool, a nice restaurant which isn't too expensive, you can buy taxfree booze and maybe you'll strike it rich at the slot machines.

Nope, it weakened today.

Against the US$, yes, but not against the Euro. It is I think an outdated concept to consider a currency to be weakening if just one US$ buys more of it. I am aware though that outdated or not, the US$ is still regarded to be the universal yardstick against which other currencies are measured.

When a poster claims to be a very succesfull businessperson I get curious and check the profile.........which more often than not doesn't give any information.

Oh well, maybe they just have some kind of business that doesn't need a website that should be brought to the attention of as many people as possible.

Oh well, working girls do sometimes have a relationship that doesn't revolve around money, and yes, they can fall in love.

I see that 16 people are reading this thread now, so you will get a lot of reactions.

All I can say is be cautious, but the same would apply if she was working at the airport or running a laundry service.

Monks have to carry an ID card identifying them as such. In case of doubt, I would ask for a "bat pra jam tua", it is a general expression for any type of ID card other than the normal ID card every Thai citizen has.

A few months ago when I was driving to the district capital, I saw three monks who were hitchhiking. Feeling that I needed to make some merit, I stopped to pick them up. They told me they were on their way to Bangkok, and asked me for money. Knowing that a monk is not supposed to ask for material help (apart from the morning begging round), I politely refused.

Only now, reading this thread, the thought crossed my mind that these three men might not have been genuine monks.

Always been a big fan of roundabouts, they keep the traffic flowing.

In the Netherlands, a country with a very high traffic density, intersections with traffic lights are being replaced by roundabouts all over the place.

Fortunately this type of thing is pretty rare. The maybe 3 times in 16 years I left a bar feeling cheated, I just chalked it up to experience. Many times I witnessed things like a fully loaded guy settling the bill, then falling asleep whilst trying to finish his last drink, and then after waking up asking for the bill, only to be told: you paid already.