Ombra

I was at Don Muang Airport yesterday. In the departure lounge, I noticed that the seats nearest to the boarding gates were labelled 'Priority seats,' and there were symbols to show that they were intended for the sick, the elderly, and so on. The only weaknesses that the people using them were suffering from, though, were mental and moral.

B-Quik is OK...

I've used B-Quik in Rangsit a number of times and I found it a good deal more than OK each time.

I lived in Thailand in the late eighties and the Thais' treatment of zebra crossings as road decoration made a strong impression on me. So much so that when I took a trip to Singapore, I behaved like a bumpkin. When I was out walking one day, I approached a crossing and all the traffic stopped. I thought that there must have been an accident or something and I looked around for a few seconds until I noticed that the drivers were looking at me and waiting for me to cross.

My wife has 3 rai of land on the outskirts of Nakhon Phanom. Until 5 or 6 weeks ago, I saw a snake close to the house every couple of days, but I don't know what kind they were. By the time I got my camera ready, they were gone. However, in the past month I haven't seen a single snake, and the wife claims that that is because one of the neighbours has acquired a family of cats. There are always a couple of cats around, but I would have thought that a cat was less of a threat to a snake than a dog. Could the missus be right or should I check my eyesight?

Given how hard life is for so many people, I am surprised to read that 59% actually have savings at all and that as many as 44% are capable, to some degree or other, of saving for their old age. It is sad, though, to learn that an unusually rich politician is telling the poor to save.

You are being paranoid! 1 person died from a jellyfish in 1 year! You shouldn't let your kids on a Thai road ever again if you worried about jellyfish. (20,000 people die on Thai roads a year).

The bloke is concerned about the wellbeing of his child. How on earth does that make him paranoid? My wife was stung by a jellyfish a few days ago in the sea off Prachuab Khirikhan and it was very painful indeed. The responsible thing, as he has said, is to use the swimming pool.

What difference does wearing sandals make when you have to remove your footwear before entering?

Since when do you remove your shoes going to immigration in BKK

The Prachaub Khirikhan office expects people to remove their shoes. I am sure that there are other provincial offices where this is required.

I like to load up my Kindle Paper White at my local library in Australia. This saves lugging a few kgs of books in my suitcase, and as the Paper white has built in lighting, I can read on the plane while others sleep.

Just finished Lawrence, D H., "Seven Pillars of Wisdom". I'll give camels and deserts a miss, tho he certainly got around on them.

T.E. Lawrence, not D.H.

Thank you. I've also never seen such a thing before. Perhaps it was a sick bird.

Actually, I checked with my wife who said that my eyesight was at fault. It was not a kite, but an owl. She claims to have seen owls hanging upside down before, and the question of whether they do or not certainly appears on the internet.

Thank you. I've also never seen such a thing before. Perhaps it was a sick bird.

I am spending a few months by the seaside 20 kms south of Prachaub Khirikhan town, and I would appreciate some insight into a surprising bird watching experience I had last night. I was in the garden at about 6.30 p.m. and I saw what I thought was a dead bird. It was lying on its back and it was upside down on a small bush. Its wings were outspread and they were about 18 -20 inches from tip to tip. The bird looked to me like a juvenile Brahminy kite, but I am only a novice bird watcher. As I turned to tell my wife about this beautiful bird, it flew away. I am very happy that it was not dead, but sorry that I didn't have more time to look at such a bird at close quarters. My wife says that she remembers seeing birds resting upside down when she was a child in the countryside more than 50 years ago. I've looked on the internet for information about birds resting in this fashion, but I haven't found anything helpful. I would be grateful for anything anyone can tell me.

Caffe D'Oro. The branches are mostly in Bangkok, but there are some in the provinces. Their bags of beans are very good value. The company's website has a map showing the location of the coffee shops.

I'm a 70-year-old and my wife chose a Honda CR-V because we have to travel a few times a year from Nakhon Phanom to Prachuab Khirikhan, which is more than 1,200 kms each way. As the CR-V is not a converted pick-up truck, it is extremely comfortable and easy to drive. The car uses E85 and does about 12.5 - 13 kms per litre on the highway. There are enough petrol stations selling E85, and, in the unlikely event of not finding one, you can also use E20, which is only about 2 baht a litre more. The car is very spacious and the back seats fold down very easily. For an old bloke, loading is made simpler because of the good design of the back door and the fact that the floor is slightly lower than usual. Someone mentioned tyres, and our car has Bridgestones, which seem to be very good. The car wasn't my choice and I wasn't enthusiastic about it at first, but after a year of relaxing driving, I'm very happy with it.

..get yourself some Ohropax, that's what I do against the noise of the straydogs.

http://www.ohropax.de/en.html

Are Ohropax ear plugs available in Thailand?

Why is Yann55 so upset by what DoctorB has written? The latter seems to have done his homework. I worked in Shanghai from 1983 to 1985 and Uighurs used to hang around the Merchant Seamen's Club and offer to change Renminbi into dollars,at a much better rate than the banks offered, It was extraordinary to find this group of Turkish-looking men in what was an almost entirely Chinese city because only a few hundred foreigners were working there at that time.

My brother in law bought 4 a couple of years ago,1500 baht each, has about 30 now. They are just free range on the land and we eat one some time ago but it was like chewing leather.

He has a bit of a problem now, they are not like chickens, they move about mob handed and will attack anything that goes near. Even the dogs steer clear.

I was just as disappointed with my experience of a Thai free range turkey. I think that the one that the wife and I bought last Christmas must have been running around for about two years. It was stringy, tough and tasteless.

Where do you live? In Nakhon Phanom, there is a turkey farmers' co-operative, and there are other turkey farms between Nakhon Phanom and Sakhon Nakhon.

Thanks for the information about Hua Hin. I am happy to hear that it was easier than you expected, but I am sorry to hear that the frontier office only does minor things. I should have realized that from the size of the place.

Hello John,

Do you have to go to Hua Hin to do this? Can't you use the immigration office at the Thai-Burmese border? I went there a week or so ago to do my 90-day report and I was surprised by how informal it all was. The immigration officer said that there was no need to complete any form because all of my information was on the computer.

Whenever I have tried to suggest (very politely) to a cashier in a supermarket that I can get by with fewer plastic bags, they always look affronted. My wife says that my comment amounts to a judgment about the Thai way of doing things, so I no longer bother.

I have only been in Thailand for about seven months and so my knowledge of Thai is basic. However, I came across a loan word which I was unaware of this week in a branch of HomePro. I was looking at some hooks to keep windows open when a salesman came up to me and pointed out a particular hook and said something repeatedly which sounded like 'stan-let.' He clearly expected me to understand, but I searched my small Thai vocabulary in vain. When I asked my wife what 'stan-let' meant, she said the same word only louder. She also asked me why I couldn't understand the meaning of 'stan-let steel.' It was all quite amusing.

My wife was in this situation some years ago. She still owed about a million to the bank and she was paying about 6% in interest. As we had spare cash and we couldn't earn 6% on any account, we decided to pay off the remaining debt - after talking to the bank staff.

I had a ham and cheese toasted sandwich from 7/11 for the first time last week and it took me about an hour to get the taste of salt out of my mouth.

^{I was wondering exactly the same thing.}

My one-year licence was issued in Nakhon Phanom, but I shall be in Prachuab Khirikhan when it expires. Is it possible to apply for the first five-year extension in a province other than the one in which the licence was issued? I looked on the driving sub-forum for an answer, but there are so many posts that I couldn't find the information I needed.