n8sail

Also note that when buying from these "sketchy" tent shops, it is very possible that the odometer has been rolled back. 120,000 km on a 10 year old car is... well, questionable. My assistant sold her 10 year old Mitsu Triton with 235,000km on the odometer to a local 'tent' dealer here in Rayong. She found her exact truck 2 weeks later listed with the 'tent' dealer literally 200m away, with a photograph in the listing clearly showing 135,000km. I have heard this from other people as well, but just wanted to share this as I actually saw it happen myself. You're in luck with a corolla from this generation as it does not have a timing belt. Timing chains last a very long time and give some good warning signs when they start to stretch, and they rarely break. If you have an engine with a timing belt and you go well past the recommended replacement distance, you risk the belt breaking, without warning, and very likely ruining at least a couple valves if not the entire engine. Just be aware of this as the car ages. Things may fail sooner than you would think due to the odometer being changed. I would buy a cheapo bluetooth OBDII scanner and check it out myself. If that's above your paygrade, ask around for a good local mechanic that specializes in Toyota (probably very many in most areas of Thailand). I asked around and found an excellent and fair mechanic for my Ford truck. 1/10th the price of the dealership right around the corner and a very nice guy to boot.

ThaiPBS and I'm sure others broadcast in 4k mate. It's 2023. And you can be sure there are a LOT of peasants up north who are massively offended by PT's backstab who are watching every move very carefully.

Never head that before... apparently true! https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-03/31/content_319484.htm Of course they were already massively wealthy and it looks to me like a publicity stunt.

The vessel was facing due South when departing. The only side that COULD have hit was the port side as it motored away in a Southerly direction since the pier in question is Westerly facing. Actually it hit what's called a 'dolphin' just off of the pier, not the wall of the port. I've seen the footage. My point is that a Thai Navy ADMIRAL ranked officer didn't report correctly which side hit. My guess is the Thai translation to English from original article was wrong, but who knows. The footage quite clearly shows the port side of the frigate hitting, and the article quite clearly states that the starboard side hit the pier.

Not surprising given that the Navy doesn't even know port from starboard. The frigate hit the Southwest corner of the pier with its PORT side on exiting. Source: My girlfriend works at the company who owns the pier, and she was actually in the 'war room' set up on their premises for the NASMEX exercise. She is a sailor and unlike these Navy morons, does actually know port from starboard on a vessel.

What's funny is in the article blue-color themed news outlet yesterday, the damaged liferaft casing in the photograph showed the name "HTMS Chaophraya", the sistership of the Naresuan that was involved in the incident. So if the Naresuan sank, which we know is possible here, anyone finding the liferaft might think the Chaophraya also sank!

Girlfriend works at the company where they were 'exercising'. It was indeed a serious exercise, a full scale 'war room' lead process imitating what they would do in case of terrorist attack or similar. The Frigate was in and out of their pier a few times during the day as I understand it. Calm conditions for SW monsoon, no extreme weather. The boat is pushed against the pier in SW direction winds, and there were TWO tugboats, bow and stern, guiding the Frigate into and out of it. The pier is designed to accept massive coal barges from Australia that I'm sure displace many times what the Frigate does. The company is extremely well-funded and wealthy, literally every i is dotted and t is crossed, and the pier has probably the best fending system I've ever seen. Difficult to imagine that any competent helmsperson could damage the boat in these conditions unless there was some sort of mechanical failure.... oh wait, didn't they just sink a Corvette Class due to leaving hatchways open in 3+ meter seas and 35+ knot winds? ???? TIT

Any details on how you did this? Crack the transmitter open? Is the MPass tag same as the Kapsch brand tag that Easy Pass uses? My EasyPass is I think 7 years old now, I'm sure battery is getting low soon. To the OP, I recently thought I lost my EasyPass... girlfriend was trying to get another, but apparently the only way now is at the EXAT Admin Office in Bangkapi Bangkok. I was fortunate that my pass had just fallen into my steering column and found it when cleaning out my car, so saved myself a trip. @Thailand J Thanks for the tip about EasyPass Plus!

I'm a 33 x 35. Nearly impossible to find here as well. Uniqlo makes some very nice 'dockers' style pants that are very light weight polyester and comfortable to wear here in the tropics. They are un-hemmed, so I just have a sewing shop add a small amount of cloth to the bottom so they can be hemmed right at the limit of length. This has worked well for me for a couple years now. I'm not sure you'll be able to get a full 36" inseam, but I get right around 35" with this method. With the coming wet season, you'll probably want some 'high-tiders' anyways 5555 ????

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.