andy50

Hi All,

during my recent 2 weeks' visit, I personified the typical farang sucker. 1.) George fashion, South Pattaya. Ordered a lot of clothes and prepaid the whole order with my credit card. When I came to pick it up, the price per trousers went up 100 Baht. It was my last day / I was ready to leave in one hour... So I paid. But now I feel I should have walked away, contesting the charge. Or called the Tourist Police. (It must be a common way to make a few bucks).

2.) The travel agency across the Post Office charged more than the amount printed on the ticket. Not just the % for using a credit card. At the airport, the Tourist Police paid out the balance on behalf of the travel agency. Pretty cheeky - I bet ALL farangs get defrauded...

3.) I bought an antique "Omega" watch at a small store, the fist one in the corner of Central Rd / Soi Buakhao. Well, turns out its a counterfeit one. Is anyone surprised?

ARE BUSINESSES ONLY LOOKING FOR ONE-OFF DEALS?

Cheers, Chris

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hi dutch, its critical to have a change-over switch if you plug the generator into a socket in your house, when there is a power cut,otherwize the generated current, will flow through the wiring system of your house, and also back down the power lines too!

which will "back feed " to everyone elses houses !

so if you MUST do it without a ch/over switch, MAKE SURE you turn off the main switch on your fuse box (consumer unit)before you connect your genny to a socket

and make sure that you disconnect your generator before you turn the consumer unit back on when the power cut finishes,or the generator will be history

btw a 1kva generator will only give out 800 watts of power, because the cos is usually 0.8----(it may even state "cos,0.8 on the specification plate ,or in the instruction book)so allow for this when you buy your genny (2kva=1,600 watts only --etc(you lose 20% for each 1kva)(bit like a tax!!)

Anyone else have problems accessing TV today ? I've been trying for 12 hours now, and up until a few minutes ago, kept getting a "MySQL" error.

Thought maybe that ###### Websense(less) filter finally caught on to this forum.

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Excuse my ignorance but who are the other people on the sign ?

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the other 3 were murdered in los too,one girl by a monk as far as i can remember--------

--c/p-----ms kirsty Jones, from the village of Tredomen, near Talgarth, Brecon, was raped and strangled in a guesthouse in Chiang Mai, 422 miles north of Bangkok,

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Excuse my ignorance but who are the other people on the sign ?

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if i go into a bar that i am not familiar with,i always pay for each drink i am served with ---no bill pot----- so there can be no scam

I live up country and I am semi retired. If he came to my door at that time and woke me up I would offer him a cool drink and some food and thank him.

Why?

1) Because it is polite

2) because I can always find something to do (even if it is logging onto tv)

3) if he is knocking on my door at that time he must have got up early to do so and it would not have been his idea.

4) at least it would save my wife a trip to the village or wherever it has to be paid

5) I know him and he is a nice guy anyway and so is the man who comes with the water bill and also the trash man.

I  don't have to work or beat on peoples door to get 2 or 3 hundred baht but somebody has to, and if it makes his day a little better, why not, and it is only once a month anyway.

I could wake the wife but she is not really a morning person and she gets a bit crabby before her first coffee.

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Good grief...!

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couldn,t you leave the money under an upturned flower-pot ,by the door ?

Just had the lights in my room turned out by my gf for 5 minutes at 8.45 pm to start some new energy saving project or something or other. 

Looked out the window, and definately a lot of lights turned out, so did you join in?

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you may have saved(in electrical energy .00000001 bht but hey every bht counts !

I am about to buy an old used car very soon and need a person who is an expert with old or even very old cars. I already made a selection from those many used-car-magazines, but now need someone to go to see the cars and judge their tecnical status, the engine, the body....and all that. and call the dealer or private sellers.....then after that go to those places and have a survey....of course I will pay for that.....should be a trustful Thai person.....anybody knows one ? as for the time, I am very much flexible.....can be morning, afternoon, evening.....doesnt matter.....please, dont tell me "go to expatmotors" as even their cheapest car doe blows my budget....I have found hundreds of offers for cars in the 100.000 Baht-range, and thats what I can afford now.....as I have invested my 2 Million Bt. somewhere else already 

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also the quality of the construction is another factor ,if the place falls apart after its sold i very much dought if there is any recourse

i took a look at a development on phuket last year ,these houses were built into the side of a hill,

the quality of the building was terrible, they were using short pieces of batten all joined up, to build part of the roof, and the welding of the steel roof was just tacked, instead of doing a proper weld ,just a pile of c*ap!

Yes, gas is to high.

1000 baht will get you about 4 bottles a month.

A bottle lasts my stove/oven about 3 months.

Do you have any other gas appliances ?

If it's a still, please may we have your address.

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the house may have gas central heating

i agree, the honda is the best bet. ###### good little engines on them go for years with a little TLC. If you buy new then make sure you run the engine in slowly, with modern engineering the tollerances are pretty good but it pays to take care for the first 500 - 1000 km. It will then serve you well for years. dont listen to any local mechanic unless you know he knows what he is talking about. The first thing they seem to do to any engine is rev the &lt;deleted&gt; off it to see if it works? Stress that you dont want them to start the new bike without u being there, if they do rev it to ###### walk away, give the poor thing a chance i say.

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Come on people this is an intresting topic .

Pandit thanks for the URLs very interesting.

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sorry for the cuck up ---regarding wind power ,i recently purchased a booklet from a website,which shows how to construct a powerful wind alternator,and it doesn,t require too much wind to generateyou do need batterys though (deep cycle ones)and an inverter if you want 240 voltsand the generator needs to be mounted on a tall pole where the air is more constant and less turbulant www.scoraigwind.com/axialplans/ -

some of you guys live in the sticks--- is there a wind --ablowing ? if therir is , then thereis a good chance thet there is a good source of ellectricity-- all 240 volts of it

how about buying a baby buffalo for mum?

it would be a very practical gift,

and for the boy a pair of wellingtons (to wear when ploughing the field with when the buffallo grows up)?

on my last stay on phuket, i used the hotel car service,from hkt,airport to patong the only problem was --it had no brakes!the driver said "no ploblem"and was using the handbrake to slow down !at least he drove slowly !

is this is right that from  million of FALANG who hide them self in Thailand  50% of them are a kind  of ( rejected quality from there own society ) means  they cant win challenging life  in there own city  , or the are  a kind of mentally   criminal  who hid in Thailand , if you look deeply  to back ground life of many English teacher or  those who open bar and gogo in thailand, you can find interested  story . and honest people of Thailand that believe to any  falang   as a great personality , a falang few year back  put  the red cross boxes  in front of  many pattaya hotel and bar and restaurant  , and collect money for them self till police  catch him and deport him to he is home town .  and I found many falang look like farmer who work as  door keeper or reception  in many computer courses  in Bangkok .  they guy look like a home les in there own town , and as you know that Thailand weather is warm and all are jai dee dowai . pachaow  save Thailand .

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maybye you could get it galvanized?

its not much good owning the house, if the land its stood on isn,t yours !

bars are going for a song in phuket, due to a massive dowturn in tourists after the tsunami (77%downturn)

its also difficult to find bargirls to work in bars anywhere near the beach, as they wont go there , due to ghosts of the dead(as thet see it )

,the new complex you speak of would be unviable as the rent is far too high, some of the bars in the sois have shut up shop too, check-out www. phuket-info.com the site is owned by nicke who owns the mai tai bar in soi eric ,also there are other bar owners there too it wont be any good asking the bar owners if buisness is bad as they would never admit that over the internet, but there is a lot of advice there about the subject

i vote with my feet paul ,and refuse to travel in tuk tuks if tourists were made more aware of this situation then these mafia would die out

when you hire a vehicle in los, the hirerer may/will require your passport as surity,

this is not good ,as you are suppose to carry it at all times,(also its foolish to entrust your p/p to these people, as some(some not all) will find a dent or scratch on the vehicle when you return it, that was already there, and refuse to give you back your p/p until u pay up!

you can take photocopys of all the relevant pages in your p/p, and try to negociate ,i tryed this last xmas, but none of them would hire me a motor/cycle without leaving my p/p which i wasn,t prepaired to do

so i walked or taxied everywhere instead

as luck would have it, the tsunami washed everything away on beach road in patong ,so if i had left my p/p with them ,i wouldnt have got it back !

you may be able to hire a jeep from the hotel that you stay at ,they wont require your p/p , dont forget to take an international driving licence with you as well ,or the police may ask you for some "tea money" if they stop you, and you havent got your int ,d/l --your normal d/l and your p/p with you !

and dont forget, driving in los is very risky , if your involved in an accident its normally your fault regardless, as the accident wouldn,t have occurred if you(as a farang visitor) hadn,t been there (thai logic!)

went to a wat in pattaya once , there was a dog lying on its side, in a bad way with its eyes closed ,ants all over it ,so i sat alongside it on the step ,pulled its lip up and poured in some freezing cold water,(big mistake,) it leapt up in shock and died ,most embarrassing ! perhaps i should have given it 5 bht instead

there a middle aged woman locked up in dubai at the moment ,for having traces of coedine in her urine, this is an illegal drug in dubai