JensenZ

Thanks for reminding me about Covid 19 - I forgot, though for some reason I'm always wearing a mask and now I know why. I don't need to rely on YouTubers to show me Walking Street. It's near my home and I ride up it most days. Most places have been closed and most of these will never reopen... so eventually some businesses will return, but at what level? My prophesied demise of Walking Street is not negative doomsaying. There was no need for the phychological profiling. I'm not sad or happy about how things are on Walking Street. It is what it is and people can make predictions without being sad. Maybe you are the one living a sad life because Walking Street used to be your source of happiness. What's wrong with it being replaced with a nice shopping mall and hotel? Would that make you sad?

250 Mbps/8 = 31.25 MB/s. The speed you get is very dependent on the number of seeders of course. I will get high speeds on the latest popular offerings.

Your speed is not choked at night by your ISP. Your speed rating is a shared bandwidth and it will depend on what your nieighbours are doing. At night more people might be watching movies and downloading, hence your lower speed. Most cheap services we are talking about here are shared with 20 - 30 neighbours. The cheaper you pay, the more neighbours you are likely to have. This will vary from ISP to ISP and where you live. I don't have a problem with speed dropping at any time of the day. The only way to avoid this is to lease your own line, but that will cost a fortune. You can also pay for business packages which all ISPs do offer, which are much more expensive, but share with fewer neighbours. But if you're only watching movies, it doesn't really matter if it takes 1 minute or 15 minutes to download... with slower connections, just think ahead and download while you sleeping or doing something else.

I was responding to a suggestion that downloading is becoming archaic, not really which is better, however, having used both methods I strongly disagree. My method is better, faster and easier, and if you're a person who likes to rewind to rewatch scenes, a lot better at that too... not to mention logging into streaming servers can be a pain too. Navigating inside the movie is so much easier with the movie on the hard drive. I don't arhive many movies. I watch them, and after I've done my social duty seeding back, delete them. With the size of hard drives these days, it's not a problem.

Have you been for a walk down Walking Street recently? It's far from being ok. It looks like a bombsite. The reason they (council) haven't bothered to repave it or do anything to improve it may indicate they are going to pull it down soon. I super shopping mall on the beachfront is not a bad idea. It's had its moment - its time is over.

There was a recent report from Australia about this. They just reopened international travel, but most people are putting off international travel and choosing to holiday domestically instead. It's going to take awhile and Thailand is not on every country's safe list yet.

I know one way to make KSR busy. Open an official Apple Store there. Despite the poverty caused by the lockdowns, you can only buy the new iPhones by pre-ordering them. Phones costing 25K to 50K are selling like hotcakes. There's still money around, that's for sure.

I never fogot this. The world's wealthy have increased their combined wealth by about 50% since the pandemic began. I'm sure that goes for Thailand's billionaires too. However, the wealthy who acquire real estate in KSR and Walking Street might have different ideas of what to do with it.

Yes, I agree. On rare occassions it might require clarification, but mostly it does not as most people are on the non-O visa. In fact, my extensions of stay are ON an non-O visa, meaning I'm actually getting extensions of stay ON my visa. No non-O visa - no extenstions of stay. Try getting an extension of stay with no visa. My visa class is "Non-O - RE" stamped in my passport.

It might never come back - just like Walking Street in Pattaya. A relic of times past.

And thank God for that ("Bangkok will never be Singapore").

I use an agent now after doing it myself for 10 years. Actually I can't call it an agent as I deal directly with an immigration officer. It's money well spent IMO. I go INTO the immigration office and get smiling service from people who don't normally smile. It takes about 5 minutes. This year, I went on a Monday and just knocked on her outside office window as it was too busy inside and she handled it through the window. Talk about an expidited service - It was a wonderful experience.

Here we go again. Nitpicking the use of "retirement visa". It never gets old. As soon as they change the meaning of visa, which clearly covers the "extension of stay" term... a term probably used nowhere else in the world and only by nitpicking expats at that. Oxford dictionary: noun noun: visa; plural noun: visas an endorsement on a passport indicating that the holder is allowed to enter, leave, or stay for a specified period of time in a country. In Thailand, no matter where you go, to conduct official business (hotels, banks), they want to see your visa and they call it that too. What am I to say? "Sorry, I don't have a "visa", only an "extension of stay".... and they might say "sorry, you have no visa - no can do" The best solution is that people like me can use inverted commas so as not to incur the wrath of the nitpickers.... or the nitpickers can just give it a break and relax. We all know exactly what they are.

They might be serious. but the delivery people will always be one step ahead of them. Let's hope they don't do what they did in major cities in China and ban motorcycles completely. It could happen.

Don't get too smug about this. He might double down on his disdain for foreigners and take out his frustrations on the rest of us "dirty" people. In Thailand he runs the show, irrespective of what we may think.

By Thailand standards, maybe, but yes, it's looks quite standard and nothing special.

Well, I didn't receive the memo. I had an amazing lawyer that got me out of a very complicated legal battle in 2 separate cases (one civil, one criminal).... and for a very good price. Ironically, a bad lawyer got me into the sh*t that I needed the good lawyer to get me out of. Guess where I found the firm? On here, as recommended by other expats at the time (2017). If you're in Pattaya and need legal assistance, send me a PM.

Looks like a great swamp for breeding mosquitos. This might be a legal angle to follow. If these people have enough money to buy a big house, they should be able to afford a good lawyer, because that's the only way anything can be done.

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There's no problem with my wifi, but if you have fast fiber connection, with LAN straight to your PC, it's not a matter of "each to his own", but what is better. Having a movie ON your hard drive is far superior to streaming it. My PC is connected to my TV. I'm also a YouTube guy but you don't have to be one or the other - you can be both. I wouldn't watch movies on YouTube though, preferring HD or Ultra HD on the big screen.

Not at all. It's far better than streaming and is not going anywhere. It's faster to get what you want, and you have a much larger selection... and you don't need to log into a streaming service. There's a lot of older, good stuff you will never find on streaming services.

LOL. You would never attempt that on a public road. You'd need to be an experienced race driver on a special, very long, straight race track. You can grab one in Thailand (cheaper model) for only 113,600,000 baht (about 3.5 million USD) and test it out. https://www.ccarprice.com/th/bugatti-chiron-car-price-in-thailand-398

I have downloaded bittorrents for 15 years, so I have downloaded a few terrabytes by now. I don't spend my retirement watching movies (if that is what you're implying) and spend most of my time online trading, so I need the best possible connection I can get with no compromise to save a few baht. Disconnections at the wrong times can cost money. In fact, a few years ago I was paying over 5000 baht for my (at the time) fast fiber. 500/500 has significant meaning as it's your starting point to get the fastest International speeds possible. If you start lower, you'll end up with less speed. I don't know how good your True 500/500 service is vs CAT. They're probably about the same, but it's the CAT service I appreciate., High speed movie downloads is a convenient advantage to a good connection, but not the reason I got it. When I've finished my work, I look for something to watch and get it quickly. If I don't like one movie, I trash it and get another, and another. Quick is great. It's much better to download than stream. I tried Netfilx for awhile, but there's no need. I can get everything I want when I want it, for free. The navigation through movies that are streamed is cumbersome vs downloaded copies that are on your PC... and of course you don't get a spinning clock, and can watch even when your connection is down (if that ever occurs). TOT were never affiliated with CAT. They amalgamated last year to form "NT Telecom". I also have used TOT, and agree their service was extremely poor. I've also TT&T and 3BB (TT&T was 3BB before they changed names). In fact, my experience with TOT was so bad that when I got the letter explaining the amalgamation and name change, the first thing I did was email my account manager. I was dreadfully concerned that the service level would drop.

Let's assume you are not joking or trolling, and just had difficulty understanding what I posted. Slim chance, but I'll take it. 26.6 seconds is the speed of downloading a 3 GB file if you are getting a full 900 Mbps speed at your bittorrent client and the torrent has ample seeders. I get a max of around 30 MB/s, which is 240 Mbps and it would take 100 seconds, hence my comment that I can download a 2 - 3 GB movie in 1 or 2 minutes. As it happens, a lot of files will take longer due to the torrent not being "healthy". Either way, I have movies to watch in about the same time as it takes to prepare a cup of instant coffee. Using my Mesh Wifi routers (2 provided free of charge), I have enough speed to stream 2160p video anywhere in the house. Think of it like this. You're driving a Bugatti Chiron, which has a top speed of about 490 km/h, on a congested freeway, where your maximum possible speed is 90 km/h. This discourse started as a recommendation to get NT Internet (ex-CAT) if you want reliability. I've used CAT since 2006, at which time my max speed was 2/1 Mbps. They used to be much more expensive than their competitors, but they have now caught up in speed for price, and have much better customer service. still have much better service.

Ever the joker... I download a lot of movies and TV packs, of 10 - 30 GB. Allow me to elaborate so you might understand how it works. You should know what the specs of Internet packages are, and what they mean. They are rated as the maximum download/upload speed to servers in Thailand. It's the absolute most speed you can get. I download 2- 3 GB moves very fast, but not at 900 (or so) Mbps which is 112.5 MB/s (divide by 8). If I got the full movie download speed on torrents of 112.5 MB/s, it would take exactly 26.7 seconds to download a 3 GB movie. Go back and read my post. I said 2 - 3 GB in a minute or two. I can reach download speeds of 20 - 30 MB/s on many healthy torrents (the number of people seeding a torrent is most important). Assuming a download speed of 30 MB/s, that would take 100 seconds to download 3 GB and 150 seconds at a slower speed of 20 MB/s.... and we also talking about 2 GB, so most certainly it takes a minute or two. ... therefore my estimate is right on the money.