Lannig

Hope we'll eventually get rid of the the incredibly cold and rainy weather we've had in May and June (record-breaking) else le Tour de France will not be that nice to watch (and even less to ride)

Dubai isn't the nicest airport I know, it's kind of cold (too much air-con IMO) and poorly lit in some areas.

Transfer walks are kind of long and sometimes difficult to figure out. I know it by heart now and almost every time I have to help puzzled people searching their way.

There's a huge duty-free mall but I have hardly found anything that's worth a purchase. Electronics aren't cheap contrary to many people think. I can get better deals online here in France on Amazon or local e-commerce sites.

The good thing is that there are fast-food outlets (MacDonald's and Burger King I think) selling stuff at regular prices, unlike the ripoffs of Suwarnabhumi.

There are many deck chair style seats but they are really hard and poorly located along noisy and busy alleys. Very few if any in quiet places.

Only at both ends of the terminals there are some sofas and a couple of things almost looking like real foam mattresses you can lie and possibly sleep on (but don't forget your blanket). As one can imagine they're hard to get to.

I've seen showers, apparently free to use but I haven't tried them yet.

What I dislike the most about Dubai airport? the wifi. It really sucks. You get only one hour free and even this is after quite many clicks. It's slow and unstable as hell.

Well, I paint a dark picture here but overall it's not that bad. Certainly much better than the "old Doha" (I don't know the new one) and probably as good as Paris Charles-de-Gaulle (except for the wifi maybe).

"The Ministry of Interior is planning to appoint provincial education committees to promote discipline enhancement and Thai values among students, as well as teaching the sufficiency economy philosophy from the agriculture for school lunch campaign of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn in order to encourage a good way of life for children and the youth."

Oh dear. All becomes clear now about the sudden push of sufficiency economy.

I have no further comment to make - what Dumpy and Grumpy are trying to do just became very clear. There'll likely be a lot more of this to follow, and I imagine that has not gone un-noticed in other camps.

One more step being taken on the road to armed conflict in Thailand as we speak, and surprise, surprise, it's being taken by the junta. Suddenly, the rationale for the coup, although hinted at for a while, has suddenly broken cover and is now obvious.

Winnie

I usually enjoy your posts which make much sense to me but you've lost me this time, Winnie.

What kind of armed conflict are you talking about? a civil war or a war against one of their neighbors? (presumably Cambodia?)

And how does this relate to these education committees and the policy to use local farm product in school canteens? Please explain.

I've checked a recent SIM from AIS and it's not printed on this one either, probably because it's a triple-format SIM (mini, micro, nano) which makes it quite difficult.

On the other hand it's almost certainly the number I can see on the credit-card size plastic carrier I detached it from.

Oh, by the way... hi, Garfield

Economy class on Emirates is as good as business class on most other airlines to Thailand!

I wouldn't go that far but on their most recent A380s (tail number A6-EOx) they have an economy class section upstairs.

This is even quieter than downstairs, there are only about 20 or 25 rows of 2-4-2 seats, the cabin crew is more available due to less passengers to take care of, so so the overall ambiance isn't quite far from business class indeed, if it weren't for the seats.

What's wrong with frogs?

(sorry, couldn't resist)

I've sometimes seen fieldmice (hope that's the correct word?) being sold, they really look like big rats but I've been told that they're clean because they live in the fields. Never tried eating them although some of my Thai friends have tried to convince me.

I fly them almost exclusively from France to Thailand and back, 2 to 5 times per year.

Excellent service. If they operate the Airbus A380 on your route, that's a real plus. It's more roomy and much quieter than other aircrafts even in cattle class.

Usually you get very service-minded staff, very international. 20 or more different nationalities in cabin crew is common on an A380.

Highy recommended and definitely the best deals I could find on my own route.

Their frequent flyer program isn't very generous, though.

I think that you get what you pay for in China.

Plenty of very cheap workforce, plenty of companies building cheap stuff meaning crap produced and robots who learn the Microsoft, Cisco etc. certification books by heart but have precisely zero ability for structured thinking and creativity. I've worked with these, I know them.

On the other hand, given unlimited funding (i.e. state-funded), I'm sure that the Chinese are able to do things at least at good as the best we can do in the West.

Only one Tsuanami in the Indian Ocean in recorded history.

No one alive today will see another one.

Relax.

You should really have attended the "Probability, Statistics and Random Processes" course in high school (or is it college?), you know

You could have one in over a century then two in the same year without violating any mathematical law. At least that's what I've learned in these courses. I must admit that I was bad at this but still I think that's correct.

Back to the topic: how can one imagine that these expensive devices don't send alerts weeks if not months before the battery dies? based on voltage, charge current curves of whatever... even notebook computers can do this. But of course, there must be someone to act to these alerts before the battery actually dies and yes, this is Thailand so...

Seems like a really useful tool! congratulations and thanks

I'll get back to this topic if I have feedback but in the meantime I really wished to thank you for the effort.

(don't bother with Safari... after all it's only used by the lowest life forms who use Macs <== Joke alert for the humor-impaired reader, not a troll )

That Thailand is not one people but really two people who hate each other to death and will go for each other's throats as soon as they've lost their only common reference.

Dream on...

If their local infrastructure is overloaded like rightly suggested by KhunBENQ then they can't offer what they don't have, i.e. spare capacity at local exchanges, DSLAMs, switches, uplinks to BKK etc.

+1 I must have at least half a dozen SIMs registered under my name.

And for the time being, they're not interested in what mobile phone(s) you own and how many (might change sometime...)

DTAC STOCKS ARE DROPPING. Obviously, society understands that the UFO temple is a scam.

Well, or more likely analysts realize that the junta will be all over the company now, making all kinds of trouble. I'm willing to predict that DTAC will lose all bids for new frequencies now and that financial accounts are going to be heavily scrutinized until something fishy is found.

True folks must be very happy these days. With AIS still somewhat smelling the odor of former owner Thaksin and DTAC now getting on the blacklist...

More likely they're worried that someone may have been making billion baht donations to buy his way into the new concept of Buddhist heaven. I'd rather invest in a company where the CEO is more interested in current secular happenings rather than his alleged "life after death."

That's a distinct possibility, indeed.

@Patsfangr: well, although I'm an IT professional I'm not a VPN user myself (no need to) except when connecting to my employer's network for remote work using the company's VPN, so I may not be the best adviser on VPN benefits for home internet users.

But since you're asking for advice: you sound like you don't need VPN indeed. The only motive I can see would be browsing some foreign general media sites that aren't reachable but that would be illegal wouldn't it?

For something like this (buying of all new phones) to be controlled, purchase of new phones would only be sold from nominated outlets which would warrant a change of law/regulations regarding smartphones. This isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

For those who were in Thailand in 1999 or so, it used to work like this. Phones bought overseas would not work in Thailand because only IMEIs from phones bought from authorized resellers were allowed to register to local operators (except for roaming phones with foreign SIMs)

And of course local prices were way higher than in the west.

Now would it be feasible to go back to this? I really don't think so but with the junta anything is possible...

VPN isn't a magical wand.

First, the encapsulation of data payload induced by VPN protocols decreases the overall data transfer efficiency. Second, serious cryptos have a cost (as accurately stated by your VPN operator). It's a trade-off: use light encryption that can broken easily or get serious. Depends on how much you value your safety

VPNs can be used to evade the throttling of web traffic up to a certain point when ISPs realize the amount of traffic going from/to VPN operators and soon add their servers to a list of throttled IPs (or worse, blacklist them due to government requirements)

Last but not least, there are some signs showing that something's happening at Thai ISPs that may or may not be the first steps of a single filtering gateway being rolled out. There's another thread on this. At least they seem to be changing the way the government's blacklist is implemented. It may impact web traffic speed.

Interesting point, but do you really have to post it in a big bold font to get it through? Don't think so.

DTAC STOCKS ARE DROPPING. Obviously, society understands that the UFO temple is a scam.

Well, or more likely analysts realize that the junta will be all over the company now, making all kinds of trouble. I'm willing to predict that DTAC will lose all bids for new frequencies now and that financial accounts are going to be heavily scrutinized until something fishy is found.

True folks must be very happy these days. With AIS still somewhat smelling the odor of former owner Thaksin and DTAC now getting on the blacklist...

They're certainly going to use any opportunity to disable POP so as to discourage as many people as possible from using it.

Guerilla tactics

Blowing in the wind...

Good point. How do IMAX cameras work? are they adapted to the curvature of the projection screen?

This is becoming interesting. Not sure there are that many followers upcountry, IMO it's mostly a Bangkok middle and upper-class thing, but if they manage to really gather hundreds of thousands of people there, this would become a serious challenge to the junta's authority.

I'm getting the popcorn...

Just book a flight that has a USB charger socket in the chair.

Indeed. All gulf companies at least have them now.

Another issue is that these big Chinese no-name powerbanks are a safety hazard aboard planes. They've caused several serious incidents already.

You guys still think that a 8K bahts smartphone is a "cheap" one?