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I've had a car for three years now, and have thankfully never had an accident or been stopped by the police. But I just renewed my auto policy again, and it occurs to me that I have no idea what documents I'm required to keep in the car, if I ever have a problem. I assume this has been covered in this forum in the past, but I found nothing obvious. Is there a simple list someplace?

As an update to this thread, FWIW, I ordered - and received - exactly what I wanted. I did have to wait three months for delivery, unfortunately. However, I'm glad I did; the bike is perfect for me.

I ordered from a shop in Bangkok called Cycle Sport, and I worked exclusively with K. Nattapon there. He is extremely knowledgeable about the bicycles his shop sells, and his English is excellent. During one conversation, he even referred in detail to the bike frame geometry, so his vocabulary is also excellent. He was also 100% professional, and was true to his word in every sense.

I believe you can reach Cycle Sport at 026-217-223, 026-217-225.

They wanted 50% down upon order placement, and then the remaining 50% before they ship it to you. I was a little nervous about this, because I effectively paid entirely for the bike before I ever saw anyone or anything, but it arrived exactly as expected. They will ask you to deposit funds into a bank account for both transactions, and the account wasn't under the name "Cycle Sport", which had me a little concerned - the account was in the name of an individual, I assume the owner of the shop. I wanted to use a credit card (just so that I would have some recourse if something went wrong), but they apparently aren't set up for mail order. I'm told that if you were to go into their shop, you could swipe a credit card, but only in person.

The bike arrived at my place in the original heavy-duty Merida box from Taiwan (with extremely thick cardboard), but it had first been delivered to Cycle Sport - it wasn't shipped directly to me from Merida. K. Nattapon informed me that Cycle Sport had taken the bike out of the box and made some minor adjustments (not sure what - maybe the derailleurs or brakes) before re-boxing it and shipping it to me. After it arrived, I had to attach the handle bars, the seat, the pedals, and the front wheel, all of which was pretty easy. Shipping cost from Bangkok to my place in Chiang Mai was 200 Baht.

After the bike arrived, I checked all the components, and they were exactly as prescribed, so there wasn't any funny business going on at the shop in Bangkok when they took the bike out of the box. I had been concerned that they might try to swap out some of the components on the bike with inferior stuff, but that didn't happen.

I don't normally buy stuff like this, where a leap of faith is required without any consumer protection, but in this case it turned out fine. I can't say enough about the service I received from K. Nattapon.

Hopefully this will be helpful to others considering ordering a bike. I'm not sure if the 3-month lead time is typical or not - it might depend on the time of year, what size bike you want, etc. Anyway, happy biking!

how complicated are the gps thingees to use? I'm not very computer literate, and long complicated operations discourage me. on the other hand, i would be interested in being able to ride more roads without worrying about getting lost. i cycle around wat doi kam area mostly, usually around 30 k or so. thanks for any replies.

If you already have a smartphone, all you have to do is download one of the free cycling applications to your phone which take advantage of the fact that your smartphone has GPS built-in. For me, I just switch on GPS and Mobile Data, start the app, and go. You can also pause the app if you stop riding to take a break - otherwise, the application would calculate a lower average speed, etc.

I have used the built-in GPS function on my smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S3) along with Google Maps to figure out EXACTLY where I happen to be while riding, many times. As a matter of fact, the confidence this gives me has allowed me to be a lot more adventurous in terms of where I'm willing to go. I have ventured down dirt roads into dark forested areas because Google Maps has indicated that the chosen road would take me where I wanted to go, and I've rarely been disappointed. If unsure, use your instincts: if it appears that the dirt road or trail you're on has had any recent traffic (i.e. motorbike tracks), you're probably fine. If there are a lot of undisturbed leaves and dirt, maybe you're going someplace that leads nowhere. It's my impression that the Thais all know the various ways to get around their local area via motorbike, whether it be on paved or unpaved surfaces, and the well-used trails, dirt roads, and paved roads will be easy to spot. If you're on a paved surface, other than the possibility of an unfriendly dog, the only real danger would be reaching a dead-end and having to turn around, IMHO.

I also ride a hybrid, Trek 7200 for the past 6 years. Every Thursday 40 kilometers in two hours is my primary goal; cardiovascular exercise my mission. I ride mostly local roads in the Big C (Hang Dong Road) / San Patong / Lamphun triangle. This area is comprised of interconnecting paved roads with villages separated by vast rice paddies. I use a GPS to monitor my location and speed. I also do shorter rides during the week in the same area if I have an hour or so free. Customarily I ride alone.

PM me if you have similar interest and want to see the area.

What GPS do you use/recommend,plz?

I use CycleDroid on my Android smartphone (a Samsung Galaxy S3). CycleDroid is free, and will map your course, calculate your maximum speed, time used, elevation changes, etc. I don't think I can share the plotted maps of my trips with others, though (other than on Facebook), which is a frustrating limitation.

This application appears to use Google maps to plot the course you took, and I'm amazed at how accurate it happens to be. Even minor deviations of 10 - 20 meters are reflected on the map.

For kicks you might want to join the Chiang Mai Sunday Bicycle Club. They meet every Sunday morning at Thapai Gate around 7 am. Pretty electric group and loosely organized routes. Very fun.

Sent from my XT1033 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

I'll check it out, thanks!

I also ride a hybrid, Trek 7200 for the past 6 years. Every Thursday 40 kilometers in two hours is my primary goal; cardiovascular exercise my mission. I ride mostly local roads in the Big C (Hang Dong Road) / San Patong / Lamphun triangle. This area is comprised of interconnecting paved roads with villages separated by vast rice paddies. I use a GPS to monitor my location and speed. I also do shorter rides during the week in the same area if I have an hour or so free. Customarily I ride alone.

PM me if you have similar interest and want to see the area.

Jollyrog - similar to my reply to junglechef, your area sounds interesting, and thanks for the reply. If I get a car rack I'll PM you so that we can begin a ride in your area.

Speaking of 40 kilometer rides, I just did one yesterday into Mae Rim, very peaceful and beautiful. Love the greenery! Looking forward to cooler weather in October or November for the same reason.

I ride with groups occasionally but more often by myself or with someone else for nice 1-2 hr what I like to call social rides. Enjoy the beauty and discover new villages or ride some trails we like. If your interested in checking out the Mae Jo area your welcome to join me and do a ride to your liking.

Thanks, junglechef! I live northwest of the old city (Canal Road - around the convention center and sports complex), so most of my rides have been starting from here. To do a ride in Maejo, I would probably need to get a bike rack for my car (which I might do), and meet you over there sometime for a ride. I'll keep you in mind, and PM you if and when I get a rack.

I recently bought a new hybrid bicycle, and I'm interested in doing some riding around Chiang Mai for fun, exercise, etc. One of the folks living here kindly put me in touch with a group of people who appear to go off-road most of the time, but I've checked out some of the videos they've posted on their website, and the videos make it clear that I really don't want to go off-road much! Roots, rocks, and ruts amid swarming mosquitoes isn't my idea of fun!

Anyway, I've done some road rides already, around CMU, up to and around Huay Tung Tao lake, partway up Doi Suthep to Monthathan Waterfall, etc. This is the kind of road riding I'm interested in - places that have natural beauty, but not too much traffic. Are there any like-minded folks in Chiang Mai that are interested in this kind of bike ride?

 

 

I have looked inside a TT Exchange vault for security boxes and it looks pretty safe to me.

 

Please elaborate - what is a TT Exchange vault?

 

 

A room with locked metal barred access.
 

 

You mean, like a prison?  I was actually hoping for clarification here!  Why do you refer to such a thing as a "TT Exchange"?

I have looked inside a TT Exchange vault for security boxes and it looks pretty safe to me.

Please elaborate - what is a TT Exchange vault?

I expect it's anytime during the year...it's just you'll pay a small fine for late filing. It would be stupid for any tax revenue dept to only accept tax filings only 3 months out of the year, not only for tax revenue purposes but for public service/satisfaction. Just go file.

Many thanks!

From one of the posts above, it appears that we're allowed to apply for the refund after March 31st of every year, albeit apparently with a small penalty cost. So here it is now, June 26th, and I'm wondering if I can still apply now for 2011, 2012, and 2013 (I wasn't aware of this refund capability until very recently). Does anybody know how long after the January - March period I'm still able to request the refund?

Many thanks for any input!

If you are looking for a decent hybrid, one that will take the Bangkok roads as well as speed and agility. You should be looking at the Merida crossway 300D, has suspension (which can be locked off) pretty light weight at approx 13kg, disc brakes for the morons that decide to pull in front of you so they can turn left, not slick tyres but thin enough to still get caught in the cracks in the road. Not only that, its actually a decent price here too at about 20k.

You could go for a trek, but I think you will be hard pushed to get a hybrid with disc brakes (a must I would say) for under 30k

Funny you should mention this particular bike, it's EXACTLY what I ordered, about a week before your posting above (sorry about the late reply). I'm currently awaiting delivery, scheduled for March. Woo-hoo!

I'm not sure who you've been talking to here, I would have said that its mountain bikes which are over-priced. I* can put you in touch with someone who sells quality hybrids if you're in BKK, they are generally cheaper than the mtbs that he sells.

Thanks, Deserted (and apologies for the late reply), but I actually ordered a Merida Crossway 300 from Cycle Sport in BKK about a week before your reply above. Because I ordered a large frame size (55 cm), it won't arrive until March!

I'm planning to buy a new bicycle very soon, having already learned a lot about the various types of bikes, components, etc. I've concluded that the best bike for me is a hybrid (or "cross-road"), something with 700c (29") wheels, around 27 speeds, and with rack/fender mounts and a suspension fork to absorb some of the bumps instead of my arms. I don't want a road bike because I'm willing to venture off-road, onto trails, through puddles, etc. But I don't want a purely MTB either: IMHO they tend to be too slow on the road.

However, I'm beginning to get the distinct feeling that hybrid bikes are either unusual, or downright unpopular here, and therefore not many are available for sale, which means very few to select from.

For example, I had one bike shop explain to me that hybrid bikes are subject to a 30% government tax, whereas mountain bikes (and presumably road bikes as well) are only subject to a 1% tax. So, according to this particular shop, hybrid bikes are significantly more expensive than a comparable road or MTB.

In a different case, I had a shop explain that Trek, Specialized, and even Giant hybrids are "overpriced" for the money, and that the best bang for the buck is a Merida. This from a shop which actually sells Specialized and Giant bikes. This makes me wonder if the first three are possibly subject to a higher import tax than the Merida, which might explain the price discrepancy. For the record, I'm only guessing here: my Thai language ability could certainly be better, and I'm trying to piece together what information I'm able to glean from my conversations with these various shops.

I'm a relatively large guy (183cm tall, 87cm inseam), and finding anyone selling a hybrid in the right frame size, with the features I want, is proving extremely difficult. Even the possibility of ordering a specific bike gets pooh-poohed by some of the people I've spoken to - they tell me that I would have to search for what I want from within large-quantity orders already placed by the various shops, because the bike manufacturers won't accept an order for a single bike. I suppose I could ask a shop to order a specific bike for me as part of a large order that they were already planning to place with the manufacturer, but this suggests that my timing would have to coincide with their decision to place an order, or that I would have to be willing to wait, possibly for several months.

All of this is a bit perplexing! Bottom line: does anyone out there have any knowledge about, or experience with, buying a hybrid bike here, that might shed some light on the situation?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this!

I already have a pair of reading glasses, and the frames are fine, I just want to replace the lenses - but I don't have a simple prescription. I have serious astigmatism, and I'm willing to pay for decent quality lenses, with anti-reflective coating and scratch resistance. But I would like to avoid getting ripped off! Any idea what a fair price should be for something like this?

Many thanks for any feedback!

Well, FWIW, after reading all the information herein, I decided to just give it a shot. So, I bought a docking station (550 Baht) which will accommodate the insertion of any SATA hard drive (either a 2.5" or 3.5" size) - and yeah, as someone mentioned above, the docking station looks like a small toaster. In my case, this thing only has one slot, although you can get them with more than one slot, if you want. This particular docking station has an eSATA connector on the back (which is why I bought it), and I bought the longest eSATA cable I could find (1.5 meters - 90 Baht) to connect the docking station to the True Visions set-top box eSATA connection in the back. Into the docking station, I inserted a newly bought 2 terabyte Western Digital hard drive (3.5" size) which cost me 2,820 Baht. Plugged in everything, called True Visions to get them to (instantly) switch on my PVR service for 99 Baht/month, and off I went. Upon pressing the "PVR" button on the remote, and powering up the hard drive, I received a message on the TV asking if I wanted to format the hard drive, and I said yes. That was about the extent of the difficulty of setting it up. Thereafter, it was reporting that I have over 500 hours of recording capacity. Not sure if this figure is based on the recording of regular or HD shows, but it's large enough that I don't care.

I have subsequently recorded and played back a variety of shows, with very little problems. As others have reported above, occasionally during playback, the TV screen goes black for a few seconds, and when the picture recovers, I notice that the show has fast-forwarded maybe 5 minutes from where it had been. But I can usually rewind back to where I last was watching, and resume the show, so I don't think these "black-outs" are usually the result of any lost data. Other than that, I haven't had any problems. True Visions tells their customers to purchase ONLY 2.5" size hard drives (not 3.5"), and to be sure to power the hard drive using the "eSATA Power" connection on the back of their set-top box. But as mentioned above, I'm using a 3.5" hard drive, and my docking station is powered directly from a household electrical outlet, so I'm not sure why True Visions tells people this.

One other observation: since the hard drive is essentially running 24x7, I think it's worthwhile to get a hard drive which runs quietly. In my case, I luckily bought a WD Green hard drive, which I discovered later is designed for this purpose. I know that other people in this thread have mentioned that they turn their HD on and off as needed, but I happen to like the fact that the PVR service is automatically recording any show that you happen to be watching (regardless of whether or not you've decided to record it), which means that you can pause or rewind live TV. I've already gotten spoiled by this feature, in which I regularly rewind something of interest while watching a show. And if you happen to pause the live TV long enough, you can always fast-forward through the annoying commercials after you've started watching the show again. None of this would be possible if your hard drive were powered off.

I've been wanting PVR functionality for literally years now. My friends and family in the States have had this pleasure for 8-10 years, and True Visions has finally reached a point where it's not only cost-effective, but relatively reliable as well. I tried to buy a PVR box from them back in 2009, which didn't work at all, but luckily they returned my 9K Baht purchase price so that I wasn't out of pocket. Disappointed that it took them this long to enter the 21st century, but glad it's finally here. Unfortunately, all of this gives me even more of a reason to hit the couch lately than ever before. Hmm.

I just got off the phone with True Visions, and their customer service rep tells me that the hard disk I use with their set-top box must:

- connect to the set-top box for data purposes via eSATA;
- be powered via the designated "eSATA Power" connection on the set-top box;
- be a 2.5" drive. She expressly said that customers are having problems with their 3.5" drives;
- be anywhere between 500GB and 1TB capacity.

Being somewhat of a techie myself, I can't help but wonder at some of these instructions. For example:

- it doesn't make sense that the set-top box won't support hard drives with capacities greater than 1TB, unless for some reason its address space reference capacity is limited to this amount.
- I doubt if the source of power to the hard drive matters at all, but maybe the set-top box won't deliver data to the eSATA port if nothing is plugged into the "eSATA Power" connector?
- What's the deal with the 2.5" form factor? Do 3.5" drives have higher throughput speeds which overrun the buffers in the set-top box?

After snooping around a little, I think I figured out which set-top box I happen to be using. Although of course it has a True Visions label on the front, I'm almost positive it's a Samsung SMT-S5260. I've attached the brochure for this below, in PDF form. Nowhere online (including the Samsung website) can I find any user manuals for this box, most likely because the cable or satellite operators which buy these boxes in bulk from Samsung don't want their customers knowing much about how to use them!

One thing I have definitively discovered however, via information provided by email from True Visions, is that the disk file system format is XTVFS. Along with whatever proprietary encryption True Visions probably uses, this might explain why people can't read the saved video files on their PC's.

Anyway, if anyone happens to know anything else about this that might be helpful, it would be much appreciated. I'm perfectly happy to buy the necessary hardware goodies to make the PVR functional, but getting accurate details about how the set-top box works is a different matter entirely!

Samsung Set-Top Box Specs.pdf

Any idea if a vehicle pass can be obtained mid-year or must I wait until December?

For what it's worth, my understanding is that the open period for applying is somewhere between November and February, but don't quote me on that. Based on that, I seriously doubt if you can get a pass now.

I'm pretty sure it opens at 06:00 after closing at 20:00

That's what I was thinking too - I'll find out tomorrow. Thanks for the reply!

I need to use the Wing 41 road soon, very early in the morning, but I'm not sure at what time of day they re-open it after being closed the night before. Anybody know?

There is no grace period - but policy is that they will allow an extension application on the first workday in the case of a weekend or holiday.

Many thanks, Lopburi! Next year I'll plan better.

Since July 7 is a Sunday, your only grace period is one day since you can apply on Monday with no overstay. It's best to do it before te date in case you don't have everything that they require. The year is added to your present permission to stay so you don't loose any days if you do it early. Most offices allow 30 days early , but some allow 60.

Wayned, I'm currently planning to go in on Friday, with Monday the 8th as a backup day, but I'd like to be absolutely certain of this grace period. Can I ask how sure you are of this?

Since July 7 is a Sunday, your only grace period is one day since you can apply on Monday with no overstay. It's best to do it before te date in case you don't have everything that they require. The year is added to your present permission to stay so you don't loose any days if you do it early. Most offices allow 30 days early , but some allow 60.

That last piece of information (no downside to doing it early) is very helpful, thanks much for that.

Yes, this time, I will! Just took care of that, hehe.

No grace period AFAIK - although the experts will doubtless come on to confirm or otherwise. Looks like you'd better get your skates on, then, particularly if you use the Embassy letter method for proving your income.

Since you can apply for annual extensions up to 30 days before the existing one expires, why don't you set your mobile to sound a loud alarm a month before the expiry date this time next year to remind you then?