BugJackBaron

Lookin at the map of the Gulf of Thailand it seems to me that only 100Km or so seperate

Pattaya from Hua Hin if one travels by boat. A high speed boat could cover this is 2 or 3 hours.

Has anyone tried this privately? Is there a public boat available?

Surprise is the key. Fear is the lock.

Adopt a pet tiger.

If money were no object I'd have a buffer zone between entrance and bedroom.

When burgler enters maze of confusing lights and flase targets appear//

a voice says "your move sucka!"

You been watching "Home Alone" again?

Actually I was thinking of the scene with Bond and Scaramango in The man with the Golden

Gun..

Might be hard to find a midget though....

Yes, perhaps I should have stated ANY movie where the locale is explicitly

Thailand and not just Thailand shot as a stand-in for another location

Oh so many.

Probably 80% of Kubrick's ouvre.(2001, clockwork orange)

The man who fell to earth(original David Bowie at his best)

Once Upon a Time in The West ( Sergeo Lorene's masterpiece)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Excalibur

Body Heat (they don't make em like that anymore)

Walkabout

Picnic at Hanging rock

Take a look at movies from the 70s especially - the hight of Western film

More recently really impressed by

The Fountain - seems like a 70s movie that believes in itself

Sunshine

Smokin Aces - far better than the trailer may look and a great ending

OK western movies that are set in or contain major scenes set in Thailand....

The King and I (good old Yul!)

That one by Van dam_n with martial arts....

Gangster

(?)

(?)

saw Sunshine...

crappy movie, I thought i was going to get a seizure 'cos they kept cutting in distorted brightly coloured scenes that would last for a couple of seconds.

I saw it and thought it was simply brilliant. But then again I have probably seen

all major SF movies.

Surprise is the key. Fear is the lock.

Adopt a pet tiger.

If money were no object I'd have a buffer zone between entrance and bedroom.

When burgler enters maze of confusing lights and flase targets appear//

a voice says "your move sucka!"

Anyone ever try Phuyuck wine (sp?) It is the wine that Roger Moore - as James Bond - scoffed at

in a scene in The man with The Golden Gun

Francisco Scaramanga: Nick Nack! Tabasco!

Nick-nack: Right away, Monsieur Scaramanga.

So why do you keep using the baht buses ? They ARE NOT an essential PUBLIC service. There ARE alternatives. NO ONE forces you to use them.

They ARE an essential public service.

What are the alternatives? Walk, ride a dangerous motorcy, use the airconditioned public bus service that the Baht Bus Mafia kicked up such a stink about and got shut down, use the new Metered Taxi service that is owned by the Baht Bus Mafia and refuses to use the meter.

Have I missed any out?

And why isn't there a regular baht bus service along Third Road? Thepprasit? North Road? all of which are now all built up business and residential areas that people need a reliable public service to access. The empty and parked up baht buses could be making money servicing those routes.

I don't know how long you have lived here but there WAS an experiment to set up regular buses last year

and you can still see the bus-stop signs on Jomtien. Unfortunately noone used it and it went kaput.

I can only remember once being given 5 baht change for the 10 baht I gave for a very short trip in Pattaya.

I usually just give 10 Baht and am fine with it. What gets me is the few dishonest ones who insist

on 20 baht from Jomtien(soi 4 jomtien beach, not out in the boonies) to Pattaya.

I havenever seen a Thai pay more than 10 and that is what I insist on no matter what their protest(one guy got out and pounded on the taxi but I walked off after telling him to call the police if he didnt like it).

What is even worse is that in a popular tourist bronchure(u know the one that is obloong)

it reports the fare from Jomtien to Pattaya as 30 Baht. Outrageous lies or incompetence!

I agree with Richard-BKK, I've never had issues with Java and Linux whether it was 32 or 64 bit. Also, have you tried to use Jack? Alsa and OSS are both pretty notorious for locking the sound down on a single application. In fact, I've even seen it (ALSA) not allow you to raise or lower the volume with hotkeys while inside a game!

Really? Alsa mixes things very well generally. But I mentioned speicifc test cases that simply won't work in ALSA. Java applets for one. This is because java is OSS based. Now this was on a standard semi modern system of i915 chipset with ac'97n onboard sound mixing. If you have a dedicated sound card these

issues may not be present. I don't know. But the mixing issue is a recognized bug in ALSA forums. It's a bug thats getting to be a decade old.

As for Jack this is for musicians and few distros work with it...from docs i remember reading it sounds

nontrivial to set up. Pulseaudio sounds more promising as it may allow true sound mixing

from ANY source, oss or applet. I have been using various distros with the same applications

for the last 4 years so I know these isssues are real.

maybe Cuba, but again, communist government, plenty of impoverished locals, and a gazillion former "residents", their descendants and wannabees just 90 miles away, itching and waiting for the opportunity to flood back in there and claim what was supposedly theirs 60+ years ago. Not exactly a stable environment for retirement.

But I bet it would be a great place for all those that don't like Pattaya to go to !

You are writing off communist or socialist countries since you dismissed Vietnam in an earlier post for the same reasons. There's also awesome Moçambique, that embraced Marxism and arguably has some of the most pristine and idyllic beaches and resorts in Africa. Angola has a similar past and future potential (but since they are already China's major foreign oil supplier, maybe that is less of a cherry). Namibia has a fledgling eco-tourism industry but is a step or two further behind.

I have worked in all four and if Puerto Rico doesn't have the cache (pay attention basjke), I would say go for the places that have socialist past, present or future. The east-end of Cuba, beyond Varadero is an undiscovered paradise. Some of the beaches in north Vietnam north of Haiphong remind me of Patong in 1977. Inhambane province overlooks the Indian Ocean in the south of Moçambique and is probably the best. Travel outside of Walvis Bay in Namibia and there's some secluded beaches (it's the least densely populated country in the world apparently). The Portuguese villas overlooking the bluffs in northern Angola looked like a peaceful retreat but some needed fixing up.

There are vacancies!

No beaches (??!) but I just took my first trip to Laos. Best western food for money in Asia. Prices good on MOST

things(motorbikes at 300B/day though!) Vientienne traffic was sane. There are even girls there though it is more descreet than Pattaya. So yes, "commie" countries have their points. Rampant capatilism results in too many greedy people jumping on the bandwagon. I'm told Kazastan is great too.

BugJackBaron;

You do realise that it is not the OS fault for buggy drivers don't you? Like during that whole Vista launch deal 20% of crashes (according to Microsoft) that were reported were Nvidia's fault. I always download Nvidia drivers from as many IP address as possible, simply so that they can see there is a demand for *Nix drivers. This will only prompt them to write better drivers--or risk losing customers to a company that will support OSS. I've tried both Open Solaris and various versions of *BSD, but I keep gravitating back to Linux, specifically SuSE.

I realize it but that is not really what I meant when I said linux was too hacky. I have got good nvidia

support from such distros as Vector, Bluewhite-64(a lot of fun!) and Mepis.

My problem has always been sound on basic ac'97 integrated chipset.

Try this: run a java applet(I use jin to play chess) , and SDL game like lbreakout2 and

say Amarok to listen to music and get them to mix all sounds succesfully with no crashes.

Well good luck. Yes I know you can buy a sound card. But that is so 90's and I won't do it just to run an OS nor should anyone else.

Java is oss only so u need a hack like the aoss program - that of course won't work with applets.

Also java applications both 32 and 64 bit have always been unstable for me on linux.(Decaf, jin)

whereas they are fine on sun(no surprise) and even windows.

Sure it is not linux's fault that SUn has crappy java for linux but I just want a something to work.

Solaris ran all the above fine. OS X too probably of course though I can't afford a mac right noiw.

After 10 years living here permanently, if I did not have a family here, I would only come for fun and frolic. Too many backward things for my taste. Police are a joke completely!!! the Pattaya City admins are also a joke; the so-called land of smiles is not that at all.......beware of the hand in your back pocket. These folks for the most part are not 'wired-up' too well. I have two homes in Thailand; two kids in University and two in English private school, so I am doing my part in trying to prevent 4 Thais from falling into the mess I see around me daily. So, I cannot just up and leave as is suggested by some who are here trying to re-invent themselves. I have learned to not put myself into compromising positions or in situations that piss me off, so I can live the jai yen yen attitude, but I still maintain the right to 'bitch' a little when it is called for. Slowly too, the price is not staying 'right' with the baht being where it is not justified. I am thankful that I have enough income to not be too effected by this volatile movement, but I see many ex-pats who have had to really tighten their belts or leave for Cambodia........with the greed and corruption as a way of life here (and in Asia), I have little hope for too much change in my lifetime. Tum dee die dee, tum chua die chua (phonetically)........I hope?

You sound like me.

I have been in the states of the united for 16 years "permanently"?.

4 weekends ago I got pulled over for going to the mountains with my truck loaded with 4 kids with snowboards on my rooftop. 6 am in the morning in the smallest little town. That cop handed me a $704 ticket for going 39 MPH in a 25 MPH zone plus I didn't have the current piece of paper on me that proofs that I have insurance. I was insured. Going to trial...the judge was so nice ...I only had to pay 304 dollars. That day in court I watched people just being milked for having a dog that is too big, a nurse driving without seat belt....she picks patients up and drops them off. Corruption is not a new idea...it does get out of hand no matter what country.

In other words...what you are descibing is not limited to Thailand.

Everything nice and well Bernd, but you WERE speeding, the nurse WASN'T wearing a seat belt and maybe the dog WAS bigger than it should be. So this has nothing to do with corruption, maybe ripp off, but not corruption.

Fine line between rip-off and corruption.Keep in mind that America is legal-obsessed so the later is more to its taste. Asia, like most of the non-western woprld is power obsessed - and money is power.

I'm reminded of distinction between fascism and communism. To those in Gulag

or in Nazi prison was there a difference?

But keep in mind the good side of a less legal oriented country(this applies to most of Asia as well)

I can drink beer on the beech and not have to worry about a wanna-be cop in Canada trying to make a bust. As long as I am not doing harm, I can more or less do what I please. Noone will sue me or

quote a bylaw. This is a side of freedom that is ironically denied by our western "free" countries and their

often ridiculous laws(or their predilection for enforcing said laws).

We all do have our own plans to liv.

which are your plans?

I plan to travel in a phone booth and pick up strange women as a time-lord but failing that just get a job

i saw somebody mentioned canada on this post.then we saw shithole refered to as pattaya.seems to me that toronto is just as much as a shithole with some of the worst racism i have ever seen worldwide,and there are slum areas too.

mmmmmmmmm sounds like pattaya doesnt it lol

Canada's Vancouver Island runs open sewers into the Straights of Juan de Fuca and eventually waters down into The Sound (eventually raw sewage dumps into another country from the Victorian scumbagians) so I find it rather hypocritical a Canuckian whines about somthing his countrymen are used to forcing upon aother(s) nation too...I imagine the Cambodians get what The Sound doesn't deserve either.

Hey, like Dirty Harry, I play no favorites. I hate 'em all .Victoria is not only a sewer, but it's a sewer that thinks it is British . I'm still trying to parse your last sentence though...Cambodia well

at least the water down south in Sinoukville (sp?)was nicer than in Pattaya.

I'm sorry I would love to know more. But gambling is illgeal in Thailand. At least for now.

The original game is called Connect-4 (at least in the UK it was)

There is a very simple way to win, after half a dozen alternate goes, offer your opponent a lady drink and when she is distracted sorting that out slip an extra couple of your colour in.

I tried that and it worked but the next game she used the same trick on me. Some

of these girls are a quick study!

Beach vollyball and strip water polo.

I have absolutely no idea why so many whingers (I like that word) would want to stay in a shithole like Pattaya or even Thailand for that matter. It would be much more pleasant for those of us who happen to like Pattaya and Thailand if the moaners just went back home to their wonderful countries.

I like Pattaya and like to moan too. Is that a paradox?

Ever heard of "constructive criticism"? It's a constructive thing.

As for Canada being wonderful. Yes , but only if you are rich.(check housing prices these days)

I use whatever gives full 64 bit support for nvidia , seemless sound mixing with my ac'97 chip.

Linux is just too hacky to get all of those things working all of the time but I have probably tried all major disros. Last one I really liked was slackware based bluewhite linux. I think opensolaris shows moer promise

thna any linux distro thoough. FreeBSD would be there but they have no Flash-9 support and their java is buggy.

OK you guys who go to girlie bars know the game

that Thais often dont seem to know the name of.

It's the one with a plastic sheet with holes in it. You alterate and drop

platic "coins" , pink or green, in the holes trying to make a line

of 4 in your color. Draws are possible.

So after being humiliated last night by a pretty AND smart lady

I guess I want to know if anyone here has analysed this game

to find out the perfect strategy. Or if anyone even knows the proper name

for this game.

Cheers

Wow wow wow. I coudnt believe my nose walking down Pattaya beach

in the last few days. In font of the new Mall being built the smell was like,

er, shit! Is this a seasonal thing? This is my first time in P during the low season

but can't recall it smelling like this last Xmas.

Maybe the mayor should invest less in new malls and more on upgraded

treatment plants?

Yea , I know this is no Chiang Mai with its granola chewing hippies

but I seem to recall a couple of years ago, mind you in the high season,

Tai chi or something on Pattay beach round sundown. Whatever happened to that?

Is there any practising yoga classes or meditation here at all?

I found a sign for yoga near Jomtien but was told the teacher left.

Some diversity would be nice.

Thanks for the suggestion, and I know the Dog is happy. Maybe I will just have to import these product types myself.

Or better yet, do some research and you'll find that the claims about eggs being bad for you have been debunked. And when you toss the yolks, you're getting rid of the best part of the egg!

Yes and in general the whole cholesterol thing is very controversial. In fact there

are many medical professionals who are openly skeptical of cholesterol being bad . It is a natural

substance and some people with low cholesterol get heart disease and others with high

are worry free. The whole thing was based on poor science.

Here is an interesting link http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/cholesterol_myth_1.html