henrik2000

Hi all, thanks for some good info about carrying a bicycle on international flights in and out of Thailand! In my European country Thai Airways have clear information that a bicycle counts as sports luggage and is charged with 150 US dollar extra (not Euro, as I stated falsely above) ow, and then you have the normal luggage allowance of your flight class - and I need both, a regular suitecase AND a bicycle transport bag which may well reach 32 kilos (was 37 on another trip). So now from my territory a bicycle is not counted as overweight luggage and is not charged per kilogram or otherwise totally unreasonably. And Thai Airways is the only non-stop and by far the most convenient flight. It's good to know that there are separate bulk luggage counters in Bangkok (in Madrid the bicycle bag staggered in on the regular luggage belt). Elsewhere I experienced that bicycle bag and other bulky stuff stand around at a bulk luggage counter without any safeguarding, and the luggage tag was not checked when I carried the bicycle bag out of the airport. I wonder how to register the extra sports luggage with THAI in Europe. From their website I gather I should call them within 24 hours after booking the flight. It seems not possible to register this sports luggage online. Funny enough, from previous experience I know that they actually answer their phone. But what if I have to call them again for flying out of BKK, I will book the outbound flight only several days before actually flying out. Last time with a European airline I could register the sports luggage online, but had to wait about three days until they agreed by mail they would have space for it. Sorry, in my initial post I did not mention that I go from Suvannahbhumi straight to Jomtien. I will book one of the reputable taxi services going there and tell them of my extra luggage, maybe even mail them a photo of the bicycle bag next to a car. They offer all sizes of cars. Last time in Europe when I needed a taxi for the bicycle bag I got a spacious taxi that had a ramp for wheelchairs and wasn't more expensive. (I do little or no bicycling in Chonburi. After a few days I will move by car to several Isaarn places, and there I hope to bounce around rice fields + noodle shops a lot.)

Hello, have you ever transported your bicycle on Thai Airways long distance? What was your experience? Do you remember a weight limit or restriction on non-bicycle-related stuff, and was that enforced? Do you remember a size limit? In Bangkok, does your bicycle case arrive on the regular luggage belt or at a bulk luggage counter? Is it stressful to hand in the bicycle case upon flying out of TH? From Europe, bringing a bicycle case on THAI costs 150 Euro one-way. I would certainly need to bring another regular suitcase for pants and toothbrush. Thanks! PS. Am aware that there are other airlines and other modes like renting or buying a bicycle locally. I did all that, and I'd like to bring my own bicycle next time. I do have a tried and tested bicycle transport bag for air trips. Thai is the by far most convenient connection for me, and the only non-stop one, so I'd like to use it in-bound and out-bound. Aware I need a bigger taxi from airport, but that can be arranged (not going to cycle from airport; bicycle is for daytrips from fixed bases, not for long-distance bikepacking). I put the questions above through MS Copilot (=Chat GPT?), but didn't get back much. PPS. I recently had a bicycle air transport within Europe – 80 Euro ow. The weight was limited to 32 kg (bike + bag). In fact, I got through with 37 kgs no problem. There was also a size limit which my bicycle bag just-so adheres to. Some people said online the bicycle case may NOT contain non-bicycle-related stuff. The bicycle case was x-rayed by airport security (not the airline), and I wonder if they ever looked for non-bicycle-related stuff (there was a little bit, like a bulky thermos). At one x-ray station the bicycle case would almost not pass through the bulk-luggage x-ray machine, and under the direction of the operator, I had to shift the bicycle case 10 times a few centimeters this and that way, until finally it slipped in and out without getting stuck. At one airport, the bicycle arrived on the regular luggage belt, at the other airport at a special bulk luggage counter.

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.

Hello, thanks also for the suggestion to bicycle to Bang Saray, which I did today, in spite of unavoidably using the super highway most of the time. I quite enjoyed loitering on the fishing piers, but I'd say it's being gentrified and might be the next Jomtien or Na Jomtien. I cycled on to Sattahip town, which to me seemed quirky and lively, with a well visited temple too. And there I didn't notice condominium high-rises (Del Mare, in Bang Saray….), massage shop clusters, hotels on piers, rude foreigners in muscle shirts or girlie bars (which Bang Saray all has). To my big surprise I found Sattahip quite sympathetic and after staying 4+ nights in backwaters like Taphan Hin, Khun Han, villages in Uttaradit and Nakhon Si Thammarat provinces, I could now well imagine a spell in Sattahip too, still have to research the live music scene there. Some stations today: Khanom Krok stall on hwy 3 next to Ban Amphoer school beach Bang Saray fishing and hotel piers Bang Saray Che Junction Market (lots of street food stalls, clean toilet and ample seating) Wat Khao Khanthamat nearby (pretty but empty) Wat Sattahip (less pretty, but busy) Puean Talay Restaurant (nice rambling wooden affair over the water, seafood and sailom in Sattahip 😋) And long planned as the final stop in the area was post-prandially a coffee shop out on the pier not far from, but outside Sattahip’s military zone, according to Open Street Map. And within eyesight of that coffee shop the army stopped me again (see my posts about not reaching Hat Nam Sai); after some moaning another uniformed guy pedalled along on a bicycle wreck and declared between chews on his gum that indeed I couldn't proceed the 100 m or so to that interesting coffee shop out on the pier. Well other rim talay coffee shops aren't in short supply there. I couldn't see myself bicycling back the direct route on the monster highway, so composed a route back to Jomtien on a lot of back roads which lengthened this one way trip to 45 km or so, but it was nice and peaceful. In Jomtien itself from the south to the center this time I used Second Road, not Beach Road, which is much faster at sunset, if not more scenic. Thanks again for another great suggestion which, combined with some subsequent research, made for a great day trip!

Oh cool question. No, I brought them from Europe as well as the Schwalbe AirPlus inner tubes and more. Compared to the original Asian tires I had one year ago, the Schwalbes saved me from about 95% of the punctures which is very well worth the effort. I used Schwalbe Mondial, and not the even more protective SmartGuard, because the Mondial can be folded very small. And now that I want to sell the bicycle, nobody considers the Mondial tires a great thing to have. Also my bicycle dealer confirmed that nobody is interested in single parts and their usefulness, but only in the overall look, so people don't think the Schwalbes are any better than any Asian tires. (While in Europe every single screw is discussed at infinitum.)

Thanks, good to know.

It's also a beach and a roundabout. Also tourism texts mention it. Hopefully the shooting range is not audible from the beach. Actually now I saw another review on G Maps for Nam Sai where a foreigner complained he wasn't allowed in even though he had had residency and paid local taxes for 6 years. Then again, other seemingly foreigners do review the place, just 2 months ago.

Thanks, noted.

I second that and had the same experience several times. One example not completely off topic: On Ao Manao military beach near Prachuap Khiri Khan town (I do go places), where anybody may dwell in daylight hours, an overseer told me I was not allowed to park my bicycle under the trees in the sandy Beach area. The bicycle should be on an out of sight parking lot. We discussed back and forth for a nervous 5 minutes. Suddenly he told me to lay my bicycle flat on the ground *behind* the tree and ran away. In the case at hand, the checkpoint for Nam Sai, the soldier was adamant, there was no way of naively sneaking in and I was not energetic enough to talk more into him (also there were other nice beaches nearby that were open to me). When I asked again later at the Nang Rong parking lot and the soldier said no again, I just didn't want to risk to cycle in the midday heat into the bush and then being sent away after I sweated it already. I do speak basic Thai and can say things like "Hat Nam Sai pai dai mai khrap?"

Thanks, i assume you came from the north on road 3126, that also leads to Curve beach and Nang Ram beach? About 2 km before those beaches there is a turn off to the left, signposted to Nam Sai beach as if anybody was invited. The turnoff yesterday had a huge, dark checkpoint built like some kind of A-Frame house over the road. There I was sent back. Or maybe you came from the south, which looks more complicated.

Hello, in Satthahip district I would like to go to Hat Yao beach and Nam Sai beach. I would also be interested in the built-up area with many piers just south of Hat Nam Sai (all beaches army controlled, but at least partly open for a fee). These beaches are about 40 km south from Pattaya and just a little bit south from the more well known beaches Nang Ram and Nang Rong. Nang Ram on map: https://maps.app.goo.gl/yv9tBcq71DLPdsdT6 Nam Sai on map: https://maps.app.goo.gl/R2sWxuxtU7389jds6 But while foreigners review Nam Sai on Google Maps, soldiers on the ground told me foreigners cannot go there: - This happened at the checkpoint on road 3126 leading to Nang Ram beach from the North, where the road to Nam Sai beach forks off - no passage for me (on bicycle). - At Nang Rong Beach, there is a back road into Nam Sai. At the main parking lot of Nang Rong beach I asked a soldier if I could cycle to Nam Sai, and he declined. But is it possible to enter these beaches from the south? Is a passport asked there? If Hat Yao and Nam Sai beaches are open to foreigners somehow, I would like to know your mode of transport to go there from Jomtien: - In theory I could go by bicycle (distance no problem, but roads from Jomtien leading there not agreeable), - songthaeow (how? reasonable?) - taxi app (Bolt, Grab 1way 410, 440 Baht, not sure if any driver in Jomtien would pick up the offer). - I'm quite against a rental car even if that would be cheaper than the taxi app. I would go on a weekday Monday to Friday. Thanks for your real life experience!