grain

Doesn't make sense. An iphone 16pro 6gb/128 retails in Thailand for 37,000 Bt. And in Australia sells for $1,849, which is approx 43,000 Bt. So he's smuggling iphones into Thailand to sell at a loss of 6000 bt per phone?

Quite a few cases being reported in Australia, all M2M sexual contacts.

Blanks, I've been firing blanks for several years now. 😁

I'll be buying new smartphone soon, probably 2 as missis needs a new one as well. We need 5G for use in Oz when we go there again in a few months time. I've been watching hundreds of YT vids, so after much research I've narrowed down to 3. My budget is 8000-9000 Baht per phone. The 3 on my short list are all 5G, all 8/256, all have 5000 batteries, all have Android 14, all have fast charging, all are dual sim. From what I can judge all have good specs for the price and all have good cameras. The short list is: Realme 12+ (8+256) Navigator (5G) ฿8,499 from Banana. (2 OS upgrades and 3 years of security patches) Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Smartphone (8+256) (5G) ฿7,799 from Banana. (3 OS upgrades and 4 years of security updates) Samsung Galaxy A15 Smartphone (8+256GB) (5G) ฿8,999 from Banana. (4 OS upgrades and 5 years of security updates) I've checked online prices at Shopee, Lazada, PowerBuy, and others, and Banana are doing the best prices. I'm currently leaning very much towards the Realme 12+ which seems to tick the right boxes. The Realme includes the fast charger, Redmi may or may not include the charger, as I've heard they have ceased including chargers now, and Samsung of course do not include the charger. Anyway, before I bite the bullet I'm interested in any opinions/thoughts from others. Any other phone in my price range I should take a look at?

If I'm alone I don't have any problem speaking Thai with them, we can chat away and cover many subjects, and they'll tell me what a wonderful Thai speaker I am, and I'm now a Thai, no longer a farang, but if my Thai wife is with me all of a sudden they haven't a fkn clue what I'm saying and have to bring her in as a translator.

That came later, and only after Thailand received huge quantities of vaccines donated by OUR governments. In the early days of vaccine availability in Thailand it was Thais only. I'm the sole farang in our village and when the poo yai baan announced over the loudspeakers that they would soon be vaccinating and everybody should go and put their names down now, my Thai wife went and put her name down and she asked if she could put my name down too, but the poo yai baan said the vaccines were for Thais only and I can contact my embassy. I thought that was taking meanness to an absurd degree because if the whole idea of vaccinating everyone in an area was to curb the spread of a deadly pandemic, then leaving one person unvaccinated because of his race is madness and puts the entire community at risk.

I lived in Songkhla for 14 years back in the boom time when the oil & gas personnel were thick on the ground, we had a ball and it was one of the best times of my life. But sadly it's all over now. Since then I've dropped by a couple of times to take a look around, last time was September last year. As Stocky said they have done a few things to the old town, and there's still excellent seafood restaurants, I saw some bars, but all the great old ones - Skillet, Lipstick, Smile, Corner, Parlang - are all gone. So it's kinda quiet again, however, you could still have a good holiday there, maybe split your time equally between Songkhla and HatYai. I didn't go into HatYai last trip but I'm sure you could find some action there.

He could become PM in the not too distant future, and if so he'll almost certainly make life a misery for the resident farang. Tighter immigration regulations and requirements, higher bank balances and incomes could make living here impossible for the great majority of us.

Thanks for your suggestions everyone. I now have Wine installed and using some of my favorite Win apps on my Linux laptop, but as I investigate the native Linux apps more and find the ones most suitable, I think soon I can get out of Wine and those Win apps altogether.

Yes, good point, I did think of that but thought I'd streamline my post. Anyway, a description: Bandizip - to extract zipped folders, I already have installed Peazip for Mint, so this is not so necessary. Picasa3 - a very simple jpg editor, it's small, light, and does basic editing and some photo effects. I don't want to use a big thing like GIMP. PhotoFiltre - another very easy and small jpg editor. I do already have RawTherapee installed but if I could get PhotoFiltre it's much better. Tagscan - to edit tags on mp3 files, not really necessary as I have found a similar one for Mint. Ken Rename - to bulk rename folders and mp3 files. Format Factory - a convertor that handles music files and pic files. Can convert flac to mp3 and other formates. JDownloader - an excellent download manager, if you lose connection it will continue when connection resumes. HumanMedia Audio Converter - an alternative to Format factory, I use this to convert flac to mp3. PhotoRazor - can bulk reduce jpg files to smaller sizes for posting online. Again, I realize GIMP can do this but I don't want to use a huge program just to do one simple task.

Hi everyone, I've recently switched over from Win 11 to LMDE. There are a few apps I use daily on Win 11 and I'd like to find equivalent apps or as near as possible for Linux Mint. Any help is much appreciated. These are the apps I want Linux equivalents for: Bandizip Picasa3 PhotoFiltre Tagscan Ken Rename Format Factory JDownloader HumanMedia Audio Converter PhotoRazor

Agree, I also don't eat meat, I find it kinda puzzling when people happily eat lamb and calf and rabbit and other lovely cute little animals and then get into an uproar if someone else is eating dog or cat.

I've only been pulled over once and breath tested in Thailand. Happened about 15 years ago, I was driving along a road in Khon Kaen city about 5:00pm and this cop walked out in front of my car and waved me down, then when I opened the window he produced the thing for me to blow in. I am a drinking man but this happened at a time when I had decided to take a week off the booze, so naturally I blew negative and the cop told me I could go.

Another suggestion: my wife and I are planning a stopover in KL for about 5 nights on route to Australia in December and if we do we're planning on staying in the Brickfields area, which is the Indian part of the city. We both like Indian food and we think staying in the Indian section will give us a more colorful, more interesting and exotic holiday.

Penang & Cameron Highlands are both good places but a bit of a distance from KL, if you didn't want to travel far then certainly Malacca is nice, my wife and I had a week there a few years ago and enjoyed it.

I need to get a COR soon to renew my 5-year DL in August, I was at Korat Imm this morning to renew my annual retirement ext, and while there I checked with the office about what I need to bring next month when I come for the COR: I was told to bring my PP, my wife's Tabien Baan, her ID and 500 Bt. BTW: last time I renewed my Thai DL 5 years ago I was living in Hua Hin then and the fee for the COR was 1000 Bt.

Beats me why either of them put themselves though all this stress. Both are old men, both are very financially secure, both could be chilling out with their families, enjoying their senior years in peace, relaxing, having pleasant holidays. Yes, I understand there's the lust for power, the greed for more money. Biden looks like he's only got months left, Trump maybe a few more years, yet they subject themselves to all this.

Heineken for me, it's consistently good quality wherever I drink it, even when in Australia I'll buy Heiny rather than any of the Aussie lagers. One of the criteria I use for judging a beer is how is it the next day? The hangover test. While I don't get sloshed and moderate my drinking these days, there are those odd occasions when I might drink a bit too much, I can handle a Heiny hangover, whereas Chang or Leo hangovers are much rougher. And a Sing hangover is something I wouldn't wish on my worse enemy.

Tom Yum with fish As already mentioned som tum, and steamed fish, and most "yum" dishes are ok. Stir fried or steamed vegies There is lots of very unhealthy Thai food out there, so much deep fried things in the cheapest oils, also lots of fatty meats, and eggs, it's easy to eat 4 or 5 eggs a day in Thailand if you have a couple eggs on toast for breakfast, then a fried rice at lunch, and a phat-thai in the evening, and maybe some Thai cakes/sweets for dessert. Generally it's best to go for the steamed or grilled things.

My Thai driving licenses (car + MC) will expire this year on my birthday, which is in mid August. Is it better to renew before or after the expiry date? I seem to recall you can get a longer time if you renew after your birthday. I'll be renewing in Korat.

Been hot & dry here in Korat the past couple of weeks but it's been pouring down rain these past few hours, very welcome change actually.

I saw the same thing in Perth when I was there recently. They stay in Chinese owned hotels, eat in Chinese restaurants, shop in Chinese owned tourist shops that sell Aussie souvenirs that were made in China, and they ride around the city on the free CAT buses.

I returned last week after spending 3 months in Australia, I have a non-imm retirement ext + multi-re-entry visa. A week after returning I popped into Korat Imm and told them I was back at my usual address and if they wanted to update anything on their system. They took my PP but didn't require any other docs or any forms to be filled in, just did some updating on the computer and printed out a new slip which they stapled into my PP. I often go away to other provinces for a week or two holidays but never contact Imm when I'm back home, I only do so when I've been out of the country. And so far it seems that Korat Imm are happy with that approach.

They really are horrible things but not much, if anything, you can do about them, I've had several dinners at outside restaurants totally ruined by thousands of the damn things swarming around our tables. The frogs like them, they seem to appear from nowhere and have a feast.

They don't want you to get too comfortable, don't want you to settle in too much and start thinking you live here now and this is your home, all these silly little hoops they make you jump through keep reminding you that you're an alien and whether you're married and got 10 kids and bought a house and concerted to Buddhism doesn't matter a hoot, you're only here on a very temporary basis.