filingaccount

bangkok post classifieds normally lists a ton of them

even online I believe. I have been told I am NOT allowed to link to other sites, so I am unable to help further unless you contact me via PM.

Just did the Thaivisaservice run... snip...

So that was it. All in all, I'd give the service as a whole a 6 out of ten rating, but only suggest you use it if time really is of the essence.

B.Gas

I did a visa run as well, but completely different from yours. Arrived on the same day as you.

You didn't state the price of this Thurday to Saturday trip, but I assume around 5-7,000 baht.

I did my trip as follows.

1. Got a Laos visa ahead of time. 1500 Baht. 2 hour service.

2. Booked with Airasia to Udon Thani. 99 Baht ticket. Return ticket including all taxes and fees was 618 Baht. (normal price would be around 1500 baht. Got lucky with the promotion)

2.1. Taxi to airport. 200 baht. Flight left 7 am.

3. Used the airport van service to the border at the friendship bridge. 200 baht.

4. Arrived at the border about 9 am. Stamped out of Thailand less than 3 minutes later.

4.1. Crossed the border with the border bus. 15 baht.

4.2. Stamped into Laos.

5. Used a tuk-tuk service to Thai Embassy. 50 Baht.

6. Arrived at 10.30 am. Got queue number 385. Currently serving #260.

7. Out from the embassy at 12.20 pm. Hotel van picked me up free of charge.

8. Got to my booked hotel. 1100 Baht for the night in a huge suite (2 queen sized beds, 4 tables, 4 chairs), with breakfast, free internet in the room (256 kbps), fully stocked minimart nearby.

9. Next afternoon the van took me to the embassy. Arrived an hour early and got queue #20 or so. Done in 10 minutes.

10. Van took me to friendship bridge. 400 baht.

11. Stamped out of Laos in a minute. No queue at all.

11.1. Bridge bus. 20 baht.

11.2. TWO people at the Thai side of the border (HUH? 400+ people applied for visa the day before). 4 booths open. Staff looked happy and bored at the same time. Done in 4 minutes including filling in the arrival card.

11.3 Transfer service to airport. 200 baht.

12. Left Udon at a delayed time of 6.25 on Friday evening.

13. Taxi home. 220 Baht

14. Arrived at home at 8.15 pm.

Total price for my 36 hour quick trip? Less than 5000 baht+visa fee.

Edit: clarifications.

We live near Bangkok and come into the city often. We are often looking for new great restaurants to try.

Regardless of cost, type, or location: what are the "must go" places in Bangkok (anywhere)? be it Thai, Chinese, French, whatever.

There is a quite famous and popular Suki place on Petchaburi Rd. close to opposite Amari Atrium hotel, just at some small bridge over a klong. I forget the name of the place, but it has been there at least a good 20-30 years. The suki is great.

Baan Tawan Gai Yang is on Ekkamai, also been there for a long time. Their grilled chicken is amongst the best you have tried.

Pepper Lunch inside Central World.

Pizza Pizza, also inside Central World. Try their pasta.

The Laos food restaurant just next to the SFW movie theatre.

Midnight Kaitom (small food stall) just outside a small 7-Eleven on Petchaburi road, close to the Pratunam intersection.

White Kitchen, the very last foodstall in the Paragon foodcourt. Try their TomYam.

Prantalay, also in the Paragon foodcourt, nearer to the middle.

I suggest walkig around inside Central World and explore all the restaurants, many which only exists there. Many are very different and offers interesting choices. One restaurant offers Italian and Japanese buffet for 299++ Baht. Another dessert place nearby offers 5% alcohol icecream/sorbet. Kuu, gives you a fantastic noodle set with deepfried pork.

Then there is that inexpensive japanese curry place, run Thai style.

They also just opened a Singapore Chicken Rice place (apparently famous in Singapore, Orchard rd something restuarant.)

Siam center has that place with old style Thaifood and 50-60-70's music.

The restaurant on the ground floor in the middle serves great food.

You notice I am quite bad with restaurant names...sorry for that, but it might give you at least a few ideas.

Almost 2 weeks since my seagate 500 krapped out, I'm still waiting.......the shop tried to pawn off a rebuilt with visual flaws on me and my tec guru refused and he now has secured a new one.

we'll see how this one goes......that latest put me over 50% failure with seagate.

I am interested in what your HDD temperatures are.

What is your normal room temp when the PC is on?

Do you have any airflow running over the HDD's?

What is you power supply readings? eg. the 12 V and 5 V rails.

I used to have some issues with Seagate HDD's. It was a 1-2 punch with the HDD's being imported from China and receive quite a lot of punishment in shipping, and a lack of airflow of the HDD's. The lack of airflow resulted in high temperatures when there was prolonged disk access, and the temps dropped when disk access stopped. Apparently what happed was that the abuse during shipping (althoguh seagate takes a lot of precausions, the abused received is much higher than from a locally built HDD's) combined with heat cycles reduced the expected life of the HDD.

Another problem that many HDD's suffer from is that the circuit board easily overheats and breaks. The data is still intact, but the HDD requires a circuit board replacement with the same version of the firmware.

This was corroborated by DCOM service center.

The problems seems to have become slightly larger since the perpendicular technology was introduced. The tighter packed bytes seems to be a little bit more sensitive to outside conditions.

I don't agree - a bad cable can mess with your signal, digital or not, and there was a marked difference in picture quality between the two cables we looked at or we wouldn't have bothered. Anyway, here's some interesting tests.

It matter only with ANALOG cables. VGA, component, composite, SVDO.

DIGITAL cables send only 0's and 1's.

If a 1 is sent, then a 1 is received. It is not stronger nor weaker, it is simply 1.

There are several scams regarding the sales of higher priced cables, and these are taught by the company selling these cables. I personally have attended 2 of these "upsale" teaching classes.

The gist of the matter comes down to manipulating the settings on the TV using presets done in advance - a click on the remote and the TV looks horrible because the preset is done with low saturation, low contrast and high light settings - and using unshielded analog cables that are overly long to degrade the signal, tune in to standard antenna Thai TV and at the same time talk about the benefits and how the investment of your new expensive TV shouldn't have to suffer because you do not want to invest "just another couple of grand" which in the big scheme of things does not matter. You want the absolute best, don't you?

Then they bring out the very shiny, gold plated, expensive looking cable and talk about how the retail price is 9000 baht, but they are willing to help you out by giving you the price of 5300 baht, the cost of the cable and that they normally wouldn't do sell it so cheap. But you have been so nice to us (you have given them water, no?), so we will give you this special price (don't tell anyone though). If you mention the price is expensive and you dont want it, they will convey a message of disapproval, make a phone call or 2, talk amongst themselves a little, and come up with the new, never before heard of price, 3400 baht. They will look suprised, excited and even talk about they themselves buying it if you do not, because they can easily sell it to anyone else for more than 5300 baht. Good profit.

So of course you will go ahead and buy the cable, and voila perfect picture quality. Of course now the presets have changed to the optimal settings and all of a sudden you are watching a channel on UBC and you think, wow, this cable is great.

I have massive problems with TOT and gmail.

Using the browser interface, any attachment larger than 200 KB does not attach to the outgoing email.

I did a little digging around and found that it seems TOT has implemented some sort of upload proxy/compression method.

Just get any HDMI cable. Brand doesn't matter. Digital is digital.

I have a 240 baht run-of-the-mill chinese made with gold plated connectors and it performs just as well as any other "brand name" cables.

In Bangkok IT Mall (Zonelink) is your best bet for decent enough cables.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product....=1&format=2

That's the real price... anything more is pure profit for the reseller/manufacturer.

Everyone I have spoken to report the same issues as detailed below.

1. Bittorrent downloads are lightning fast. Be it from local cashing (ala True) or through enough connected peers with 10-30 KB/s speed each. The result is that torrent downloads are always maxing out the line speed (minus header overhead). A 2 Mbps line typically sees 155 KB/s download speed. If you do not see this behavior, force encryption.

2. Browsing webpages is dog slow. You are lucky to see 280 Kbps per page you are loading. Opening 10 pages strangely enough yields you 8-10 times total speed (DU Meter is fantastic for monitoring bandwidth). Intermittently you will see pages pause the loading, and restart 10-15 seconds later (see point 5 for possible explanation).

3. Any streaming media above 280 Kbps is going to be choppy. It will buffer for a little while, and work ok for maybe a minute or so, then chop-chop-chop. This happens for both streaming radio and video (eg. ustream.com, justin.tv, shoutcast.com etc). On very rare occasions will a feed with more bandwidth requirements work. Any less bandwith and the stream will work fine most of the time.

Youtube and other video services that allow local caching will of course work as long as you wait long enough. This does not work for live streaming TV though.

4. Many times between 2.30 am and 3.30 am your internet connection will inexplicably stop working. Many times requiring you to restart your ADSL modem. Normal service will resume after 3.30 am even without restart of modem.

5. Larger downloads will many times cut off before the whole file is finished downloading. This is possibly caused by ISP's sending RST packets (eg. informing your browser that the connection is dead, please drop the active link). To see this behavior, try downloading a 2+ MB PDF from gmail for example.

6. It will not matter which ISP you are with. All of them suffer from the same ailments. Not all at the same time though, it seems to go on a rolling schedule.

7. Draw your own conclusions.

The thread is very long with quite repetitive statements, so if my comments have been addressed I apologize.

HUMANS are selfish in general. Looking out for #1 is essential for survival. Don't think about the "society" today, but how evolution has crafted us to become what we are today. All throughout human history we have seen destruction of "natural" habitat for human expansion. Yes, from the cavemen who cleared paths and eventually started planting crops to the situation we see today.

Humans, evolutionary speaking, has not caught up with the advancement of technology and thus the "comforts" it provides. eg. no more manual labor needed to collect food.

One could liken the human population growth to that of rats (although on a longer timescale). More food, less effort (calories) to collect the food, the bigger the population numbers. Inevitably the food supply will run short, and population will drastically diminish.

You can not change human behavior in a relatively very short time (a couple of generations). It will take quite a while for humans to adapt to the current conditions, and that is assuming these conditions will be stable. This is of course not going to happen. Things change very quickly, and the pace is picking up.

No matter how hard one might try, humans will stay selfish and always seek the easy way out. Sure, we will preach about "betterment" and perhaps make a small effort, but we will never leave the comforts (whatever they may be) of our own homes.

Human "activity", people say, is killing the planet.

This is total and utter bullcrap. "The planet is fine, its us humans that are f#cked."

We are simply just killing off the conditions that make the planet habitable to us. Life on this planet has gone through worse, and life has bounced back, even from 99% extinction - several times. This is just simply another extinction event, but our frame of reference doesn't allow us to "see" it. One humans life is simply too short.

This is getting very long winded, and tiring. Just one more point though to emphasize my point above.

The dinosaurs, popular topic when it comes to "quick" removal of a line of species, didn't die out in a day or 2. It took a good several thousand years before they were gone. Similar trends are seen today with species going extinct rapidly.

Can anyone today say they feel confident that species that exists today will survive several thousand years?

Finally. A simple conclusion to the original topic, Thai's are doing no worse nor better than any other human throughout history.

So far I see irrelevant opinion - comments on buying instead of leasing, one Internet search passing as a fact, and experience of talking about something without even trying to get acquainted with the subject.

And your argument is to argue that I am wrong... based on what?

And guess what? This is a discussion forum, ergo, it's open for discussion. So please stay on topic and refrain from personal attacks (veiled or otherwise).

And yes, someone has to buy the buses and lease them out. The buyer of the buses would pay in round numbers US$ 80,000 per bus. Even with full import taxes that comes to aprox. 8.5 million Baht. Then to lease out for a value of 17.25 million Baht sounds like a very profitable business.

Should I further detail this or are you able to follow the train of thought now?

There's no Thai deal to buy buses. You are comparing apples and oranges.

See above.

There were several teams working out details of this project for years. You feel proud you can shoot holes in some imaginary bus purchase in two minutes. I can only imagine how much you can come with in a few weeks.

And that's the best they can come up with? Please... it doesn't take a genius to figure out what is going on. If one was to completely hide or distort a deal of this magnitude it would most likely require a lot of work and great timing.

Then again, there is no need to prove anything one way or the other. One could work out a whole deal and present it properly to the public and government at a much much lower leasing rate than the 17.25 million value per bus (or alternatively offer the very latest hybrid buses fully kitted out with cash to spare) currently offered.

Make a basic and simple break down of the cost.

Right now the public has to pay 4,780 baht per day per bus. Or 143,400 per 30 day period for a full 10 years. With a passenger rate of 500 persons (10 full bus loads) using the bus per day per 30 day period, that means an average payment of 10 baht is needed just to cover costs of the leasing. Then you'd need to add insurance, fuel, staff, and basic maintenance. I'll let anyone who is interested work out the cost for the daily running of the bus.

If you think these costs are normal, then please inform yourself correctly.

I also think Bangkok needs buses. Now.

This I can agree with, but Bangkok does not need "high end" buses, and more importantly Bangkok needs cleaner air. Graft free hybrid buses would get 2 things done at the same time.

Oh, before you start asking me to prove <item>, or ask me to give accurate quotes of prices, or pointing out flaws in my English or pointing out a wrong choice of words, please consider the general message I am giving. The per bus price, leasing or not, is valued way too high. 17.25 million per bus is outrageous.

One would think that a good starting place would be to enquire with hospitals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hospitals_in_Thailand

Oh, and don't confuse retail cars with wholesale purchases of buses.

Yet you yourself confuse buying MB buses with renting Chinese ones.

Senators who oppose this deal want to trim the cost on petty things like electronic ticketing and cctv cameras and rigging TOR to favour certain Chinese suppliers.

But what do they know! One alibaba search can give them some real ammunition. Thank god there's internet and all kinds of expert advice on it.

Really, do you want me to offer you a full report?

I have my opinion, facts and experience to back it up. Do you?

Someone asked for proof of cost of buses, mentioned Chinese ones, so yeah, a quick search yields results that are significantly lower priced that what has been proposed with the Thai deal. With a bit of time, research and putting it all together, the results will be even more competitive. If I can shoot holes into the 69 billion deal in a coupe of minutes, imagine what can be done by a team in a few weeks...

And if you think politicians (senators or otherwise) are savvy business people you are sorely mistaken. If you think this deal is graft free, think again. If you think that Thailand *needs* high end buses as opposed to low cost alternatives, please explain your reasoning.

And YES, thank god there ARE people who CRITICALLY look at things and not just say "oh well, since they do it, it must be proper/graft free/and completely transparent".

The price is FOB China. Internet price showing 30K to 80K us.

If you pay 30K, I don't think it comes with an engine. You will be paying closer to 80K for a useable bus.

Also, have you forgotten the import tax. Correct me if I am wrong, that is a few hundred percents.

It is said that 70% of the assembly is done in Thailand. I believe that tax is not a few hundred percent on spare parts (and yes should one import a whole bus into Thailand, one should import spare parts and do the assembly here). Do they pay more than maybe the excise tax? I'm sure someone who is familiar with motor vehicle import can figure it out.

Also 30k to 80k is a price per bus at 1 bus orders. Negotiations should yield a reduction in price with the volumes talked about (4,000 buses).

In closing I'd like to offer this thought.

Why would one have to show corruption for any deal? It would be simple to undercut the prices offered and that way there is no need for a "big investigation". Someone could easily just show up with a quote, in this case, for 4,000 buses at a (hypothetical) price of 20 billion Baht, make is very detailed and very public, et voila.

Go to www.nvidia.com and download the latest relevant drivers.

Uninstall your current nvidia drivers while in safe mode. This is generally sufficient.

Reboot.

Install new drivers.

Sometimes....

One 45-55 passenger seat bus is about US$ 80,000 (2,800,000 baht) retail.

That equals about 24,600 buses at retail prices. Of course any government is not paying retail prices, but probably at discounted rates of around 20-30%. That would mean a total of up to 35,000 buses. If you factor in Thai taxes then the total is nearer 11,500 buses.

Doesn't take a genius to figure out this or the rest. (30 seconds doing web searches is sufficient)

Please show us a link on these cheap buses. Chinese made? 2.8 million is cheaper than my mini cooper.

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/20049422..._YCK6126HC.html

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/21143269...ompany_bus.html

I was wrong... It could be cheaper than that with Chinese made buses.

A country like Thailand, particularly in recession, should not be thinking about Mercedes or whichever "high end" brand.

I'd be happy to import and sell buses to the government, but I tell you, doing business with Thai politicians inevitably ... never mind, I'll self censor.

In any case, setting an average value of 17,250,000 Baht per bus (US$ ~490,000), as they have done, is ridiculous.

This price would net you the very latest spiffy, non-polluting, fully kitted hybrid buses with cash to spare!

Edit: Oh, and don't confuse retail cars with wholesale purchases of buses. Worlds apart.

One 45-55 passenger seat bus is about US$ 80,000 (2,800,000 baht) retail.

That equals about 24,600 buses at retail prices. Of course any government is not paying retail prices, but probably at discounted rates of around 20-30%. That would mean a total of up to 35,000 buses. If you factor in Thai taxes then the total is nearer 11,500 buses.

Doesn't take a genius to figure out this or the rest. (30 seconds doing web searches is sufficient)

I've just spent a fairly fruitless hour or so contacting a few Chinese suppliers via a couple of the many B2B Chinese websites that I would assume have been successful in supplying the world with Chinese goods.

I have yet to get as much as a price list or discuss shipping costs, I can't believe that a Chinese company is avoiding talking to me because I am not a Thai in Thailand or because my proposed order is not for three ship loads of heavy machine parts, they are within their advertised minimium order levels. Even ignoring shipping costs it will cheaper to deal with China than the US supplier I have been looking at earlier for some items.

Any one else encountered this type of problem or am I having a bad website day?

I contact with factories on a daily basis in a few countries, including mainland China.

I would be willing to help you out a bit to get you started in the right direction. PM me and we can talk.

the friend of the family does not care if the unit does not inrease in value or is mega desirable as long as it can be let out and not lose value

He wants a sure thing, eh?

No such thing.

If he want to be reasonable, he must do a lot of research himself. Nobody can say "this" or "that" will work. It's all research, cold calculations, marketing (not sales), a bit of luck and most of all a desire to succeed.

Now, MY opinion is that the Thai property market will stay stagnant for a few years, much like after 1997, and probably experience a slow pickup after a few years.

Thais do not generally rent for more than a few thousand baht a month. Anything higher, and they tend to buy their own place.

Foreigners do not travel to Thailand at all at the moment. Who knows when it will pickup again.

Walk outside on the same level you pick up your luggage. Inside most of the people trying to grab you for their taxis want 1,000 baht. Outside they have a line for the public taxis. I stayed at the Pratinum area last week. It cost about 430 baht from Swampy to Pratinum because I paid a premium of 50 baht to get the taxi (you're guaranteed not to be ripped off) and the toll charges were included. They charge by meter. Going back to Swampy last Friday from Pratinum cost just over 240 baht, plus 70 baht for the tolls.

No, do not do that.

Go to the top floor and grab a taxi just after they drop of passengers heading for the airport. No surcharge, no scams, no "big taxi - 500 baht" ripoffs.

As said, the taxis are mostly happy just to get a fare back into town. If taxi #1 says "x baht" just walk away and grab the very next taxi.

I am again shamelessly pimping www.factory-listing-thailand.com

The in-depth search services are top notch.

I am again shamelessly pimping www.factory-listing-thailand.com

The in-depth search services are top notch.

Anything from 7500 to 80000 - Apartment rental 1 bedroom or 2 bedroom near train station.

2000-3000 - Electricity, gas, water, etc.

0 - Home phone

1170 - Home Broadband/ Cable Internet

9000 - Groceries

1000-1500 - Mobile phone

500 - Transportation (taxi, train, etc.)

200 - Insurance, if any

12000-20000 - Entertainment (movies, eating out, drinks, etc)

1000-1500 - Laundry

Misc expenses adds up - Any other things that I may have missed out

Also what's the taxes imposed on foreigners working in Bangkok:

depending on income - Taxes (how many percent % of gross/ net salary)

7% VAT - Any other taxes

All in all you might require around 30000 baht minimum to pay expenses. Comfortable living I would say 60-75000 at least.

Interesting.

I have had many frustrating failures with Sylvania Minilynx mini Twister 11W.

Nothing wrong with voltages, wiring nor anything else related to electricity in my condo. Confirmed by me, a Thai electrician and the condo builder. The conclusion is that I must have bought a bad batch of the bulbs. ALL 16 I bought broke within 4 weeks of installation.

Some failed spectacularly by simply exploding.

Others dropped out of the sockets (heat expansion and contraction when cooling, perhaps),

but mostly they simply just died quietly (as in turn the light off with the switch, turn it back on... and no light).

I bought Philips Tornado 12 W as replacements and not one has failed on me for over a year.

Strangely enough the two Minilynx spiral 20 W I bought still works to this day (passing a year).

I think JSK Network might fit your criteria for web design.

Our designs are professional, easy to navigate, flexible for expansion & re-designing and best of all, beautiful to look at.

We listen to your ideas and needs, but more importantly we tell you if and when we think some ideas might be not the best suited for your project. We understand how people interact with websites and how to capture your visitors immediately.

A new (and existing) online venture depends on one thing really - the success of turning your visitors into regular customers, and generating good word of mouth reviews online. Simplicity works, not over choreographed sites.

Please have a look at some of our recent work which includes the below.

xpresso-coffee.com

factory-listing-thailand.com

asienresan.se

matimitr.co.th

jhonglo.com

compactlabelling.com

Each site is under continuous development as we offer unlimited updates and revisions to your website for one full year included in the price. We do this as we know everyone needs and wants flexibility to update the site with the newest promotions, news, offers, text changes and other content updates.

Of course we can tailor make advanced site features as well, from forums, to online shopping, to full social networking sites, integration with social bookmarking sites, media (youtube, facebook etc). We feel however, that many "advanced features" like social bookmarking takes away from your site and places focus on the social site. Too much video might draw customers away from your site to youtube because customers get curios about related videos etc.

In closing, it doesn't cost you anything to consult us. We will offer our honest opinion to you and without further obligations. Oh, we are very reasonably priced as well.

Thanks for your time.

Heikki

JSK Network

PM me for enquiries, or find the backlink on each client site and contact us at JSK Network.

I bought unsalted almonds at Makro:

They are sold in a transparent, resealable plastic bag;

brand name "Heritage";

with a red label in TH/EN: Raw natural whole almonds 500grs;

by Heritage Snacks & Foods Co.,Ltd.

Enjoy!

Got the same. They claim it to be nitrogen packed, and thus are crispy and not soggy when you open the bag the first time. A bit on the pricey side at Central supermarkets though.