billd766

I know it is slightly off the Ducati topic but it is a motorbike.

I have a Honda Phantom which is nowhere in the same class as a Ducati but my last 4,000 km service was 360 baht and that included the parts. It was done in less than an hour by the local Honda shop and the bike originally was bought in Phuket.

Somebody somewhere is definitely into price gouging.

I have been waiting for a land line since 2003 in my village in Khampaeng Phet province from either CAT, TOT or TT&T.

Fortunately I am very good at holding my breath though not for that long.

A friend is building a house on the plot next to us and there are 3 resorts, (2 farang and 1 Thai) so maybe the 5 of us can get a line put in.

The trouble is it will need to be about 5 km long.

To be honest if these "experts" were really that good and successful do you think that they would still be in the business?

Surely they would have made a pile of money and withdrawn from giving advice to keeping it all to themselves and getting even richer by doing it all and paying no fees to anybody.

An old but true saying:

If it seems to good to be true, it is.

Run, don't walk away from it.

There are only a very few people who are extremely rich by doing this.

There are many poor people who are bankrupt through doing this.

However somebody must be getting very rich.

According to the thai news last night in Nation Channel, the driver was described as a 19 year old male student from a so called "prestigious" thai family but they are withholding the name at the moment. There was never an issue of the car being stolen.

Guess it another case of some so called Thai Hi-So family that made their money through corruption as usual and their so called younger generation bastards kids thinking they own the country.

The sad thing is that the probably do.

anybody know where has stock of an ABS CBR?? but ACTUALLY has it, not WILL have it! maybe,..... probably.... perhaps....... in the future?

There is a red CBR 250 with ABS for 130,000baht at the small Honda dealer PT Honda motor sales next to the hotel by the market in Khampaeng Phet. I saw it there last Friday 18th March.

I live in Khampaeng Phet province near the Mae Wong national park and I have been banging on at my wife for weeks now for someone to bring 6 x 1700 litre ongs (for water storage)from her shop 3 kms to the house and all she says is that every farmer is busy.

Sadly I have to believe her as when I look around people have finished the man saparang harvest and are now busy replanting for the next crop. The same goes for rice and sugar cane.

Sure there are the few drunks before lunch but most of the farmers here are hard workers.

A few years ago when we first moved here I thought of buying a tractor and renting it out with a driver. In hindsight that was a bad plan as I was going to buy a Ford 6600 and now the roads are full of Kubotas and Yanmars with but a few Fords working and a lot more on the side of the road for sale.

Fortunately my wife talked me out of the idea.

The bad news is that if we wanted to farm seriously we would have to hire people as and when they are available rather than when we want them.

its their amazing roads. I was in Suphan years ago and was absolutely amazed at the perfect roads. Of course, you knew once you entered the next province as they immediately got small and bad.

I vaguely remember from many years ago when Banharn Silpa Archa was prime minister that Suphan Buri was his province and for some reason it became known as Banharn Buri as most of the road building budget seemed to go in that direction.

Mind you I may have been wrong or had a memory dump but.....

Maybe they were tourists on their way through to Sukhothai or Chiangmai? I have never seen a group about before, in all my time there. Maybe they didn't speak English? It took me a while to get used to the fact that not every white foreigner you see necessarily speaks English!Then again, some people are just rude! And yeah, BigC doesn't have the most user friendly parking lot! ...but fumes? I thought they were roses I was smelling!

I think they were all local's all had there good ladies Thai family's with them. Eating/shopping in Big C, Not in group's. Where I live not to far away never had anyone "well one" not reply to a good morning. Keep themselves to themselves. Ok if you dont want to speak a bit of Farang at odd time's, all be it just to find out what's going on in the area. Rude/Impolite who know's been there several time's alway's seems the same no one speak's. Next time your in Big C give it a try. Maybe it's me I am an ugly bugger.

Must admit though outside of N/S there are some nice place's to visit. But you'll need a car full time.

Do I go there anymore not if I can help it. Now it's the bypass. Now that IS the best thing about N/S allegedly.

Rose's, is that the diesel fragrance green one's I've heard about???????

Anyway to all those that live there. Enjoy. It's just not for me.

Fredob

I would have spoken if I was there but as we have our own BigC etc in Khampaeng Phet I only go down there for my 90 day reports.

If a farang down there looks at me I will say something like G'day mate and about 50% of the time I get a response. If I don't then I am not bothered about it.

Sure but we have only just got our Big C so used to go quite a lot " At least once a month" for shopping Ect. There and Makro alway's had a bite to eat while there. I just found that all the peep's I came across didnt what to say even a hallo. Never found that in any other place in Thailand.

You can do the 90 day bit by post save's the trip, not to mention the traffic. But I'm sure you know that.

Bowling sound's great only problem it's a bit far from K.Pang

Had a good time at Mike's last Friday there was about 18 Farang + good ladies there. Hope your well, Bill.

Fred.

I was in KP Friday morning with my mate from Germany trying to get warm and dry after the last few days so bugger it I missed you again.

No problem as there is always another day.

Last week I was a member of the CWFM (Cold,Wet & Frigging Miserable) club.

Yesterday and today were totally different.

Maybe they were tourists on their way through to Sukhothai or Chiangmai? I have never seen a group about before, in all my time there. Maybe they didn't speak English? It took me a while to get used to the fact that not every white foreigner you see necessarily speaks English!Then again, some people are just rude! And yeah, BigC doesn't have the most user friendly parking lot! ...but fumes? I thought they were roses I was smelling!

I think they were all local's all had there good ladies Thai family's with them. Eating/shopping in Big C, Not in group's. Where I live not to far away never had anyone "well one" not reply to a good morning. Keep themselves to themselves. Ok if you dont want to speak a bit of Farang at odd time's, all be it just to find out what's going on in the area. Rude/Impolite who know's been there several time's alway's seems the same no one speak's. Next time your in Big C give it a try. Maybe it's me I am an ugly bugger.

Must admit though outside of N/S there are some nice place's to visit. But you'll need a car full time.

Do I go there anymore not if I can help it. Now it's the bypass. Now that IS the best thing about N/S allegedly.

Rose's, is that the diesel fragrance green one's I've heard about???????

Anyway to all those that live there. Enjoy. It's just not for me.

Fredob

I would have spoken if I was there but as we have our own BigC etc in Khampaeng Phet I only go down there for my 90 day reports.

If a farang down there looks at me I will say something like G'day mate and about 50% of the time I get a response. If I don't then I am not bothered about it.

Back in 1990 I hadn't even been to Thailand, was married to my UK wife and had a 12 year old son and lived in a 3 bedroom semi-detached house near Portsmouth in England.

In October 1991 the company lost its UK contract and we were given 3 choices:

1 work in the factory 120 km away but lose the company car, mobile and overtime

2 take redundancy and get 3 week salary in compensation

3 work internationally

I talked it over with my wife and son and decided to work internationally for a couple of years.

In 1992 I worked in Indonesia, Mexico, USA, Chile, Venezuela

1993 UK, Indonesia, UK, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, UK, Qatar

1994 UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Thailand

1995 Thailand

1996 Thailand

1997 Thailand and Sri Lanka

1998 Sri Lanka, UK, South Africa, Egypt, Angola, France and Angola again.

It went on like that for another 10 years and somewhere down that line I divorced my UK wife and married my long term Thai lady and we had a son.

I finally finished my 3 years international work in 2009 and I am now retired and living at home in Thailand.

Perhaps once more in my life I will return to the country of my birth to show my wife and son where my side of the family came from and after that I will be here until I die.

I love Thailand and the Thai people warts and all and in some 38 countries that I have worked and live in I can't think of a better one to be in.

Yesterday at 6.30 am it was 21 and by 9 am it had gone down to 19.

This morning it was 17 at 6.30 am and hasn't got any better.

Also it has been raining since Tuesday evening.

All this 65 km south west of Khampaeng Phet.

At 06.30 this morning down near Khampaeng Phet it was 21 and raining and by 09.00 it was down to 19.

It is a CWFM day (cold, wet and frigging miserable) but it is th first real eain we have had in 3 months so I shouldn't really complain.

But I will and I did.

It makes a dam_n sight more sense wearing shorts here in Thailand than it did in primary school in the middle of winter in the UK freezing your nuts off.

But in those far off days of old you had no nuts anyway unless you dropped 'em early.

It is OK giving the wife an ATM card to access the funds, but what happens when the card is retained or needs renewing. She wont be able to draw any more funds

When the bank gets the information that the account holder has passed away, the account will be blocked. Better do it the legal way: make the wife your inheritor (or is she so anyway, according to Thai law?), and before long after formalities have been fulfilled she will be able to use the account.

I totally agree with you but please try not to bring too much common sense into threads as it confuses people.

To each his own. Who are you to judge?

Judge? I was inquiring actually and not intentionally critical for sure.. Why be so defensive?

Beechboy I don't think you were judging either.

I am a bit like Ignis

Posted Today, 08:27

I am one who fancies the village life plodding around in shorts and sandals, I would never have moved here if I could not live out in the sticks, have a garden all round the house, have my dogs and fish ponds.

Of course it is a lot cheaper living out in the stick and mostly shopping at the local markets, I don't drink and have never been to a bar of any sort, or bought beer..

On the other hand you must think of when I came and now.... the Exchange rate when I came was 74 baht for 1 GBP now according to the top of this page is 48 baht.... Interest in a Thai Bank was 2.76%, now is something like .50%

There cannot be that many people that do not check prices + buy extra when on offer.. Just simple things like Eggs for the past year the largest size have been 29 baht for 10, 2 weeks ago cheapest was 33 baht, yesterday 2 different Sunday Markets cheapest 42 baht, the other Market was 45 baht.

I am totally in agreement with him.

When I did my financial planning for retirement quite a few years ago the exchange rate was about 76 per GBP and in that scenario I had plans to take my wife and son back to the UK for a (last) visit to show my son where my part of the family was from.

Perhaps also replace the pickup truck etc but with the ER having gone down things like that are a lot further away now.

I am not as well off as I had hoped to be but I am also not as poor as a church mouse.

I think the best term for me is comfortable, with the odd sticky patch now and again.

I usually wear shorts and sandals as I too live in the country on 10 rai of sloping land with granite not too far down. We have a fish pond that overflows in the rainy season and has been dry as a bone since last month

Ignis was talking about the price of eggs but if you lump into that the price of cooking oil up from 47 to 79 baht, 95 gasolene up to 39 baht and 91 to over 45 in places then you tend to look at the odd baht or 2.

When we bought the truck in December 2001 Ford filled the tank (70 litres)and got change from 700 baht as it was 9 something baht a litre and now it is subsidised at 30 baht.

I usually pay about 50 baht for a haircut and the time before last a different barber charged me 100 in the village. I just smiled and walked away and now I go elsewhere and get charged 50 baht.

Most of the markets I buy stuff I pay the same rate as the locals and in one place where I buy fruit the lady always gives me an apple, oranges etc free. I went this morning looking for some decent bananas and she gave me a small hand and a yellow mango for free.

As you said in your original post you are mostly a part timer in Thailand and have different spending patterns to expats who live here full time and I suspect that if you do move here full time you will spend less and count the coins more.

Good luck and thanks for an interesting post.

"Grandpa" Bill aka billd766 went there a couple of weeks ago on my Phantom with Dave Boo and it was a good ride.

There is a bad bit of road rebuilding coming out of Mae Sot but the rest was good fun.

We stayed overnight at the Umphang House for 200 baht a room with a fan, hot shower but oddly only one socket.

Breakfast in the morning was only 50 baht for 2 fried eggs, tea or coffee, toast butter and jam. Good value for money.

We ate dinner at a good restaurant in Umphang but while the food was really good and plentiful the meal for the 3 of us was not served together but separately as though the cook could only make one meal at a time.

Amazing and wonderful Thailand.

Umphang is only about 45 km from my house, or would be if there was a road but I went via Khampaeng Phet, the turn to Mae Sot just before Tak, Mae Sot and Umphang a total of 365 km.

So is this area overpriced because it is well known or what?

There is something strange about the price of wood items throughout Thailand. The asking price of a simple door is more than the price of buying a big teak tree. The materials price for a teak door would be about 200 baht and on top of that Thailand has very reasonably priced labor. So where can you find all these 300 baht teak doors? Well for some reason when wood items of all sorts gets to the consumer the prices are marked up tremendously almost like there is a monopoly controlling prices. Even a simple plank costs just so much. The way they price these things seems strange for a country with such a strong tradition in wood.

AFAIR teak is controlled as there has been so much deforestation and destruction of the teak forests in Thailand.

To cut teak legally you have to be registered and so do the teak trees.

There is a thriving market in illegal teak which is usually smuggled in from Burma and if it is found the teak is confiscated and sent to the government wood yards.

I also found TVF thread from back in 2005 which may be of help.

IED dog handlers are, in my view, the bravest of the brave whose life-saving work with their dogs goes largely unrecognised and unnoticed except by those with whom they work. Their job demands that not only do they take the point position on every patrol in which they take part but that the handlers cannot take and use cover as any other soldier can and should as they need to constantly observe and control their dog. They are the bravest men (and women) it has ever been my privilege to meet.

billd766, sadly those graves are still being filled by too many young men, Afghani as well as British and too many other nationalities around the world. 17 year-olds who have completed junior training in the British Army are still considered old enough to be deployed operationally and to die for their country but not old enough to vote for it (or, rather bizarrely, to be tattooed or to marry).

When will we ever learn?

When will we ever learn?

To answer the last 2 lines.

We never will.

Unfortunately never until political leaders of ALL countries are forced to fight in the wars that they choose to let young men and women go out to die in.

I also think it should be mandatory for every cabinet member of every government to go to the funeral of every soldier, sailor and airman, male and female who dies in combat and also the Leader of the country should met the grieving families at the family house after the funeral.

I think that the last Prime minister of the UK to actually fight in a war was Ted Heath back in the 70's.

Years ago when I was serving with the RAF in Libya we went to the Commonwealth war cemetery near Tobruk and there were graves of boys as young as 17 who served with the Indian army.

There were thousands of graves there. There was also a Free French cemetery, a German war memorial with about 7,000 odd names and an Italian cemetery that had been desecrated by the Libyans.

The Commonwealth memorial cemetery at Kranji in Singapore was beautiful as well with thousands there too.

There is also the one down at Kanchanaburi which is worth a visit.

It just saves my wife having to think of an excuse for a headache.

A few years ago I did exactly the same thing (but no death in the family) I simply forgot.

They were quite sympathetic at Suan Phlu but they did say them's the rules and after all it was my own fault.

I got a 30 visa on arrival then just before it was due up I took all the stuff I needed to Penang and started all over again.

I will not repeat what my wife said but buffalo and brains and crap were among the more polite terms. If nowt else at least I had a jolly ashore in Penang.

Not really but since you (sort of) asked I looked at my profile and found this

Group:

Advanced Members

Active Posts:

2,660 (0.99 per day)

Most Active In:

General topics (518 posts)

Joined:

2003-11-11

How odd as my profile says 2,660 topics yet to the left it only says 2,615.

Which isn't really that much but then again I read a lot of threads but don't necessarily reply to most of them.

I suppose I spend a couple of hours a day on TVF most days.

Thanks for the info guys.

The scratches are only minor and are in my peripheral vision and a bit distracting.

I live way out in the sticks and I would have to go online to order the visor to be posted to me at 400 baht.

Unfortunately I don't live in BKK or in Chiang Mai where I bought the helmet which is a Real Ozzy and very comfortable.

Eureka thanks for the tip on Silvo polish.

Seedy I have some Pledge so I will try that.

Submaniac I saw that Meguiar's PlastX: when I was chasing Goddard's polish through Google but I suspect that by the time I order it and pay shipping etc it will cost more than a new visor.

I would also advise that you generate a folder on your computer and list ALL the details you have.

1. Who to contact.

2. Where things are such as your passport etc

3. If you are in receipt of any pensions contact the provider and ask them what they need when you die.

4. If your pension is paid into a UK bank PLEASE make sure that your wife can access it in case it gets "frozen" on your death which would mean that any payments into that account may not be able to be withdrawn.

5. Seriously consider any pensions could be paid into a joint account in Thailand so that your wife and family can get it out to live on.

6. If you have any good UK friends ask them to help your wife on your death and explain to them that there is a folder with the information they will need.

7. On your death the Thai police will need to report it to the embassy and if there are no problems they will instruct the local hospital to issue a death certificate in Thai which will need to be translated and sent to all the relevant persons.

Above all and please accept my apology for shouting,

DON'T WAIT, DO IT NOW.

Does anyone know where I can buy some polish to remove some minor grit scratches from my visor.

I would rather do that than buy a new visor.

I clean the visor daily with pigeon brand baby wet wipes and polish off with a soft cloth. Thank you son for at least some of your leftovers.

When I was in the RAF we used to use Goddards plastic polish and scratch remover to clean and remove small scratches from aircraft canopies. It was absolutely brilliant for the job but alas that was several decades ago.