DavisH

Australia is the same, or it was when i was included in the census one year. I was literally only working a couple of hours a week at the time, and the census officer said, ok you are 'employed'. These were the dark Keating years where unemloyment was running at 10%. Horrendous!

Ans check with the doc if its ok to eat 😄 Actually 3-5 day fasts are good...after the initial hunger pains, the body learns to burn fat, as you enter ketosis. Hunger reduces at this time.

Which just shows the company you must keep...

Its just a lack of law enforcement and leaving it all up to karma.

I'm covered under my wife's CSMBS (civil servant medical benefits scheme). My son was also covered until her turned 20, and her parents were covered (both deceased now). his is a good scheme as I can use any public hospital, and I've used several! I just usually pay a small amount for the after hours clinics. don't pay for medicine also.

Well there is a good reason to charge to 'only' 80%, and all owners should know that reason. keeping the charge between 20% and 80% will maximise the life of the battery.

If you got it remapped, they may have mapped it to run optimally on e85. we have a suzuki swift and remapped it on e20. I would say e85 would give you the best performance if it was remapped to run on this fuel.

If you list you priorities, its easier to give advice. Like new vs second hand first. You will get more for your money if buying second hand (the initial drop in value has happened). Resale is not great on any brand at the moment but its best with toyota and honda. It's a buyers market if you are looking for second hand (don't go too old though_ and see if you can find something with warranty remaining on it. You can find something larger and better specced than a yaris cross. Do you need size, performance, comfort, etc. Do you travel far or mainly in the city. etc. Sorry if you have already mentioned your main specs. I do like the yaris, if I wanted something smaller than I have (crv diesel) and wanted a relatively fuel efficient car that can cope with road flooding. Or try second hand fortuner/mu-x, but the ride is stiffer than most regular cars (easy to sell though!)

Not enough to cover your medical expenses 😄

What's your point?

Sounds like Bond St and its sois. I think 2 years ago there was a big downpour. Muang Thong Thani went under water and many cars were damaged. My crv got through it, but in some locations, even pickups wouldn't go through it. My doc on Bond st reported water going into her clinic when cars went by. Im not sure the concrete wall could stop water - There are plenty of gaps in it. Not sure they have all been sealed.

If I had a decent plot of land to protect, and it was flood prone, I'd probably put a high dirt mound around the border of my property - leave it there permanently and let grass grow on it. This is what they did along klong Prapa in 2011 to protect Impact and Muang Thong Thani from getting flooded. Around this area and some parts of Pak Kret were among the few places to avoid getting flooded. A number of new villages since 2011 in my area were build on raised land (at least 1m higher than the road level.

I tried the pipe in the drain hole...silicone everywhere ...didnt work. I only know of one resident in my village who managed to keep the water out of his house...had pumps running 24/7 for like 6 weeks. It was just easier to abandon the place. The guards did stay the whole time though. Next time Id make more effort to move more stuff upstairs.

There was recent posting of a low km byd seal for sale at 1M, baht, so that's a 500K drop in less than a year. It's not advertised anymore so I guess someone snapped it up. Losing a 1/3 of value in 1 year is steep.

The water also comes up through your drains in the bathrooms. Pretty sure that happened in my house in 2011. Fortunately we only had 30-40 cm in the house but still caused a lot of mess and damage. I don't expect anything like 2011 this year. I don't live too far from the Pak Kret tide gauge. As you mentioned when the water gets to the top of the concrete edging, flooding can become more widespread (at u-turn bridges, and the Nonthaburi immigration!) The problem will be the high tides towards the end of the month (that will add a meter onto the current maximum height. Hopefully we won't get too much more rain adding onto it this month (traditionally the wettest month).

They should have thought about the glaciers before developing their economy largely based on the oil and gas industry! Bunch of bloody hypocrites I say..

This was an illegally modified 50+ year old bus. Catching fire is relatively easy if there was a gas leak and the bus grinded up against the guard railing causing sparks. The gas tanks looked intact from the photo I saw, but the burn larks on the bus suggested a leak from the tanks. The tanks did not appear to have exploded.

I leaned to drive in a manual also, In Australia. Then drove a mini. The manual was fun in that but autos have come along way. my car's paddle shifters shift much faster than I could ever in an manual car (unless it had been modified for racing. Un country driving is fine, and I drove a manual honda city when i first came here. I would not get a manual unless it was a second car, maybe a k-swapped eg civic for fun or something like that. But not a daily driver.

2014 sells for 200-300K now. So you its probably depreciated about 50% in 10 year...not too shabby! You can sell a vios any day of the week...well, in the past you could. But the market is depressed at the moment. People just aren't buying cars at the moment.

You get used to it pretty quickly, and resale on an auto is much easier later when you plan to sell it. You have to stay on high alert driving here, so its best not to have to be changing gears a lot as well. Once I drove 17 kms in over 3 hours when the roads flooded badly. Imagine that in a manual? I would recommend getting a vehicle with more ground clearance (as opposed to looking for a manual). I have a crv diesel with 9 speed auto. You can get one for 700-900K now second hand. It does well on flooded potholed roads. browse on www.one2car.com

Honda jazz came with a manual gearbox, but they are not made anymore. A number of the smaller ecocars had them also. I can only think of the suzuki ciaz that currently has a manual option. Unless you go to something more expensive like subaru brz. Lots of older cars came in manual, but will cost more to maintain. Have you driven much in Thailand before? I've used a manual here as out first car, but would in no way go back to a manual car now. The traffic can be really bad in many places, and you will wish you were in an auto.

Urging doesn't work! How about massive fines and/or deregistering these shoddy bus companies with their poorly maintained and illegally/poorly modified buses. There should be random checks on ALL buses and fines dished out. But no, the government won't do anything substantial in regards to this. Poor law enforcement is pervasive here.

And more people see the car that they can show off with, and usually not see the slum they live in. My previous car cost more than our townhouse, but we moved out and sold the car. New car is 3X less than the house. Get no visitors at home and don't car who sees me in my car.

I've been able to do online reporting for 2-3 years. Left the country in April, returned, and tried to do the online report (rejected as expected). Went to the office to do it online. Took about an hour. I'm due to report again by Oct 7, so I'll try the online again in a couple of days. I'll report back. But yes, you need to report in person for the first time. Thereafter, it 'should' work online, but some still have issues with it. I've never had a problem when not leaving the country. Every time it has worked.

That's your opinion. And you know what they say about opinions...