caramba77

Thanks a lot!

This is great. Very helpful, JohnG, and apologies for not having seen your post elsewhere.

Any experience on whether a signed photocopy of work permit may suffice as seller? I assume this is up to the discretion of the staff at the DLT but may there's some experience here on this?

No one with experience selling a car or scooter in Chiang Mai?

3 minutes ago, Berkshire said:

Interesting.  Then that aqmthai site is extremely misleading, especially with the green color bar denoting moderate conditions.  If it's really 160, then you're right, that's horrendous. 

Well, the Aqmthai is indeed misleading as it only uses PM10 to calculate the AQI and chooses to ignore the PM2.5 - even though it is being measured. PM2.5 is considered far more damaging to one's health. Even more, the Thai website uses a far more lenient colour coding of what is green, yellow, or red. When other AQI sites would already show yellow, in Thai that is still a healthy green.

The Aqicn website is more aligned with the international AQI recommendations.

Until now I was not aware that the Aqmthai website does provide PM2.5 readings - but only through the 'Manual Report' option and then only providing you the actual measurement which you need to convert into AQI.

1 minute ago, Berkshire said:

Thanks for that site...although I'm a bit confused on the readings.  I assume the AQI is for PM2.5 and the readings for today as of 2pm is 83 and 73 in Chiang Mai (35/36), which is respectable.  What AQI readings are you getting?

Not quite. The PM2.5 values on the AQMThai website are the actual particle measurements in ug/m3. These need to be converted to the AQI value. The most common converter method is apparently this one:

https://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=resources.conc_aqi_calc

You'll find that PM2.5 values of 73 equal an AQI of 160 or a big fat red 'unhealthy'. PM2.5 below 35ug/m3 is 'moderate' and below 13ug/m3 is 'good'.

Hi,

what is required for a farang seller of a car/scooter to allow smooth paper transfer of a vehicle to the buyer?

Does the seller also need to produce work permit or similar (same as buyer)? And if so is a photocopy usually good enough?

And I guess the seller has to come along with the buyer to the transport department?

Anything else to be aware of to make that process as pain free and smooth as possible?

Thanks!

1 hour ago, ogb said:

This site is up http://aqmthai.com/public_report.php?lang=en

 

Readings at station #35 Chang Phueak have been consistently worse than station #36 in the city.

 

PM 2.5 has been at unhealthy levels for over a week now

Thanks for that. I actually didn't know that the manual report provides the PM2.5 values. They don't show up in any of the other easier to access interfaces on the aqmthai website, hence i usually use the aqicn.org.

Yes, the PM2.5 have been 'unhealthy' for a considerable time now - probably 2-3 weeks actually, apart for some rare instances in between.

Puts the whole smoke discussion a little bit into perspective, as that would primarily trigger the PM10 which continue to be 'moderate'.

Almost all Thai stations seemed to have stopped reporting last Friday as per AQICN website. Not sure whether this is a website issue (though other countries continue to be reported and 2 or 3 stations in Thailand still report) or a Thai based issue.

Frustrating as no way of telling the PM2.5 now...

Quote

I notice the AQI website has been stuck on Friday for 3 days now.

 

http://aqicn.org/city/thailand/chiangmai/city-hall/

 

Wonder why?

 

 

•  

Hi all,

i'm in search for a simple 3rd party liability insurance that also covers trips to overseas with sufficient coverage.

As i'm a resident in Thailand since several years now my former liability insurance from Europe does not cover me anymore. While liability in Thailand may not seem to be as important as in Europe, I would like to have one for trips abroad, including the US and Europe. The general advise is to seek insurance cover in the country of residence, which is Thailand. However, as far as I can see most 3rd party liability insurances are car insurances that seem to be linked to your own car, may exclude rental car driving and have insurance coverage of max 5-10,000,000 THB (which is rather low if you compare it to the standard 5-10,000,000 EUR coverage in European liability insurances that only cost you 60 EUR per year).

Is there an option that covers 3rd party liability abroad, not linked to a specific car and covering at least 30,000,000 THB?

Thanks!

Yep, I guess that'll be the way to go. Just wanted to check if anyone here may have had some specific recommendations. Thanks for the reply.

Hi,

me and my wife plan to escape the seasonal chiang mai haze for the rest of Feb and March and were hoping to temporarily move to Ko Lanta.

Most accomodation I can find seems quite expensive and is hotel based. Does anyone have recommendations for monthly rentals around 20k THB or suggestions where to look?

Thanks

I used Dragon Air a few weeks ago and this was a nice enough experience for a budget airline. One daily direct flight from CNX.

Thanks, I know the road up to there but was wondering if they'd let one camp there if they're officially closed. If they have a care taker hanging around he might object I guess...or not care at all.

Hi,

yes it sounds a bit stupid to go camping in the rainy season but we'd like to try out our new tent before taking it for a more serious trip. I heard that the Doi Pui campsite is closed from May to September, but does anyone know if that just means that there are no service facilities and camping can still be done independently? Or is the road access closed and if so how far away from the camp site would the barrier be?

And while we're at it, does anyone have a recommendation for a beautiful campsite anywhere else in the Chiang Mai vicinity. Ob Khan and Doi Suthep are known, but anything else?

Thanks!

Ok, thanks for the info!

I'll have a chat with our HR person to find out more about this. At least now I'm armed with some knowledge.

Thanks for the quick replies!

Right, so the fees for the extension and the multiple reentry were just mixed up, but are generally okay.

It just remains a question what those service fees are about. I was told that my wife first needs to apply for the extension upon which she'd get an additional 30 day visa (I assume that's more like a 'under consideration stamp' that I receive every year around I need to extend my stay) and then she is to return a few weeks later to pick up the actual extension of stay. At each of those visits she would be charged 2,000 if she does it in person or 3,000 if someone else is doing it for her...

I'm not sure if our company is now using an agent and these fees are the agents fees?

I've been following up the above with our company and been provided the following information regarding fees:

4,000 THB for the 1 year visa extension

1,900 THB for multiple re-entry permit

2,000 THB service fee at application and receival of a 30 day visa

2,000 THB service fee at delivery of one year extension

Total would be 9,900 THB, which seems awfully lot! Do these figures make sense?

Thanks and regards

Yep, guess i'll check with TWIZ re a new SIM. Don't think this was caused by an update as I haven't received an OS update since almost a year - something i need to take up with HTC according to AIS.

Thanks

If you read some of the old threads, you will see that there are people who are completely oblivious to this unfortunate phenomena. This includes me, who in earnest would probably have never known, even today,. That even though I used to exercise quite hard outdoors during the worst of it. Unfortunately, there appears to be no doubt that the health consequences of this pollution is very bad in the long term, though I personally probably wouldn't worry if just visiting, unless I had previous health/lung problems.

Currently I am experimenting with 3M's filtrate material, regular air conditioner filtering, and one of the supposedly best personal use air purifiers (from the Blueair company), measuring the effect with a particulate counter from Dylos Corp. Hopefully it will let me make some educated guesses as to what is needed to hopefully reduce the problem in my family's home at least.

Post your results. Thanks!

Hi, I have now finished testing most of what I wanted to test. I will

do some more testing, but this will mostly be related to how much time

my air purifier needs to make the room clean, and what speed setting is

necessary when the pollution is extra heavy, so is probably of little general

interest.

There was quite a bit of data gathered, and so I found it easiest to use

my regular document processing system for my own thinking and analyising.

While I admittedly did not pay much attention to others possibly reading

this document when I started on it, I have tried to attach my document as a

PDF-file with this message and have tried to make it more readable for others,

in case anyone else should be interested in reading it.

My short conclusion is that the 3M Filtrete material works, and does

improve things somewhat, but much less than I expected. 3M Filtrete

simply wrapped around a fan also improves things considerably. But only the

air purifier brings the particle count down to fair level, at least without too

much noise.

This is an absolutely incredible useful work, Awk!! Really amazing and well done. I was pondering about the effects of AC and air-purifier for a while.

This report needs to be made a sticky at the top of the Chiang Mai Forum or at least this post.

Thank you so much!

Hi,

I've switched to the new 2100 3G late last year as my HTC is not able to use the other 3G frequency provided by AIS here in Chiang Mai. In the beginning internet worked absolutely normal whenever demanded. Only once in a while it would not connect and I'd had to go into flight mode and back. But since about three or four weeks this is the case in 100% of the times now.

Yesterday my company subscribed me to a new 799 THB plan, which includes 3GB of 3G and unlimited regular GPRS data.

It's a windows 8 phone, so under About in the settings I can only get information about OS version (8.0.10211.204) and various hardware, firmware and radio revisions.

However, here's the additional info that may be helpful:

Network: AIS

Signal strength: 4-5 bars "H"

Mobile network type and service state: can't find this info in my phone. Highest connection speed is set to 3G and 'Automatic network selection'

Internet APN was entered manually: APN = internet, nothing else entered here.

MMS APN was entered manually: APN = MMS, MMSC (URL) = http://mms.ais.co.th, MMSC port = 8080.

From what I read it may be an issue with the APN settings, but the AIS website does not list the HTC 8s (nor any HTC windows 8 phone), so I relied on Thai forums that listed the supposedly correct settings. And since the internet APN is really only consisting of the APN name, I'm not sure if there's much to have wrong?

Thanks for your help!

EDIT: Not sure about AWN SIM. I've requested a new SIM once I got the HTC phone in early 2013 as it would only accept micro-SIMs. I assume they would have given me the appropriate SIM?

Hi,

I've got a rather annoying issue with my HTC windows phone on an AIS 2100 3G network.

I seem to only be able to connect to the internet after I disconnect and reconnect to the network, e.g. by entering flight mode briefly. Following this procedure I can use internet perfectly. However, once I take a break and want to access the net again after a few minutes it fails to get a connection and i have to do the above again.

AIS brushed it off saying that it's because my internet package expired, but after renewing it it's still the same problem.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Thanks, UbonJoe! Great and fast help.

Excellent, so that's unusually straight forward then. We've already got the certified translations done and approved by MFA, so that's ready to go then.

Is it needed to go to the immigration that issued my extension of stay (Chaeng Wattana) or can this be done in any immigration (e.g. in Chiang Mai)?

Previously I had to get my visa and extension of stay transferred to my new passport and Chiang Mai Imm refused to do so, saying that it's a Chaeng Wattana stamp and thus needs to be done there...

And will I need to go with my wife or can she go alone with all copies of my documents?

Thanks

Hello,

I'm in Thailand since several years on work permit and extension of stay. Since me and my french girlfriend got married we would now like to get her the same extension of stay. She's already on a Non-Imm O right now, and I was wondering what exactly is needed for her to apply for the same extension of stay that I have.

Thanks!

Yes, well, okay an under consideration stamp. With that terminology cleared, is there any way to shorten this period and actually receive a new extension of stay earlier?