ThailandTony

Can't believe nobody has suggested you book the hotel for an extra day and go straight from the hotel, forget messing about in Bangkok, you can use the limo service from the airport, be in your bed by 02:30 (no traffic at night) and have all of the facilities that you want for the rest of your holiday from the moment you arrive. Anything else is just a waste of time and money.....you know it makes sense!

Happy Holidays!!!

Congratulations Dean, nice to hear some proper good news for once. Just hope that the judges words havn't put your hourly rates as high as the plane your Mrs will be on soon. All the very best.

Another chance for the snipers to have a go at someone. Well done to all of those community hearted people and good luck on your exit/re-entry OP.

To all at TV and Martin at FC, thanx from Chaiyaphum and unfortunately Bahrain were I am just now, look forward to the pics and the stories that are sure to follow.... Have a good time guys....TT!

Some things never change regardless which country your in.

After dropping our son off at his 1st day at school in Bahrain, my wife & I went to look at a villa for rent and I was ordered to STOP by the wife outside what I knew to be the wrong villa. As she has only been here a week I was a little perplexed but it suddenly dawned on me why we had stopped. She had spotted a "salad" tree that she recognised and after a rummage on a neighbouring building site for half a minute she came out with a stick and started thwacking the tree. Large curly pods started landing everywhere and before we knew it we had a bag full! We then went to see the villa which wasn't up to much but went home happy with our salad catch.

This is a scene I have played out dozens of times in Thailand and its good to know we have good salad trees here in Bahrain to!

Keep thwackin them branches guys!

This is true Mac, always something to do around the place, especially if the builders have only just left!....haha. I just finished a small house in Chaiyaphum m/pants, did it long distance (Isend the money, the wife gives it to the builder....haha) The only real pitfall was making sure what wasn't in the bill for the finishes, ie tile shop scenario:

me: ok, what tiles can I have?

builder: (picks 3 bland and cheap tiles) you have these tiles

m: I don't like the colour, you have some other colour?

b: you have these tiles

m: ok, can I have 450 x 450 not 150 x 150?

b: you have these tiles

m: ok, I want non-slip, these are fully glazed

b: you have these tiles

m:lol....ok...what if I pay more money

b: you have ANY tiles

Haha....this same scenario was played out at the paint shop, the bathroom shop, the door shop, the aluminium shop etc.etc.....but in the end it only cost me an extra 80 k on a 620k build for a 120m2 3-bed so not to worry.

Good luck to all house builders and rice planters!

Same same on the rice front Mac, been having alot of night storms the last few weeks, some have already sown and our 30 Rai are being sown now. Had alot of flooding at the end of the season last year so nobody wants to lose their yield this year.

Hi All, back in Bahrain after another fun and adventure packed couple of weeks in my adopted country, Thailand. I think I was the only falang actually flying IN to Thailand for Songkran....lots of stories and photo's to follow.....just wanted to share one of the funnier days at home.

I have a katom (same same Sala) at the end of Mama's garden next to a big fish pond, about 20m x 10m x 3m where I have a hammock slung for those lazy afternoons. The location is perfect for a snooze, great view across the paddy's and surrounded on all sides by 15ft high bamboo. On the day in question a beautiful nap with afternoon breeze was interupted by the unwelcome drone of a generator starting up. Now Mama doesn't own a genny so this drew me out of my slumber only to see that Papa had attached what looked like a little genny to the end of a 4m long 6" pipe. I'd seen these before as they are used to irrigate the fields but normally with a lod Thai (tractor engine with handlebars) attached. Roused I wondered what was going on and got the gist that Papa was now pumping all of the water out of the pond. We have a klong (stream) bed at the end of the garden which of course is mostly dry at this time of year so was thirsty for our 400-500 m3 of water.

So what were they doing? It takes some time to shift that much water and my normally secluded end of the garden gradually became more and more populated by our kids, the village kids, family and friends. For what?

FISHING!!!!!

Anyone who thinks Thai people are daft need to spend some time in my village. Not a single rod! No nets! Not even a nylon line with a bent nail on the end! They emptied the pond, everyone climbed in and they lifted the fish out of the mud like they were going out of fashion haha! Big and small they were all extracted and then the real work started!

Anybody who ever wondered why the Thai's, especially the Isaarns, like Pa La (stinky fish paste) too mud, it takes a hel_l of a lot of effort to make it. The fish are obviously all gutted and scaled then everything is chopped up to a medium coarse paste then malleted with the pestle and mortar (pock pock pock) until everything is ground down to a fine paste and then bottled. A hel_l of a lot of effort but many hands make light work.

In these situations I often sit watching with a chilled bottle of Leo just wondering what anybody who knew me from home or from work would make of it in the absolute knowledge that they would never associate me with this scene. It is completely alien to most Westerners and complete heaven to me.

The reason for the Pa La fiesta? My wife and kids came back with me to Bahrain this time to stay here full time and we needed a shed load of Pa La to make the transition smoother. When we went to Dubai I could smell our bags 10 minutes before we saw them and so could everyone else....haha! We pretended not to recognise it as we lifted our damp and extremely smelly bag onto the trolley and sniffed our way through customs, all the time looking over our shoulders as if we were as disgusted by the smell as everyone else....haha.

My wife had the answer to my question before I asked it as we packed our bags last week. "5 BAG" she laughed holding up the big jar of Pa La bagged 5 times just in case...haha.

Now in Bahrain a week it has certainly helped having a big jar of Pa La. Word went around the Thai community and all the Isaarn ladies started making house calls and within a week my wife has met more people here than I have!

More to follow.....Special Hi to MacB, Bee and Jasmin ("did we settle on Jasmin?...or Gloria...lol")

I am obviously in the minority on this subject, I really enjoy Songkran!

I am flying back to Thailand on Wedenesday morning to collect friends and family of my wife from Bangkok and then make the journey to a new Songkran destination for us this year, Ubon Ratchatani. This will be my 5th straight year in Thailand during the holidays, we have mixed it up between Pattaya, Chaiyaphum, Pattaya, Chaiyaphum and now Ubon. We have a pick-up and it is great to take the kids (young and old....haha) around and enjoy the atmosphere from the Thai point of view. Of course there are those that push it to far and for sure some people are down right dangerous but I have found that to be the exception not the norm.

Songkran sanook mak mak!....Chak dee naaaaaah!

Japan already has this problem solved

I saw on UK TV the other night that the solution lies in onacup

Do a search on google for onacup and you will see some dongles that knock the socks off Thai 7/11 male or female dongles...

fyi : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onacup

THe best part is the link to the Japanese article....quote "At Tokyo’s 2006 Gay and Lesbian festival, Tenga actually set up a mobile shop (see above) where they were introducing the onacup line and passing out samples to lucky w#####s."

Doubled up laughing at this one! What's wrong with a load of inulation tape around a banana skin?....lol

Never mind - Thailand can tax the he11 out of the internet - the canny chaps at google anticipated this and have a solution :

http://www.google.com/tisp/

It looks pretty good and should be able to over come the "blockage" in thailand from hereon

yes you can escape internet prohibition thanks to the trustworthy search giant !

freedom2surf man !

EXTREMELY Funny.....I've gotta flush my internet worries away.....sign me up!....ROFL.....this has been a great start to a Sunday....lol

I would hope this is an April Fool's joke and not real. Because it would be the last straw and i would move out of thailand. Obviously thailand wants foreign money and not the foreigner. And without foreign money we all know thailand would be just another desert.

Thailand ~ "The land of goh hok kee gong"

No one smiling anymore except the thai's.

What a load of rubbish.....that would be a metaphorical desert would it...lol....if you need a lift to the airport give me a call!

That would have really set them off mate....I can just see it now...."In an effort to appease the Muslim minority and settle the restless South, all male Muslims on presentation of the Koran and an uncircumcised penis will be given free access dongles so they can surf all day rather than run around shooting and bombing each other"......lol

Anyone that got to the bottom of the 2nd page without laughing their dongle off and checking the calendar has to seriously consider nipping down the pharmacy for a packet of Chill Pills!

I am still amazed that people are still ranting on 9 pages in!

Very, very, very funny George & Co......remember thers still another 11 hours of the day left everyone!

I know about april 1, and all the stupidity that people have to unload and endure.

I really had hoped, in vain, that living in Thailand would have freed me from all this bloody nonsense.

I think it is bad enought that the Thai government is blocking Sites for me, as it is!

However, everything even a little relating to sex is under scrutiny, but I tried to obtain some info how to fabricate bombs, kill people, in short, very dangerous things in the hands of people that want to do wrong.

Guess what.....all free to view.

I think that looking at male and female "meat" and so on, is infenitely much more dangerous as looking at bloodshed, murder, killing, blowing up things, and more of those very nice things.

I think all readers of ThaiVisa will agree with me!

But please, no more April stupidity.

Please do not fuel the "blame the farang" mentality.

Thank you so much.

However......it was a good one!

WARNING.....WARNING.....sense of humour failure ALERT....ALERT....

Apparantly if you can get a BG to dangle from your dongle while surfing porn sites there is a further 69% discount!

There is no substitute for experience and ours (The good doctors and mine) sounds like reasonable & practical advice. Those BTU calculators are way off, and as we said, you only need the full capacity of the units for a 2 month period in April/May. Sound advice also on good insulating techniques Doc!

I have a 78 m2 living room, with a 3m high ceiling and average wall/ceiling insulation. I have 2 units, 1 x 18k & 1 x 24k positioned at opposite ends of the 13 x 6 room. They eat up my a/c requirements for breakfast. 2x 40k is super overkill and v. expensive, Your gut feeling was correct, they are trying to oversell you, and a/c systems increase in cost exponentially so they are really spanking your monkey. If you want to play safe go for 2 x 24k split units and you'll never look back. Also if 1 goes wrong you'll still have the other as back-up. The secret is a high ceiling and lower FCU's. Mine are at +2.2m and ceiling height is +3.0m so they deliver the cold air below the warmest air and from either end so they balance the temperature across the room. 6 months of the year I only need to use 1 or no units so I am happier not having a very expensive a/c not working half of the year. Good luck.

Blah Blah Blah Religion Christians Agnostics Conservatives Politicians... I don't like Christians or Conservatives... Agnostics are undercover Christians...Blah Blah Blah

Excuse me, but don't you think you might be a tad off-topic here? Were talking about the brutal murder of two young beautiful Russian girls, in case you didn't notice.

It is generally considered bad form to misquote.

In any case, the topic has become a little repetitive

Hi Doc, whilst I respect your right to defend yourself, it would appear that most of your recent posts on this thread are only doing just that, which in itself is a little repetitive. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not going into posting battle with you, but I do believe you have made your point.

Regards....TT.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2007/02/26...es_30027896.php

Police are questioning known members of Russian gangs living in Pattaya....I guess these would be the non-existant foreign gangs that are not in Pattaya, according to the "acting" Police Chief....he should stick to comedy as he seems more of a joker!

Pattaya police have questioned a Russian male who knew both victims and visited sites with them. The unidentified man and another Russian male were seen chatting with the women on Friday afternoon.

Oh yeah and this one is choice.....after questioning the Russian male he remains "unidentified" and so does his mate! Not up to the normal MiB confession extracting techniques this one, they don't know who they have just spoken to....this has got to be just woeful, woeful, horrible, awful reporting.....please don't let it be true!

Police search for two suspects in beachside slaying of Russian women

Police investigating the slaying of two Russian women who were shot dead as they waited for the sun to rise at Jomtien beach last Saturday are searching for two men, one of whom may have been a foreign national.

Video footage of the scene and a roadway show the gunman driven on a motorcycle by a tall, hefty man who appears to be a foreigner, police said.

Police believe he may have been on the same Siberian Air flight that carried the two women to Thailand on February 16, a senior police commander said yesterday.

Lt-General Assawin Khwanmueng said investigators were examining the passenger list of the charter flight, SBI 849. There were 201 passengers, including 10 children, he said.

Police have yet to determine whether the double homicide is linked to Pattaya's notorious sex trade.

Tatiana Tsimfer, 30, and Liubov Svirkova, 25, were found dead in their beach chairs at 5am on Saturday.

Video footage from surveillance cameras showed a lone gunman shooting 10 rounds at the victims before fleeing on a waiting motorcycle driven by another male.

Vladimia Viprovin, the Russian consul in Pattaya who is assisting police investigating the crime, dismissed speculation that the women were sex workers. Both had full-time jobs in Russia and were on their first visit to Thailand, Vladimia said.

Based on the images from the video footage, Police say the killer is a tall and thin, non-western male.

They say footage from cameras at U Tapao airport, where flight SBI 849 landed, will be checked for more clues.

Police are also questioning unregistered tour guides to identify the one the women had hired shortly after they arrived. The male guide has disappeared, but his image is on a video camera belonging to one of the victims.

Pattaya police have questioned a Russian male who knew both victims and visited sites with them. The unidentified man and another Russian male were seen chatting with the women on Friday afternoon.

Police said the motorcycle driver could be a foreign national due to his large build and height, which was up to 180 centimetres, according to footage from cameras on a major road heading to Chachaengsao that was used as an escape route.

Acting Police Chief Seripisut Temiyavej said he believed the murders could have been ordered or carried out by foreign gangs in Pattaya. He threatened to take action against Pattaya's police for failing to deal with the problem of foreign gangs.

Pattaya police chief Colonel Suthin Phuangsab said he believed the gunman was a Thai. He claimed that there were no foreign gangs in Pattaya.

What a complete load of drivel, it seems that the police suspect anyone who has had contact with these ladies!.... and the Acting Police Chief says it could be a foreign gang where as the actual Police Chief (who is obviously in total denial) says there are no foreign gangs in Pattaya! If these really are quotes I cringe at the impression anyone outside of Thailand is getting of the competency of our MiB!

What was the source of this choice piece of Pulitzer Prize winning journalism?....it did not appear with the post!

Totally gobsmacked here!!

*** UPDATE ***

Source: Pattaya Daily News: February 25th 2007

Anonymous tip off:

"the answer in las vegas gogo bar"

Link below:

Las Vegas Go-Go

Interesting link, well played Libya, pours some wee wee on the fire of those suggesting nothing doing for russian ladies wanting work in the Thai tourist industry. I don't know if there was any substance behind it but the reference to Siberia is intersesting as others suggested that these ladies were from that part of Russia. I had a girlfriend from here when I worked in Russia, looked very similar to the blonde lady, thats why I have a heartfelt interest in this tragedy.

Can anybody confirm if they leave all of the deckchairs and tables out at this location?....if they don't then these girls must have had company, you don't go to the beach and set-up a table and 6 chairs if there are only 2 of you. Also bottles of wine are not readily available at 7/11 last time I looked. These girls were comfortable enough to have swam, hence the towel around the midrif of the lady in white and no shorts/skirt. This looks like friendly girls get whacked by companion(s) doing something they planned to do and had done before. They have bikini's and towels, wine and a bottle of strong stuff from hotel or shop. You ever try getting out of a deck chair half cut/drugged (on drugs?....maybe) and now on the wrong end of a load of bullets! B4 anyone shouts me down for calling the girls junkies, please don't, I am not. Look at my earlier posts, nothing but sympathy for these poor girls. Just exploring the possibilities.

Those boot treads look like Timberlands to anyone else?