henrik2000

Hello, there are flights to\from Camiguin from Manila and Cebu, for instance with CebGo. Is it true that the maximum checked luggage is 15 kilograms? Do you know the penalty for more than 15 kilograms, by kilogram? Is the hand luggage weighed as well, or maybe even the passenger? (I had that on small planes to Palawan in 2008.) Are these flights sometimes cancelled at short notice even if the weather is good? Anything else that might flummox the foreign traveler on these flights? One airline servicing Camiguin is obviously CebGo, seemingly an offspring of Cebu Pacific and anyway to be booked through the Cebu Pacific website. This site always stalls when I try to see a flight like Davao-Camiguin via Cebu. That means I can't check the luggage restrictions at the source. Many other search sites like Kayak offer this flight and link to a travel agency (not the airline itself); but I don't trust their information as much as I trust the information on the site of the airline itself. (I would prefer PAL if available.) If the Cebu Pacific website does work alright, is it possible to book a domestic flight like Davao-Camiguin from a European computer with an international Visa credit card or PayPal? (That was impossible in 2008 and maybe also in 2014 IIRC.) Thanks for your real life experiences about flights to\from Camiguin!

Hi all, thanks for some interesting input!

Hello, i just finished reading the fourth edition of Chris Baker/Pasuk Phongpaichit: A History of Thailand (2022), ending with the year 2020 (Covid, demonstrations). What do YOU think about the book? What did they miss? Are there better reads for lay readers (not historians)? Or a good job? What about the style? Asking members who read the 4th or 3rd (2014) edition. Thanks!

Hello, what do you think about Thai people and their smartphones? How did did smartphones change the country since circa 2007? Do people in other Southeast Asian countries have a similar relationship to their smartphones, like in the Philippines, Vietnam etc.? Do people in Western countries have a similar relationship tp smartphones like Thai people? What changes brought the advent of mobile data, selfie-ism? Irrelevant small personal experiences: Upcountry, but not in the big cities, at least once a week I enter a shop or restaurant where staff is so absorbed with their smartphones that they don't notice me at all. I am hardwired to not interrupt people having important business, so I just walk back out and they never know I was there. Also some streetside taxi drivers lose my business that way. When cycling small town roads, i often see motorcyclists parked in the middle of nowhere, staring at their phones. The reception at The Hot Springs is in a closed box with a closed, sliding window. I look through the window and see a lady immersed in her phone, naturally not seeing me. Now I have to overcome my discretion and knock hardly on the window pane. She looks up irritatedly, slides the window open, all the while looking at her phone, not at me. I have to tell her my wishes while she is looking and tapping at her phone, never looking at me. Another lady guides me to the booked place, walking “blindly” while constantly looking down at her phone. I don't dare to ask any question. I was intimate with a high flying, very well earning + living Thai lady manager whose TWO phones rang and plang constantly, also on her hours and days off (she was never off really). Asked if she might want to turn off or at least mute her TWO phones during sex, she gave me a very annoyed look as if I seriously let her down. But are Thais and their phones something extraordinary? Or just like anybody else around the globe, including you and me?

Indeed. The intro to the linked article reads: Pattaya City has partnered with Dynamic Group Products to spearhead a comprehensive improvement project It couldn't sound more frightening. One wishes they'd stick to spearheading fish

This is indeed a very sad view, and the multitudes of customers in Pupen Seafood (must) look at it, or not.

Is that important? I might be 10 months out of Thailand. Left this February, might come back around next November (I like good weather).

And Google Lens calls it "relaxation" in the stamped-in edition (see pics). Finally i had planned to leave the country at 11 p.m. on my last allowed day and fly out at 1 a.m. 2 hours later. Due to terrible hold-ups - including an even longer than usual queue at the Foreign Passport immigration ruin and a broken finger scanner that required change of counter - i only left the country at 0.20, meaning 20 minutes of unplanned overystay. This earned me the stamp seen below to the right (original, Google-translated). But may i come back or must i holiday in the Middle East now?

Hi, thanks for more reminiscences!

Hi all, thanks for some very interesting, detailed re-views! Interesting to learn about the very dramatic change in a short time and about your personal involvement including ghosts, snakes and dust. If now anything more springs to mind, let's hear! One wonders if other backwaters may change as rapidly and dramatically as once-backwater Jomtien, for instance Na Jomtien and Bang Saray, both no mere fishing villages anymore by now, maybe even over the edge. One wonders if the change will also take place further away from Bangkok, also in coastal places that look now quaint, like Bang Saphan Yai (PKK). And if anything like that would happen on a place not on the beach.

Hi, thanks for some interesting observations so far. Agreed about the Thepprasit mess.

Hello, what changes did you notice in Jomtien (not Pattaya) since 2005 or so? When did influx of Russians become very noticeable? Which changes did that bring generally? Changes in beach etiquette? Attitudes of Thai locals? Business models going up, going down? Number of people milling streets and beaches? Amount of traffic, what kind of change? Property building? Changes relative to other beach resorts like Pattaya, Phuket etc? Changes in your desire to go there for a few hours, days, years - and why? Thanks for your experiences!

I just ordered a Bolt from Jomtien to Nam Rang Beach for 397. The driver confirmed, then messaged: "Very far, request 800." I declined, he cancelled. Got another car within 2 minutes and asked driver through car window again if 397 was ok. "Yes yes."

Hi all, I want to stress that I think the Pattaya area is very bad for bicycling. Still I am interested in that bicycling because of a sudden change of preferences and because the bicycle is unexpectedly still with me while in Jomtien after a long provincial sojourn. Around Pattaya, one cycles through a lot of wastelands and faceless urban sprawl, I didn't see one rice field and only one small sunflower field, and a lot of boring cassava. Then unavoidably one has to use the monster highway or other big highways. One is hemmed in by the sea, the monster highway and military areas where sometimes you don't know if they let you through or not. More than elsewhere, small roads are not connected but just exist as dead end stubs, so you're forced back onto big roads. Several times where the GPS app and the satellite pictures show ground floor crossings of the monster highway, those crossings were obviously very recently also blocked with new walls (steel, not concrete). So you have to bicycle a long way (perhaps in an unwanted direction) to find a crossing; you may have to bicycle the monster highway’s slow lane in the wrong direction (like many motorcycles); and in one case I felt forced to carry the bicycle up and down a high pedestrian bridge, to the entertainment of a gaggle of street sweepers. Then again, the dogs are especially chilled around Pattaya (exceptions apply). If you just want to move your legs for exercise, the Pattaya area has several smooth parcours mentioned by others in this thread, and maybe those are even better or more plentiful than elsewhere. But if you bicycle out to have some good view, funny encounters, backwaters experience, small town Thailand and reach some interesting destination, to lurk here and there, many other provinces are better.

Well, too bad, thanks for reporting your trials.