suzannegoh

On 9/26/2020 at 9:17 PM, EVENKEEL said:

Before going to the beach I prep the cans in the freezer for 30 min then put in small cooler with ice. I drink Heinekin, not sure if that should matter. Anyways I'm a can fan for now.

Heineken tastes best poured from a can into a glass.  In bottles it tends to skunk.

On 9/7/2020 at 2:36 PM, jonwilly said:

Please be so kind to tell me what service you use.

john

If AIS is in your area, AIS Fibre works well and the 1 Gbps package is now less than 1000 baht per month.

On 9/1/2020 at 12:24 AM, nobodysfriend said:

This herb is known for it's ' consciousness enlarging ' abilities .

And that is exactly what is desperately needed these days ...

It makes people think about what they are really doing , and if it is worth to do so ...

Don't have to be stoned all the time , but a tea from time to time helps a lot already .

People who like that are definitely more peaceful , and think twice before starting wars or other problems ...

Laugh about it , laughing is good for your ( mental ) health . 55

It's not consciousness enlarging, it just makes people think that trivial observations are profound.

23 hours ago, Trujillo said:

It has been pointed out to me that in these ... particular times, naming a Chinese restaurant "Fat Chow" is about as stereo-typically racist as you could come by. 

Not that the Thais give a fig about racism, but there you go. 

By the way, did you just call me fat? 

Thank you for this woke reminder, clearly you are a better person than the rest of us.

2 minutes ago, timkeen08 said:

Thanks for your explanation.  It led me to where I needed to go for more information and clarity.  I never worked in the cellular field but I have been in electronics from the tube/transistor/CD crossover eras.  We did not call 2 such different things by the same name.  So all of this 5G Fiber being promoted so hard is just marketing BS riding on the back of the real 5G cellular standard.  5G WIFI is faster but a lot of people are being duped and think they have 5G.  I see it's being done the same way full blast in many countries.  I'm not going to tell my Thai and US families that they don't have 5G.  They were all so happy but many did upgrade to fiber just to get 5G (WIFI).  Again, thanks for the heads up.

I haven't noticed any ISPs calling their Fiber "5G" but if they are that would be a misnomer.  Fiber Internet is just optical cable, which is an upgrade over copper cables but is still wired internet.

19 minutes ago, timkeen08 said:

Yes, 5G WIFI on both.  So now 5G is not 5G?  Didn't someone ask about phones being able to connect to 5G.  I have 5G Fiber coming into the house.  Do I somehow connect my phone to fiber?  Sorry, I've been out of the field for quite a few years.  Can you give me technical details of the difference and why 5G is not 5G?

"5G" refers to the 5th Generation of cellular technology, not to the frequency of operation.  Most recently produced WiFi routers have a 2.4GHz band and a 5.0GHz band and it's common that the router will be set up such that the SSID corresponding to the 5.0GHz band is named such that it has a suffix of "_5G".  However the 5GHz band on a WiFi router has nothing to do with 5G.  AFIAK AIS's 5G is operating on the 2.6GHz band, which Thailand had previously reserved for some other purpose.  The article at the link below shows a listing of all of the frequency bands that 5G can operate on.  There are a lot of them, and different countries and different carriers have chosen different ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands

4 minutes ago, timkeen08 said:

My Note 4 and 1 year old Samsung Smart TV both work quite well with 5G in our Isaan Mekong village.

Are you sure that your Note 4 and Samsung TV are connecting to 5G rather than to 5GHz WiFi?

On 5/30/2020 at 7:21 PM, jonwilly said:

No memory says one was B91K at the hospital and the other around B25K.

My UOB credit card covered both though I would have prefered to use money from my UK bank.

 

john

The limit must be being imposed by the card issuer then.  I often charge amounts greater than that to an American issued Visa card.

8 hours ago, jonwilly said:

Thank you for a polite sensible answer.

These incidents happened about 3 years ago, I phoned using Skype to my UK bank and they said that it was the Thai end that had refused payment.

From comments by Thai sales staff I have come to understand that they do have a limit, which the staff do not know, on foreign Credit Cards. Probably breaks the Rules that the card companies set.

 

john

Were these transactions for several hundred thousand baht? 

51 minutes ago, graemeaylward said:

In areas where CAT and TOT have not been installed, DES will talk with the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission to see if a deal can be achieved with the private internet providers.

 

And therein lies the problem of too many cables! In UK, it used to be the case that only one company, usually BT, would provide the cable and any other Internet Service Provider, would rent the line from them. I am not sure whether this is still the case but it would be a good model to follow here in Thailand ????

Yeah, that's the problem with ISPs in Thailand, too much competition.

I've noticed AIS advertising all over the place that they have 5G service now. I think that they are operating on the 2.6GHz band rather than at mmWave frequencies only but I'm not entirely sure of that. I don't have a 5G-capable phone but with all the techies in this forum maybe someone here has experience with Thailand's fledgling 5G and might be able to comment about whether it's living up to its hype and which band it is connecting on. 

I'm well aware that there are a lot of YouTube videos and alternative media reports claiming that 5G makes birds drop dead midflight, causes birth defects, coronavirus, and even that it was the cause of 5G Grenfell Tower fire in London, but I don’t want to get into all that.  What I'm wondering is how well is working in technical terms; speed, ping times, etc. and whether it’s a bonafide upgrade from 4G.
 

On 10/26/2019 at 12:58 PM, racket said:

I somewhat agree but 4K is A massive resolution jump which is awesome. Most people said the same about HD(720p) video but when Full HD(1080p) rolled out it was definitely a huge improvement. 4K will ultimately enhance the experience. 

Personally I'd rather watch 4K video on a large screen TV connected by fibre than on a phone connected by 5G.

Has anyone here tried AIS's 5G?

There may be some ATM machines that use DCC (which you should refuse) but generally the exchange rate will be set by Visa rather than by the ATM machine's owner.  There will be the 220 Baht fee charged by the ATM machine's owner, and your bank at home may apply additional fees for foreign transactions.  The ideal thing is to get a card that refunds ATM fees and applies no foreign transaction charges.  Examples of ones that do that are the ATM cards issued by Schwab and Fidelity in the US.

1 hour ago, jimn said:

Your visa expired years ago. Now if you are refering to an extension of your permission to stay thats something else.

I'm aware of that distinction and I apologize if I used the wrong word in parts of my original post. 

19 hours ago, elviajero said:

My advice was based on the OP's idea to apply for the Non O in Thailand. It is much easier (usually) to get the visa before entering the country.

 

You can't get a Non O-A based on marriage. It's for over 50's and now requires insurance. If the OP can meet the O-A financials and is happy to pay for insurance, I agree that it's a good option.

The insurance issue is secondary - more of an irritant than an actual problem.  I have an excellent health insurance policy underwritten outside of Thailand.  It has high limits and is good worldwide.  It's irritating that the Thais might force me to buy a crappy locally underwritten policy on top of that but if I really had to I would.

The main issue to me is just to be able to stay legally in Thailand after my OA expires.

I have a Non-OA visa that I've extended annually for several years and it needs to be extended again in April of this year.  If I was going to be in-country at the time I’d be able to meet all the requirements to get it extended on the basis or either retirement or marriage.  However I have a need to be in Europe from February to May and it won’t be possible to return to Thailand to do the visa extension.  It occurred to me to just let the OA visa expire while I’m in Europe and then re-enter Thailand as a tourist and then within 2 weeks apply for a Non-O visa at a local immigration office.  Should that work?  I’m thinking that it might solve both the problem of not being in-country to extend the OA and relieve me of the need to buy a Thai Health Insurance Policy.  I need to stay in Thailand at least through the end of 2020 before repatriating to my home country.

On 12/9/2019 at 10:07 PM, henry2109 said:

I am not at all a fan of the orange conman in the WH, but this has really nothing to do with him.

Quite right, this type of problem was going on well before Trump came into office.

It's hard to be green.

On 12/7/2019 at 6:50 AM, PlastikbinLina said:

Sugar Is the number one killer in Thailand.Thais are addicted to sugar. Even in savoury cooked dishes sugar is added along with cillis. Sugar according to the link below is the main food for cancer. 

 

 

https://beatcancer.org/blog-posts/5-reasons-cancer-and-sugar-are-best-friends

The linked between sugar and cancer is part of Alternative Medicine folklore but actual medical researchers seem to not be on board with that, or at least say that the folklore is it's grossly oversimplified.
https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/FOH-sugar-cancer-link.h13-1589835.html

On 12/7/2019 at 2:37 AM, ubonjoe said:

No need to apply early. You get a under consideration stamp that allows you to stay until it is approved.

But can you leave and re-enter Thailand during that period in which your application is "under consideration"?