coops

Suggest to bother with AIS.

Swapped over from True fibre to Ais for a year and had no problems.

Why bother?

Just buy a decent Asus router, which has vpn client capablilty. Done.

7 hours ago, newatthis said:

If you think Alien Covenant was crap, watch Tom Cruise "The Mummy." Absolute hogwash!!!

Now hang on... I'm not that dumb! 

Ah, ok - i thought you must be joking or sarcastic... but on the other hand there probably are people who don't 'bother' with insurance as they 'plan' on never getting real sick 

I'm not sure if JLCrab is joking, or profoundly ignorant of what insurance means.

"Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss. It is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss."

And obviously, based on simple common sense, in any 'private', ie capitalist, insurance scheme the average of payouts should be less than the premiums paid in - otherwise the insurer will become bankrupt.

"So if you are planning on never getting real sick" - 

Ridley Scott.... d@mn you!

"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me"

I shoulda know better.... @sigh@    .... massive @sigh@

Prometheus was the first time I was a fool... but to be dumb enough to watch Alien Covenant, I can only blame myself.

Oh, it looks nice (yay, Ridley!) but apart from that - it notches up 6.6 at imdb, which is a decent enough warning.

Dreadful.... again.

Speaking of dreadful movies - Michael Fassbender reminded me of Tom Hiddlestone so much that  I must do my duty and hereby warn you never, never, to watch 'High Rise'.

There's only one decent moment when there's a cover of Abba's 'SOS' by Portishead - and you can hear that elsewhere or on youtube without suffering the movie - i'll be reading the book once I've rinsed the memory of this from my mind.

On the other good Tom Hiddlestone side - the TV series "The Night Manager" was marvellous.

It's specifically stated as 2 million US lifetime per person - but that is on my plan... if yours is genuinely a maximum per year then the lower limit makes more sense

Would definitely have helped to specify what currency you're using... I kind of guessed you were using US $ by default until the GBP total coverage part.

Just to state the 'obvious' but the "GBP 650k, 1,3mn and unlimited" refers to life time allowable total coverage... and an expensive chronic illness will add up with the prescription drugs - so the 650k in UK sterling is ok-ish... but maybe the 1.3m would be more advisable?

It won't be easy to decide how much deductible and % pay etc... 'up to you' it really is (!) but i'd be tempted to discard the 10% options just to make the final choice 'easier' ;-)

I'm lucky enough to have Cigna insurance through work ( no deductible, no co-pay or whatever that's called - outside the USA) so the side of the decision was already taken - but can tell you i've not had any issues with Cigna and no need to 'pay and claim back'.

Started watching season 2 of Preacher....

amusingly oddball... and it has Ruth Negga

Not even sure what 'AIS PowerPro' is, but sounds impressive....

I am on AIS fibre though at 100/10 :-

To your first IP the ping was 294ms average... (42 std dev)

turning on my VPN to a UK server brought the ping down to av of 264ms (25 std dev)

That second IP you gave was a lot more variable - av of 324 ( std dev 54).

A google speedtest to Atlanta US was 94/10.8 speed with a ping of 264ms.

Having a VPN that has servers in Belgium itself may help if it's that important.

3 minutes ago, tonray said:

I think coming from the UK Vs the USA as I do colors thinking on what's expensive as far as health insurance. 

You should see the difference between my coverage inside the US and ANYWHERE outside... basically 100% covered outside the US but mostly deductibles and 80% in the US...(not that I spend any time there)

"

Physician Office Visit

Outside U.S. - 100% covered; Inside U.S. - 80% after deductible is met

Specialist Office Visit

Outside U.S. - 100% covered; Inside U.S. - 80% after deductible is met

"

and Lord only knows what a 'physician office visit' will run you in the US....

I'm with you - Pho is a bit bland really.

Much prefer my local Kway Teow Rua

or Ramen of course....

On 04/08/2017 at 2:20 PM, Mover1 said:

Wow i just tried Cigna for a quote and their cheapest was 70,000 baht. Is that the normal price for a 44 year old uk expat in thailand? Seems excessive

You don't specify what level of coverage - but it is not way off if it's for maximum 2 million USD coverage in Thailand/Asia with NO deductbiles at all for drugs/hospital etc ( this does NOT apply in the US for obvious rip-off reasons).

I'm lucky to have Cigna global through work, covers both me and my wife and i can only guess on the total coverage cost ( as part is covered by Company) but 70k bhat may be about right for a high level of (almost unlimited) coverage with no deductible.

You should be able to get a range of quotes depending on any deductible you may choose to take on and total limit etc.

ps I forgot to add I've had to make numerous claims - and all are/were dealt with immediately with no need to pay then claim back or any of that malarkey.

2 hours ago, GR8fun in LOS said:

I have found and also read on this site that the "Ookla Speed Test" is a complete waste of time.

 

I have found that it is recommended by Thai providers, as it overstates the speeds by 10 times and sometimes higher.

 

Try some other speed test tests there are many free ones about and also look to testing outside of Thailand, is my suggestion. 

No.

And as far as your quoted speed - that ONLY applies IN Thailand - the total bandwidth out of Thailand is not big enough  to possibly provide everyone with their quoted speeds at all time or even part of the time.... hence why Ookla is just fine for testing your inside Thailand speed.

They have some other servers, but seemed to be more Asia, and so much slower (Vietnam for example).

On the other hand, out of interest I did a Google speed test to a server in the USA and got a surprisingly decent download speed at that time of ~50 Mb/s... naturally it will vary greatly.

You can always use

http://speedtest.googlefiber.net

Just did it from my laptop on a 5 gHz Asus wifi with AIS fibre, and got 94.1/9.2 to Atlanta - which is nice. (The 2.4Ghz happened to be 78/16).

And Ookla Beta on a macbook does near as makes no difference 100 down to a couple of bangkok servers - as it does to my Minix box over 5gHz Oookla to a Bangkok server.

A decent 5gHz wifi connection will have no problem whatsoever getting your 100/30 speed - my Minix box is downstairs connects to an Asus wifi router upstairs on the 5gHz freq. and always gets the promised 100/30 with Ais on a local thai server speedtest.

The 'free' routers you get may not have such wide 5gHz coverage, but should be ok for the same room to test - just make sure you are on a 5gHz connection and a local server, the Ookla speedtest will usually search and select one in Thailand for you.

The 'free' routers from True are going to be.... fairly sh@tyy no matter what - there's no reason to need to disable your 5gHz for example.

Unless in a one floor type of setup, you might want to buy a decent Wifi Router ( Asus as an example ), plug that in to your router/modem and disable completely the True router wifi... use the asus or whatever with appropriate passwords etc.

Then if you end up finally having had enough of true you can just disable the next (AIS or whoever) crappy router wifi, plug in your Asus and away you go....

Call them up and ask them to comfirm it - and be sure to let them know if so you'll he takng your business to AIS... that might actually get you a discount and some offers to try to keep you.

You can mention what an HBO fan you are too to rub it in...

Not an immediate solution for you... although i'm sure you have at least two pairs of glasses anyway (especially with that prescription...) but my sister was -10 and had successful lasik several years ago.

Lasik is always improving even more, and now Relex is another option - google it - but TRSC has had it as an option for a few years, and now have seen it advertised at Bangkok General also. (by the way, i had PRK laser refractive correction done over 25 years ago, and i still consider the best money i've ever spent - and that was before the more comfortable lasik and better wavefront lasers.....)

As a language, grammatically and phonetically it is far easier than English for instance... BUT  any, and every, westerner, first has to deal with their compelete inability to hear the tones correctly...or at all.

If you try to 'learn' thai and speak it BEFORE you can hear the tonal differences, then you will be imprinting incorrect pronunciation into your brain... note - even the Linguaphone teach yourself course is quite good at getting you used to the tones ( stick to the first 10 chapters until you genuinely can hear them ) but ideally... if you are in Thailand i'd recommed STARTING with some time at AUA - they specifically do NOT want you tryng to speak initially, but listening for many hours to native speakers talking about basic topics.

There is NO way around this - the tonal nature is competely amd utterly foreign to a western speaker and just takes a bit of time to hear it and get used to it.. but you can and you will... and after that you'll find the phonetic writing system hugely more 'reliable' i.e. less ridiculous exceptions like English... and spoken is enormously simplified compared to any 'conjugated' language.... as a few examples in Thai plurals are the same as 'singles' so it's 'one dog', 'two dog', 'three dog' and so on... verbs have a specified word to indicate a past or present etc etc tense with no changes tomthe verb wrd itself or 'absurd' conjugation... so it sounds like saying in English... e.g. for the verb 'to go' - 'I am go' ( present tense), 'they am go' for present tesne with many people....  future tense would be 'will go', past would be 'have go ( in the past)',, amd so on amd so on... the verb 'go' stays exaclty that with another signifier word to indicate the tense.

1 hour ago, SooKee said:

One other thing re iFlix, it is no longer only SD.  Since Jan 24 2017 new shows / movies will be in HD (720 for now) and the back catalogue is slowly being converted.  You can pay 100 pm or pay 1,000 per year.

That's interesting - I briefly tried iflix but on any decent sized tv the quality is so poor - like the old True AXN level of sub video cd screen definition - so offering 720p is a very big improvement.

By the way, The AIS Game of Thrones is censored, just as it was on True before.... wife was watching it for the thai subtitles, but will be sticking with Sickrage and proper uncensored 1080p with no Channle logos and english subtitles.

Most Asus routers have built in vpn client - mine is, works fine ( the standard router firmware is just fine), amd Asus routers are easy to find in Bangkok.

On 24/07/2017 at 7:29 PM, robblok said:

I use sickrage with sannzbd it works great. Wish i had known about it long ago. I run it on a qnap 4 bay nas

Shush....

Mine's on a Synology.

Asus routers are good - get down to Fortune Town for a browse... the latest and greatest Asus routers are pricey of course, but they'll have older/cheaper models too...

This is very, very far from 'new' - the only new thing is the rather silly 'craft' label.

Haven't had it for a while, but it's been available on draught at the Singha Est.33 bars for some years now.

And it tastes very good indeed - Hitachino Red Rice beer is another rice based beer that is good ( but sweeter ). I wasn't aware it used rice, but it is a very good pint and wondered if they'd ever bottle it...

Just because the most well know rice based beer, Budweiser, is an insult to beer doesn't mean it has to be bad to use rice - try it before mocking it. If you can't afford it, stick to Archa or Cheers...

I've seen LG OLED heavily discounted now - there's a new improved oled panel coming out but still a good buy for the previous model, around 50 to 60,000 i think