DivinGuy

15 minutes ago, qwertyuiop said:

I understand his reasoning as regards the Red Shirt movement, but surely the same argument could be applied towards the Patani-Malay Revolutionary Front or are they allowed to go about their business unmonitored?

The Patani-Malay Revolutionary Front remains effective, monitored or not.  I'm not saying they did this, just that they have managed to carry out bombings consistently for the last 10-12 years.

Has anyone checked their registration? I registered my SIM a couple of weeks ago, and dialed *151# a few minutes ago and the response said it's registered to a passport number ending in 0000. My passport number does not end in 0000.

The kid who registered it did seem particularly inept, even for a kid in an AIS store, but I have no idea if there's actually an error or if the *151# response doesn't use the actual passport number.

They return the last 3 digits and an alphabet of an actual passport number.

Thanks. I wonder how many registrations are incorrect, and how many more will be incorrect if there's a huge rush to register in June and July, not to mention how easy it would be for the employees to 'make a mistake' for a hundred baht.

Has anyone checked their registration? I registered my SIM a couple of weeks ago, and dialed *151# a few minutes ago and the response said it's registered to a passport number ending in 0000. My passport number does not end in 0000.

The kid who registered it did seem particularly inept, even for a kid in an AIS store, but I have no idea if there's actually an error or if the *151# response doesn't use the actual passport number.

There's some stuff at Market Village, Index, and a couple of other places around town, but not high end at all.

if you look here: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/forum/147-audiovisual-hifi-and-home-theatre/ there is a list of distributors in Thailand.

Best wishes to all of you.

Cheap Backpacker, you say you live here on about 10K baht per month. Does that include a place to live?

What do you do for fun?

I don't live an extravagant life, but it seems that with a budget like that, there would be very little money for anything except maybe meditating at the wat.

(Edited a typo.)

We seem to have developed our own language, where often its a mixture of Thai and English in the same sentence totally confuses Thai people.

Exactly! I think this is pretty common among bilingual couples. Long ago I lived in New Mexico, where many people are bilingual in Spanish and English. The local paper had a weekly humor column about it.

It confuses some westerners, too.

I'd just bring the guitars and buy a bike and a blender here. If you have friends here you can probably store the bike and blender when you leave.

KhunBENQ, I brought my old Trek MB over about 18 months ago, unboxed, and paid neither a duty nor a bribe. I wheeled it right of the baggage claim at Swampy and through customs and never got a glance from anyone. Maybe the bike looked old and cheap enough they didn't care?

Your airline accepted an unboxed bicycle .. you were lucky!

EVA's website said to turn the handlebars parallel to the frame and remove the pedals. It said nothing about a box, and I'd never traveled with a bike so didn't think about a box. I had an interesting few minutes at the counter, but they accepted the bike and it arrived w/ zero damage. No extra baggage charges, either.

Come to think of it, I guess Customs didn't bother me because I looked like a tourist bringing in my bike to ride while here on vacation.

I'd just bring the guitars and buy a bike and a blender here. If you have friends here you can probably store the bike and blender when you leave.

KhunBENQ, I brought my old Trek MB over about 18 months ago, unboxed, and paid neither a duty nor a bribe. I wheeled it right of the baggage claim at Swampy and through customs and never got a glance from anyone. Maybe the bike looked old and cheap enough they didn't care?

3BB Gold, and I've had the account for six years. Generally it's been rock solid, if a little slow (3 MB down, o.7 MB up).

I haven't had any throughput issues, but have had intermittent DNS problems since last Friday (30 May, 2014). Really non-controversial sites like IMDB.com, wunderground.com, my.yahoo.com, gmail.com, and even ThaiVisa.com have disappeared and re-appeared. Potentially controversial sites load just fine, so it's probably not coup related.

[Edited a typo]

It's very good. I can see the in-laws' house as well as the gate to a farm we bought and both are in very rural western Ratchaburi.

we just need heineken and thai pussy

I don't like Heineken.

I think ThaiLife meant to post the siamphone link to Nokia X (an android-based phone) instead of the Nokia Lumia 630 dual sim (Windows Phone 8.1)

The Nokia Android fork/offshoot phones are actually pretty interesting because of one thing they bring - they come default with offline HERE mapping, don't they? Garmin licences their map data for their "City Navigator" maps... dang it, yet one more phone I have to buy

I bought one of these a couple of weeks ago. Android purists won't like it. Winfone purists probably won't like it either. I didn't like it at first, but I've gotten used to it. I sometimes bicycle in areas where data coverage is spotty, and I don't need data 24/7 anyway, so the offline mapping was the selling point. The phone part is fine, the GPS receiver seems a bit slow compared to my tablet, but it does work. I don't care about browsing, games, videos, music or email on my phone, so none of that mattered. It's good for me, but definitely not a phone for sophisticated Android users. Go to a store and play with one before you decide to buy. For me the phone, mapping and camera (not great but I don't cycle at night) were adequate and it was cheap and not too big.

I've had a TF700T (bought in the US) for about 14 months. I added a Bluetooth keyboard rather than the ASUS keyboard - that connector never looked strong or reliable enough to me. The keyboard came with a nice case and it holds the tablet upright.

It's been a fine, reliable tablet, but I can't say I push it to its limits. I mostly use it to read books and newspapers and such. I watched Avatar on it as a test and it was fine for video. It's fine for Skype, etc. Music and movies sound good through decent earbuds, but I think the external sound is mono. I don't play games. I don't have another tablet to compare it to, but battery life has seemed okay.

The downside of my particular model, or ASUS, is that ASUS won't be upgrading Android past 4.2.1 on that model. For me that doesn't matter, but it might for you. I never rooted it, and though I have the Android dev system (it's free to download) never bothered to write any code for it.

Hope that helps.

Thaksin is on record as saying he views Yingluck as his daughter

How does he view his daughter? As his wife?

Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

To the MODS... it is exactly about this situation and how the REDS are going on April 43 to cause CHAOS if Yingluck is in trouble. They have been sprouting off thier mouths so much that the figures for Tourism appear down 30% across the board for the same comparative period last year. (this was on this forum yesterday) So regardless of TAT this is no tit for TAT and now the effects on Thailand will be hard. So Yinny and co, what do you have to say to the people who ENTRUSTED you to care for them,?

This was in the Australian newspaper THE AGE. Now that was today and each day there has been something about this little fiasco going on here. Australia is a LARGE PART opf the tourism market to thailadn considering our small population so this certainly will not help the little shops on the soi's.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/thailands-red-shirts-gear-up-for-a-fight-20140331-zqouc.html

What in the world does this rant mean? Are you blaming the half-dozen, maybe ten or so 'red shirts' on Thai Visa for the drop in tourism and expecting the MODS to stop them from posting their opinions even if they follow the rules of the board?

If the protest had stopped when the amnesty bill was killed, the tourist season would have probably been pretty normal. Tourists don't care whether the Thai government is 'good' or 'bad', but they get scared off by protests and riots and grenades. I doubt they get scared off by guys arguing on web forums. Endless, useless arguing has been a part of the internet since the days of usenet. It's not likely to change.

As long as the red's chaos is scheduled for April 43, we'll be safe. (edit was for a stupid typo.)

This one is highly evocative, for anyone who knows anything about Thai history.

Yeah - the first thing I noticed about the series was that it's Manee. Then I saw this page. When I first saw the picture it's based on, I thought it was from Cambodia. It wasn't until many years later I learned it was from Thailand.

"Study hours for Thai students are five times more than countries such as the US and Canada where students spend 600-700 hours in classes while Thai students 2,000-3,600 hours."

Lets look:

52 Weeks have a year.

12 weeks are vacation

40 weeks lectures * 5 days a week = 200 days

3600 / 200 = 18 hours per day spend in classes (from 8am morning to 2am after midnight)

2000 / 200 = 10 hours per day spend in classes (from 8am morning to 6pm)

average = 14 hours per day spend in classes (from 8am morning to 10pm)

average = 70 hours per week.

I do not know what they are doing in the classes, but I doubt the data base and the validity of data collection too.

In Ramkhamhaeng (the largest university in Bangkok) and generally in Bangkok,i see every day oodles of students on the streets,

- shopping, in cinemas, in restaurants and in the evening in discos and pubs.-

No way that they study day per day, spending 14 hours in classes.

20% of State Budget for education?

If this is true, than we have here maybe another rice school scam.

Yeah, the math for hours in class doesn't work at all. Thus, how much can we trust the numbers for expenditure?

There's certainly a story to be written about Thai education. Unfortunately, this one isn't it.

More mob rule

And that's a worry. Societies always take law and order and social cohesion for granted until they're gone. Then the job of restoring them is massive and takes years.

As I posted on another thread, I believe people are too sanguine about what's happening here. Political deadlock, a military paralyzed for fear of precipitating a major internal split, angry mobs on the street, the prime minister nowhere to be seen or heard and powerless to boot,....it's a witches brew for complete anarchy and social breakdown.

Of course, people will say that Thailand has been through all this political turmoil before, but I'm not so sure. It's like watching the build up to a Thai bar fight. Words, more words, scuffle, more words, finger pointing, raised voices, pushing, more words, more words again,and just when you think it's all so much piss and wind and is going to peter out- all hell breaks loose and people are literally trying to kill each other. I hope I'm wrong but I have a sense that the stuff before - yellow shirts, coups, red shirts, etc, were like the the raised words and scuffles - just hors d'oeuvres to build up momentum for the real thing.

The army is the real worry here. In the past it's always been able to put a clamp on things. I'm not so sure it can anymore without falling to pieces.

Your second sentence is spot on. " Societies always take law and order and social cohesion for granted until they're gone."

This is my worry, too, as it was in 2010. I couldn't care less about scoring points in an argument on a web forum. What am I going to do, what is my Thai family (which includes red supporters, yellow supporters and one unsuccessful BhumJaiThai politician) going to do if the sh*t really hits the fan? My only comfort is that they live way to the west in Ratchaburi. Pretty much gateway to Burma, and a really peaceful community.

Of course alot of thais dont like farang.

A lot of Farangs don't like Farangs also.

I Know, they do smell somewhat

Sunset put these stupid farangs who think they know more about thailand than all the other farangs.

Please explain to them what "farang kee nok" means as YOU are thai.

What, who is Sunset ?

Ok, I will try my best to explane in English

Yes we use farang Kee Nok for cheap , stingy farangs....actually "Farang Kee Nok" its mean guawa (fruit) that grow from bird which it have eaten guawa and poo/shit somewhere else which its mean for fruit Guawa (farang) smaller, and less taste than the original flavour ones.

Hope you all able to understand what i mean

Thanks sunset a real answer from a real thai.

To sum it up its an insult then

Please i hope there isnt a farang out there who is going to disagree with a her a thai native speaker.

"Farang" also means guava in Thai. She said there is a kind of guava that no one likes to eat and it's called "farang kee nok".

Since I'm the only person I know of who actually referred to asking their better half, and although Sunset quoted your later post about this which didn't refer to asking a Thai partner, perhaps you'd like to tell me in what major way these definitions conflict with each other. The only differences I see is that I didn't specify why no one wants to eat it, and that Sunset specified that the guava seeds came from bird shit so were no good, which anyone who knows about propogation of fruits would find laughable. (Sunset, that's not directed at you - my gf knows i understand two definitons of kee or khi, so she knew I knew bird poo already.)

I do not know if the farang kee nok is bad because it's a slightly different fruit or because of some microclimate difference. I only know there's farang people want to eat, and ones they don't want to eat. My gf's family works with fruit of various kinds, so I figured her etymology wasn't too bad, and I was right. Neither of us filled in the parts that had been covered already.

As far as the insult part, I'll confess, I was trying to be charitable to the OP's wife's family. My best friend in Thailand aside from my gf is her sister's bf, a Thai man, and no matter how drunk we were, and how much bs we were talking, if he said that without me understanding the context, I'd be pretty pissed off. He would be much more likely to call me khi niaow in a Thai karaoke where some little girl thought I should give her twice as much as he would, and he knows I would consider that a compliment because I know he'd also be saying," he's not a fool, I've known him a couple of years".

Sorry BygonKeaw if I misunderstood your motivation. Since I read most of the thread and as far as I saw, was the only person who quoted a Thai partner, and was right, I found the post before the one Sunset quoted a bit offensive.

I still haven't figured out the lady in the Mercedes with her husband, though...

Just talked to my Thai gf about this. No question that "farang kee nok" is an insult, meaning a bad farang. But the actual meaning she gave it was interesting. "Farang" also means guava in Thai. She said there is a kind of guava that no one likes to eat and it's called "farang kee nok". She said she will show me a farang kee nok tree next time we're at her home in Ratchaburi.

There are a lot of friendly insults hurled around between her friends and family, and between us. For instance, she may call to me, "Hey, muu see kao", to which I'll respond, "Yes, madame" (mahdahm, a posh pronunciation). She just called me a white pig and if I got the tones right, I called her a black dog, leaving out "see", or color, which isn't absolutely necessary and would ruin the joke.

I guess it's possible the OP's wife's family was just joking with her about her "useless farang husband" in a friendly way and had no idea he would recognize the phrase.

Coming from Chiangmai to spend some time and new year eve in Hua-Hin, would anyone recommend a cool place (outside of the hotel scene) where reasonable food and ambiance could be found. Thank you

you could try el murphys they have a live band on most nights and very good food at decent prices,near the bintabaht

El Murphy's is a good bet. GF tells me that LimeLight, just across the intersection from El Murphy's, will have a 'cabaret' so if you don't like one, the other is very nearby. It's near the center of the main restaurant/bar/nightclub area so a good place to start anyway. Walk around some and have a good time!