cflai

How about injecting a GPS tracking device into all tourists like they do with dolphins to track their movements?? That way, the Thai tourist Authority will know exactly what each and every tourist do while they were visiting Thailand, also good to track and monitor all foreigners who may want to do their regular visa runs......

Question is, where are these public toilets located? Highly possible some public toilets are actually cleaner than actual houses - with full tiling for walls and floors. And also next to some public toilets are "surau"s (prayer houses) where Muslims can go to pray. If the toilet is at one of the highway R&R stops, they are also near to food stalls. It will be a one stop shop, much more convenient than home!

Dial #1690 for info on Southern train services /via@TAN_Network

Hi Can anyone here throw some light as to the accessibility of Highways 4 and 41 from Sadao to Bangkok and the north?? Thank you

Hi

We are a convoy of 10 cars intending to cross Thailand from Sadao in the south to Chiang Khong in the north into Laos enroute to China in a week's time.

On the way, our original plan is to stay over night at Surat Thani, Ayuthya and Chiang Khong.

Now that the flood situation has arisen, we are in a bit of fix to decide which way is the best to avoid all the floods along the way.

Although it is still a week to go and situation may well change, any advise under the current situation will help to determine which way we can take.

Any advice will greatly be appreciated.......

Thanks

Many Car alarm systems now can provide this feature. Some systems need subscriptions and some do not. I have a non-subscription system installed in mine and whenever I need to know where the car is, I send it an sms from my hand phone and it will reply with an sms giving me the coordinates of where it is. I can also find out how fast it is running and actually sms it to slow down or imobilize the car. Read more of it in car alarms....

There is a good place down on Naratiwat? Dunno spelling! Off sathorn. New tyres for my Civic cost 17k for bridgestone. You can't miss the place, it's huge.

How about Hatyai or Satun? Any recommendations? I am looking for prices and availability of 275-65/17

I would say a GPS reading to be far more accurate than a speedo.. However that comes with the caveat that its an average speed reading of your most recent distance, they are very accurate while you travel at a fixed speed and very inaccurate as you accelerate and decelerate..

I agree with this

I have Tom Tom on my iphone for Thailand it works pretty good actually def. the best option for iphone.

I have used Garmin machines for years and will still stick to it because of the number of maps available covering many countries. I have a couple of Garmin units with Thailand maps which takes us all over Thailand the last few years - at least 2 trips a year through Bangkok from Malaysia. I will definitely be lost in BKK without my NUVI. It is very well updated and sure, once in a while I get 'misled' - but mostly it is my own fault in doing turns prematurely. At the end, I am happy I can get to my final destination albeit a little longer compared to the local who know all the short cuts....... But in the past without the GPS, I could go round and round in the traffic jams and ended up using a taxi to lead the way! Now which is better??

Last trip in Dec2009 was to Chiangmai and Chiangrai, stayed at a place called Tharnthong Lodge - a wonderful jungle-like hill resort about 30 km on way from Chiangmai to Chiangrai. All we did was to e-mail the owners of the resort, asked for the coordinates and a route was created through Prachuap Khiri Khan, Kanchanaburi, Tak and the GPS led us all the way from Sadao at the Malaysia/Thai border to Tharnthong Lodge with no problems at all! Love that feeling when members in the convoy thought we were so good with the roads in Thailand - well, hahaha!

Spent 3 days wondering around BKK looking for 4X4 shops, the POIs were very adequate, important thing was it took us in and out of BKK's concrete jungle very quickly - From Emerald hotel to highway 4 on the way back to Malaysia all within 40 mins through the overhead highways...! What a view on the top of the bridge whew! We even have time to look at scenery now with the GPS compared to the days when we were quarreling which way to go amongst the sweats and tears!!!

Will not leave home without my GPS!!!

If they are shipped to the tyre store with an RRP on them im not too sure how much cheaper the they sell them for as there "isnt" that much margin on tyres.

I can get imported 275-65/17 highway tyres in Malaysia for about Bht 9,000 (RM830) each inclusive of installation and balancing. They are Bridgestone or Dunlops from Japan...

Friend of mine bought 4 pcs of Dunlops from Japan in Cambodia for 1/2 the price while we were in Phnm Penh 2 years ago - he stuck it rich when he had a leak in one of his tyres, sent the car to a tyre shop for patching and discovered the prices, so he decided to buy them and put all 4 new ones on his roof rack in time for his London-Kuala Lumpur drive. Got them through without paying taxes or Duties, lucky....

Unfortunately I am not doing Phom Penh anytime near now before my tyres get dangerously worn.....

I have no idea of the "street" price, we buy in bulk directly from the distributor.

MMmm thanks anyway, there are of course some lucky devils who do not have to worry about prices...

Garmin nuvi 200w..

Simple answer.. Save some money by going to the 200 non W model or save even more by having one brought from the west and installing the maps yourself.

Of course you may have more needs, some specialist interest, but for a basic in car system thats a simple solid unit that will perform well.

I agree with the recommendation that Garmin will be the best brand to go for... that is if you need a machine to cover many countries or the whole world for that matter (Well, not exactly all if you were to think of Myanmar and some other politically sticky countries where they do not like people mapping their country).

This is because it has the most number of maps available. Some you have to buy from Garmin, some are free (albeit some through 'contributions') done by 3rd party mappers through user groups - all regularly updated.

I have over the years, used Garmin's Etrex, GPS III, GPSMAPC60Csx, Streetpilot III and Streetpilot 2610, Nuvi 265, Nuvi 760 and now I have the Nuvi 1460. (Serious, I have been convoy driving through countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and China - the GPS is a tool I can't leave home without!)

I find for the car, a big screen in invaluable (But care, you may loose a windscreen if you leave it in the car when parked). Many new features to load in a lot more maps than the older models, junction view, lane assist. etc. You can't go wrong with paying less than USD285 buying online..... Oh of course you have to get the maps.... either free or at a price.... depending on how nice you want it to be...

Yeah, works fine on XP. I improved the performance on Win7 a bit by running MapSource in XP compatibility mode and by bumping the virtual machine's RAM up to 1.5 GB.

As you both did not have problems with Mapsource 6.15.7 running XP 9which I am using also) I decided to re-install Mapsource 6.15.7. Happy that the Rotweiler map V 5, the SEA 4.5 and the India map work now . Don't know why yesterday these 3 maps failed but probably something went wrong with the installation although I can't explain why my other maps did work properly (have another 12 maps installed in Mapsource) and these 3 failed to show.

I had the same problem trying to install big maps into Win7 - after zooming the maps in and out a couple of times, it hangs. This was done with the last 2 Mapsource 6.15.7 and 6.15.11 updates, did not bother to check previous versions. If you were to press cntrl/Alt/Del to reset, the process menu comes out - you will see Mapsource process eating up some 1.96GB memory!!!

I then re-installed Mapsource 6.13.7, the problem went away, only trouble with my Acer 3810T could not show some of the POIs in full color. Then I tried it with Mapsource 6.14.1 and it is now working fine.... !!!! Especially the Thailand Ver 10 map... . Now I am sticking to 6.14.1 and that's it!

My Thailand Ver 10 had no problems working in the latest Mapsource updates with Vista and XP. I do think Garmin has to overcome this problem in their next update........

I have been using http://rotweilermaps.com/ for a few years now. He has all of Thailand along with numerous other asian countries. You send him money via paypal and then give him the GPS unit ID. After that you just download the map to the unit. I prefer to download it to my computer. From there I install it on Garmin Mapsource. Now I can use the map for planing routes or finding points of interest from my computer as opposed to dealing with the small screen on the GPS. You also have the capability to load maps from Mapsource straight to your GPS.

Also try :

www.asiagps.org/ - they are creating a Thailand map and need your track contributions - also have combined maps for Laos/Cambodia and Vietnam

and

www.malfreemaps.com/ - Free public download for very good detailed map of Malaysia and southern part of Thailand up to Bangkok UPDATED weekly, they are busy developing Thailand for inclusion, do contribute your tracks there.... In here, you will find ALL the answers on how to install maps, detailed forum discussions on all Garmin models and Papago units. You need go no where else for information on Garmin and Papago machines...

I have just purchased the Nuvi 1460 2 months ago and I find the following features very worthwhile (I got it through the internet online for RM1020.00)

1. It has a 5" screen - definitely better than the Nuvi 265 or 760 for failing eyes.

2. It is faster to lock on to the satellites and refreshes faster than the old Nuvis.

3. It has several map conventions which I like very much. Besides storing maps in a hidden /system directory (which you have to unhide the hidden files in your Windows to see). Here you see all your usual gmapsupp.img, gmapbmap/img, gmapprom.img etc, you will find there is another subdir called /map (Or you have to create it yourself) that stores other maps.

4. They now use the SDmicro card and in the card you can create 2 subdirs i.e. /garmin and /map (or create them yourself). /Garmin stores the usual maps as mentioned but in /map - you can now store any map names.. i.e. it will recognize any XXXX.img files. The number of maps is only limited by the size of your memory card! You then select the map you need via the Map INFO menu when the unit is turned on.

5. Only machines bought from authorized dealers in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia can read JVs created by Garmin authorized maps.

6. There are still some bugs with Nuvi 1460 even with the firmware updated to ver 2.30, hopfully Garmin Singapore at www.garmin.com.sg will have the new updates soon to correct them.... (Do not update other machines bought elsewhere with this firmware or it may render your UK or US machines inoperable!)

You can quite safely buy the Nuvi 1460 as the "local" machine as other countries will sell the unit called Nuvi 1450 etc.... with different JV capabilities...

In general, I love the Nuvi 1460!!!

Sorry for not replying earlier.

It turns out that on some newer nuvi models the map files are in a hidden folder Garmin\System. To view the folder with windows go to Tools/Folder options/View then tick "view hidden files and folders" and untick "Hide protected operating system files".

There were 3 .img files in the folder gmapbmap.img (Base Map) gmaptz.img (Time Zone) and gmapprom (Installed Map).

First I tried copying the TSM v10 map into the folder and renaming it gmapsupp.img but it was still not recognised, but then I tried renaming it gmapprom1.img and everything is working fine.

I now have both the European map and the Thailand map installed in the internal memory, I'm not sure but maybe the file name gmapsupp.img is only recognised if it is installed on a SD card.

That would be right, NUVI 14XX series have new map recognition conventions. You can now create a subdir in your SDMicro card called /map and place all your maps into the subdir in the SDMicro, no more need to have gmapsupp.img etc although they still will be used. Also in your internal memory create a Subdir /map same thing but will take up space.

You can now load all your maps into the SDmicro /map in your own name e.g. EsriThai.img, Malsyai.img etc etc and they will be recognized. The number of maps you can put in is only limited by the size of your SDmicro card.

You then select the map you need in the map info menu.....

Please visit this forum site to read all the detailed discussions www.malfreemaps.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4710

Hope this helps

Goodyear 265/65/17 are 8400 baht*, Bridgestone and Michelin are dearer.

* This is the R.R.P sticker that is on the tyre when purchased.

Thanks for the info - What would the 'normal' discount be like from the R.R.P.?

I have Bridgestones from Japan on mine at the moment and they are good, but they eat up pretty fast..... They are almost finished after 47,000 km..

I belive your speedo reading is easily adjusted with a Toyota computer. Just check out how much error you have at 100kmh, and if same as Vigo/Fortuner (which I belive it is), its adjusted in 2 minutes.

My car speedo reads 110km/hr when all my GPS's put together tells me I am running at 96km/hr. I trust my GPS because all my previous cars were dead accurate..... i.e. they synchronized. Will any official Toyota dealerships in Thailand be able to handle this computer adjustment? The local Toyota distributor in Malaysia will not touch my car because it was not imported by them....

Thanks for the tip... now I have plenty to do when I next visit Thailand..

265/65-17 is very available, since this is original on VIGO and Fortuner top of the line.

Both on road tyres and off road tyres. Bridgestone and Michelin most popular. Dont know the price new.

Should be available "secondhand" for like 15-20k baht, since many buyers take their new car to wheel shop to get some 18-22s and trade in the 17s.

Thank you for the information. That's good then, I have just decided that I will have them changed in Thailand.....

Still would prefer 275-70/17 if available to get my speedometer to read right again..... but have to check that when I am there...

Regards

Hi

I have a Toyota Land Cruiser VX100 in Malaysia and will be driving to Thailand in about a month's time.

My car is due for a complete change of tires and size 265-65/17 is very expensive here being imported (About Bht8,200 each). I am interested in finding out if this size of tire is available and cheaper in Thailand......

Also I am interested in the 265-70/17 size availability as the reading on my speedometer is slightly out and I believe that by putting the 70 sidewall will put the speed back to normal.

Any help on this is greatly appreciated

Thanks