Chaiwallah

I would be more apt to suspect the food preparation or storage as the culprit in your market case. I am guessing pollution would not have such immediate effects and would be more insidious and cumulative.

That said I am reluctant to eat the fish in our pond because I see what they spray on the fields around us and I am pretty sure a lot of that stuff makes its way into our water and subsequently into our fish. So I look at our fish more as pets and enjoy watching them get bigger rather than eating them.

Thanks for the response. I didn't mean that I thought the heartburn was from toxic metals, but the incident did make me consider the possible arguments against eating fish here. I've eaten food from food stalls around the country for years and rarely have had a negative experience, though a few instances of sudden bowel evacuation in Bangkok are indelibly and painfully etched in my memory, especially the one time when I disgustingly fouled a lavatory in a wat at perhaps 2AM and opened the door to find a monk outside waiting to use it. . . (I am anonymous on here, right?) Food problems can happen anywhere, but we should use discretion as far as possible. As a general statement, I think Thais are quite clean and careful with their food preparation.

I'd like to add that I've lived here several times for a couple of years each time. The first time was thirty-five years ago when I had the very great fortune to live on Chaweng Beach on Koh Samui for eight months before the island had a road, electricity (except for some gas-powered generators), or drinking water (except for captured rain water), though it did have an "ice factory". I was even employed by the bungalow owner to "ha farang", meet newly -arriving tourists at the harbor or at the train station in Surat Thani, the first foreigner to do this job. (Sigh . . .) Anyway, something that fascinated me was that though refrigeration was perhaps non-existent in Bangkok at the time, animals were brought into the city and butchered at night (by Muslim and Chinese butchers in certain areas in the city and of course the Muslims did not butcher the pigs) and fresh meat was distributed to all the local markets for sale the next day. What a marvel of logistics! I wish National Geographic had done a story about it.

The Chao Praya in Bangkok seems to be full of big catfish...not that I would want to eat one of them but they seem to flourish there......almost all of the river taxi stops along the Chaoo Praya have vendors selling bags of bread scraps to feed the catfish which number in the thousands.....seems they should/could also flourish in the Mae Kok but if they do I have never seen anyone pull one out....catfish also reproduce quickly and will eat practically anything....of course the problem can be that by stocking rivers with a variety of fish they may well wipe out other species etc. I have no idea of the fish population of the Mae Kok but I suspect it is very very small for such a substantial river....i'd love to fish via rod and reel in the Mae Kok rather than in some fishing park but I highly doubt that you'd catch much of anything. I also don't know the pollution level of the Mae Kok but I would guess it may well be a lot cleaner than the Chao Praya which of course isn't exactly pristine.

I ate some catfish I bought from a woman who sells curry in the market and developed severe indigestion/heartburn that lasted for days. I've eaten her curries before and the fish was delicious, but the incident made me consider that all pollution here probably makes its way into the rivers where these fish live and so it might not be wise to eat fish that may contain high levels of toxic metals. Any opinions on this?

I would guess that means that traveller's checks and credit cards will be accepted.

I miss the excellent bus system in Bangkok. A bus or two to service the more trafficked routes might relieve traffic and parking congestion and would certainly provide me with some convenience. Buses with bike racks on the front?

A good library that could also be a venue for clubs like reading, chess, photography, art, etc. would be very welcome. I also would like to see the rail line extended from Chiang Mai to CR. I think it has to happen sometime.

She has a good point.

I usually say, "Rien ngoo ngoo plah plah". "I'm learning snake snake fish fish (i.e. little by little)." It always gets a laugh.

Yes that usually gets a laugh but I still can't pronoun that damn "ng"

Is it really that difficult? I think if you can pronounce it at the end of a word like sing, you should be able to begin a word with it. As an aside, I've always thought it curious that Thais have the ng sound, as in ngoo or nguung nonn, while the Cambodians use sr, as in srey.

By the way, I've found a really excellent resource is the Google tranlate app for android. Not only does it translate the word, you can also hear the pronunciation.

I just moved to Thailand with a retirement visa. Just before departing the US, I shipped a boxfull of personal effects/household goods (80lb worth of laptop, tablets, camera, lenses, external hard drives, a RAID enclosure, etc.). Like the poster I expected the goods to be allowed entry duty-free. They were held up in customs, however, for two weeks. The customs officials didn't want to allow the shipment as household goods/personal effects. I was told that I would have to pay $600 in duties and taxes to get the items in. I said that I understood that I was allowed to bring them in duty-free as a retiree here. The shipping company sent me a copy of the regulation and asked me if I thought I qualified for the duty-free importation. I replied that as far as I understood I was. A couple of days later my shipment arrived at my door. Not only that but it was forwarded to Chiang Rai at no cost, though it had been addressed to a hotel in Bangkok. It seems that oftentimes regulations here are vaguely worded or contradicted by other regulations, so that one is more or less at the mercy of the official involved. I had also seen, for example, in investigating the matter that computers were not considered personal effects, but does this refer to new computers (my laptop is 4 years old), and what about tablets? I also had to explain that the $4000 valuation of the goods was for insurance purposes only, not resale value. As always here, it's important to be polite and not lose patience. Good luck!