meadish_sweetball

No food carts on Nimman as far as I'm aware. So your best bets for that would be Thanon Suthep just like you suspect. Best eateries on Nimman is a tall order... If you're not afraid to pay a bit for home-made ice cream, do try Udom 'Note' Taepanich's ice cream shop "iBerry". Note Udom is probably Thailand's most famous stand-up comedian, and he moved up to Chiang Mai from Bangkok some 10 years ago and opened his ice cream business in one of the sois off Nimmanhemin. Very popular with young urban Thais. Nice garden setting with arty/whacky objects.

Mangrove horseshoe crab egg salad is my personal yuck favourite. Can't find a pic of the actual salad that isn't copyright protected so here's a pic of the critter from Wikipedia instead:

"A limule in the Ha Long Bay" Date 13/07/07 15:57 Author: Nicolas Pourcelot

Im always "falang" when I visit my gf's home town near Kamphaeng phet. I dont think Ive never been called "farang" there.

That's because their dialects have no 'r' phoneme, as somebody pointed out, in some words, what is an 'r' in Standard Thai has a 'h' in Northern Thai and Isaan/Lao, and in other words, the 'r' is realized as an 'l' ('r' becoming 'l' is common in the casual speech of many Bangkokians, too). Thais are encouraged to use a trilled-type 'r' when learning Standard Thai at school, but since many of the teachers do not have a natural trilled 'r' in their everyday speech either, results of this teaching policy vary. Attitude-wise, many younger Thais feel that other Thais having a constant 'r' pronunciation in their casual speech, while formally correct, is like 'putting on airs' or trying to show off. Most Thais would still encourage you, as a foreign learner to pronounce the 'r's correctly, since they know that is how Standard Thai is supposed to sound.

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It's just a Thai word for westerner, polite or the way it is said has nothing much to do with it, it's just a dialect thing.

It's not a Thai word for a westerner, it's a Thai word for a white person.

White Westerner or Caucasian probably comes closest.

There are Chinese people who are objectively more white than the pink/red specimens of Europeans, Americans, Australians or Kiwis you may spot strutting bare-chested through Thai cities and elsewhere on holiday. The latter ones are Westerners, the former are not. And yet, the former would not be referred to as 'farang', but the latter would.

'farang' means, loosely, 'Western' when used as a descriptor - 'farang culture' = Western culture. 'farang food' = Western food. 'farang movies' = Western (mostly Hollywood) movies.

Lighter skinned subcontinental Indians and Pakistanis, Persians, some South Americans are also frequently referred to as 'farang' by Thais who have not bothered to ask where they are from. But a distinctly Asian- or African-looking person would not be, although 'farang dam' (or 'dum' if you insist on Anglo-type transliteration) is sometimes used to describe black people from Western countries.

Anyone visit the Chiang Mai National Museum recently? It's been there forever, not much gets spent on it and it shows. With just a fraction of the cost of mega-projects like the Night Safari, CM museums could be so much better. And, they would be a GENUINE highlight of local culture and history, not something artificial.

This topic has been up for discussion before, please read this thread: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/and3627and3634and3585-and3606and365-t218768.html&p=2288791

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<br />I passed the accident when they were salvaging the bodies. Although the truck was on the wrong side of the road, I was under the impression that two of its tires were blown out and it might have become uncontrollable. The truck was in pretty good shape though. The yellow passenger pick up was new too. It came off the road and landed 5 meters or so below near a water stream. It was completely flattened. only the motor was still visible. The people must have been trapped like sardines in a can. The roof had completely collapsed. Fact is that the authorities do not give a dam_n thing. Converted Pick-up trucks are simply not suitable for transporting 15-20 people at a time. The transport Mafia will always oppose decent buses. But micro buses are the way to go.<br />

<br /><br />"But micro buses are the way to go"<br /> <br /> 1. Passengers would be just as dead as the unfortunate in this incident. "5 meters or so below? ... completely flattened?"<br /> 2. Not when they are screaming along at 140 kph as they do en route from Bkk to my village. Have you ever seen the result of a high speed micro-bus / van crash? Not much left of it I can tell you. And no one walks from it.<br /> <br /> The roads should be better marked and signed with speed restrictions, and better policed. .. by police who do serious police work and don't take bribes, and who don't just target farangs. <br /> <br /> In Thailand it's all about money, as you may have noticed. Start handing out fines for speeding and confiscating vehicles for multiple offenders, plus imprisonment. A few hard-hit ones will languish in jail, and providing the news media publicise the fact, others may get message, and a few of them may even take note, or better, take heed. The revenue from fines could go towards funding the safety upgrades. Come up with a good strategy and implement it, with commitment..<br />

I don't think signage is the problem.

There are actually plenty of road signs on this stretch of road, many of them stating things in Thai and English, or sometimes only in Thai like 'accident-prone area' and the ever-present 'dangerous curve', 'the road is slippery during rain' and 'use low gear', and there are signs stating conservative speed recommendations for particularly sharp curves. Where overtaking is risky, there are double yellow lines - but just like a previous poster mentioned, what use is that, when the majority do not respect the double line anyway?

A police reform would be great, but I do not have high hopes in that regard.

Police targeting farang over any other group does not seem to be a problem in the CM or CR area at all. On the contrary, whenever I pass check points, the people they stop are overwhelmingly poor locals and hill tribe people.

I am not sure why that is the case, as I haven't studied Lao formally. Some guesses as to why: Lao has a simplified alphabet and probably (this may be incorrect but it's my hunch) uses fewer words borrowed from Indic languages, making it more transparent.

FSI has a list comparing average difficulty of learning various languages for US Americans. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers Thai is not in the most difficult category, but is in the next most difficult category, and marked with a *, indicating that typically it is more difficult than the other languages listed in the same category. Do not be discouraged though. It is fully possible to learn Thai, but if you don't have a general knack for languages you will have to work hard. As with any skill, regular and persistent practice will get you there. A little time spent every day is always better than a lot of time spent on some days. Obviously, difficulty for the individual learner depends on several factors, and language learning consists of several skill areas... no easy answers but a little every day will ensure progress.

The greatest loaf of all. William Butler Yeast himself would have been proud.

Bokmål is Norwegian mainly based on Danish, as Norway was part of Denmark for a long time. Nynorsk was an attempt to construct an alternative to Bokmål, intended to be more authentically Norwegian. It was based off of dialects all over the country so it's a bit of a hodge-podge.   Norwegian is not a major language. All Scandinavian languages are small, but Swedish and Danish at least has pockets of second language speakers elsewhere (Greenland, Iceland and Faroe Islands for Danish, and Finland for Swedish).  Norwegians speak good English overall and if you speak Norwegian with a noticeable English/US accent they may well try to switch to English with you, to make communication easier and to get a chance to practice their own English. Scandinavians will not be offended by you not speaking their language, unless you are a de facto immigrant, in which case it would be expected that you learn the local lingo (and necessary for work purposes). There are free, reasonably high standard facilities for immigrants to do that.

Before you start looking into medication, take a look at your lifestyle. Minimum of 30 min of physical exercise per day, and more time spent out of doors could provide the boost you need.

I have been there three times, overall I noticed the same thing as Winnie. I'm acquainted with two expats who live there. They like it, but it's not for everyone. But if the quiet life is what you seek, I think there's a good chance you can find it there. You may find yourself wanting to do supply run every now and then as the selection of goods available is not as great as in CM or even CR. The Internet works surprisingly well for being so remote, but if it is a crucial aspect of your life, you won't be able to live too far out of town. Being such a small place, cultivating good relations will be extremely important.

I think we need to ask how you had planned to use the word. There is a literal meaning of cliché, and derived meanings.

If you mean cliché in the sense 'You are such a cliché' or 'This is such a cliché situation' then I don't think you'd be able to use สำนวนซ้ำซา, however if you want to point out a word or phrase that people will say over and over again, then it would work.

I suspect it's only Americans that could take Fox seriously

As well as other educated individuals. On the other hand, those who criticize without watching - well, they will never be capable of understanding.

If you look at how the viewers scored on knowledge questions, the results are rather disappointing overall, regardless of news source.

Show this pic...

Sorry for being Off Topic, but wife was angry when she saw that picture, she said something like, why does a monk do that.

Monks are supposed to act as role models for those practicing Buddhism; in return they are shown respect by the laymen. Most Thai people take it very seriously whenever a monk does something out of the ordinary that is not compatible with the idea of what monks should be doing. Hard for modern Westerners to grasp, perhaps, but Thais are taught since childhood that religion, along with the monarchy and nation, is one of the three pillars upon which their society rests, and therefore they have to venerate and safeguard it.

Secularization in practice is common, but secularization in thought and speech, for the most part, is not.

Monks are from the general population so it is natural that they reflect that fact. Not so few of the younger monks and novices become novices from an early age because they do not have that many options, there may be problems in the family or they may have no family at all. So with that starting point, perhaps it is not so strange that problems are seen now and then.

Mae Rim rather than Saraphi. Prices will generally reflect this, too. Not that Saraphi is much worse than any other place, but Mae Rim is closer to the Doi Suthep/Pui massif, so is usually cooler than the communities located more in the middle of the valley. For anyone considering Saraphi, I would recommend you check out this study: http://books.google.com/books?id=gvlk2lSvZA0C&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=saraphi+lung+cancer&source=bl&ots=WeP_-pyG5a&sig=aOPgLJzcLYTFQWQbQ1s_wiNQJi0&hl=en&ei=62HsTeDcD8zHrQfnlJngBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=saraphi%20lung%20cancer&f=false

<br />I pay nothing, my meter is broken.  <img src='http://static.thaivisa.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /><br />

You too? We had that for three months as well, and the owners were too lazy to do anything about it. Shame it wasn't the electricity meter, that would have made an actual difference.

Patrick's translation is correct. Since Thai uses third person pronouns for direct address (=you), "Oh" could be the recipient of the letter, or somebody the recipient knows.

Could it be related to the movie มนต์รักทรานซิสเตอร์ "Monrak Transistor" from 2001? It's a story about a Luuk Thung singer.

It's the same, just with an affected spelling, as with hugZ, kewl, etc. in English.

It's not a curse, though. As was suggested, "for once" fits well as a translation in many cases.

Ah, burgers.

This story seems fishy. Everyone knows Kiwis are sheep skates.

Regardless of what view you have of the immigration laws, the tourist could not reasonably be expected to know he couldn't get up on stage and sing a song. That he got to spend the night in a jail cell for it is disgraceful.