Lannig

Hello folks,

I'm stuck here in FR until April and I need to ship an Android tablet I've bought here to Thailand. It's a gift I want to make.

Normally I would be planning for my trip in early January, but it won't happen this year ????

I've read enough horror stories about shipping over int'l postal services to make me reluctant to do so. Lost/stolen, broken on arrival, held for taxes etc.

It will really be my last resort.

In the meantime I wonder if a TV member who will be travelling to the LOS over the next month would accept to carry it for me?

Of course the item will be unpacked, available for careful inspection, unlocked for contents checking (none whatsoever, it will be reset to factory settings). Packaging will be provided to ship it on arrival (EMS to a friend's work address in Pathum Thani). And of course fully paid in advance.

Giving the item hand to hand in Paris / CDG is preferred, but as an alternative I might ship it to any western EU country.

If someone can pick it up in Paris or around, I will offer complimentary driving to CDG to show my appreciation.

Obviously it's a light item (check model: Huawei Mediapad M5 Lite for details)

Please PM me.

Wow. Amazed to see how far this funny sign post has been taken. Come on guys, it's more probably someone who's just messed up while making the sign. I just found it amusing to relate this to the never-ending reports of dual pricing.
And as someone has pointed out, this has zero legal value anyway.

43 minutes ago, glennb6 said:

Govt could produce and require viewing of very graphic gut grabbing videos as part of the licensing process or even as a required driver training for license renewal. 

Useless in Thailand IMHO. They just don't "register" this information. I remember being at the funeral of a vaguely related youngster who had died in a motorcycle accident. Teens present at the funeral were watching gruesome pictures taken at the accident site on their phones, almost laughing at them. And the same day I saw one of them speeding and wheeling on a bike.

Somehow they firmly believe that such can happen only to others. Not sure western teens are that different anyway.

Helmets? plural? I can see only one. Not surprising, as cops tend to (sometimes) enforce mandatory helmet only for the driver, following a logic that escapes me. Explains why so many motorbike accident fatalities are young kids. Even if dad (or mom) does, they almost never wear a helmet.

EDIT: I think "gang" was to be taken as "team", "group of buddies", not literally.

As a side note, the admission procedure is a huge pain in the backside. When we arrived yesterday, the car park was only 2/3 full (shaded areas) so not a record intake of visitors by far. It took us almost one hour to get the entrance tickets and eventually get in. I can't imagine how long it takes at peak times.

One needs to fill a form first, they are staff folks around tables with pens to give the forms away and advise. Again, ID card number required, passport for foreigners, plus work permit or driving licence to get treated as Thais. Then you are allowed to enter the HUGE queue in front of the cashiers. For no obvious reason we were diverted to a large office room at the left of the cashier line. 50+ people waiting inside. Not so sure it has been quicker than going through the main queue.  I asked why: "same thing" was the reply. Certainly not because I'm a non-resident, they were tourists in the main queue as well. My party was a mix of thai adults and kids plus me.

It takes them almost 10 minutes per person to do their stuff. They have an electronic ID card reader but for some reason Thais only can understand I suppose, they hand write the ID card number to the back of the members card they're making, reading it not from the ID card itself (would be too obvious, wouldn't it?) but painfully from the hand-written form. Then all this information is typed into the computer again and eventually an admittance ticket is printed. For us non-resident foreigners, it's a waterproof wristband. Do they assume we're too stupid to keep a ticket?

At 900THB per person including (or not) the 100THB food/beverage credit, it's not quite worth it IMO. Especially considering of all the costly extras (150THB to rent a swimming trunk? 60THB for a locker? ouch). Of course there are many attractions besides the water park, but they're really outdated now and 2 major ones were closed. Still, everyone in my family party enjoyed their day and was thankful so I don't regret my money too much.

FYA all, it's actually 900B for everyone. It gives a one-year pass for thais or residents (work permit nomally required but thai driving license was accepted for a friend who's joined us). For non-resident foreigners it's a day pass only. It includes a 100B food credit for thais and residents provided that they show their ID card. Strangely enough, if they don't have it, the only difference it makes it that they don't get the food credit. So technically it raises the ticket price by 100B. Go figure.

Conclusion: buy online. Same ticket, over 100B cheaper. I should know better next time.

I've been to that page already as I've mentioned in my first post. These are promotion bundles sold online, I'm fairly sure that they're different from the walk-in simple entrance tickets, hence my asking for someone who's actually been there recently.

Hello folks,

Actual Siam Park walk-in ticket prices for thais and foreigners (I assume double pricing) seem to be a very well kept secret on the web. Does anyone has up-to-date information please? They offer bundles with food credit and such on their web site that are different from the plain entrance tickets. Not interested.

I'm driving from upcountry tomorrow with the whole family and 4 kids (probably too old for kid pricing) and I would like to anticipate by how much my wallet will be lighter.  We would go on friday. Tomorrow has another program.

If you know a way to get discounted prices online, that would be appreciated too, although I fear it's too late for this now. I had managed to catch a very good promotion for the Cartoon Network Park in Pattaya during the october school break, but I did take care of that a few weeks in advance.

Crying shame, really. The A380 is a great experience in flying: quiet, smooth, roomy. I really hate the loud B777 you get to fly on the same long-haul routes. Definitely my main reason for choosing Emirates or Etihad (when they fly it over one leg of the Europe<->Thailand trip at least) over other companies.

Weird for Emirates to be "disappointed" since their cancellation of the outstanding order is the main reason for the shutdown. They basically killed it.

I say, unfair practice... 

5 minutes ago, natway09 said:

Bein have obviously purchased the rights (as is being shown in Saudi)

Again, you're missing the point. Rights are awarded per-country. That's the exact reason why I couldn't watch matches using their BeIN Connect application while I was abroad although I was subscribed. And the reason was very clearly stated in the error message, basically: no rights for the country you're in right now.

BeIN has most definitely lost the rights on C1 and C3 here in France. That's a public fact. And, I presume, in other countries as well, possibly in Thailand.

Seems that BeIN Sports has lost these rights almost everywhere.

In France they've lost them to SFR/Altice, whose new IPTV SFR Sports subscription-based channel was so much drowning under connections yesterday that almost no one has been able to watch the Champions League matches. Lag, freezes and disconnections fiesta.

Quite a bit of bad buzz today.

Can somebody knowledgeable please explain the details? is this really only for 2G handsets? AFAIK DTAC also still use 850 Mhz for 3G in rural areas, don't they? so if you have a 3G device in Nakhon Nowhere, you're likely  to be cut off as well, aren't you?

There's almost no usable information on DTAC's web site, only a melodramatic apology video...

18 minutes ago, 55Jay said:

Just went to the Mobile Banking site to check it out.  Looks like it's down for maintenance from yesterday to today. 

They're lying. Today's their peak day for transactions. No way they would have a planned maintenance today. Doesn't make sense, even in Thailand.

They're hiding some real problems behind a planned maintenance.

KBANK's online banking web site a tad slow this morning (EU time), but this happens at every month's end.

Sometimes even causes money transfers to fail repeatedly. Not this time, though. I made a transfer an hour ago or so and it went through.

43 minutes ago, Acharn said:

The baht is not going to "crash to nothing." The governors of the Bank of Thailand are very conservative and very watchful since the country went crazy in 1995-6.

Well, right, probably not unless the country enters a period of major unrest which may more or less escalate into a civil war situation. We've come fairly close to this already and (sadly) my deepest belief is that this is bound to happen sooner or later when people really have enough of the current regime and the ultimate recourse to calm things down doesn't work so well anymore. If this doesn't happen before I retire to Thailand, I certainly won't keep more than that's required by immigration laws and daily expenses in Thai banks. Because I might have to call what's in there a loss while leaving in a hurry.

Can one fly a kite and drive a car at the same time?

Well, I agree that true, native VoWifi is nice and dandy but it's usually restricted to a (very small) set of supported handsets. In Europe, some operators even restrict this further to smartphones bought through their own sales channels.

So I prefer the DTAC approach of using a separate app which works on just every Android smartphone, by far.

Especially since this app is surprisingly well done: you can call any contact in your contact list transparently and calls appear in your general call log. Only SMSes are kept apart, which I don't mind.

It would seem that MMSes are not supported, too, but that's a very minor issue for me.

And I do receive OTP SMSes from my bank this way, too.

I'm using DTAC Call all the time, (unfortunately) not being a resident in Thailand anymore and therefore spending most of my time in my home country, and I've never noticed it draining battery on my Samsung J7. And it's active all the time. Weird.

No issue at all with calls and sending/receiving SMSes either. SMS reception is way more reliable and fast than using my DTAC SIM card in roaming. I use this all the time for OTP passwords from my Thai bank.

I did absolutely nothing for being able to use this app and it even worked flawlessly on a Chinese, no-name 50 euros Android smartphone, so I'm pretty sure that there are no special requirements.

I love this app. Changed my life ? ... will look into the AIS equivalent which I didn't know existed, thanks. I also have an AIS SIM.

I'm resuscitating this old thread to share a gem I've discovered a few months ago: DTAC now has an application that allows you to make/receive calls and SMSes over data wherever you are in the world, provided you have a working data connection (wifi of course, but also 3G/4G if you have a local SIM with data). Its name  is "DTAC Call"

Here's a link to the Android version: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=th.co.dtac.wificalling

It might exist for iOS as well but no fruity thing here (God forbid!) so I can't tell.

It's different from what was discussed above because it doesn't use the phone's built-in functions for calls and messages. It's a separate, standalone application that has its own dialer and messenging tool.

As far as I can tell it works with any reasonably recent Android phone.

But it's great! You may now use your DTAC number when you're abroad for exactly the same call and SMS rates as when you're in Thailand. It can be useful as well when you're in an area without DTAC coverage but there's an usable wifi. There's a simple switch to choose reception of calls and messages to your SIM or to the app. Best of all: it's reliable. Been using it for months and not a single issue as of now.

You have to create an account and then activate your account with a code received by SMS on your regular SIM. So it has to be done while you're able to use your SIM but hey... receiving SMSes while roaming abroad works so you don't even need to be in Thailand.

This little gem really changed my life so I thought that it would be nice to share the tip.

I rent usually very new Revos and D-Maxes every time I come to Thailand. They look pretty much equivalent to me except for the fuel consumption which is way higher on the Revo. Something to consider in times of rising fuel prices.