steveromagnino

Not if you need a permit to do a silly walk!

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Silliness walk development for Thai 50 baht

Silliness walk development for farang 200 baht

Watching Herr Taksin doing the silly walk as a special performance in the Winter Olympics priceless

You can contact me on 09 1240664, or PM me here.  Cheers

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maaaaaaaaaate.

Flats and flatmates isn't how it is done here in da BKK... you can take that right back to Westport

Mostly you can get a studio for much cheaper; 3.000 - 10,000baht a month dependin on location so no need for stinky feet flatmates.

If you feel the need to live with other people, then maybe guesthouse is a better solution.... but otherwise easier to get a room alone.

There are also a LOT of dodgy people in THailand, and IMHO there are a ton of dodgy foreigners here who would quite enjoy stealing all your stuff and waltzing back to their country on the day you aren't around. Hence, studio is a safer option.

Hope he spent all his money before he kicked the bucket. If he didn't, not much use for it all, eh?

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He loved to gamble; I think he actually severely depressed the earnings of one of the big casinos in Vegas for a quarter, when he won AFAIK about $30M usd...

Mind you he also holds the record for losing the most as well :-)

I always tell visitors Anusawaree commerates the fact that Thailand did the catering in WW1 and WW2. 

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Phoo Pun Somchai. What did you do in the war to earn your title?

Artillery Sir.

Artillery? Really Phoo Pun Somchai>? I was under the impresson all you lot did was catering?

Krap Pom. I was in charge of all our shelling activities. Peas mostly. Also some nuts Sir. It was courage under fire sir. They American GIs they kept wanting that flame grilled feeling Sir.

Seriously, these monuments for wars and stuff, they are all a bit crap really. Nice to remember it, but would it not be better to make some movies about heros and stuff, historically correct ones like the Patriot and that other Mel Gibson one where he yells 'freedom' at the end? That way people would know what really happened back in those days.

The soldiers can be a cantakerous bunch though; I've copped a fair bit of racist flack but never so much as when I went to the RSA for one of their lunches; even after 30 years, the old buggers were convinced I was the enemy that they had been fighting back then.... Ah well, I still took care of a few peas for them anyway:-)

The supermarket is almost Tesco Lotus size. Qute an impressive place, been there today. The Emporium will have to compete very hard.

Why would they compete? its the same people behind it!!

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Well almost, the people who own the Siam Centre are partners in Paragon, but not in Emporium if I understand correctly.... and the biggest concern in retail for the retailers who are in Central, Paragon, Emporium etc is where the customers will come from; if they do end up cannabilising Emporium then that will be a very big problem for The Mall Group.

Ditto Siam Centre, which I see will be the loser of this whole thing.

Central Chitlom have also developed a fairly swish swanky food gourmet market as well; according to a recent celebrity chef visitor it is right up there - so for the gourmets out there, well worth a look and I'd be curious to know which is better (I am more a talard nut kind of guy, so I need to hear how the other half live)

Meanwhile, the London Underground is closing down on New Years Eve because of a strike.

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Well, as they say, TIL.

Ok ok, it's silly question!

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Silly indeed!

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Ministry of Silly Walks. That might be corruption free :-)

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE.

A guy has died, and you lot are making jokes about it?!

I hardly think this is appropriate.

Although that said the ground floor gag is frigging genius

Hey Khun Stever-O:

Steve -o???

Like the guy from Jack Ass?!

Now that is an insult

I'll check some of your other work out over coming days

Chownah

From what I understand, the bricks have been fired for a loooonnnnngg time already. But I am no expert.

Anyway, I want to know from you or someone else how the big massmarket guys like Land and House are churning out their homes.

I have seen some of the new fancy insulation blocks which are very light (float on water) and already lined; some being used in the BKK market.... surely these would be easier?

The amount of finishing is almost non existant with these concrete blocks, whereas the little bricks seem to then require copious plastering, with all the attendant effort and time.

Khun Kat

It is my poor taste and sense of humour, sorry 'bout that

however, writing something like:

"For those people who are calling all critical discussion on this board a whinging session, I have to ask you, what are your interests in Thailand? Is it that you can find a woman easily and cheaply because of the exchange rates from your Western, so-called "cesspools"? I am certain that the vast majority of Thailand lovers here wouldn't give a rat's arse if they weren't enamoured with the shapes and accessibility of the women here."

could offend some people, particularly those who consider this thread to be a fairly large amount of whinge, not much critical discussion, and therefore have to be accused of being here to find women cheaply and easily?!

I would welcome a thread where we can all discuss some of the issues you raise, and look forward to seeing one.

I think dirty wet places are the worst; swimming pools when I was doing triathalons (and my feet soles were all beat up from running around on beach and stuff) I had them all the time.

But then I discovered windsurfing, and because the board is like sandpaper, i keep ripping them out so I have a hole in my foot, but no veruca. :-)

So now, just have 2 on the side of my heel...how to get rid of those ones? Maybe some OTC medicine.

For the most part I don't think people's homes are too bad, as mostly this is the disease I always got in farang countries, not here./

The idea of this is to improve what is basically a big mess and is difficult to use even for Thais I have asked Thais about this and a lot would like a centralized bus terminal that has all the info you need and is clean and tidy.

keeping the tuk tuks moto bikes and cars way from the terminal is a good idea all they do is create traffic this the point of the BTS and MRT to reduce traffic so no parking and areas for tuk tuks or motorbikes

Taxis are needed but you walk up to the surface exit (under the BTS at mochit) and get one from the taxi stand next the exit.

the traffic in the current bus terminal areas is crap anyway this will help to ease it not increase it as the intercity buses are not using the normal streets just the existing expressways of Bangkok and the city buses will do what they do now use the normal roads then via a tunnel enter the terminal with no cars or moto bikes following them

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I think you raise some excellent points, although I feel your solution is massively expensive and is not the onlt one to address the points you raise

- lack of links to BTS/MRT

- multiple terminals

- confusing

Lack of links

I would point out that the majority of people I know getting on buses are the types that do not ride the skytrain; many are ridnig on the bus to get to the station, so the BTS link won't help. And for anyone (in fact most people) not living on the BTS rail line, the attachment is no help. And lastly for anyone carrying stuff, well you can't always carry it on the BTS. Foreighers, well yes this is more useful I agree.

The link between Morchit current station and the morchit future station under Jatujact would be infinitely easier if they just joined the two together with an additional line to Mor Chit bus terminal; I suspect traffic on it would be negligible for the reason above. The idea of tunnelling out below JJ park is impractical and unlikely given the amount of money available; who would pay for this and since finance is allocating money away from something else, what would we give up? e.g. the park belongs to one dept; it is looked after by the BMA, the bus terminal belongs to another, the buses are private etc etc.....

Buses are a fairly inefficient form of transport, why not allocate this money to improving rail which is already operating in a similar way to how you describe?

Assuming that the money was actually spent, how will you justify to the public why the travelling time to say Chonburi should increase by 30 minutes or so, wasting fuel and so on because the terminal is now on the wrong side of town for going to Chonburi? Ditto for south?

Additionally, for all the private bus services that do not use terminals (e.g. Khao San road, Rot Dtoo ekachon) will you force them to use the terminals too? If not, we are in the same situation we are in now.

Multiple terminals

Given the traffic situation as it is now, the idea is that the terminals are on the side of town they service. This saves considerable time, since particularly the north south line is terrible. Incidentally, there are a few buses leaving from say Mor Chit that go south to pattaya as well; but mostly it is geographical segmentation.

If we combine all into one, it would be a MASSIVE area which does not deliver any economies of scale for the bus operators; because mostly the bus operators are regional, it is not one single company that operates all the buses. e.g. Korat Tour might run just Ubon, Korat, BKK; whether they are in the same terminal as Pattaya Tour doing Pattaya, Bang Saen, BKK makes no difference to them; they need service staff in BKK and in Korat either way. However, it would cause gridlock unless there are great links to the local motorway system... and this is the case whether it is 1 terminal or 4. So... solution is link the terminals to the motorway system, irrespective of how many there are. Actually, the links are not so bad in some cases.

Since the buses going from say Ubon to Pattaya do not pass through BKK, transit is not an issue unless they are people going to one place, resting then going onwards. In which case I do not see that they would spend a night at the terminal.

The size of one single terminal would increase walking a lot. I just don't see the point. I think hub systems are going out of favour right, people like point to point; so as long as the systems link together that is enough...whether it is 1 terminal or 4, I still need to get in either a taxi and go to mor chit, or walk to the underground and go to Mor chit......

Confusing current system

Sorry, but I don't know any Thai people regularly using the current system who have problems. I know tons of Thai people who refuse to use buses; however that is nothing to do with terminals, it is to do with cleanliness, convenience and the fact most will drive themselves. Agree on the english bit; don't see any benefit to smart cards. Again, with the current structure of many operators, many reginonal, the smart card would not help them at all.

I read Thai, so it isn't confusing to me either. With no english, it would be bad, but that is nothing to do with the 4 terminals, it is to do with poor english service.

I've looked at the translink system, and I have no idea how they got it running in Aussie, most countries don't have this system, at least not as flash as it sounds on paper. Sounds very cool. However, I can't quite see the value to me, and I cannot think of anyone who lives here that would be wantnig to use such a system as it seems to mean you have one pre pay card for everything. Since i use the promotional price on the skytrain, I use a different promotion on the underground and I hardly ever use a bus, what use would it be to me? And why should I store value with the card? Am I missing somethign with the benefits to this card

I'd also point out that the scheme you propose works in Brisbane at least in part because IMHO:

- the volume of buses is minimal and the places people are going are few (what is population of Aussie, and how many travel on buses, and how many cities do they go to)

- Brisbane is small anyway with a well defined city centre

- Brisbane is a lot richer and newer than BKK

In summary, I think the good points of your idea:

- link all 4 terminals into motorway system more directly (I think there are 4, there might only be 3!)

- join terminals into skytrain system

- english signage

The rest I don't see deliver enough benefits/any benefits to justify probably destroying a very nice park and creating even more gridlock for the express way section from Din Daeng South. I also don't even consider most to be feasible without nationalisation of the bus service, which would be a disaster.

I would suggest that the money would be far better spent on train system upgrades and water transport.

Regarding the course of history, given that the sexual preferences of so many people is unknown, and given that for much of history is has not been acceptable to be gay (and hence heros might have been 'dressed up a bit', er, dressed down dressed down), and given that as a percentage of the population, that the pavilion enders are in the minority, we could expect anyway to see at least some sort of bias towards the heteros.

Same sort of argument frequently used - 'if a woman was running the world, there would be no war, 'cause Hitler, Stalin, Mao, The Kaiser, Cliff Richard, dem be all men innit'.

Well, for the most part since few women have ever been running the world there isn't really much of a track record to comment on what would happen if they did. Well, you've got Maggie, but since she went to the Falklands, and stuff, well that isn't convenient to include is it.

I think though, that you get a bunch of steers and queers from Soi 2:P running things and at least there would be some nicer dressed politicians; there would be more flowers and decoration around and maybe if there was a war... well it could be decided with a lip sync contest or maybe some sort of celebrity makeover.

There are pro's and con's of bikes using flyovers and expressways, I think they should be allowed to, but then I'm only a stupid farang so what do I know

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Well at least you are honest

What would make more sense is if they built a flyover with a lane for the people on bikes to ride themselves to certain death if they so choose (and that includes almost all Thais and most of the foreigners I see on bikes who are a danger to themselves and to anyone near them). 4 stroke bikes be well good for the environment compared to a car innit.

Better yet?

- convert all mass transport vehicles to NGV reducing pollution

- encourage private sector to also drive around in NGVs

- more extensive MRT/BTS system which has already made a massive difference in the areas of operation, linked to the motorcycle/van system

- taxi stands are good suggestion, and being introduced by Dr T today I think again

- higher tolls on all highways from 7am - 10pm except the King's one for private vehicles - buses and public transport excluded

- more tolls for anyone farang going to Pattaya - we can call it the 'singlet and singha tax'

- upgraded train service

- more taxes on cars

- let me start dating Kae Chollada in some sort of oil lubrication capacity

- and so on

The reality? If we do not work in this industry or have some involvement in developnig the infrastructure of Thailand, we shouldn't bother to complain about it. Our complaints are falling on deaf ears, as most of the people here can't do anything about what we are complaining about! That said, I have done my bit, although unless someone asks nicely, I am not going to grandstand about my vast acheivements.

I am different. Somehow, my words, like the devine sound of Mr Farang in the Thai language threads, sounds like music from heaven to the ears of the big wigs in the 'ministry of transport, roads and other contraptions'. Hence why I write it down. Not for you lot of deadbeats mind, which according to Kat are (including myself) inthe vast majority a bunch of crazed sex tourists.....FYI Khun Kat this is not critical discussion for the most part, it is peppered with insinuations that Thai people are this, Thai people are that, hospitals ?!, your charity work in Burma ?!, a rather convuluted and ill thought out way to discuss roading in Thailand, but then again, I'm always up for a whinge.

Inovations proving that Thailand is 'not stuck in the box' which some people who obviously know minimal amounts about Thailand cannot see because they themselves have been in a box so long that the walls form a barrier beyond which they cannot escape, similar in some ways to a cardboard box? Please outline which of our mighty western countries have been soooooo kind to share with us:

- private van system operating within Bangkok and beyond, which uses a 'we leave when we are full system' thus providing a very competitive pricing structure without subsidy from the public sector for the most part

- motorcycle taxis

- motorcycle messenger who can also run errands

- a bus service which can transport someone a distance of BKK to Pattaya (about 130km) for a massive less than 80 baht (about $3NZD)

- transportation, again, not funded by the state, offering home delivery in much of Bangkok

Ah sorry, my confusing writing; Amex is not a credit card for the most part, it is a charge card.

However, they do the credit card now and also BBL issues AMEX I think.

AFAIK Thai credit cards carry the same levels of liability as any other VISA worldwide, as it is a VISA system? I will check that bit out though, good point.

Thanks for your advice :-)

Thai TVCs can pay well. I'm auditioning for a TVC role this week that pays THB30,000 a day for two days' shooting. Probably won't get it, but someone will ...

Depending on the category, that definitely sounds about right for most work, with liquor, main lead roles in beauty and electronics paying quite a bit more sometimes....best of luck with it; always grease up the casting agents; they only present about 3 of the multitude that audition, so it is well worth while making sure that you are one of the 3,....

Maybe I'm missing something, but the type of expat you're talking about can easily get such a card already.

So what are you proposing that's different from the above?

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Definitely know about the AMEX; judging from the unending complaints from every expat I seem to meet that the banks won't give them a credit card, I started asking around, and initially it seemed like some didn't have their ship in order (other than HSBC) to issue a VISA for an expat.....

Seems like this might make me have to rethink the whole thing then....

This card is going to be a platinum card which has some quite handy travel benefits, a much better points scheme including airline mileage on the card; well better than the HSBC scheme for sure, and also more discounts at selected fashion outlets mostly with freebies abounding.

It is mostly aimed at THais and we have the research on that side, but I'd be keen to know what it would take for me to persuade you to take up another card and ditch your HSBC and/or AMEX.

I am working on a project which may also include a credit card specifically for expats. I am pushing this, in the belief that there is a need for a locally issued credit card from a reputable bank for expats living here who want to collect points, pay for stuff, get discounts that sort of thing.

I could be well wrong....

However, as a non representative piece of research, I'd like to be able to say to the underwriting bank (who currently have nil interest in this) that the expats will come if they do the following:

- english call centre

- application forms in english

- requirement only for proof of earnings with most recent paycheck, work permit, work visa

- all conditions otherwise the same as local card holders including 100k min income per month (exactly the same as local card holders)

- all benefits the same as local cardholders including VERY elaborate and generous points scheme, free gifts with purchase all that sort of stuff and 1% off petrol

- english language statement

- no annual fee for life no conditions

I feel that some of you guys could use a locally issued credit card and if the level of interest on this board is postiive, then I'll push it, otherwise, it is quite a bit or work for nothing.....so... what do you thinK/?????

Is this something you'd go for>? Am I mising something?

Correct. And that's how they make their bread (and a lot of bread involved I might add). One of my old school mates is one of the VPs over at Capital OK. Once the pikers start making late payments, there is typically a clause that says all 0% promotions are immediately null and void.... and wallah, you're paying the maximum legal %'s involved.

Niiiiiice. I see that Quikcash and your Capital pals just had to write off some interest; burying stuff in the fine print is ok, but it cannot be buried too deep; I still am not 100% sure that all this easy credit with high interest rates is doing anyone any favours....

But then again, if I was a rich man, duddle duddle duddle duddle duddle duddle duddle doo... all day I would lend and do some poo... if I was a wealthy man?!

Woo ho

I'm a junglist soldier.....wide awake with a strange wet substance in my pants

And before that...

playboy cool guy with lots of hos

And before that awake and a band nerd..... and feeling quite tired....

chonabot: It was really a mistake to resurrect that threat again.

pretty useless thread....... Really a waste of time to read fantas posts....

Yes, I wish people wuld stop posting in this thread

Unless your retriever gets wet,  I doubt very much the temperatures here get low enough to make a dog uncomfortable outside. The dog should at least have a mat or carpet to lay on, my dog won't sleep on a ceramic floor.

Chihuahua owners be warned, these ugly little creatures will shake even though it's 30 degrees outside.

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Hey Penzman, I think the OP asked about a dog being outside, I don't think he needed to see a picture of that rat

And of course Mam, because mam is the nickname for girls who look like a whitey, so I think if nothing else, then Mam is not bad....

You can be like Mam Kathleeya, Mam Marisa, Mam na Beverly Hills 90210 'nuff respec' yo yo yo!

P.s. Bambina...is that an offer for lickings?!!

Your requirement:

- sweet/cute

- lasts a lifetime

- unique

well, hard to have all, but how about:

- Lookmee (like a teddy bear)

- Lookgait (like a raisin)

- Jam (which in Thai becomes Yam which is easy for farang to say too)

- Geow (if you insist on tea cup, well, maybe class is better than cup, but hard for a foreigner to say)

- Cherry (easy for foreigner to say, fruit name is cute and sweet), can write for extra style points Cheri

I hate the car nicknames like Benz etc - most of the people with these names are too poor to even own a Benz, and anyway, why would you want to be named after smelly heavy object that lots of people get inside all the time?

BTW Somchai = full name, not nickname

Also, many people have several nicknames with different friends they use different names e.g. with western friends a nickname like C or Apple, and then with Thai friends a Thai nickname, maybe Durian or Som :-))))))