Fabricus

9 hours ago, finy said:

Chiang Mai is the digital nomad capital of the world because it's cheap, it's the only reason and the rest are merely benefits.

 

There are 4 types of digital nomads in Chiang Mai:

 

1 - Read the 4 Hour Work Week and headed to Thailand with $15K. Spends all their money on coffee, coworking spaces, and pretends to be an entrepreneur until they go home with their tale between their legs. Roughly 30%

 

2 - Makes enough to get by in CM, but has a lot of fun. Roughly 30%

 

3 - Makes enough to get by. Will eventually build business up to respectable income. Roughly 30%

 

4 - Make good money: 5kpm to 100kpm+. Roughly 10%

 

Most real entrepreneurs come and go, Chiang Mai is a place for the poor. Trust me, I know.

 

But who cares what category they're in, living in Asia is great.

 

All this talk about correct visas and tax makes me throw up in my mouth. Are some people really so pathetic. I would hate to meet a few of you in real life.

 

Great post.

 

I figured already that a lot of these youngsters are "trust fund darlings" who rock up in Siam loaded with daddy's cash. These misfits have zero talent and will never achieve a thing. Some of them stay here and end up with houses with views. Say no more.

 

As for the rest -- good luck to them. Live and let live. I have nothing but complete and absolute respect for youngsters who want to travel the world and experience life.

 

RE: All this talk about correct visas and tax makes me throw up in my mouth.

 

I hear you. I really do. My son is 12 (he's half-English / half-Thai) and very soon will be old enough to bum around the world and do what other youngsters do.

 

It really does sicken me to see old farts talk <deleted> about visas and taxes.     

 

14 hours ago, JB300 said:

Wow!!! What's left of the thread is proper childish behaviour (surprised the mods didn't just delete it) but not knowing the background (or being privy to the 5 pages that got deleted) I'll say no more.

I'm hoping for a Mark Twain style response here... but I thought I'd read recently that Neverdie had, well, died!

If so RIP fella, I've been on threads with him before & none have been like the one above so hoping (Q M.T.) that the reports were greatly exaggerated.
 

 

PM sent. Enjoy. 

 

PS. Did you work out my little quiz at the end? I'm afraid to say I failed! If you can work it out, you're one up on me.

2 minutes ago, JB300 said:

If you can, please post the link to the thread, I'd love to read it

 

 

 

This is the thread:

 

Five pages of "off-topic bickering" were subsequently removed by moderator Metisdead, but it was here that the Boiler Room Criminal gave himself away. 

 

Prior to this I had become aware of the Criminal. I set up five or six accounts in an attempt to trap him, but to no avail. It was YeahSiam who got him.

 

One comment made by the  Criminal stood out -- I've discussed this comment with police and lawyers, and they all agree it was the perfect giveaway.

 

Later this evening (I have to out soon) I'll PM you and YeahSiam with details. 

 

 

 

 

 

24 minutes ago, JB300 said:

Guys let's agree to disagree (or let's argue about Anthony Hopkins not being able to act his way out of a paper bag)...

We all have a different perspective on things... live & let live

 

 

 

Agree 100%.

 

I have massive respect for YeahSiam. He's the gentleman whose well-crafted accusation in a ThaiVisa thread two years ago led to the boiler room criminal giving himself away. The boiler room criminal's reply was in fact the very best post I've ever seen on TV.

 

And who can doubt the magisterial talents of Mr JL Crab -- xylophonist to Siamese Kings, Russian Czars, Roman Emperors and Babylonian Gods. 

 

6 minutes ago, JB300 said:

My memory is very hazy from that time (was focused more on architecting & developing the Orchestration to Data layers) but didn't people have to keep using table-based designs long after CSS was available because of MS IE dominance in the browser market & their (typical at that time) refusal to adopt/accept Industry (want to say W3C?) standards?

IIRC, it was only with the move to IE5 (might have even been IE6 + major upgrade & CSS 2.0) when it became viable for people who had to develop for IE browsers (I.e all internal websites) to use CSS... but it was a Paradigm shift from previous approaches (XML/XSLT/Soap probably being the next jump).

Anyways those were great days, like I say, I'm both jealous of & sorry for the guys that are doing the same nowadays.

Edit: just realised we're well OT here, maybe somebody could start an "Old Timers Coding War Stories Thread"... I've got a few to contribute

 

Yes and no.

 

When CSS Zen Garden showed the world that the way forward was with CSS rather than table-based design (thanks in no small part to the Mozart design I made), IE5.5 was mainstream.

 

Those were the days of box model hacks and other IE workarounds. Mozilla had just brought out a semi-compliant browser; Opera appeared to be gaining space; IE6 was on the horizon but just as defunct (with respect to CSS compliance) as IE5.5.

 

So yes, CSS didn't replace table-based design overnight. It took a few years.

 

--------------------

 

I too remember those days well: endless hours spent trying to get IE to do what every other browser could achieve with ease.

 

--------------------

 

These days things are so different. All major browsers support CSS3  and the days of hacks are long gone. 

 

All is good. Peace!

 

 

 

 

 

 

6 hours ago, JB300 said:

@Fabricus... you're either making all of this up or carpeting over the facts.

Cut your cloth accordingly...

[sorry, its Friday & I couldn't resist ]
 

 

Ever wondered who made what ten years ago was the most famous design on the internet?

 

Ever wondered who wrote Wikipedia's best article about Thailand?

 

Ever wondered who right now is writing what will be the best article ever submitted to the Journal of the Siam Society?

 

Wonder no more. Fell free to PM me and I'll happily tell you more.

 

9 minutes ago, Bulldozer Dawn said:

 

If you got drunk three times a day, how could you tell when you were sober?

 

That's a very interesting comment.

 

It goes likes this:

 

1. When I was very young (still at school, in fact) my friends started giggling. Apparently they'd been to a pub on Friday night. That was just so adult.  

2. I simply HAD to do the same.

3. So I went to the pub.

4. I queued up and asked the man for "a glass of beer".

5. The man laughed at me and gave me half a cider.

6. Eventually I worked my way up to three pints of ciders per night.

7. And then something odd happened.

8. The following day my friends laughed about their hangovers, but I never had one.

9. Truth is -- I felt invigorated the following morning.

10. I used to wake up at 6am the following morning and go jogging.

11. My mum looked at me strangely. She said I might have a problem with alcohol.

12. But my mum was just an adult, and what the hell do adults know about life?

13. I started drinking alone. I used to go to pubs at 11am or 1pm or 6pm or 9pm. I did so because it felt good.

14. The other people in pubs were dull farts or alcoholics.

15. I was different. I went to pubs to read newspapers.

16. One day I bought a newspaper prior to going to the pub and noticed it was unusually slim. I guess journalists had been on strike the day before.

17. I remember feeling a tinge of anxiety. Why? I'd never felt that before.

18. I figured I couldn't possibly go to the pub with such a slim newspaper, so I bought another one.

19. By the time I left England, I was on three newspapers per day.

20. Alcoholism is a progressive disease. Everything they say about it is true.

 

When my son's mother went with the Football Manager, my disease went from stage X to X+1.

 

The high I experienced from being drunk three times per day was amazing. It was like floating on air without a care in the world. My "home" was a wooden bench in the office. I slept on that bench for about three months. I didn't shower or wash. I just got drunk , and then drunk again, and then drunk again, and then drunk again.

 

I was in a terrible state. And then I realized I was an alcoholic, and always had been. I have a rogue gene which makes me react to alcohol differently to other people.

 

Most people can limit or moderate their alcohol intake. I can't. If I start drinking, I can't stop. If I have a drink on day one, I'll crave a drink on day two; if I drink on day two I will NEED a drink first thing in the morning on day three.

 

So I quit.

 

Quitting is unbelievably hard. It only takes a day, but going that single day without alcohol is almost impossible. The only thing on your mind is alcohol: you freeze; you shiver; you suffer from massive anxiety attacks; and then you realize it's not gonna work. It's a stupid idea. You simply can NOT NOT NOT quit alcohol. It was only ever a dream. And a stupid one, at that.

 

But if you make it past day one, you're clean. I've heard (from Keith Richards, in fact) that quitting heroin is pretty much the same but takes three days.

 

And that's that.

7 minutes ago, seancbk said:

You have a great memory.  Unfortunately I have nothing to go on to even guess who you are out of the many people I've met here.  

But that's ok, you can stay anonymous.  

BTW, I've now dated 2 Thai girls.  The aforementioned bar girl and the most recent one who was off the charts hot, from a good family, with a good job but who left me for a very rich Thai guy.  

 

Ha!

 

So your ex left you for a rich Thai guy.

 

My son's mother left me in 2010 for the Manager of Muang Thong United Football Club. He was a 63 year-old Belgian. Back in 2010 he was voted coach of the year. His team won the Premier League, came second in the FA Cup and got to the semi-finals of the Asian Cup.His salary was several million Baht per month. He sold African MTU players to clubs in Belgium and structured the contracts so that he got commission from goals they scored. He had a luxury house in Nichada Thani, drove a company Lexus and was loaded!

 

I had immense alcohol problems: I got drunk three times a day, neglected dental hygiene and lost two teeth. I've still got two teeth that are loose and one that is half black. I look like shit!

 

But I'm clean now and no longer take Thai women too seriously.

 

Stay cool, Sean. 

7 minutes ago, seancbk said:

You've raised my past before and I still don't remember who you are.  Would be nice to know as clearly we've met.  

It is true I lived with a bar girl for a few years, but that was then and it's been a long time since I did anything that daft :-)
 

 

Sean -- I'm not gonna tell you who I am. All I'll say is that we met back in 2008 in Sukhumwit Soi 7. We had a couple of beers together. 

 

HERE COMES SOME WEIRD BULLSHIT

I went to Oxford University and have a strange memory. It's not photographic, but it's amazing. Thing is ....... I can't remember the name for my type of memory. I can however remember just about every conversation I've ever had.

 

I can remember you (Sean) telling me you went to a top private school in the UK; I can remember you telling me how you got free drinks in HK; I can remember you saying you'd never dated as Asian girl; I can remember you telling me your father paid for your server. 

 

I can remember the other guy who came to BKK from HK in 1998 (ie, the boiler room criminal) saying that the skytrain "starts nowhere and goes nowhere". He also told a strange story about how he'd drank four Amstel beers the night before. 

 

And so on.

19 minutes ago, Rc2702 said:

So you talking about a cowboy guy. Sorry my memory sticks to stuff.

 

Ha!

 

No. I'd actually forgotten about the cowboy guy until quite recently. He was a Brit -- about 6'3'' who dressed from head to toe like an American cowboy. He was a harmless eccentric. He was employed at the boiler room where I worked for two weeks back in mid-2000. It was at this bogus finance company that I came across a former member of this forum. He (like Sean) came to BKK from HK, albeit a decade earlier.

 

Does this make sense?

 

Truth is most definitely stranger than fiction!

 

 

 

 

 

  

4 minutes ago, Rc2702 said:

I recall this exact discussion taking place less than 4 months ago. And if I'm not mistaken it was you both discussing this exact "I know who you are" this forums not so big what's going on here?

 

It's kind of strange. 

 

Over the last two years I've come across two people on this forum who came to BKK from Hong Kong.

 

Sean is 100% honest and decent. He came here in 2008.

 

A decade earlier another guy came here. I met him at a bogus finance company in 2000. He was one of the managers.  I can't comment further as this issue is being handled by the police. I've also asked my ex-GF in Pattani (an officer at the DOH) to pass his details on to the MOT in BKK to track down a crappy old car he used to drive and park at the Homeplace Building in Soi Thonglor.  

 

Again, Sean is not to be confused with the other guy. Sean is a nice chap. He's had his ups and downs, but he's completely honest. 

8 minutes ago, Rc2702 said:

So what's that about $150 a month.

 

Ha! I've no idea what Zimbabwean dollars are worth right now, but I'm not here to discuss fees.

 

Let me tell you something that puzzles me. A client transferred cash to me today from the Czech Republic. She sent USD, but the rate that hit my bank (United Overseas Bank in Singapore) worked out at about 27 Baht to the Dollar. Why is it that sometimes I get the full amount and sometimes I don't? Today's rate is 36:1.

 

Put another way, why do some overseas banks stitch me up, while others don't?

 

It's not a problem as I'll charge extra for the final installment -- I guess I don't really understand how international banking works.     

51 minutes ago, Rc2702 said:

All for a fixed fee of?

 

900 trillion Zimbabwean Dollars (give or take the odd billion).

25 minutes ago, seancbk said:

I've been involved in the internet as a business platform for more than 20 years.  

As an example, from 1998 to 2001 I was the Regional Business Development Director for China.com which we listed on Nasdaq in 1999 at a valuation of 3/4 of a Billion USD.   

I know a think or two about doing business online and all things digital.

Your point is that you have clients who don't get involved with what is under the hood... my point is that unless you have the money to pay someone to do all that then you need to learn how to do it yourself.  
Making money online isn't as easy as some people claim, and paying someone to build your site and do all your marketing etc isn't an option for some people when they are starting out trying to make it online.

 

Sean -- you're being mischievous.

 

I've just remembered who you are.

 

You're the guy who came to BKK from Hong Kong in 2008. You were constantly broke and lived with a hooker (at her place) in Sukhumwit Soi 20.

 

You do know who I am. Cast your mind back. You'll remember me.

 

The difference between me and you is I get things done. You talk way too much and invent obstacles.

 

What you did back in 1998 is of no interest to anyone. All that counts is what you're doing right now.  

3 hours ago, seancbk said:

But for people who want to make money online with their own site or sites, the need to know a bunch of digital skills definitely comes into play.

 

Once again, you're hopelessly wrong. 

 

I have a client who makes over 1000 USD per day.He operates a slew of e-commerce websites selling business services and knows zilch about coding / programming. 

 

His companies are a major source of revenue for my company. He focuses only on the products he sells, and comes to me when things need tweaking. 

 

I also have much smaller clients who operate a single e-commerce website. They too don't involved with what goes on beneath the hood. They focus solely on the business and let my company handle the programming.  

1 hour ago, rubl said:

 

first an attack then an 'innocent people'  and ending with a mere suggestion of someone being obsessed.

 

Anyway, watch the movie Tron for real digital nomads and lost bits 

 

Thanks bro, but I think I've already seen it.

 

Maybe someone should make a movie about Thailand-based digital nomads. You could play the part of the fumbling Thai immigration officer; I could be the digital smart arse who manages to stay one step ahead of you. I guess Jessica Alba could be my love interest.  

9 minutes ago, rubl said:

Digital Nomads are profiting from the existence of infrastructure. They may pay for use but for sure without taxes they don't pay for the laying down of the infrastructure or it's upkeep.

 

Profiting, simple as that.

 

Seriously, get a life.

 

Digital nomads are just youngsters bumming around the world.  They harm no one. I doubt they earn much, but at least they're happy.

 

I can never understand why people are so obsessed with digital nomads. It's not just here on ThaiVisa, either. Over on the BigLoony forum they're just as obsessed.

 

 

1 hour ago, seancbk said:

Go ahead a slap up a store and see how far you get without any marketing.   Try doing any modifications to the basic template without some html or css skill.   See how well you do relying on a template being SEO ready if you don't know what SEO is or know how to read and interpret your analytics.

It is not as easy as some people will claim.

 

I can see you don't really understand the issues here.

 

First, marketing can be as simple as advertising on Facebook. It's cheap and effective.

 

Second, templates offered for the likes of Shoppify are generally quite good. If you need to tweak or customize the design, just hire someone who specializes in e-commerce templates. It's not expensive.

 

Third, just about anyone can read and interpret Google analytics. 

 

Modern e-commerce platforms are designed to be simple: they're aimed at ordinary people who want to sell online. If they were as fiddly as you're trying to make out, they wouldn't have a combined customer base well in excess of  a million users. 

 

  

1 hour ago, seancbk said:

To successfully sell on eBay or indeed anywhere online, you need to know how to do digital marketing, design, coding, SEO and a whole slew of other 'digital' skills.  

 

Nope, completely wrong.

 

See:

 

1. https://www.shopify.com/

2. https://www.bigcommerce.com/

3. http://www.3dcart.com/

 

All stores offer ready-made templates, most of which are SEO-friendly.

 

Store owners need no knowledge of CSS, HTML, PHP, AJAX, SQL, graphic design etc, though they'd probably need a basic knowledge of Photoshop to make a logo.  

7 minutes ago, JLCrab said:

Well that's the whole thing  it seems to me -- Labour and Immigration don't care what anyone does after someone enters Thailand as long as Ministry of Foreign Affairs keeps handing out Tourist Visas to people who aren't tourists but are living full time in Thailand and doing whatever.

 

I disagree. Immigration does care if a foreigner takes jobs / revenue away from Thais.

 

You could test this yourself:

 

1. Tomorrow go and buy one of those fruit carts

2. Place a layer of ice at the bottom and stock it up with pineapples, melons and guavas.

3. Start selling!

4. Park you cart outside the local police station and offer discounts of freshly sliced pineapple.

5. The police will be puzzled, but will leave you alone.

6. Do the same at the local immigration office.

7. When the office girls ask what you're doing, tell them you've run out of cash and need to earn more to buy a flight home. They'll leave you alone.

 8. Finally, park your cart next to a little old lady in the main shopping street.

9. Within 30 minutes you'll be busted.

 

Why?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

16 hours ago, Rc2702 said:

Judging by a lot of posts and topics I don't see a lot of bloggers or coders on here. 

 

You can often recognize bloggers by their piss-poor writing. They're usually wannabe authors with little or no discernible talent. Many of them go the self-publishing route and peddle junk on Amazon.

 

As for coders, I'm not quite sure how you'd spot one. Ditto programmers and graphic designers.

Just found this:

 

http://beachub.org/

 

Aimed specifically at digital nomads, it's basically an internet cafe on Ko Phangan that bills itself as "the world's first beachfront co-working space". 

 

Here's another one:

 

 

The article doesn't say how these guys pull in the green.

 

Are they coders or bloggers?

 

EDIT: Has anyone ever met a digital nomad? Are they mainly Europeans / Americans?

6 hours ago, Stocky said:

My nearest mosque here in Hat Yai is 200m away. I usually sleep through the first call to prayer at around 5:30, I wake up around the sunrise call at 6:30, the midday and afternoon calls remind me of the time, and prayers at sunset tell me it's time for a beer.

 

We've seldom had issues with the mosque, it's a mixed community though mainly Buddhist, a couple of times a new muezzin has turned the volume up but I think complaints via the Thesaban ensure things return to normal and the mosque doesn't set the volume too high.

 

Personally I find it soothing,

 

I lived in central Pattani for just over five years and never had a problem with the meuzzins.

 

After a while you barely notice them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

7 minutes ago, transam said:

Thanks for the offer but my head is now really detached from stuff..Just thought, I have a pic somewhere of Mrs.Trans in Trafalgar square with a bunch of Chelsea Pensioner rascals.....

 

Then share it. 

 

Your wife is a very pretty woman. You've done well. And you say her son is now part of the Royal Thai Police. She must be proud.

 

IMO, Blether is 50% decent and 50% silly. I don't see him as bad. The real worm is that dopehead. 

 

A few months back I had lots of PMs warning me about that little creep. I ignored all the advice. I figured the dopehead was decent. He isn't. He's the worm and the shit stirrer.

 

Blether is basically okay. He served in the army, too. It's kinda crazy that the two of you don't get along.