jfchandler

Apparently I got unsubscribed from this thread during one of its quiet periods... Glad to find my way back...

Was out at Queen Sirikit today for one of their shows/fairs...and came across a couple of interesting things I'd never heard or of seen before... one a healthy foods market in BKK near Siriraj Hospital, and the other a healthy foods restaurant in the Lumpini area...

See the images I've scanned below....

The Cheewajit shop had their own good sized mini market set up at QSNCC the past few days for the fair...and I could see that had a pretty broad range of a lot of different products.... rices, grains, beans, drinks, packaged food, juices, etc etc.. The prices were quite reasonable, and as you can see from the image above, they're doing some foods under their own brand labeling.... I talked with their store manager, a Thai who speaks quite good English.... It's a bit out of the way, but would seem well worth a visit...

Meanwhile, I only saw the brochure for this restaurant below...but it looks quite interesting... I wanna try it soon...and I'm presuming it's near the Saladang BTS and/or Lumpini MRT stations.

BTW, though I'm not a vegetarian, there's what looks to be quite a decent vegetarian restaurant... yes... a real restaurant... in the basement of the Ekamai Mediplex complex just adjacent to the Ekamai BTS station... Haven't tried it yet, though.... They looked to be heavy on soy substitutes for meat, which isn't a good thing for me....

Well, I was out on the prowl today and ended up running down the "XL for Men" shop on the 3rd floor of the Silom Complex building at Saladaeng BTS station. The staff inside said the same company has a second location on the third floor of MBK...

The two girls/staff inside the Silom store were pretty clueless and spoke sparse English.... At first, they said in Thai to my wife that they had no pants longer than 34 in. inseam... But then as my wife and I stayed and browsed in the store longer, it turned out they actually had at least some pants that had a 36. in inseam, and waist sizes up to the mid 50s at least.

The Silom shop, despite being not that big, is actually crammed full with clothes... pants... shirts... mostly casual with T-shirts and polos, short sleeve button down shirts, Dockers type pants... They also had a pretty wide range of sizes in both big and tall versions (probably more in the straight big category), ranging from XL to up to 5 or 6X... Prices seemed to be 400-500 baht for their pants and 200-300 baht for most of their shirts...

A couple things I noticed.... most of the stock I looked at had labels saying manufactured in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, though the typical fabric material was decent quality... Another thing I noticed is they appear to have a lot of shelf stock items mixed in that are "seconds," with the little collar tags cut or crossed out with black marker... And I noticed some of the polo shirts there had collars that had small cuts or tears/frays in them.... So best to pay attention to the condition of the item you're interested in...

The store staff said they're open in the Silom Complex 7 days a week, from 10 am to 9 pm.... though that closing time seems a bit late for that location... But that's what they said.... They also said the MBK shop probably has a smaller selection of stock... though I haven't seen it myself to verify that.

At least...it's good to know a couple such places exist.... Didn't see any shoes there, by the way...

Meanwhile, no one here has answered my query above about not being able to find any big size clothing place inside the new Big C center across from CentralWorld... I walked and walked that place...and saw nothing there last week.

State Farm Bank has such deposit module also, but I've never been able to get the module to work....it always says contact customer service when trying to use it...I'll have to call one day.

Perhaps it's one of those things where the accountholder has to somehow register with them for the service first, or they have to otherwise enable it for one's account...

But more broadly, I'd say... anyone living here ought to find at least one home country bank or CU that they have an account with that makes the online check deposit service available.... given the fee expense and hassles and delay in trying to deposit foreign checks with Thai banks.

Had this USAA news in my banking stuff tonight...

USAA Bank Announces the End of Its Debit Card Reward Program

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 11:16 PM PDT

A week after the Federal Reserve released its final rules on the debit card regulation, USAA Bank announced that it will be ending its debit card reward program. However, USAA Bank will be keeping its free checking account along with its ATM fee refunds. USAA Bank posted the announcement on its website in this news release:

The new regulation caps the debit card interchange fees that retailers pay every time you use your debit card. The regulation exempts financial institutions with assets under $10 billion. USAA Bank has $48 billion in assets so the fee caps will directly affect them. The regulation takes effect on October 1st.

USAA Bank's debit card reward program wasn't that great, so I doubt it will be missed. It only offered 0.5% cash back. For those interested in cash back rebates, they will probably be using a credit card. Since the regulation only affects debit cards, USAA Bank will continue to offer credit card cash back rewards.

According to USAA Bank, they conducted a survey to decide what to cut:

It's nice to see USAA Bank will be keeping its free checking along with its ATM fee refund policy which refunds up to $15 in other banks' ATM usage fees each month. The checking account will remain a good deal. Other perks that come from the free checking include mobile banking apps and Easy Deposit which allows you to deposit checks at UPS Stores around the nation. They also offer a remote deposit service called Deposit@Home, but they are still restricting this to customers who qualify for their insurance products which requires a military connection.

Where the OP might want to be careful, however, is moving any of those 800K in funds from one account to a different account during any "seasoning" period that may apply in his case, which can be either two months ahead (for the first extension) or three months ahead (for all subsequent extensions), in the case where only deposit funds are used to meet the income requirement.

There was a case reported here recently where a bank officer, supposedly wanting to be helpful, had a TV member move his 800,000 in funds into a different kind of account during the seasoning period ahead of his extension application... Immigration in that case judged that the funds hadn't been in the SAME account for the required period and ruled against his application, according to the poster.

I don't know whether every immigration office/officer would take the same approach. But it would seem wise to avoid exposing one's self to unnecessary complications.

I believe the TV news tonight said they'll be starting in four cities/provinces... I caught Chiang Mai and Korat... Pathum Thani, I think... The other I can't recall.

More broadly, I couldn't make out any timeline for how long they expect it's going to take the authorities to complete this pretty enormous undertaking, considering the number of 7 - 15 year olds in Thailand.

As for carrying the card, I'd assume they'll just keep them along with the IPad or similar pad device they're all going to be getting from the incoming Thai government.

Charn, who insists that he does not know how the car ran into the youngsters, has been charged with recklessness causing death and injuries.

I see the authorities in this case are acting a bit more quickly than they did with the hi-so teenie driver who clobbered the van on the BKK expressway.

The only thing that would have surprised me would have been to hear that the local police were renting out their jail cells as short-time rooms for the aforesaid "aliens" -- and taking their fair cut....

But seriously, for anyone not born here, I'd suggest it's important to remember to distinguish in our own minds between a) recognizing that this kind of stuff is rampant here vs. b] that it's still not right or legal and not what anyone anywhere should expect from the police...the people who are supposed to be enforcing the law... not violating it.

By the way, let's all have a public meeting on the subject at City Hall so all the wrongdoers involved will have loads of advance warning that a "crackdown" is coming...

I'd suggest... only posting results from reasonably reliable measuring sites to avoid further confusing and muddling an already muddled subject....where many people think they're getting real results that are in fact false.

That assumes there are some reasonably reliable measuring sites?

I'd certainly believe a MS reading of 7 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up from here to Singapore with a 46 ms ping via True Cable, according to MS...

vs. a 17 Mbps down and 19 ms ping time to Singapore, according to Speedtest....

This is something that was publicly discussed here during the leadup to the election: Why weren't the Democrats filing a complaint with the Election Commission or making a bigger deal over the clear and heavy-handed involvement of former PM Thaksin in the recent election and PT's campaign and candidates in it...

Well, now I suppose the answer is clear... It was always an end card to play in the event the Dems didn't win the election outright...

You don't have to be either a PT or Dem supporter to recognize that the role of former PM Thaksin in directing the PT's recent election campaign was clear, public and substantial.

Regardless of which party anyone supports, it ought to be pretty clear that the PT violated the law via Thaksin's involvement. If the Election Commission follows the actual law, then once again the PT Party ought to be dissolved.

And who will they have to blame for it? Only themselves and their de-facto (in absentia) leader.

I'd say the Speedtest.net international numbers are clearly bogus....both in ping time and likely in speed...

The DSLReports numbers are more interesting...as indeed, that site generally has operated with more reliable and real results.

The Speedtest number of 16 Mbps to San Fran is especially curious, because I think I remember you posting a prior Speedtest number for San Fran that was one third or less of that number...

I'd suggest... only posting results from reasonably reliable measuring sites to avoid further confusing and muddling an already muddled subject....where many people think they're getting real results that are in fact false.

I know Thai people that have been studying or have studied English for 10 years or more and give the blank look when asked "how's it going" or "how was your day?"

I'd say that above is a good point.. And it's true of course....

If we started judging the Thai education system on the basis of how well their students can respond to spoken English that they've supposedly been taught and studied, there'd be a lot of Thai public schools being shut down....

He did not ask him to translate passages from Shakespeare into Thai, did he?

I was around some Thais lately who were watching a movie on cable TV that happened to be the modern-day, Leonardo Di Caprio version of "Romeo and Juliet."

I asked, did anyone know or recognize the name "Shakespeare." Answers: Not a clue...

So if the guy in Barry's story actually understood what the officer was saying in Thai about the big fish eating the little fish, would he have gotten another year's ED visa? I certainly hope so....

Re El Charro, I haven't ordered direct from them yet....but I intend to... It's cash on delivery, so you don't have to worry in that regard.

As to their products, their tortilla chips, salsas, burritos and chimichangas (and sometimes enchilladas) are all available at various of the western oriented supermarket locations around Bangkok, with the stocked items seeming to vary quite a bit from location to location.

The salsas and tortilla chips are perfectly fine... The pre-prepared, frozen burritos and enchilladas that I've tried of theirs, while not great, are perfectly serviceable, particularly as frozen, store-bought entrees.

I'll be interested to try, via direct order, some of the less common things they have available...like their tamales, mole sauce, guacamole, etc...

If someone doesn't have any personal experience with their products, find them on the store shelves or in the freezer section of places like Villa market, and then decide if you think it's a company worth ordering from.

There's no particular price advantage from ordering direct from them, as their product list prices seem to be almost identical to their BKK retail store prices... But if someone lives out of BKK or another area that stocks such Mexican food products, or if someone's looking for something beyond the few choices the grocery stores offer, ordering direct would seem a good option.

By comparison, the absolute best nationally available, FDIC-insured CD rates I'm aware of in the U.S. right now are 3.1% APR for 7-year CDs and 3.5% APR for 10-year CDs from IGOBanking.com...

No one else in the FDIC insured world is even close...even for the longest terms, with pretty much everything now under 3%.

iGObanking.com® is an online division of Flushing Savings Bank that enables consumers to open and fund deposit accounts directly from the convenience of their personal computer. Additionally, it's a simple, smart, and secure way to actively control your money online while earning a highly-competitive interest rate on a savings or CD account.

iGObanking.com® is an online division of Flushing Savings Bank, FSB, and a FDIC insured institution established in 1929. Accounts at iGObanking® are FDIC insured to the maximum allowable limits.

To compare Abhisit and Thaksin is like comparing night and day...

Whatever one thinks of his actual government policies, what led to Thaksin's original downfall was his own substantial efforts at personal self-enrichment at the expense of the Thai government and people. Last time I checked, there were something like 7 or 9 different legal cases in various stages pending against him, including the one conviction for conflict of interest.

On the other hand, while he clearly failed to reign in corruption among his allies or do much to limit it in the broader Thai government, I've seen nothing to suggest that Abhisit in any way used his term as PM to enrich himself. And rather than being a "murderer," if anything, it was his own personal abiding restraint (some would say inaction) in dealing with the Red riots and takeover of Bangkok -- thus letting the situation grow and escalate -- that probably contributed to the ultimate end and the casualties incurred.

With the election now decided and Yingluck headed toward being PM, the main question is will her election mark a return to the family's old ways of government sponsored self-enrichment.... or will they take a wildly improbable change of direction and actually focus on actions and policies that benefit Thailand and the Thai people at large... If past history is any judge, the odds of that don't seem promising.

I've had my True Cable 20Mb/2Mb package for 16 days now and it has been up and running at least 99.99% of my hours setting in front of my computer.

Thanks for the added info, Pib... I would have said the same exact thing during my initial two months of True cable service.... a time during which I had the same pretty much 100% up time... Then for reasons still unknown to me...the service uptime began to falter badly... Nothing related to anything inside my home... But unfortunately, the problem could have been any number of different places up and down my soi where something got loose or pulled or who knows what...

Where I fault True is not that the problem occurred, but how they handled resolving it... or in my case not resolving it... thru multiple go-rounds and half-hearted repair efforts with absolutely no customer followup on their part.

In the old DSL days, every time a tall bus or truck came down my soi, which would happen periodically, unless the vehicle had a guy standing watch up on the roof, they'd end up hitting and pulling out my old True DSL service line that used to hang low across the street from the other side to my side... And it must have taken 3 or 4 service call rounds of that before I could finally convince the True people, with some great effort on my part, to stop just reattaching it, and instead to actually hang and suspend the cable in a way that it wasn't so prone to passing trucks and buses.

As I said above, overall, I think True cable is probably the best consumer ISP available around these parts, and I'd hope to be able to continuing using it until and unless something better comes along... It's just that their customer service capability blows.... bad.... And of course, you had your own go-round with that with their overly optimistic and then much delayed schedule for actually connecting the service in your moo baan...

As I mentioned before, at least, hopefully, you've got the advantage of all new cabling and connections and hardware... Whereas, as I described it before, my street's wiring looks like a spaghetti factory exploded.... But at least, I'm back online tonight...and nothing's failed in the 8 or so hours since the True guys departed.

CapOne has a checking account/debit card that pays a little over 1% but numerous posts indicate about every 3 or 4 months their debit card stops working when using it overseas and you have to call CapOne and tell them it truly is you using the card and you are just traveling overseas....then you are good for another 3 or 4 months.

Pib, as I know I've indicated before, I've certainly had that experience with Cap One's credit card... I've never had that experience, or made any notifications or had any blocks imposed, on what now is their straight ATM card.

IMHO, you can never get more than 15mbps in Thailand from any provider, unless it's a business package from CAT and you pay a ridiculous price for it

Speed discussions are really a can of worms...

There's speeds for resources being hosted inside Thailand, which can be quite fast if your service plan/ISP allows it...

And then there are true international content speeds, which suffer the vagaries of distance, network congestion and who knows what all else... And within those, there's single stream speeds vs. multi-threaded downloading.

And then there are speeds for international content that is hosted/mirrored or otherwise held locally or regionally, such as content from Google, YouTube and various other of the heavyweights. There may also be, though I'm less familiar with these, international content where the source provider is routing the traffic over their some proprietary routes to achieve improved performance.

In my experience, the locally hosted content can be accessed pretty much at whatever speed your service plan will allow.

The real U.S. hosted, non mirrored or non-content delivery network or non-proprietary network content speeds seem to top out around 4-5 Mbps for single threads....

The Googles, YouTubes, Apples and others can be much faster if your local plan/ISP will support it...but that data served to Thailand either isn't coming directly from the U.S. in a single thread because it's being hosted on a distributed content network or it's coming over some other kind of proprietary network arrangements.

Just a bit of an update here re my True cable internet service 10 Mb plan... What can I say about True and their customer service ... that won't get me banned from TV and kicked out of Thailand... (Just kidding...)

But seriously, I've had a running encounter with True over the past few weeks over recurring problems with my cable connection suddenly dropping out at various times of the day and night...no discernable pattern as to when or why, and sometimes for hours at a time, other times just a half hour or so, and as best as I can tell, not part of any broader area network outages.... And they've sent out staff a couple of times during that period who fiddled around outside...and never managed to solve the problem...perhaps until today...

I did learn some things along the way, however, that might be useful to other users...and my comments are specific to those with the 10 Mbps plan, because you'll have the same Motorola Surfboard cable modem model as mine... One of the main issues re service problems is going to be the power levels traveling along the cable line to your cable modem, which need to be in the proper ranges in order for the signal to be received and work properly...

As explained above, you can use a web browser and an IP address to go to the settings/info page for your cable modem, and select the "Signal" tab. On that screen, it will show entries for both Downstream Power and Upstream Power expressed in dBmV values...

According to the True techs, for your service to work properly and know that there's not wiring problems somewhere along the line, they want the Downstream Power level to have a value between 0 and 4. Mine had a value of almost 10 when they arrived today, and -1.5 when they were done.

Likewise, they want the Upstream Power value to have a reading below 50 dBmV... Mine had a reading of 55 when they arrived today, and 40 when they finished their fiddling, which they said was a good value.

From what I can gather, today on about their 3rd time out to my home for this, they finally changed some more cabling connections outside along the street, and that improved the values, but still didn't bring them into the proper ranges. So then one of the techs installed some kind of connector/filter onto the splitter unit they installed originally to separate the cable TV line from the then new cable Internet line where their cable comes into my home.... It was just a little coax metal tube of some sort that they attached on the cable TV line outlet of the splitter. And that along with everything else finally seemed to do the trick. I tried to get an explanation of what that little thing is....but couldn't manage it in Thai.

Let me just say, I don't know of any better broadly available internet service here than True's cable...in terms of available speeds, affordability, and stability of connection.

However, what really has hacked me off about True has been their lousy customer service practices... In particular, each time the techs have been out, they'd usually come inside, and then go back outside to fiddle around at various points along the street. Before today, each and every time, they never came back inside or even called to tell me what they'd found or done. And each and every time before today, I put in that request with their English speaking customer service for a recap call back, each time they promised to do so, and each time they never did... Never...

On one of the prior visits, after the tech guy disappeared...I waited some days and saw with certainty that the problem was still occurring. So I called back to True Internet and spoke with an English speaking rep, who checked the notes for my service ticket and they told me the tech had closed the case because of finding that the problem was with wiring INSIDE my house, which is not True's responsibility. Well, that came as a pretty big surprise to me... because when the tech had been out at my house, he had checked everything inside and found no problem and had told me so, before disappearing to go outside... Plus, since I'm in a house, the only actual wiring I have inside is that that True themselves installed when they did the original cable Internet install. So I knew that answer was a load of BS... But, I tried to remain calm and persevere.

Then today, another English rep called me out of the blue... probably two weeks since my last house service call... to inquire whether everything was OK with my Internet service... And I replied NO it wasn't. And she started asking me about what had happened in my last service call, to which I replied...I had no clue... because the service tech came and left without ever informing me what they had done...and no one from True ever had called back. So she got on the line with their Tech team, and we had a kind of three way conference call this morning...

And without going into all the gory details, I had another bit of fun when during today's call, the woman kept relaying questions to me from whomever she was on the line with in their Tech area about my router... my router... and then finally something about my Thomson equipment.... And then I finally caught on to say... HEY... I DON'T HAVE A TRUE-ISSUED ROUTER and I don't have any Thomson-brand equipment.... And I've never had either of those at any point. Do you guys even know what service ticket you're talking about and what location is involved??? And that led to a bit more conversation, them admitting they'd mixed up the service tickets during our phone call today, and finally them sending the techs out again this afternoon, hopefully with good result.

All I can say is, True cable internet is great when it's working and assuming you have no technical issues or problems in your neighborhood... But God help you if you have to put your head into the lion's mouth of True's customer service system.

PS - Here's a screen shot of what the "good" power values are supposed to look like in the cable modem's "signal" tab screen.

Pib/JFC, et al., looking at State Farm Bank website, checking account and card services. Acknowledge and agree you said terms/conditions on the Visa 1% foreign transaction fee, above and beyond ATM fees, is not always spelled out being it's an external fee. Just wanted to confirm actual practice, if you have direct experience with State Farm account and their Visa logo debit card, that:

(1) Were I to open a SF checking account, move my DDS pension to it, and use the State Farm provided Visa debit card on that account for either ATM withdraws (put AEON aside for a moment, I'm clear on that) and/or POS debit in stores, such transactions would not get the Visa 1% foreign transaction fee; or if so, be rebated later.

(2) that foreign ATM fees, such as the 150 Baht if not using AEON, are rebated automatically rather than having to call the # given in their terms/conditions each time.

Jay, I can confirm the answer to your two questions above is YES regarding the Schwab checking account and associated debit card... Schwab doesn't charge any FCF or card network fee...and the only thing they have to rebate potentially are ATM fees charged by ATM operators/banks. Others will need to comment on the SF account.

BTW, here's a photo of the new style AEON ATMs that are being rolled out, which look pretty different from the traditional ones... this one is at the newly reopened (post fire/riots) Big C store opposite CentralWorld. AEON used to have a single ATM there in a parking structure lobby almost outside the store. They now have an actual branch and two ATMs in the main part of the store on the 3rd floor right in the middle of the Big C store there.

The green tinge is a function of their florescent lighting there.... If you look at the top you'll see the list of the various card networks that their ATMs will accept. The only biggie missing from the list are Non VISA or MC logo Cirrus network cards, i.e., straight bank ATM-only cards on the Cirrus network. VISA and MC logo cards with the Cirrus logo on the back work fine.

In case anyone's wondering, these ATMs also dispense hamburgers and french fries...

Big C Pratumwan. Opposite Central World. Ground Floor. Used to be in Amarin Plaza & Ploenchit Center.

I was wandering around inside the Big C opposite CentralWorld a couple times in the past week... since I hadn't really been back there since they reopened after the Red Riots...

So, I walked and walked around the shops on the first floor...and didn't see anything that looked to be selling big/tall size men's clothes....

I wasn't sure what the shop name was supposed to be...but certainly didn't see anything about "Extra Large."

Am I going blind???

According to the pdf price list El C sells them in 5 pieces per pack [@157] and Rimping sells them in 3 per pack @ 150....it's like getting 2 free, but to be fair, you have to add shipping and handling costs. and FYI, it was me that mentioned the El C source......

Ahh... I hadn't caught that before...

El Charro has two different versions of their tamales on the list...

the 5 packs on page 8 for 157-160 baht per package...

And then the 3 packs on page 9 for 96 baht per package...

Same 3 choices of beef, pork or chicken... They look to be the same tamales...just larger and smaller portion packaging.

My thanks to TV member Awohalitsiktoli for giving us the lead and the idea of contacting El Charro... Had never thought to try that...until his post.

Meanwhile, Jaidee, I'm confused about your comment re packaging below... El Charro packages their tamales in sets of 3 tamales per retail package... 96 baht for the package... And then sells them in 12 package cases. I'm assuming Rimping sells the same single package containing 3 tamales per package... except they're charging 150 baht for the same frozen item 3 tamale pack.

But yes...there is a big price difference on that item with Rimping.... perhaps in part reflecting the shipping cost out of BKK.

It's strange though, that El Charro's burritos are easily found around BKK supermarkets.... but I've never seen one of their frozen tamale packs here... yet you've got them in CM...

Villa Market Suk Soi 11 always stocks their frozen burritos and chimichangas...as well as one of their salsas and various of their tortilla chips... Foodland likewise stocks their frozen burritos at least... not sure about the other things....

Maybe we ought to make the same contacts with Danitas and Nana Foods...and see if they'd be open to making similar arrangements.

funny that Rimping sells them in 3 packs...same labeling.

Rimpings price is 50baht ea and El Charro's price is 30thb ea....big difference.

Anyone from CM wanna go in on an order??