partjfos

27 minutes ago, FitnessHealthTravel said:

This many on one dive boat is insane and this is the outcome

Itll be a snorkeling boat with that many people. Diving in thai is dam nam and in my experience thais say this whether they mean snorkeling or diving, so probably just a translation gone slightly wrong. Chinese arent big divers anyway.

Ive taken trips around the trang islands and to angthong marine park and phi phi with 100+ people on them, never felt unsafe and i dont agree that more people necessarily means more unsafe as long as the safety measures are scaled up and proportionate to the number of passengers.

The bigger the boat the better in rough seas, actually.

I have a freeview box, like one of those psi boxes. This make and model is infosat zimple box4 vip.

The first channel to go missing was pptv a few months ago however i was able to watch pptv hd on a different channel. Next to go was mcot and all other mcot channels e.g. mcot family. Then this week all the world cup channels have disappeared - tv5, amarin and true4u, along with pptv hd. At first there was just a blank screen, ive messed with the settings a lot and thats now changed to an 'encrypted channel' screen. Im fairly sure that they are not paid-for channels?

Ive taken the box apart, checked the connections, spent a long time adding PIDs and trying other satellites to no avail. Anybody had any similar issues? Any ideas how to fix before i give up and buy a new box?

Im fairly sure (but not 100%) that its a settings issue not a problem with the dish or cables. Having said that, i've also tried my friend's box which is identical, they live in the same building as me. The same channels are missing...

I thougt a hard reset might do the trick but there is no obvious reset button on the box or restore to factory settings option on the menu.

I was there Tuesday morning, and the seas were fairly calm - unless they picked up markedly overnight, it shows how easy it is for poor swimmers to get into difficulty.

1 hour ago, BuaBS said:

I hope his/her car is very badly damaged and has no insurance.

In poor light driver might have just thought it was a dog.  Even if they knew it was a bear, what are they supposed to do?  I wouldn't hang around either, there's no point if the animal is dead and if it's just badly wounded getting out of your car could be the worst thing to do.

Then you'd halve a lot of animals' territories.  This is the problem with building roads through national parks.  In this area there're 3.  There's the one that cuts all the way through Khao Yai, the one that cuts all the way through Pang Sida and Thap Lan (more of a trail than a road and barely any vehicles use it) and the one mentioned in this article which is by far the busiest and widest.  At least the Khao Yai road has some speed bumps and is single lane but even there a leopard cat died on the road recently.  I nearly ran over a porcupine last time I was in Khao Yai and I wasn't speeding.

The Khao Yai and Pang Sida roads are most used by people visiting the park, so maybe they will be driving slower.  The one mentioned in this article is just a normal highway, so people will be driving from A to B as quickly as possible with no thought for wildlife.

My bike on an island here has no tax disc, so I believe that renders the government insurance void.  Rental bikes which I spend most time on presumably have up to date tax discs, so they would have the standard government insurance irrespective of whether the rider has the appropriate license or not.

17 minutes ago, Vacuum said:

Do you drive without a license in your home country? If not why, and why do you do it here?

Yes and insurance.  I ended up spending so much time in prison as a result it became impractical so I decided to go to a country without a nanny state mindset.  I don't agree with bureaucracy, redtape or licensing of any kind, except to protect vulnerable people or animals.  It's the scourge of modern society.

Those living on Samui really need to hope and press for the building of a new airport.  Until then they should boycott the current Samui airport or nothing will change.

4 hours ago, Kinnock said:

I'm pretty sure most passengers would prefer the money to be used to improve the signaling system?

They aren't giving any compensation for normal rabbit cards or single use cards, the title is misleading.  Only in the case of trip rabbit cards are they giving any 'compensation' and actually they're giving freebies in that instance, not monetary reimbursement.

And how many people won't bother queuing up for the refund/additional trips and exit through the ticket gate and not the swing gate...

In my case because I have no license?

I imagine other people's reasons might differ.

Yes but OP specifically says 'stopped'.  To me, stopped means not immediately waved through a manned checkpoint.  Even if the interaction with the police only amounts to winding down the window (i.e. no conversation) that is still stopping.

Maybe OP could clarify what they mean by 'stopped'.  If they just mean driving straight through with no attempt by the police to look inside the vehicle or talk to the driver, then that wouldn't be stopping and might shed some light on other accounts from car-drivers which differ wildly.

4 hours ago, webfact said:

So many wild animals have been killed on the highway near the park that the Highway Department is building a 570-metre-long underpass at the spot through which vehicles will be forced to drive.

 

This sounds good but I don't really understand.  That road stretches for many miles with forest either side, not just 570 metres.  So are the animals all crossing it at roughly the same point for some reason?  A valley perhaps?

Very strange because the OP is driving a car and reports getting stopped everyday.  Maybe pickups aren't targeted.

It's not worth replacing the entire motherboard, laptop is about 5 years old.  Not looking to spend any more than 2000-3000 baht.  The guy at Pantip said he would do it for 600 then changed his mind.

4 minutes ago, NanLaew said:

That's a small SMD (surface mounted device) that has come loose so needs a technician with special SMD soldering station or a regular small soldering iron with a needlepoint bit.... and a very, very steady hand.

Any idea where (Bangkok preferably)?

On 6/26/2018 at 1:52 AM, simoh1490 said:

If the OP has in fact been stopped at police check points on average once a day for six months I can only presume he lives right next to a police checkpoint and has no alternate route from where he lives. I've lived in Chiang Mai for 16 years and I drive a lot, I never get stopped when driving locally or even around the city. The only times I may get stopped is if I head up to Chiang Rai or South to Central Thailand and even then I almost never get stopped, just waved through. I think I've only been actually stopped and asked questions maybe four or five times in those 16 years so there's something incomplete about the OP's story.

Chiang Mai along with Phuket and possibly Pattaya, is a notorious hotspot for license checks.  Checkpoints move around occasionally, so you can't avoid them so easily. 16 years and only stopped 5 times cannot be true, (though I've only been visiting CM for about 4 years, so I can't account for the other 12 years, maybe there were fewer checks then).  In those 4 years of occasional visits, I've been stopped on average about twice a week, so over 4 years, multiplying that up, I'd expect to have been stopped hundreds of times.

29.

test results attached...

Hi, my battery was loose in laptop, it rattled around and over time dislodged a component on the motherboard.  Laptop will now not  turn on for more than a few seconds before switching off.

Attached picture shows the piece and where it came from. Can it  be  reaffixed, if so where? I tried pantip plaza and a couple of the vendors there were too hesitant to give it a go. I think they were scared of breaking the laptop.

Im at koh chang at the moment without the test results papers so i'll post an update next week when im back in bangkok. My plan was to get the hepatitis a and c tests next, probably from the red cross centre. Thanks for the comments/suggestions.

I went for a general checkup today, which included the urinalysis and ast/alt as suggested by sheryl.  I found a good deal on metrodeal website - 990 baht for 13 tests, usual price 2500, at bangpakok 1 hospital. Metrodeal take paypal as well, it seems similar to groupon.

Results were all fine except ast which was 41 (normal range is 0-40). Alt was 35. Doctor said this could be due to alcohol or drugs/medicine or lack of sleep and not to worry because it was only slightly over. I slept fine and dont drink or take drugs/medication. I looked online later and high ast can also be caused by intense exercise... i did a half marathon the day before...

Is 41 worth worrying about?