Theyreallrubbish

This isn't an anti-foreigner thing. They do the same with Thai companies. Every Thai company has a line item in the accounts of "Staff Loans"

Since the orginal post I quoted has been deleted, this is now an even more meaningless post than I usually post

This isn't an anti-foreigner thing. They do the same with Thai companies. Every Thai company has a line item in the accounts of "Staff Loans"

I'd concur with around 6 hours from the outskirts of Bangkok to Chiang Mai, plus however long it takes to get from you are in Bangkok to where the highway starts to look like a highway rather than another clogged Bangkok road (not far from Ayuthaya sometimes!)

I'd also agree with making sure you bypass Nakhon Sawan or add another 30-45 mins.

This time includes a fueling stop and about 3 stops for toilet, buy a coffee etc, but no meals

I'm not in any way poking fun at your post, but a desk and chair for "a couple of thousand baht" would fall apart in less than a week. I looked around for a long time before buying my office chair which is medium Thai quality and cost around 6800 Baht but came with a one year warranty. That was 13 months ago and so far it hasn't broken yet. On the other hand I went the cheap route on my desk and at around 2200 Baht, the keyboard/mouse tray made of particle board has already disintegrated from the oils on our hands. In another couple of months it will have to be replaced or the keyboard and mouse will end up on the floor! Something to think about when buying cheap office furniture...you get what you pay for.

I bought a few desks from the shops at the factories at Lamphun. Has 2 lockable draws and a lockable cabinet, foot rest and is a decent size. 690 Baht and they seem to be OK after a couple of months. They get a lot of cold drinks placed on them with no coasters and no marks or swelling from the water.

I bought some chairs as well, padded, swivel, with arms for 450 Baht. I didn't expect them to hold up, but so far no problems at all. I bought about a year ago a deluxe office chair with thick padding, padded arms, reclining, swivel, etc for 3800 Baht from Office Max in Pantip and its still perfect

Was there a line at the door of people waiting for a seat to open up?

If not, then why are you so judgmental at the rate people spend or don't spend money? You are very quick to label people and look down on them.

God forbid someone should wander past your place and decide just to have a cup of tea and a glass of water while they decide what to do next only to have a farang sneering at them for being cheapskates and having the nerve to cross his threshold and not order a 3 course meal with ten bottles of beer.

Why don't you just charge an entry fee redeemable against food and drinks since you think everyone should spend a minimum amount you determine is correct?

I have to say that I disagree with a basic premise that the Thais single out the foreigner for worse treatment. As far as I can tell the Thais treat each other exactly the same.

Thais I know in business have exactly the same issues with the Thai bureaucracy (obviously not for work permits, but for everything else), they scam each other and over charge each other just as much as they do foreigners.

Just this week someone moved in to a shop house unit near me, moved all her things in and set up her shop selling furniture, when the owner turned up and said she had to move out as the contract she'd signed and the 3 months deposit she'd paid had been to the previous tenant who'd pretended he was the owner and was 5 months behind on his rent.

I was talking to the Thai owner of a small construction company who told me about the suppliers overcharging, staff stealing, customers not paying, sub-quality materials being substituted, etc. that every foreigner complains about.

I was talking to a Thai car driver who was complaining that the police always decided it was the car driver's fault if a motorbike hit them even if the motorbike was 100% at fault.

A Thai friend who drives a Mercedes was complaining that when he stopped to buy fruit from the side of the road the vendor doubled the price saying, "You are obviously rich, you can pay more"

And that's just this week.

Over a month I will probably hear almost every complaint foreigners have about Thailand echoed by a Thai. (And with certain of my male friends, even the ones about the scheming women!)

So watch out that anything you claim for is genuine discrimination as if you're asking for better treatment than the Thais get you're not likely to get much joy

In all seriousness though I am horrified by what the effect must be on those who grow up exposed to this and whether they view standing in a nice condo screaming at someone, or standing by a Mercedes screaming at someone, or standing outside a trendy restaurant and screaming at someone, as an aspirational life goal.

Yep. I'm sure they would all be better off with Eastenders, Coronation Street and Brookside, then you could relate to them, and they would have an aspirational goal in life, right ?

The fact that you don't understand any of the Thai soaps pales into insignifigance, the Thai people that like them are what in your opinion ? Any more delusional than the hundreds of millions of people all over the world who follow soap operas, each pertaining to their own countries ?

You don't understand Thai soaps, therefore they must be crap. right ?

You think people that grow up on Coronation Street, Eastenders or Brookside, or in your case maybe even Crossroads are enlightened ?

Thai comedy is totally different to UK comedy for example, it does not mean that the Thai people who find Thai comedy funny are inferior to a UK guy finding UK comedy funny. it's just different, and you don't understand it.

Maybe you should be " Horrified " at something worth being " Horrified " at, maybe you can start with the crap that some people spout on internet forums.

Personally. I'm horrified.

None of the western soaps have the level of violence that I see in Thai soaps. In fact, in the UK the level of violence is very contentious and subject to scrutiny. There are many Thai soaps I've seen that in the UK could not be shown before the 9 p.m. watershed due to the level of violence. Maybe its supposed to be "humorous" violence I see repeated in every Thai soap and I'm missing the joke, but I guess I'll just have to defer to someone who knows everything in Thailand better than everyone else and knows that everything in Thailand is just about perfect on that subject.

Honestly, have you EVER watched a selection of Thai soaps? As I find it hard to believe that anyone who had could seriously make that post.

And what is this huge chip you have on your shoulder that if someone doesn't like something about Thailand they must be racist and think they're superior to Thais? I don't really like spicy food so now go ahead and have a rant about how Thai food is totally different to Western food and just because I don't understand Thai food I think Thais are inferior for eating spicy food and that I think that Thais should eat McDonalds instead. Seriously, get a grip

Thai tv IS pretty bad!

so you don't like the story where the cute girl wants to date the cute boy but the parents want her to date the ugly looking fat kid from the rich family to further the parents business interest which ends in the scene where they are running around the jungle shooting at each other and then someone ends up in hospital ...

... while simultaneously in the hospital the cute girl's father miraculously regains a pulse after being declared dead by an impostor doctor as his mia noi watches faking sobs, just having been informed the man is actually her father by her crazed arch-enemy identical twin ladyboy brother who was in the next bed being treated for snake bite in the ass during intimacy with an autistic one-armed friend in the grass ... it goes on and on.

I just like the sound effects.....

They have Thai TV playing on the TV sets in my gym, and I go in the evening when the biggest rated soaps are on. From what I can tell its a bunch of people screaming at each other for an hour a night.

Although occasionally, for no reason that I can tell, one set of people screaming at each other, that is in no way differentiable from any other set, suddenly gets the attention of all the Thais in the gym, including the staff, and they all stop what they're doing to watch intensely one particular screaming match. I ruin the mood for them by giggling at the overacting and I even got some hard glances when I burst out laughing when an old man took a swan dive out of a wheelchair in response to being screamed at by a young woman.

In all seriousness though I am horrified by what the effect must be on those who grow up exposed to this and whether they view standing in a nice condo screaming at someone, or standing by a Mercedes screaming at someone, or standing outside a trendy restaurant and screaming at someone, as an aspirational life goal.

I took my Fortuner into a main Toyota dealer today for its 70k service and inevitably they came back saying I should get new brake pads and air filter as well (which I expected as SUVs are heavy on brakes and with pollution here airfilters get used quickly too). I agreed then asked if they discount any, more in hope than expectation and just trying it on a bit.

To my amazing surprise they immediately said yes, 10% on parts!

When I got the bill I was even more surprised that they had discounted the brake pads 20% and the other parts 10% even those in the normal services such as the oil for the oil change.

Overall, saved me about 1000 on a final bill of about 6000 Baht.

So worthwhile asking anyway. If you don't ask, you don't get!

There are already these bodies who lobby on behalf of western owned businesses.

There are several round tables and trade associations. They have lots of members and meet in swanky hotels and even have government ministers as members and speakers.

But they're not representing hair salon or restaurant owners. They're representing multimillion dollar businesses.

If you're not part of that no-one will listen to you here.

And frankly, another few thousand on a work permit fee isn't something a country managing director with expats on $200k a year is going to be raising over lunch with the Minister of Commerce.

Unless you can gather thousands and thousands of members who will all contribute funds so they can afford to have representation in the big leagues, you're going to have no more influence than a few dozen poor people of Thai nationality would have

Is it just me or are the mushrooms in the breakfast always burnt tasting?

I like the rest of the breakfast apart from that.

And the service IS terrible. Not once have they commented on how handsome I am!

Ahh....OK...so if I'm following this right, what used to be WIT's Oyster Bar in Soi Ruamrudee was somewhere along the way taken over and renamed Witch's Oyster Bar???

Looking online, I found almost no references still surviving to Wit's...with one S.... But Witch's Oyster Bar (part of the group that runs the Witch's Tavern and others in Thonglor) has its own web site....

I was referring to the WITCH'S Oyster Bar on Soi Ruamrudee, that is the subject/topic of this thread....

But I have a wife who loves oysters.... So I'd be interested in other choices, as well....

Same place, they've changed the name

http://www.mcdang.com/Bangkok/B29.asp

Anyone know what happened to Khun Witt?

Yes. I recognise the bar and layout from when it was Witt's Oyster Bar. They haven't changed anything apart from the name. Khun Witt was a very cultured Thai gentleman who was related to the Royal Family and was there most nights.

I haven't been for many many years as I dated his niece a long long long time ago and my next GF would become extremely jealous if anything remotely tangential to her came up, so I was effectively banned and stopped going!

Jesus, if even the internet barely remembers its old name I'm OLD!

I've had Yahoo Finance and ThaiVisa come up with the Thai Royal Police message, but I hit refresh and it was back to normal.

Weird system

I was referring to the WITCH'S Oyster Bar on Soi Ruamrudee, that is the subject/topic of this thread....

But I have a wife who loves oysters.... So I'd be interested in other choices, as well....

Same place, they've changed the name

http://www.mcdang.com/Bangkok/B29.asp

Anyone know what happened to Khun Witt?

Is it Witch's Oyster Bar or are you guys talking about Witt's Oyster Bar?

Khun Witt was/is a Bangkok institution and his restaurant has always been excellent.

OK this has nothing to do with the sex industry in LOS.

If i were to have unprotected sex with a HIV infected female the chances of me actually catching it are something like 1 in 300,

Last month my wife's nephew was cremated after dying from AIDS, it took about 18 months from whorehouse to ashes. He made claim to only one visit to the local whorehouse. He also infected his wife who has been bed ridden for many months and isn't expected to live much longer. They have three children. I guess some people don't believe in statistics.

I guess some people don't understand statistics. If you knew someone who had died in a plane crash it wouldn't alter the statistical odds of a plane crashing.

In a large sample size then outliers occur. With 15,000 new infections a year (assuming for the sake of argument all are men) if the number of men who visit a prostitute for the first time in that year is 1 in 15 (the other 14 have been to a prostitute before) and the odds of catching HIV from a single encounter is 1 in 100, then you would expect 10 men a year to catch HIV from their first encounter with a prostitute.

For the individual ten men and their families and the people that know them it would seem a horrendous stroke of bad luck and that HIV is far more infectious than the media reports, but it is a statistical inevitability that those ten men exist based on the probabilities.

Now you probably know or talk with about 200 people in a year. They do the same so just through your first and second degree contacts, that's a pool of 40,000 people. Which is about .67% of the Thai population. So again, statistically every one in 300 people knows directly or knows someone who caught HIV from their first visit to a prostitute.

There are, let's say 6000 registered users of Thai Visa, so there should be at least another 19 people who can tell the same story you have, without this being an at risk group or the statistics of catching the disease in any way false.

(Note, I have rounded and approximated to make it easy to follow, not to be accurate. I am simply trying to illustrate that in a sample size, what is unlikely can also appear common. In fact by being unlikely it is more likely to be noted and thus discussed. The odds of a sock going missing from the laundry are much higher, but your awareness of people in your contact group's sock losses is probably low)

Back to the topic of promiscuity, I'm old enough to have seen a change in the behaviour of the current generation of young women, yet young enough (just) that these women still regard me as potential boyfriend/husband/baby father material, and I have noticed a change in the sexual behaviour of the current cohort of Thai women in their 20s. My last 3 GFs all claimed I was the first or second foreigner and that they had only been with a single Thai man. So not particularly promiscuous. They were all in their very early 20s and reasonably well educated in 2 cases, one was very well educated, two came from very strict traditional families. And all three of them didn't want me to use a condom.

Very different to the behaviour of women of the same age group 10-15 years ago, who were very keen on condom useage.

It seems the fear of HIV has greatly diminished for the generation of women beginning sexual activity over the last few years, and like other posters I blame it on a reduction in education efforts.

You could always get the house mortgaged at the start and keep the money in your own account.

Then when the family to try and get another mortgage they'll either be told no, or be limited to the difference between your mortgage and any increase in the valuation.

You have to pay interest on the mortgage, but interest rates aren't high here and you'll have the money available to invest to try and earn more than the interest rate. Plus if things go really bad and your relationship breaks down for any reason you won't have lost the full amount of cash you put in to the house. IF she wants to kick you out and keep the house she'll be left with a mortgaged house instead of a free house. Minimises the temptation at the very least!

I also agree with the previous poster that registering the house with land department as collateral to a loan you've issued may work, but I'd be a bit worried with anything that's fake that someday someone may ask to see the evidence of transfer of funds from you to the property owner to prove the loan is real. Or worst case, the family insist you actually hand over the money, you signed a document that told the land department you had loaned, to the property owner!

Nothing here in CM. So far we've missed out on several good 3D offerings - let's hope that the guys over at Airport Plaza upgrade one of their screens soon.

Not much reason for them to do so though as there isn't much competition.

Still, the West is investing in 3D to combat piracy as its still several years away from being affordable in the home so Thai cinemas should be even more incentivised to move to 3D with the universal levels of piracy.

But with the economic environment, and a Thai pattern of not investing in refurbs and upgrades, new investment will be very carefully spent, so if there isn't a cinema with it already, then I'm not too hopeful until a complete new complex is built.

Oh well, I'll be in Bangkok in a couple of weeks.

One of the benefits of them moving is you'll be able to use the 'Old Farts' line.....

'It's not the same as the old days. I remember when it used to be round the corner on the moat... really seedy place'.

And us Older Farts will be able to say 'I remember when it used to be round the back of there. Seedy!!! The place on the moat was hi-so compared to the original place out back. Spicy and Tangy it was called. Oh yes in them days you could ....................... for 100 baht! 

I'm already feeling nostalgic and misty eyed and look forward to many years reminiscing over "The Infamous Step"

Any cinema in Chiang Mai with the technology to show James Cameron's film Avatar?

I'm a sucker to hype and I'd like to see this in 3D

If not in Chiang Mai, do they even have this technology in Bangkok?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6799610.ece

That all reads very scary and to think i actually chose to live here

Does is? It all seems very 'everyday stuff' - maybe I've been in LOS too long, but if you went back 10, 20 or 30 years would it be any different here? Wouldn't it have been equal or worse for most of that time in Cambodia / Laos / Indonesia / Philippines / Vietnam / Malaysia even & China... S.E.Asia isn't Basingstoke or Bracknell.

In the early 90s armed bandits were still hijacking buses up in the north of Thailand. I was never involved but a friend was and he said they were very polite but it was scary as they had weapons.

Still, back then foreigners were actually avoided as targets of crime as the police used to chase anyone who targeted a foreigner much more actively and severely as they didn't want Thailand's image damaged abroad.

How times have changed

Reading the OP's post he already knows what he has to do and is merely looking for someone to tell him its OK so he doesn't feel guilt.

From the post, you have already reached the conclusion that the current GF is not the one for your future.

You are also aware that jumping in to a new relationship will probably be a mistake at this point, but you're very tempted for all the usual reasons.

I'll be the first to tell you that you have no need to feel any guilt whatsoever at ending the relationship with your current GF. The mere fact of her discussing going (back) to work as a prostitute means you have no need to feel even one iota of guilt over ending the relationship. Your only problem is how to end it without her losing face and thus causing a huge drama that can sometimes be dangerous here. She has already planned that out for you and laid it out in clear as clear can be steps. Agree that you don't have the money she needs. Agree to let her date other guys. Agree to be separate while this happens. Then never look back.

I would also recommend you follow your own instincts and take some time before entering into another relationship. You know your own weaknesses and seem to be very self-aware, although you tend to deny your own awareness to avoid any feelings of guilt or doing anything that could affect your own self-image.

Be strong. Carry out both these steps and in six months you'll be a free man and in the right position to really form a relationship with the right kind of girl you can build a future with.

Some comedic gems today...

"...then again he was a miserable looking p*mmie scabby sort of grub, so nothing would surprise me. " - Neverdie

"Everyone has the right to be stupid, just that some over step the mark" - Artisi

Priceless.

Gotta agree. This boy is in for a whole world of hurt. He is probably still reading these posts, smugly smiling that he is smarter than all the good advice given as it doesn't apply to his girl as "she's different".

Son, you aren't the first...and you won't be the last. Feign poorhouse. See what happens....but we already know.

Good to see I'm not a uniquely cynical old curmudgeon and that other have the same interpretation of this girl as I did.

The OP has only been accepted so she can minimise the conflict while she figures out another way to get rid of him. He's going to be very upset when he realises the reconciliation is fake.

And he is in for a world of hurt as she now views him with utter contempt.

They're obviously hoping the US taxpayer will cough up 10 million Baht, they can spend the 10k (Which I believe the previous poster would be the right amount) and then pocket the rest.

After all, if the farang hadn't put the buoy there then it wouldn't have had a battery to run out so the farang has to be responsible for the new battery. How could anyone think otherwise?

And the ten million Baht is cheap for a rich farang government especially for the privilege of having a buoy in Thai waters. The US Ambassador should just go to the ATM and withdraw the money and hand it over and accept that he's in Thailand and that's Thai culture

I recently bought a new Fortuner and at first when looking around all the Toyota dealers used the same book price. When asking for discount very few would budge from the list price.

However, after calling various dealers in the locale we eventually got the price reduced slightly at first starting from 10K discount.... to eventually with the dealer we bought if from a discount of 50K with a few additional extra's thrown in.

It does pay to call around, even if the dealers are a little bit further than where you live. Although i'm not really interested in the free umberalla and rice cooker with a new car !!

Obviously, too late for this car, but if you buy in the future and aren't obsessed with the new car smell try buying from Toyota Sure you can get a car under 1 year old with the additional Toyota Sure warranty on top of the manufacturers warranty and fully checked.

But the big thing is they negotiate on the price. I got the price down about 7% from the sticker in the window, which was only slightly higher to begin with to the prices in non-official second hand dealers with no warranty or guaranteed check