n8sail

I did a solo bicycle tour from Chiang Mai to Nakon Sawan back in early December 2017, 6 days. That area is very nice to ride. You can mostly stay off the main roads if you plan routes well. I highly recommend riding the small roads that go along the bank of the Ping river, the area just north of Nakon Sawan is especially nice. You've got a good bike for it, I used a gravel touring bicycle and often wished I changed to wider tires as I was on 32mm width. There was some rice growing, not full height yet. The ride on Route 106 from Lamphun to Sukhothai is especially nice. It's a pretty good climb, but not a lot of traffic and an amazing twisty turny descent going down the Eastern side. Kampaeng Phet is a great area also, I spent a night there. That would be a good spot for a 'home base'. I also really enjoyed Nakon Sawan, the downtown has a nice nightlife, some larger hotels with helpful staff, and a very nice park with a lake in the middle of the town. The temple on the hilltop overlooking is also really cool. Easy train / bus access in Nakon Sawan. I use google maps to navigate, and just use the 'walk' instructions which often guides you through fields and dirt roads, which is really fun and sometimes lead to some funny encounters in the middle of nowhere with locals who had never seen a westerner on a bicycle in their area before. I'm sure you can do the same with Open Street Maps.

RIP fellow cyclist. Good Buddha... dragged him for FIVE freakin' kilometers. Hope they catch whoever did this and hell raineth down on them. Whoever this guy was, he was not poor. Just the fork alone, a Rock Shox RS-1 29er fork for cross country mountain bike racing, was around 60,000 baht when new. Head tube of bicycle frame ripped right off, clearly was a carbon fiber frame as well. Helmet was over 6000 baht. Very unfortunately a helmet was not going to help in this case. Having ridden through Kampaeng Phet several years ago, it's a very nice place to ride, but as with everywhere on the Buddhaforsaken roads of this country, you must ride with eyes in the back of your head wide open.

The link is working just fine for me, no VPN, just AIS 5G router. Fast! PM me if you want me to host it for you on either onedrive or google drive so you can download directly. The link is from a google drive account. Note that I am downloading from an Incognito Window and not signed into any google account on it, so that is not an issue, anonymous download allowed.

I use Proton VPN in Windows 11... free and has USA and a couple other servers. It works well for just browsing, downloading a gigabyte of data through it might take a while but it should work. BTW, AIS is extremely fast depending where you are. I have AIS in my Samsung S23 and also Ruio 5G home-based routers in my office, and regularly see speeds of 150+ mb/s on both devices, sometimes nearly 200, even on very large files. Downloaded a 2.3Gb Linux distro the other day in well less than 5 minutes! About 1250 baht/month for the unlimited plan with the Ruio router. I'm sitting in a metal portable building, amazed that it still works this quickly.

mmmmm maybe on the open China Sea it did... literally ZERO chance there were maximum sustained one minute gusts of 207 kph over inland Isaan. Bull tonky! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Vamco

The tornados that destroy whole towns in the USA have winds 250-300+ kilometers per hour. I've been through some horrible storms here in Thailand, have never seen more than about 120 kilometers per hour / ~60 knots. This much wind is very easy to plan for.

I agree about reducing taxes on things like wine and other 'luxury' things that would draw in foreign tourists. Same for microbreweries. Been to a few in Bangkok, some are excellent and indeed you run into some political dissidents in them. It's refreshing, both literally and figuratively. However, even though I would love to someday have a BMW or Porsche or Mercedes, and could easily afford one in the USA... could you imagine the carnage on the roads if every Somchai could buy a base model 3 series for $43,800/less than 1.5 million baht!?? Literally half of the households in Thailand would pile on debt to buy a new Beemer or Benz for that much money. Traffic and pollution and road safety would suffer. I don't think it's a bad move to keep these cars VERY expensive as it prevents most people from being able to buy them. All that said, it's incredible how many of these cars are on the road even with the ridiculous prices. Rayong seems to have more luxury cars than even the very wealthy Northeast USA state that I grew up in.

So hopefully that would mean that Chaitawat Thulaton is next in line. However, I would think the worst case scenario would be dissolution of the party ala K. Pita's previous party in 2019. Apparently K. Pita is not the only one with media company share issues... https://prachataienglish.com/node/10359

According to the article I posted above, ITV still 'trades', it runs some kind of radio show, and has a website with advertising revenue. It reported 21 million baht revenue in 2022. Ugh, I have a sick feeling about this...

I sure hope this is true! For the future of Thailand. According the the Thai PBS original reporting of this filing to the EC, he is shareholder #6121. In the OP here, it is reported that he is #7138. https://www.thaipbsworld.com/move-forward-party-leaders-political-future-uncertain/ So there is some kind of shenanigans going on here. Which shareholder# is he? At least they have the number of shares consistent between the two.

I have. Funny enough he is a divemaster on liveaboard dive boats in Phuket/Similans. Excellent underwater macro photographer as well.

Wonder if he's visiting this cutie from their podcast "Conan needs a friend" She is hilarious. If you listen to the whole podcast audio which is not shown on this Youtube clip, when Conan asks what she would take him to see if he visited, she literally says "Ping Pong Show!" They go on about this for a while, it is off-the-wall... ????

The EV cars we have were the same price as a base model Honda Civic. Better warranty, too... or, at least longer warranty. How claims against warranty are dealt with could be another thing entirely. TIT. I have a pickup truck bought new several years ago also. It is useful for pickup truck things, so I use it for those occasions. Like driving to a mountain top in 4-low to see talay mog, or towing boats, carrying bicycles, piles of kitesurfing gear etc. For my daily ~120km commute, the EV is faster, cheaper and more fun to drive. Truck cost exactly the same as EV, just under a million baht. You are unlikely to ever see me in a 'luxury' EV, which does indeed entail dealing with your above-quoted statement, I'm far too practical for that. Horses for courses and to each their own.

It is certainly a lot cheaper to drive an EV, we have 2 of them and girlfriend charges her completely free at work as she works at a large coal-fired power plant. But peak time public chargers are 7.5 baht/kWh, not 4.5. It is 4.5 at off-peak times. I know, we just used public chargers twice during Songkran, on the way to Koh Mak we paid 4.5 baht, on the way home 7.5 baht. Both were PTT EV Station PluZ chargers (120kw) Price is same whether Fast DC charger or AC. It cost us about 350 baht for electricity for 500km of driving round-trip. In my diesel truck the same trip would be about 1100 baht for fuel.

They are building an Icon Siam mall next to Ocean Marina in Na Jomtien. The new highway exits literally right there. The pilings are being driven as I type. As I live right there, I'm half excited, half terrified. Walking to the mall will be nice. The marina will get a lot more busy though. When they finally finish all the flyovers on Sukhumvit in that area traffic will be far better. Just be happy you guys don't live in Rayong. The house I lived in there for 7 years had construction on literally every single road in every direction from it for more than 5 years. It was absolute hell. They are STILL working on one of the intersections, literally 4 years now. It is an absolute embarrassment.

As I stated in my original post... I know for sure it's not everyone's cup of tea. For us, adventure, change of scenery, it's nice to be cold every once in a while when you live in a place that breaks 40C very often and 30C literally every single day. "To each their own" is the saying I believe. Also, you can't take your money with you. I'll likely have no heirs, so I choose to spend mine while I have the physical ability for adventure.

Compared to skiing in North America or Europe, it's cheap as chips!! In March this year we went to Austria to ski. While the lift ticket prices aren't all that bad, lodging and food and car rental were off the charts. Literally twice as much money spent as our New Zealand trip, and 4x as much as Japan. In Japan we lived like kings in comparison to Austria and New Zealand. Certainly Hokkaido is a little more, but if you ski at Nagano or Aomori prefectures on Honshu you can find lodging with breakfast and dinner included for about $100/night. Try that in USA or Europe!

When I first got together with my girlfriend 10 years ago, I traveled with her to places that were as opposite from Thailand as could be. We live in tropical paradise, don't need to see more of it when we travel. Usually we travel to go snow skiing. Japan is an easy trip, good snow (even this time of year) and 'exotic' enough to be a real adventure for a Thai. It's generally pretty cheap, too. If you have more money, go to South Island of New Zealand, rent a car and drive around. We did 2400km in 8 days a few years ago, and it was the most incredible adventure. She loved it and all her friends were fascinated by the stories and photos. Visa could be an issue for New Zealand if your girlfriend is not well-employed. Japan would be much easier I believe as many Thais travel there. Traveling to snowy places, while not everyone's cup of tea, seems to be a great novelty for Thai people. As a plus, you get to pay for a lot of new cold-weather clothing for her as well. Decathalon is the best place to kit up, cheap and relatively decent quality. There is no such thing as a woman that doesn't love lots more new, novel clothing! ???? I use this website almost exclusively to plan ski trips. Incredible, detailed reviews of resorts all over the world (no affiliation with them): https://www.powderhounds.com/

They are still around, but you have to go to actual Thai pubs not farang oriented bars. They are great fun to chat with if you can speak some Thai, generally much smarter than your average bar girl as they are usually university students. I was served by one at a place not far from Impact Arena just a couple weeks ago after the motor show. Normally if you give them beer they'll sit with you between serving other customers. Of course they are usually FAR more attractive than your average slapper from a farang bar as well. Leo ones seem to be the rarest, in Rayong it is mostly Chang girls and sometimes Singha. I did see some 'Tiger' girls once, can't remember where though.

In 2 years of using the #7 extension on a daily basis, every time the main motorway has no tolls, the extension also does not have tolls.

Girlfriend bought a new MG4 EV at the show. The benefit over our local dealership was that 8 years of free maintenance was included in the price. Otherwise, I can't see any benefit... actually a bit of a pain as she had to go back up to BKK to pick up the car. I got an MG EP EV (now called 'MG ES') 2 years ago when they first came out here in Thailand. I have serious car envy now, the MG4 is by far the better vehicle. Designed from ground up as an EV, rear wheel drive, 50/50 weight distribution and far nicer suspension. Not as comfy, but handles incredibly well for a sub 1 million baht car (after EV discount from government, and only available to Thais). MG4 has a smaller trunk/boot, but feels a little larger in the passenger area. Pretty smart marketing for an EV as in 55,000km and 2 years, my MG EP has required the addition of windshield washer fluid and literally nothing else except a set of tires as it is way too fun to light them up with the instantaneous full torque from stop lights. :D

Thanks to this posting I am once again re-reminded why I never watch Sailing La Vag EVER. In the beginning the channel was just ridiculous. Had eff-all sailing ability, endangering themselves and others constantly. Painful horrible drivel to watch. This new trimaran is a VERY nice boat, though. Much better sailing performance than their last condomaran that Greta crossed the pond on with them. What a ridiculous stunt that was. Most auxiliary sailing vessels use significantly more petroleum/person/mile traveled than a jet airliner when looked at over the full life of the vehicle. They are extremely wasteful. I still love them though ????

Just after the eh-holes invaded, g/f and I were eating outside at Wine Connection on Beach Rd and a car with two massive Ukrainian flags being held outside its open windows drove by, blasting some presumably Ukrainian music. No one even seemed to looked over at it. That said, there were very few Russians in town at that point. That act may get some attention nowadays.

I think that was the only time they met in person, so likely this was the time, if in fact true. I can't say any more because I might be racist according to all of the people here will have to self deport.

How is that racist?