Ricardo

3 hours ago, Dave67 said:

It was given to the highway department to do the foundation so they are probably still looking at the drawing to see where the white lines go.

And wondering about the odd traffic-lights ! 

Rather than wasting time on any such welcoming-activity, the qualified Immigration-officers are needed manning desks, and the rest need training in the same.

36 minutes ago, Khun Han said:

 

We flew with Thai from Swampy to CNX last year on a big bird. Can't remember whether it was a 777 or A330, but it was pretty full.

I see one take-off mid-morning (10.30-11ish ?), from my terrace, and am sure they'll be putting-on more over the Xmas-season.

And there was a Thai 747 parked at gate 4 or 5, when my Air Asia from DMK pulled-up, mid-November.

I always prefer a wide-body, from a space/claustraphobia point-of-view, on the other hand it's nice to have better frequency (with smaller narrow-body) too ! 

I'm waiting on the January-Sales on the Gulf-three, to book the remainder of my long-haul trips, for next year  ... the prospect of using Qatar direct-to-Doha & thus avoiding two PNRs & the usual Bangkok-hassle is positive !

I recently saw a Santa-Sale from Finnair  (Santa's Official Airline !)  in their newsletter, book by 8th January for travel between 26th February & 30th June, Amsterdam or Barcelona or Copenhagen from B20,900, London & Paris & Frankfurt from B22, 900 as examples of the sorts of fares being quoted.

https://www.finnair.com/th/gb/flight-offers-europe?utm_medium=email&utm_source=plusmail&utm_campaign=site+Newsletter+PlusMail+Thailand+y2017+m12+wk51+d22+TH+GB&utm_content=flights+A+holiday+surprise+above+the+clouds&ETj=4649272&ETl=396_HTML&sfmc_sub=47504580&ETu=308673687&ETjb=3&ETmid=6230917

Thai Lion Air have got a new plane, the A330-300 will apparently be operating on the two biggest routes of DMK-CNX and DMK-HKT, and as a launch-offer they are offering one-way from B655 including taxes & hold-luggage.

http://www.lionairthai.com/en/Promotion/A330

I don't know what availability there will be, when these new flights will start, but it's a big plane to fill and a quick look at mid-week mid-February & mid-March showed some flights at B815 which isn't too bad.

Oh, and ask his colleagues at the AAT/DoT to get going on the third (if not fourth) runway at Swampy, which has been needed for a few years now, especially whenever one of the existing two is shut-for-maintenance.

It's all very well building the first terminal-extension, glad to see that's underway at last, but all those extra planes will need something to land & take-off from !

Perhaps he might ensure that someone remembers, and has the budget available, to change the batteries in the tsunami-detection buoys every year or so ?

I've had SCB ATM-cards for over a decade, but when they force-issued their new 'smart-card' a year-or-so ago the withdrawl-limit was cut-back to their standard-limit (I assume ?) of B20k.

This has caused me problems on-occasion, so I finally went in to get it re-set a few days ago, it took them an hour but they managed it in-the-end, took a call to Head-Office (for technical-reasons, not approval) !

I would previously have assumed that they would retain the same limit, as one's previous car, but no  ...  Amazing Thailand did it again !

I'd definitely advise the OP to simply go and talk to his bank, if he needs a higher limit.

12 hours ago, ratcatcher said:

But why is the dog offering its master/mistress a red rose  ...  you know, it's the strangest thing, but that gives me a feeling of deja-vu. Has this ploy been used before ? 

I can only hope that this proves to be untrue. It may just be a rumour, started by a politician from an existing-party, for his/their political purposes ?

Individuals from the military or RTP in Thailand have often pursued political-careers after retirement, but an official junta-backed military-party would go beyond that, and IMO be a clear retrograde step.

Time now for 'normal' semi-democratic politics to resume, preferably by November 2018 as recently promised to the world, and with sufficient time to allow a proper run-up for both existing & any new parties.

28 minutes ago, Ossy said:

Didn't you mean ELK?

Probably not, as no-moose is good news  ...  groan. 

They'd have to rein-deer sense-of-humour in ?

37 minutes ago, Russell17au said:

What I have been overcharged. I'm on a pension here and I paid 100,000 baht. I want my 99,000 baht that I have been overcharged by you and I believe that all TV advanced members either be charged 1,000,000 baht or be deported to the Arctic to be an elf and help Santa

At least they'd be entitled to elf-benefits, when they got sick !

Merry Christmas, one and all, wherever you're from !

Unless and until Corbyn declares that he will now go into a coalition with the SNP after all, the numbers are simply against him, I don't see how he can overcome that problem and the 2017-election showed Labour as coming-in a clear Second.

I am very suspicious of his tax-and-spend economic-agenda, it all plays very well to his keen young supporters, but it would IMO be a disaster for the country as-a-whole.  Do the millenials remember the old days like I do, the 3-day-week or the miners'-strike or how badly-run the nationalised-industries were, do they even remember the semi-conservative New Labour days of Tony Blair, how he & Mr 'prudent' Brown blew a shed-load of money ?

And his fudge over the EU continues, he voted to Remain but didn't campaign very hard for it & his Labour-voters wanted out, he now supports what the people voted-for (by a tiny margin) in the Referendum because it was their democratic will, but won't give them a second say in another full Referendum, only the MPs deserve to get to tell us what will happen.  And that's his view of democracy, it has its limits.

And he's doing his best to distract & screw-up the negotiations, perhaps that is his duty as Leader of the Opposition, but in 20-years or 50-years time will he really be seen to have been helpful or constructive ?  This is the single most-important change for the UK in decades, but his eye is off-the-ball on domestic-issues, and for purely-domestic political reasons.

I hope Teresa May can hang on, and get us through to a reasonable exit-deal, before her government falls apart  ...  but I'm not confident that she will.

I'm not American, so don't have a dog in the political-race, but do wonder why taxes are being cut, when the US is running a fiscal-deficit ?  And how much credit can lobbying take for that ?

Is it because the economic-experts think more stimulus is still needed, to boost the feel-good factor & consumer-spending, I thought unemployment was now reasonably low & the economy growing at a reasonable rate already ? 

Or else why have the Fed felt able to finally start edging-up interest-rates at last, this year ?

With no major wars or disasters on-the-horizon, why isn't the US-government now starting to pay-down its outstanding debts, will the money returning from offshore & the one-off bonuses to the workers (and no doubt massively-bigger ones to the bosses too) really generate enough extra-activity & extra-tax to increase the overall tax-take enough to finally start to do that ?

I'd like to understand better, what's really going on here.

On 20/12/2017 at 9:54 PM, Aussieroaming said:

So which countries or territories have the Chinese legally taken over?

Hong Kong for one, perhaps Macau too ?

All perfectly legal and above-board, unlike some other places, which spring readily to mind.

14 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Thanks for clearing that up.

I try, but am only a fallible human, like everyone else.

I think perhaps the bureaucrats or politicians aren't all-that-good at communicating clearly.

Quote

IMO any hi speed line to C M is a non starter if passenger only. The money is in freight and the cost of going through the mountains for passenger only trains is prohibitive. Far better to double the track to allow for faster transit of all trains, freight and passenger. Would have to run single track through the tunnels, but double elsewhere would be a vast improvement on present times caused by having to wait for oncoming trains.

" single track through the tunnels "

I Like that idea ! 

So often you can get most-of-the-bang for far fewer bucks, if the pressure is on efficiency or cost-saving, rather than mega-investments generating larger brown-envelopes.  Will it ever happen here  ...  one can only hope.

Quote

Also, a good investment would be improved restaurant cars which are presently "shoddy", to be polite.

Start serving beer again  ...  most expats would drink to that !

7 minutes ago, WinnieTheKhwai said:

I saw that too, but the flight gets in at 10:20pm.  That makes it extremely difficult to get a connection anywhere else, or even to drive places after renting a car.   So will have to keep flying into JFK, where you can arrive in the morning.

 

(There are a few things I avoid at all costs on US trips and one of those is spending a night at a hotel near JFK or IAD..  The other thing is cross country domestic flights)

That makes eminent sense to me too, although at least the CNX-end has convenient mid-morning or mid-afternoon flights, depending upon which day of the week one flies ?

2 hours ago, bluesofa said:

Ha ha ha! Is anyone working there today, doing anything - the day after the second (or third?) ground-breaking ceremony for the three-and-a-half kilometres of track?

 

Forgive my scepticism, but if there was a ground-breaking ceremony every day, the government officials of Thailand and China would be able to build the entire railway themselves in, say, no more than a thousand years.

I can't be the only one who remembers the similar ground-breaking ceremony in 2015, where they planted a flag on the (metre-gauge) track at a station just North of Bangkok, to mark the start of work on the standard-gauge medium-speed mainly-freight Bangkok-China line ?

Well, it all looks good on TV, and sells newspapers, I suppose. 

1 hour ago, Valentine said:

The technology that will be bid next year will be outdated by the times it actually gets built even if it was ready by 2021 which I seriously doubt given the proclivity for delaying tactics.

When built this new line will still mark a serious step forward for Thailand, whether it also needs to be (or will be) cutting-edge in technology-terms is something for the politicians to boast about, just so long as they don't actually try to do it in reality !  Since they sometimes appear to not know what they're talking about.

It will give Thailand an improved passenger-link, along the actual route, to the North-East.  It will boost volumes passing through Laem Chabang, and possibly other Eastern-Seaboard ports too, which creates jobs & profit.  It will enable cheap Thai-manufactures & agricultural-products to be shipped North to China more cheaply/efficiently. It will enable Laos to move its imports & exports more swiftly and efficiently.

It will also give China a new route, to a major Thai port, for their containerised export-trade.  They will be able to ship their manufactured-goods more cheaply/quickly to Thai consumers, and we'll see how well-prepared Thai industry is for the coming competition.  It may even lead to some extra Chinese tourists coming here, ones who live in Southern China, and can't already get here by the cheap charter-flights which are booming !

This is all good stuff, but would the line (to Laos) have been built without the Chinese pressure, I doubt it.  Getting the Thais to pay for much/all of their section of it, and carry the commercial-risk, well that may or may not turn out to be a good investment.  We shall see  ...  in 30-50 years' time, perhaps.  Or it might become another Hopewell-project, much sooner.

I think Thailand has been somewhat clever, in getting the Bangkok-Khorat section built first, because the Chinese still need (and may perhaps pay something towards) the Nong Khai to Khorat section, and the Khaeng Khoi to Laem Chabang to Maptaphut section, for it to work economically for them.

Meanwhile the three-kilometer test-section looks a little bit more likely to get built.  One step at a time, eh ?

1 hour ago, bluesofa said:

I appreciate your straight-talking on the subject. So when are you standing for election as PM then!

"next year, after the election" - was a that a pig flying past?

I think it may have been a supersonic-pig, maintained at the new global aircraft-maintenance-centre at Utapao, Thailand's latest hub ? 

A sense of humour is IMO essential, also listening to what's said or reported, and then comparing it with what's been said previously & with what actually makes sense to you !  

3 hours ago, sanuk711 said:

--are we picking up the paper and seeing rail crashes. Trains running off the tracks....Oh no sorry that's America isn't it.

But this one in 2011 was in China, wasn't it ?  

"A bullet train crash which killed 40 people in China in July was caused by design flaws and sloppy management, the Chinese government says.  Almost 200 people were injured in the crash near the south-eastern city of Wenzhou."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-16345592

and also  "The two trains involved were based on technology from Bombardier and Kawasaki.[13] Train CRH1-046B is a variant of the Swedish Bombardier Regina, while the second train CRH2-139E is a derivative of the Japanese E2 Series Shinkansen 'bullet train.'[7] Kawasaki and other companies in Japan are currently challenging China's high-speed rail project for patent license violations."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision

59 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Far as I know they made an error. It's not going to C M according to a previous thread, but to Chiang Rai to link up with the railway to be built through Laos, which makes more sense. After all, the entire project is just to link China to southern ports to transport goods to Europe more cheaply, and little to do with passengers, isn't it?

The cleverness of the Chinese is that they have convinced LOS to build a railway it doesn't need at it's own expense.

 

The cost of building a hi speed railway to C M from north of Uttaradit would be prohibitive, but quite easily done to Phrae and from there on it's mostly flat to C R.

There are perhaps some five different projects  ...  which are easily confused with one another :-

1.  The Thai/Japanese standard-gauge high-speed passenger-only line to Phitsanulok, then on to Chiang Mai, which the OP is about.  And where the numbers quoted in the OP are, to put it politely, questionable because of the mountain-ranges in-the-way on the northern section.

2.  The Chinese/Thai standard-gauge medium-speed heavy-freight (plus a few medium-speed passenger trains) line to Nong Khai, linking with the line from Southern-China through Laos, which is currently under-construction in Laos.

One 3km-test-section of this may be started in the next year or two, and the first main section from Bangkok to Khorat is also getting closer, in fact they've held ground-breaking ceremonies once or twice already !

The second section (Khorat to Nong Khai) and third section (branching-off down to Laem Chabang & the Eastern Seaboard ports & industrial-areas, are still some way off.

3.  The possible longer-term second standard-gauge medium-speed heavy-freight line through Den Chai, then passing Chiang Rai and up the Mekhong valley to China.  This is a long way off as-yet, but might eventually be needed, as the first Chinese/Thai line (once built & operating) gets close to capacity. 

4.  The long-proposed never-started SRT metre-gauge single-track line from Den Chai to Chiang Rai, which is wheeled out every election-time, with a poster showing a DMU-unit standing at a station named Chiang Rai.  I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.  I think you're referring to either (3) or (4) in your post ?

5.  The ongoing SRT twenty-year metre-gauge track-doubling project, part of which is (amongst other things) to improve sections of the North-Western line, under-funded but under-way ?

But I may have missed some other proposals !  The standard of reporting in the media doesn't aid clarity IMO.

Beware the Greeks come bearing gifts ?

Thailand has done quite well by balancing-off rival powers against one another, over recent centuries, it could be a pity if that long-term diplomatic-strategy were abandoned, but then again  "Up to You !"

I bet the cameras are programmed to ignore Mercedez-Benz drivers ... 

Perhaps they should run a second countdown, at ten minutes after midnight, and double the money they generate ? !