moooooooo

The deputy PM instructed the city police to seek cooperation from entrepreneurs to immediately inform the authorities of their business rivals' illegal activities.

ie the city police's business rivals!!

I'm very confident about Thailand's future. I mean, it's not like it's going to slide off into the South China sea, is it?

Here are the before & after pics of the topless dancing girls on Ministry of Culture's website http://yfrog.com/h4nvfpkj

Source: Richard Barrow

hahhahahahahaahahaha. That has cheered me up this morning!!

A great sensationalist headline to launch on!! Is this Pattaya's answer to News of the Screws?

If by 'the people he is supposed to represent' you mean individual British citizens, then that's not really what ambassadors or embassies do. They represent the government of their respective countries.

I know there is a perception that they should be 'there for us' but historically speaking they were established to promote trade, represent the foreign policy of their government and facilitate diplomatic relations between governments.

They don't really exist as any kind of support network for individuals.

It would be nice if they did, but they are representatives of one head of state to another.

In our case, 'civil servants' is possibly about as wrong a title for such officials as it is possible to have! They work for HM government, not us!

I agree. It is the job of Consuls to provide advice to British citizens abroad.

I can confirm that I am having these problems too - located in West Bangkok. Some downloads working slowly, some not at all.

Tracking to the UK does not work anymore - it used to but for some reason Royal Mail don't bother providing this service now.

Hi,

We're currently based in Bangkok but are looking to possibly move to the Krabi area on a permanent basis and would like to hear about anyone's experience of living in the area. We are a family of 3 (myself, my (Thai) wife and 2 year old daughter) and are looking to move somewhere away from the rat race where there is a more healthy outdoor lifestyle. I enjoy mountain biking, running and swimming and I work for myself from home and am heavily dependent on the internet for my work. I speak fluent Thai.

The sort of questions I'd like answered are:

1. If you were moving to the area where would you recommend as a good area to live?

2. Where is the best internet connection available from? Which provider provides the fastest and most reliable connection (I've read CAT is good)?

3. Where represents the best value for accommodation? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being, say, in the Ao Nang area and the Krabi town area? Do the advantages of being near the beach outway the disadvantages of being in a tourist area?

4. Any general comments about your experiences of living in the area. Have you moved from somewhere like Bangkok or Pattaya and were you happy that you moved to Krabi?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Tom

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Many Thais get around the ban by heading to neighbouring Cambodia and Myanmar where casinos dot the border.

Should read...

Many Thais get around the ban by paying the police to have gambling schools....

555555555555555555!!!

Should read...

Many police get around the ban by becoming shareholders in and running gambling schools....

Seems that not many replies to this post....wonder why?

I don't know why but my other computer wouldn't let me reply to this post... kept on going on about me not having a genuine advantage, whatever that was all about...

I wonder if he will start sneaking across the boarder through the jungle like the criminals in that boarder areas.

Yes, he'll probably be found hanging out in the casinos in Poipet or Prum...

Hi,

I'm looking for an English teacher in the Chumpere/Si Chompu area of Khon Kaen to help my 13 year old step son learn English. Ideally, he'd need one-to-one tuition 2 or 3 hours a week after school. His level is pretty well much beginner (doesn't even know alphabet yet).

Please contact me on 087 991 2405 if you are interested and we can discuss further by phone.

Thanks in advance,

Tom

Yeah, I'm with the LaughingMan. I like MK cos I like the dipping sauce. The roast duck is pretty good too. And it's healthy. Nothing wrong with boiling food - I find it's great for a hangover cos all the minerals and vitamins that you ingest in the soup. They could do with better desserts though.

TOT internet almost completely at a standstill for the last two days - even Thiavisa fails to load most of the time. Strangely though, Skype and torrents seem to not be affected. While I couldn't sign into Yahoo yesterday afternoon, uTorrent was happily absorbing a TV programme at 200kbs plus (and before you say it, stopping the download had no effect on the speed relating to regular pages in or out of the country). Why might that be?

Wow, just took me 5 minutes to download (including one page refresh) the reply form. I am thinking that TOT must be one of the worst ISPs in the world. Isn't TV.com hosted in Singapore?

I'm not an expert on internet infrastructure but I think the reason why skype and torrents work ok is because they don't rely on the same domain name routing as websites and I think it might be this point in the network where TOT has clearly got something wrong. I have been using them for about 2 years now and they have been completely unreliable and rubbish for all that time. I was living in Chanthaburi before and had the TOT Gold package which was a complete load of old pants. It was foreign based websites that would take forever to load or just not load at all, particularly US based ones. I then moved back up to Bangkok and, unfortunately the only service on offer in my condo was good old TOT. Signed up for their 3 meg "platinum" package (sorry whilst I roll around on the floor, tears streaming with frustration) and, yes, you guessed, it is just as cr@p as the gold service. I've tried speed tests with Penang and they come out pitifully slow too.

I also have had the "it's your router that's not working properly" excuse - I went out and bought another one for 2000 baht which had exactly the same problem as the other perfectly good original router.

TOT are just a bunch of lazy good for nothings who just wait until the end of the month for their paychecks to arrive.

I tried True when I had an office in central Bangkok a couple of years ago and they seemed to be quite a bit better than TOT.

Alternatively, I guess one can always move to Singapore or Korea where they take this sort of stuff seriously.

If they do pull you perhaps do the same as what I used to do when driving my car on the express way and would get pulled. When they ask for the "fine" say, ok, let's go to the station and I'll pay there which often in my experience results in the issue dissolving into the background pollution...

"The Bandidos started out as an American motorcycle gang, riding Harley Davidsons and so on, and eventually, they spread to Europe," Piyawat said. "But they aren't all criminals, only about 1 per cent."

The Bandidos are also very well -known for criminal activity in Australia.

I guess that's why they call themselves 1%ers...

Edited: ok, ok, the spelling mistake's been done to death.

I'm afraid it was a case of plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Penang - nice architecture and tropical surroundings. Shame about a lot of the people; in general unfriendly and unsmiling. Especially the Indians. It seems they have a chip on their shoulder with westerners. Or maybe it's just because I'm British. My girlfriend and I were walking down the street when we were overtaken by an Indian woman who spat on the ground right in front of where we were walking. Quite charming!

However, has great colonial architecture juxtaposed against modern concrete, souless tower blocks. With a litle imagination you could cast your mind back to gin and tonics and tiffins. But maybe I'm being a little too imperialistic here. A trip up Penang Hill on the Swiss built funicular train is a must. Perhaps take a bike ride around the lush jungle on top of the hill... The views are stunning.

We stayed at the Cititel Hotel at 160 ringit/night. Despite it's cleanliness the staff are sullen and unhelpful. We had the maid wanting to clean our room at 9.30am on day one and then the anti-pest contractor in to fumigate our room at 10am the next day. Surely they can do this when their guests have checked out...? Anyway, on our last day we left our bags in the care of reception whilst we killed some time before going to the airport. In the taxi my girlfriend noticed her mobile phone was missing from her bag. OK, perhaps she shouldn't have left it in there but this shouldn't happen in a hotel where you've just spent $100 . I'll stay in the place mentioned above next time!

To sum up, I think Penang is a beautiful place. However, coming from Thailand you will find many of the people, especially the Indians, in my opinion, to be quite agressive and unsmiling. You may feel that you are not really welcome there. But the visa service is pretty straightforward. Expect to pay 22 ringit return from Chulia to the Thai Embassy. And that includes the wait. My taxi driver, Mr Seng, a Chinese Penangite was a nice guy and very fair IMO. Find him outside the Cititel Hotel on Chulia. He drives a black taxi. The fee for the non-imm B visa application is 200RM. Watch out for people offering the visa service for 300RM. 100RM is worth 1000THB! Get a taxi and go to the embassy yourself. Remember to take 2 p/port photos with you.