Changian

Cant go wrong at Seafood Market, Suk Soi 24. ( Avoid the fake Seafood market places taxi drivers might take you to)

Is a Work Permit included? (Just wanted to be the first to say that before the usual crowd bring it up.)

T Dog: Good to hear it worked out OK. Just had a couple of very nice days, no rain & the sea was calm and the sun shining. Starting to cloud over today though and there were a couple of pretty cool waterspouts visible way out in the ocean this afternoon.

I'd like to see the those vulvas vuvuzelas the supporters are blowing into that make all the noise dubbed into more appropriate instruments depending on who's playing. A nice Brass band when Ing-ER-land are on the pitch for example. Droning Digeridoos for the Aussies, maybe some uptempo accordion accompaniment for the French and so on.

Counting the change is a sensible thing to do. The till says how much to give, the cashier takes the money out of the till and then double checks it to make sure it's the right amount before giving it to the customer. Ensures the balance in the till is correct - so good for the business owner. Also the customer can easily see they are getting the right change as the notes are counted out in front of them. Everyone is happy.

Hardly seems a valid criticism and far better that staff do this rather than don't check before giving it to customers.

Well done Ing-ER-land.

Deliberately doing as little as possible in order not to lose and to keep something in reserve for the big games later. All part of Fabio's masterplan to lull Johnny Foreigner into a false sense of security no doubt.

Now all we have to do is avoid Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Italy, Germany and Netherlands and cheating referees in the knock out stages and the cup is ours.

Tipco have some good combinations but overall you cant beat the Doi Kham Strawberry Juice. Someone told me it was good, I thought it'd be oversweet and gloopy but it wasn't. It truly is the nectar of the gods i.e. rather good.

This one's from Japan.

They're Transformers not trucks.

Klong Prao is set to become the hub of tennis on Koh Chang with the opening of Koh Chang Tennis Club, the only court on the island.

At first glance it may not seem that impressive, and to be honest it isn't. But, when it is not being used for the local ladies' evening aerobics session - 7-8pm daily, it is a definitely tennis court and for 200 - 250 Baht you can spend an hour trying to hit the coke fridge or even people sitting in the small restaurant/counter area with your groundstrokes. Racket and ball hire is included in the price. Located down the dirt track next to the motorbike repair shop in the centre of Klong Prao village. Open from 7am-10pm

I saw this bus the other day at a petrol station near Rayong. More accurately, I heard it initially, as if you look closely there are several large speakers on the front below the windscreen. With it's lights on it's probably visible from space at night.

Can anyone beat it for the number of headlights, sidelights, warning lights, pointless lights etc on one vehicle?

Have a look at Launcher Pro (Free) to tart up your home screen - big improvement for my Samsung Galaxy. There are a few that do a similar job but I liked this the best.

Couple of addictive free games, less than 10 seconds to learn to play, so for people who aren't hard core gamers:

Abduction - Help the cow rescue her family that have been abducted by aliens. No touch required just play using the accelerometer

Air Control - Land the planes and avoid them crashing into one another. Very simple and great time killer.

Off to Samui in a week's time for the first time in a decade. Will e driving and will spend time looking round all the island so I am looking for good restaurants for lunch when driving around. Thai food or a decent steak is all that is required.

Nothing pretentious or with a wine list as long as your arm is required. Likewise not looking to be eating in a shophouse or roadside on a crowded main street.

Any recommendations for somewhere scenic & good value for money?

Problem solved. Looks like the cat managed to stand on a couple of keys that had sand and dirt under them and this was causing them to stick just a little. Not enough to be noticeable but enough to cause some odd effects when certain other keys were pressed.

Just done a through cleaning, removing dog hair, sand and bits of what looks like chocolate and all is OK now.

Thanks to those who offered advice.

Have you asked the cat what it did?

I tried to get her to retrace her steps but to no avail. Currently I am plying her with tuna to see if that will make her more co-operative. But somehow I doubt it.

Looks like a trip to Pantip or Fortune Town is called for.

Yep, keyboard is Ok - set as the standard one. I had something similar happen before but it was the keyboard configuration/layout that got screwed up by the cat and it changed to a Dvorak keyboard layout. So I checked that already and ruled it out. Most keys work fine, just odd behaviour from a few of the important ones on the right side of the keyboard. Eg I get this ¬ symbol if I press SHIFT and Insert together. I can now use the Enter key to move to the next line down.

|But to do this I use SHIFT and ENTER together and it also inserts a | symbol at the start of the new line as seen at the start of this sentence.

Pib - I just had Firefox open and was using Thunderbird when the cat walked over the keyboard. But have the same

problem in Word or typing in notepad - affects all programs. Keys are Ok, just checked them all, none are stuck.

Already checked the Num Lock and Function Lock and played around switching them on and off but to no avail. Just found out that if I try to use the Plus key it adds whatever I have last copied & pasted in addition to a Plus sign./ FYI laptop is Samsung NC10.

Thanks Gary. I just looked at doing a system restore but it was turned off, so that isn\'t an option.

A cat jumped on my laptop keyboard this morning and changed some setting somewhere that controls key functions. So no my Enter key returns to the line above, not below, when pressed - so it is like I type up the page not down if i use it. Also the Apostrophe key gives '\ when pressed, it adds the backslash for some reason, which I then have to delete. And the Delete key gives the = sign. I'm still using the default English language keyboard layout, that hasn't changed. Any ideas?

If anyone was still under any doubts about the truthfulness of our story the national UK newspaper the Daily Mail have just run the story on their website, they even made mention of this thread on ThaiVisa and quoted some of the stories of others experiences here

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/...months-ago.html

But even this story fails to mention that the baby was taken to Isaan without your consent in mid March for two weeks, before you got him back sometime before your 22 March tweet, and then he was taken again at the end of the month, after he had been back with you for 8 or 9 days.

How did you get the baby back first time round?

What were the circumstances of the initial abduction? From where & by whom?

If Granny took him that time, why not do everything you can to prevent it happening again?

are the waves surfable? or is just shorebreak?

After a storm you can surf a little but don't get your hopes up, Phuket is a better option. Vid from last year:

Something odd going on. Hopefully the boy is OK. As based on MJPerry's own tweets he had his son on the evening of 22 March, just after the boy had spent 2 weeks in Isaan. Yet, according the to 1 April Tweet he hadn't seen his son for over a week.

The original news article and subsequent posts by MJPerry fail to mention that the boy was taken to Isaan to 2 weeks in mid March by someone and then returned to his parents. In which case, it would seem strange not to keep a very close eye on the child to prevent him disappearing again.

MJPerry tweet on 22 March:

Never seen Tristan so sad like today after being snatched and taken to Issan for 2 weeks, off to hospital for overdue vaccine & checkup soon 7:00 PM Mar 22nd via Twitter for iPhone

This tweet confirms mother had the child then:

His crazy mother was running around Bangkok with him yesterday and let him go for 9 hours without food, hope it hasn't hurt him too much 7:02 PM Mar 22nd via Twitter for iPhone

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Also there seems to be some confusion about when the child was last seen. If my child went missing I'd like to think I'd remember when I last saw him:

MJPerry Tweets:

Latest photo of my 7 month old son who has been kidnapped by my wife's family, not seen for 3 months http://yfrog.com/4jvboj 12:10 AM May 20th via Twitter for iPhone

i.e. 'kidnapped' around 20 Feb

Yeah will have been two weeks on Monday, not sure British emb can do anything, he has dual nationality, lets see what police can do 9:56 AM Apr 8th via Twitter for iPhone

i.e. 'kidnapped' around 26 March

Why doesn't Thailand have child protection laws? Have not seen my son for over a week because he's been kidnapped and police do nothing 11:45 PM Apr 1st via SimplyTweet

i.e. 'kidnapped' before 24 March

But newspaper article on 28 May:

Fraught Martin Perry, 32, has not seen eight-month-old Tristan since he was snatched from a nursery almost two months ago.

i.e. 'kidnapped' around early April, but article later gives the exact date as 30 March

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^ These were the sons of influential people, so technically nothing happened and you won't find anyone to say otherwise.

Camfrong still works on TOT ADSL, so a friend of mine says ( honest)

All that I have heard is that the island is owned by the military who can take it back at any time.

You have heard nonsense. There is a lot of Chanote titled land here, but there is also a lot PBT5 and SK1 land and ownership of some of that is disputed, locals want to upgrade title deeds but can't. Quite a few farangs have 'bought' untitled farmland and have laughable 99 or even 999 year leases ( Yep, seriously) written up by local lawyers . The navy also have claims on a fair bit of land too. There's even a 'navy only' resort just south of White Sand beach, not marked on any map but visible from the sea - nice new bungalows and a pool. This is on the site of a previous resort that was originally built by one of the well connected locals, who is now a Kamnan in one of the villages, and he lost his court case over ownership to the navy.

But even when someone leases a small plot of land that has a Chanote or Nor Sor Sam Kor title, the local landlords wont register the leases. They have no need to as sooner or later someone will rent the land from them. This is because the amount of land available for anyone wanting to set up a small resort / business and needing a half decent location is extremely limited. There is some safety in numbers though as it's not as though it is only a handful of people with unregistered leases, it is the vast majority, virtually all I reckon, of the small farang or Thai owned resorts and stand alone businesses.