Boksida

I always thought Chiangmai was a safe place until one day I was in a pub and the owner and his goons stood over me because I had not realised that I had to pay for the drinking water.

ESPN has been showing the playoff games so I suppose they will show the finals. The hard part will be finding a pub open at the right time. I would suggest checking with the UN Irish Pub on how early they will be open. They have satellite TV so can get the games and also do breakfasts.

What/where is "soi 13"???

It's just off to the right a little bit after you enter Area 51.

There is a well established Montessori school in Lampang which may give you a better idea on fees in the North. This is the link.

Your partner will have to make the situation very clear when he explains it to the British Embassy. They might accuse him of being a paddyphile.

I get it from local building supply shops upcountry but sometimes they have to order it in from Bangkok. I don't have a Thai keyboard but ask for (phonetically) "my ut gun narm".

When I came here in 1971 the British Club was exclusively British – even Commonwealth citizens could not join and the only brown faces were the Thai staff and the Gurkas who moonlighted from the British Embassy as Security Guards.

I think it was around '71 or '72 that they started allowing colonials to join. My friend, an Australian, was nominated by the Honorary Irish Consul at the time, who was allowed in because he was the Land Rover agent. Part of the application process was that you had to go down and have drinks at the bar with a few old soap dodgers who were on the Membership Committee and I attended that. One of them confided to me that the reason for the drinks arrangement was that they had just had a frightful experience when they had recently accepted a membership application by mail from a Canadian and he "turned out to be a darkie".

The Irish Consul himself had a very bad experience there shortly after. There was a contract out to dig the first tunnel under Bangkok, I think it was for water. Anyway a bunch of Irish tunnelers turned up and being a nice fellow, he tried to get them temporary membership of the British Club. At some (late) point during the drinks meeting, a fracas started and the Irishmen took to each other with billiard clues and tried to damage the premises with billiard balls. I believe that set Anglo-Irish relations in Bangkok back quite a bit.

The Club has obviously changed a lot since then and even has Commonwealth citizens on various committees.

I've met quite a few who can't figure out what mileage they get between menstrual cycles. What chance is there for motor cycles?

Doing that elsewhere, too. For example, Hwy 2 now starts at 0 Km at Saraburi. Thus need to subtract about 108 km from your memory when heading to the NE. Don't know how far this has reached as haven't been past Pak Chong for several months.

Mac

I liked the old system better but I suppose measuring Hwy 2 from Saraburi does make some kind of sense. I still can't figure out Hwy 32/1/11 though, Chiangmai used to be roughly 700km from Bangkok and now it will be 804km from somewhere else. Has Pattaya become the centre of our universe?

Is Hwy 4 also being changed?

For years the number on the face of kilometer posts on major highways has shown the distance to Bangkok. Over the last year or so, all the numbers on the main highway from Bangkok to Chiangmai and Chiangrai are being changed to show a distance 104 km. higher. There remains some confusion on the stretch from Wang Noi to Nakhon Sawan where some of the distances are measured from Wang Noi, so for a while there have been three different systems on the same highway.

Does anybody know where the new distance refers to? Are there any changes on the Friendship Highway? I have not been on that for a while.

Strongly advise you to not buy an air cooled well type pump (like most Thai use) as you will not have decent pressure and with your house size/usage it will be very apparent. I have used water cooled Grundfos MQ 3-45 for last few years (after using the largest Mitsubishi models for 20 years). You do need to be sure of your pipes as this provides about 65 PSI - but makes a world of difference in the shower or to fill washer. The price is about double a normal pump but for us worth it. They also have local service center in Thailand.

Could you please explain what is a water cooled pump? That's a new one for me for an above ground pump.

The specifications for the Grundfos MQ3-45 are attached below for anyone who is interested. As a 1000W pump it is justifiably more expensive than Korean and Japanese models.

MQ3_45.pdf

You may be able to rent a car on a Thai license but check on the rules for that country.

When I asked the question as a long term expat living overseas about driving in Australia on an overseas license, the Queensland police informed me an Australian national must use an Australian license when driving in Australia.

They may have been bluffing. A couple of years ago I rented a car in Queensland and got booked for DUI and speeding. All this was done on a Thai license without a word of English on it and the only identification is a photo taken over 20 years ago when the license was issued and none of this was questioned. The rule turned out to be that a non resident can drive on a valid overseas license for a period of 6 months.

To drill and sample the extensive rock salt (halite) and potassium salt formations in Isaan requires a special drilling mud to prevent dissolving the formations. The normal methods in Thailand are a mud based on diesel fuel (expensive) or saturated salt solution. Disposal and rehabilitation is a big problem. I don't know anything about farming, but sugar cane growers in the area often asked the drillers for excess salt mud to spray on their crop as they claimed improved yields. Of course, this was very convenient for the drilling contractor. One of the biggest problems with rehabilitating sites where oil based mud had been used was that years later the sites could still be found because they were much greener than the surrounding areas, presumably due to residual potassium contamination.

The Montri has a good breakfast included in the 899 baht for double occupancy.

I used to drink in Mike Tinker's version of The Pub in '70 or '71. I thought it was a very nice place except when his wife was giving him one of his frequent public bollockings. I was not aware of any other place at the time that could be called a pub. There were plenty of shebeens, whorehouses etc. and, fortunately, karaoke had not been invented then.

Go to the Hash Pub near the Mae Ping Hotel and leave a message for "Superman". He manages one of the factories.

Have a look at jsat.tv. It will give you an idea what is available.

I thought this thread would be inundated with requests from the felching community. Must be in the wrong forum.

Surprised Tyke has not volunteered though, considering the little feller's name.

Whilst slightly off topic, I thought I would tell you my humerous little story about my septic system becoming full the other day & I was like OMG what are we going to do?

The GF's father attended to the systems immediate need to have the sewerage re-enter the house via the toilet (as not much <deleted> needs to flow to overrun a squat toilet).

The very next morning a little man came walking along the soi yelling out in thai, how he would like to suck septic systems clean. The father then entered into serious negotiations to have our system emptied, securing a price of 600 baht. The sucked the system clean, with the father supervising & hosing the septic down & have that sludge removed as well .

Absolutely amazing stuff, I would of paid 6,000 baht to have that baby cleared and there was no way I would of been supervising the work. Its a serious business this crap removal service & there must have been at least 8 thai guys riding ontop of the poo truck as it left the soi. <deleted>?

The most amazing thing about Thai septic cleaning vacuum trucks is that the driver is always called Terdsak.

Not to fan the flames, but is it really true that Australia has the Queen of England on their money?

Yeah we lent her our queen temporarily when we let them rule themselves in the hope they could come up with someone eventually to replace her, but it's been over a century now, and we are still waiting. They whinge about her all the time but are too weak, divided and feckless to do anything about it. In any case, they don't have any antipodeans of discernible quality to put on the money if ever they did. Maybe a 'Neighbours' star or Rolf Harris and, as we are seeing now, they don't have any notable cricketers or rugby players anymore do they?

Is the Queen of England different to the queen from England?

Did a search on here for land sizes and house sizes for tarang wah , and rai of land could some one direct me to were i could find the meanings and size on thai visa site

I keep this little Excel spreadsheet on my smartphone:

Thai_Units_Converter.xls

Some information here

I used to get my old eight day clock wound once a week at a place in Santitham. I can't remember the name of it but it was near the Muslim cemetery.

The phone rings in the australian Cricket Team's changing room.

"G'day. Could I speak to Ricky Ponting, please?"

"Aww, look, sorry mate, he's just gone out to bat."

"Oh, that's alright, mate. I'll hang on."

Cheers,

Pikey. (British born & bred!)

Give Ricky a break, he's Tasmanian. How hard must it be to keep your eye on the ball with two heads?

an adaptation of The Man in The Glass originally written in 1934 by American Peter ‘Dale’ Wimbrow Senior and used by Zimbabwean Duncan Fletcher, England coach to motivate the team at the final test in 2005 against Australia (The Coach’s Story: Ashes Regained, Duncan Fletcher) …..