Craig krup

23 hours ago, dfdgfdfdgs said:

I always found that park at Mochit that others have mentioned to be a bit of a rundown area, and kind of far from the middle of Bangkok if we talk about the middle as Siam/Sukhumvit/Silom.  But it is bustling I guess.

It's a nice park. I don't know what the deal is with the open air weights. Some of the guys obviously take it fairly seriously. 

6 hours ago, csabo said:

Nong Khai

Nong Khai park's mental. It's nice once you're there, but - on foot - it's a sod to get to. 

12 hours ago, rickudon said:

When you say a budget of 15,000, is that in total per month or just for accommodation? As said Udon has a reasonable central park, and 2 others a walkable distance within the ring road (I like Nong bua more, much quieter). And a significant expat population, so can get nearly anything you routinely want. 

If your total budget was 15,000 a month, you will find condo's anywhere expensive. Can get a room in Udon from about 2000 - 4000 baht a month with air conditioning. The condo's are new so not cheap. 

If the park was a really big issue, and you can manage the stairs, there are nice cheap condos immediately South of the Phosri road at the pedestrian bridge that takes you across to Nong Bua park. For about 4,000 baht you're away from the main road, and you can cross it on the footbridge. If you're the UD town side of the railway track it's a wee bit more time to get into Nong Bua, although (IMHO) the other facilities in the centre make it worthwhile. I don't think it's that safe to cut through the Thai neighbourhood north of the railway station and then walk down the road. A bit too much traffic. Nong Bua park is really mellow. They put a lot of work into keeping it nice. 

On 03/05/2018 at 9:55 AM, kokesaat said:

Udon has a large park, well within walking distance of at least one newish condo unit and a bevy of apartments.  Nongprajak......maybe not on the same par as Lumpini, but it's not bad.  You can check it out on google earth.

Nong Prajak is brilliant, and the little studios right in the South West corner were only 4,500 a month when I asked in 2016, and you had a balcony and a view. There are brand new condos for about the same money, without the view, just 100 yards back from the park on the eastern side. The only ballache is that the bikes get the better path around the park - next to the water. Nong Bua is even prettier and it's right next to the centre, although not as big.

22 minutes ago, StreetCowboy said:

Vis a vis drawbacks of Thailand, not getting Queen of the South games on television must make Thailand as bad as Scotland.

 

 At least in Thailand you don’t feel any obligation to make the effort to attend in person, and a quick check on the interwibble every few weeks feeels sufficient to fulfil your commitments as a supporter

I don't know why I'm daring to rip the pish out of Dumfries. I'm originally from Stranraer. Dumfries to me is like Venice*.

[*Come to think of it, recently they've had similar level of flooding].  

8 minutes ago, billd766 said:

 

I missed that bit.  I don't think I could stand the cold and damp at my age.

There are folk who travel to Queen of the South away games who could be broken by a hard February in a rough bit of Dumfries. 

36 minutes ago, billd766 said:

 

Plus of course the cost of getting there, buying or renting a house, and keeping one going here in Thailand. Not to mention the cost and problems of getting a UK visa for your wife.

 

Great way to save £36k.

Read what he said. He's looking to go anyway, so - if he needn't work - somewhere cheap in Caledonia (i.e. a rough bit of Doonhamer-land) has its advantages. 

On 29/04/2018 at 6:14 AM, Cranky said:

The positives outweighed the negatives for years. Not any more.  Having kids tips the balance as it is simply not a place I'd want to raise them being such a lawless out of control feral environment full of scumbags - Pattaya.  Not to mention the ridiculous cost of a decent (maybe) education and very few options once that is completed unless overseas university is achievable and affordable.  Or a Thai university - to what end for them in that case ?  Some crap job paying next to nothing.

 

Planning the escape to Blighty.

I wonder how many farangs 1) aren't looking to work, but 2) have got kids who'll need higher education. If the Scottish government keeps their policy going, which seems likely, establishing residence just across the border (Dumfries, say) has its advantages. £36k per kid worth of higher education free. 

10 hours ago, cornishcarlos said:

Yup, big cobras give me the willys... 

Other snakes, no issues :)

Apparently cobras do a lot to avoid violence: noise, standing up, even hitting you with a closed mouth. They're also active, so they'll tend to move away from human activity. It's the vipers - Malaysian, Russells - that give me the creeps. They'll do nothing, and if you plant your foot nearby you get bitten. 

Some researchers wanted to establish whether being violent was hereditary. Did violent men have violent kids? They looked at kids who'd been adopted. Did their "violent" genes mean that they were still violent? What they discovered - accidentally - was that violence isn't hereditary but thieving seems to be. The children of thieves who're adopted are more likely to go on and steal, even if the adoptive family don't. 

On 21/04/2018 at 2:17 PM, 473geo said:

Civilisation - I guess it depends if one feels institutionalisation, corporate slavery, financial entrapment, military confrontation, all supporting capitalist profit margins where the rich get richer, place people in a better place than the self sufficient methodology prominent in Thailand.

Personally I prefer the latter version of civilisation - more humane, even if a little rough around the edges you can keep your version of an 'advanced society' it is a society of underhand control.

None of the above has anything to do with what I said. Any country - communist, feudal, whatever - relies on the conduct I describe.

Of course freeloaders - bare knuckle fighting travellers, commune students - who deprecate the state and then need it for an eye operation following a blow-out fracture, or dialysis after kidney failure following drug use, need to find a reason why they're taking a stand against "the man".  

1 hour ago, ev1lchris said:

Why worry about something if it doesn't directly affect you?

A society is a group of people who worry about what doesn't directly affect them. Your sister wasn't murdered - it doesn't directly affect you - but if something isn't done about it a state of affairs may arise which does directly affect you. Of course it makes sense to be a pox on the community - a loafer, a free-rider, a manipulator, baggage. If I drop litter and nobody else does I get a litter-free (or nearly litter-free society, and I get to drop litter. Of course if each and every one of us thinks like that we have a pig sty. The solutions to the free rider problem are enforcement, habit, a culture of virtue or religion. Any one of these will make people cease to free ride, and what you get is what - and I don't want to blind you with science - we call "civilization". 

People typically define what they have to worry about too narrowly. So even civilized people tend to draw the line at the nation's borders, which is exactly why (for example) you get the clusterf**k of the Middle east, the migration crisis in the UK, and so on, and so on, and so on...

So, yes, you shouldn't worry about what doesn't affect you. Storms on Jupiter? Mai phen rai. 

You can't have an explosion without an absolute ton of chemical oxygen. Bombs are mainly oxygen, not fuel. You could have a huge fire, though. 

It's Athens! It's the demos. It's the Putney Debates. It's the Founding Fathers and the New England town hall. It's asking the pleading candidate for the state legislature to water your garden and get you a license to sell lottery tickets. It's Iowa, and months of having to pretend that the rank don't smell, and that the stupid make sense. It's Clinton's face when she found out that deplorables have the vote. It's believing that the lowest he in the land has a life to live as much as the highest. It's cutting off Charles I's head and still swearing allegiance to Elizabeth II. 

With acknowledgment to Monty Python's "Life of Brian"....

Craig - There's a geezer here who wont argue about politics!!

Masses - WON'T ARGUE ABOUT POLITICS!!!!!

Barry - Okay, okay, okay!! I think....I think......I think that limited airstrikes in order to send a message about the unacceptability of chemical weapons may serve a purpose. 

Craig - So you'd leave the will and capacity to do it again unaddressed? 

Masses - OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Craigster, Go on yersel', Intae the body, There ye are etc. 

[It went a bit Caledonia there at the end, for some reason].

On 4/9/2018 at 2:06 AM, Dmaxdan said:

You just reminded me of one of my favorite movies.....

 

1969 The Italian Job.

 

 

 

A basic test of Britishness: how much of the dialogue can you do from memory. "Every ice cream parlour, every restaurant...". "It's a long walk back to England. And it's that way". 

There will be a visa for the digital gonad community. Why wouldn't you? They're young, they chuck money into the local economy - de facto export earnings - and they're low maintenance compared to the tourists. Chiang Mai will be like an outdoor episode of Friends, with inexpensive coffee. 

On 3/31/2018 at 3:49 PM, Shiver said:

Doesn't bother me with sharing habits, though I will use a 'transport spoon' between the food and myself just out of courtesy.

 

Last week for example I was sat eating peanuts in a dish with some thai friends and used a spoon to put them in my hand.  They noticed and copied.  Really wasn't necessary, but they took it upon themselves to do so.

 

Yes! The definition of a gentleman. Someone is sitting at a table and out of ignorance drinks from a finger-bowl. What will a gentleman do? He will, of course, instantly drink from his own finger-bowl in order to spare the other person any embarrassment. 

Every Brit will happily tear chapattis, nans and the like, leaving the bit they didn't take, which will be eaten by someone else. A dry, abrasive bread is exactly the kind of thing that removes everything from your hands. What do we know from recent research? The solution to many really serious gut problems is a fecal transplant - Google it. I'd worry less. You can get "things" from being infected, and much, much worse things from not being infected.  

3 hours ago, phil2407 said:

Etihad - is a real problem airline about this 

on many occasions I’ve said I’ll sign the waiver form that if refused entry with 1 way ticket  everything at my cost - most wont even understand what this document is, insists doesn’t exist (which it does) or let you board unless you have onward flight 

I had a problem with Etihad. Plainly they've a policy. You're not in a strong negotiating position as you stand there. I'd be polite!

On 11/03/2018 at 6:35 AM, thecyclist said:

Have you tried Chulalongkorn university libraries:Never asked about e-book access, but found them the best in Thailand especially for academic books.

Athens access for an institution is pretty pricey, I think, so I'm not holding out too much hope for that. I'll email Chula and see what they say. 

I know that e-resources mean that the language thing is less important - most things aren't on paper. There's also a big difference between i) academic v other, and ii) a space to work in v the collection/resources. 

The Neilson Hays private library looks interesting. Does anyone know whether there's a library with "Athens" or similar access to academic resources, and where they'll let you pay for an account? I'd live somewhere if there was a really good library next door. Has anyone tried approaching a Western uni in Thailand (like Webster) to ask whether you can pay for library membership? Most British unis will let graduates of other institutions pay for the library. 

https://www.timeout.com/bangkok/attractions/the-best-libraries-in-bangkok

5 hours ago, yopf said:

Is the health care in UK better than the Thai system??

It's free if you're a Brit, which goes a long way to making it better. 

It takes a lot of fancy science to get drugs into your body through the gut - the acid kills things - and that applies with far greater force if everything has been through a long cooking process. 

I'd have thought the extra circulating oestrogen caused by mild liver damage brought on by a beer a day would a lot more significant if you're worried about moobs. 

1 hour ago, naboo said:

Great advice.

 

Add fish sauce to the rice if you fancy a treat.

That mad chilli sauce from Tesco - two pints for about 20 baht. 

Joking aside, there's a serious case to be made for cooking a load of your own animal source protein at least. Street food always skimps on meat, and you might get charged 5 baht for an egg. If you're really tight, and can't be fagged cooking, you should probably cook a couple of pounds of pork or chicken every five days, and boil twenty eggs, so that when you add twenty baht worth of curry to a load of home-cooked rice you can stir in some decent protein as well. 

56 minutes ago, BuaBS said:

This must have a record number of "off topics" in TV history.  You're not the only one that is surprised.

It should have been 41 pages on tips to live ( or survive ) in Thailand on 4000 B/month.

Okay. Eat a lot of f'kin rice in a fan room somewhere cheap.