Gaccha

Does Suan Plu office still have the re-entry permit facility for us?

For a long time after they shuttered this facility [except for the 3 nationalities (Lao, Cambodia, Burma)] they had one special section just to deal with Re-entry permits for extended visa. is it still open? I used it around two years ago. It had a special requirement of submitting the application by computer, otherwise they would not under any circumstances serve you.

I simply don't have time to get to Chaeng Wattana.

Thanks.

Yes, me too. Very annoying as I just submitted an online report and need to know if it got processed as running out of time to report by mail (it's due on the 6th).

I applied two days ago and was sent an e-mail that it had been approved; I wonder if they are doing this because the site is down.

given that bangkok is entirely flat, why would you need assistance?

Because it's 40 degrees and 100% humidity.

Gaccha- I have the LA Ebike 24-6 and it's okay- a great grocery getter.

I'm off to the house soon and I'll see if I can scrounge up that information from the trade show.

Edit: Didn't take long to find it: http://chanainter.orgfree.com/

That's not an endorsement of these guys. I don't know anything else about them since the nice lady in their booth at the trade show spoke no English. But their components were decent quality and their prices were okay. If I were to pick one for general purpose in BKK, it would be their folding 20" with 6 speeds- for ease of getting on the BTS and MRT. Their 26" MTB with 6 speeds looks pretty decent, but I've got that range covered with my LA Bike.

They look good: brushless engine, lithium battery.

I'm baffled why the 26" only does 24 kph; that is awfully slow for that wheel size and bike design.

Can you tell me if you noticed whether they were throttle (i.e. twist the handlebar to accelerate the rate of the engine) or pedelac (i.e. have to pedal before the engine engages) only. I really want throttle but there's a good chance that EU regulations have affected the bike design and made the throttle option vanish.

Also, if they are a small outfit designing the bikes they may be sloppy with safety. Any e-bike with throttle should have a cut-out switch. Did you see a small switch perhaps on the handlebar.

Sorry, if you didn't notice any of this at the trade show.

Thanks.

given that bangkok is entirely flat, why would you need assistance?

I ask car drivers the same question.

I have a 24" 6 speed LA E-Bike and it works fine, but looks like a granny bike in your first pic.

Last time I went to a trade show at BITEC, there was a company showing some better looking bikes, including a nice mountain bike and a couple of folding bikes. I'll try to scrounge up their brochure and post their contact details...

Edit: Interesting that LA Bikes left a few dozen of their e-bikes (same one I have) scattered around the starting line of Bike for Mom yesterday. They all still had the plastic wrap on the batteries and other parts so it was pretty obviously a publicity thing. I don't know if anyone actually rode them, though. I wouldn't have hesitated to ride mine through the rally.

I knew about LA Bikes but their webpage was down for around 3 weeks so I figured they had gone bust. but it looks like it's working again...

I think I'd call some of their e-bikes 'barely acceptable' (http://www.la-bicycle.com/product-category/products/la-bicycle/e-ride/). But if I have no other choice... then I might get this: Nimble 24.6.

They have a store just off Wongwianyai BTS... so that is something.

Solex used to have a tiny shopfront on Wireless Road... but their facebook page suggests they've closed.

I'm looking for a cool e-bike (a pedal bike with a motor). My local bike shop--just 25 metres from my door-- has an e-bike; it's bike is the image of e-bikes most people have: a granny bike with a motor.

What I want

I'm a realist. This is Bangkok, not London. I'd prefer something like this:

or this...

...but they will not be found in Bangkok.

So I'd like to make do with this:

Or something a bit quirky like this:

My search so far

A walk around CentralWorld, Big C, Amarin Plaza revealed exactly zero e-bikes of any sort. Has anyone seen any bike shop (ideally near the BTS/MRT etc.) that has a decent collection of e-bikes or has a catalogue to order them. I think Solex or Dahon bikes look good but I'm getting desperate....

I have rules out 'home-made bikes', self-importing, non-lithium battery ones, 'brush' engines. I'd like a price of around 25,000 baht with a top speed of 30 kph.

Any suggestions...?

Thanks!

It's the genuine name of the app. It's not a typo....

I failed with the online application even though I definitely did it at the right time and my most recent arrival to Thailand in 2014 clearly puts me on the system.

Chaeng Wattana's 90 day room was completely empty so they all huddled around the computer to work out why I couldn't do it. They were unable to find any reason. They were able to tell me that there were precisely 5 pending requests in total (presumably for Bangkok only).

Oh well. I'll try again in 3 months. I'd prefer to save the 6 hours travel time.

So... not a popular app then...

This new app created by the Thai police will apparently treat any messages sent on it as equivalent to an emergency phone call. It requires your id and your photo so there are privacy issues.

Has anybody registered/used it?

They claim to be able to respond to Thai and English requests.

Complex confluence of problems...

I have a tough problem that is made of a series of interrelated problems. The main issues are:

1. Passport is so old and tatty (and I would like a new one, but it’s British so there are the now well-known delays and problems with this)

2. A change of work permit and visa for a new job ( I currently am on a Non-B visa (private higher education institute) and I wish to switch to a job with a similar designation ( state higher education institute))

3. All in a tight timeframe

I want to be able to switch jobs without leaving the country (as I expect would happen if the visa is not changed appropriately).

My new employers want me to start on August 1^st, but the new contract will not be signed until that very same day (they will be flexible if you say it is necessary). I need to give one month’s notice to my current employer (making it July 1^st). I want to avoid travel abroad to resolve the visa because of the danger of actually needing to obtain an emergency passport if my old and tatty passport is refused by immigration (a foreign country immigration for about 10 minutes refused travel for me last month but thankfully changed their mind). I understand Thai immigration is very strict and once you quit your job there are no extra days to hang around; you must leave the country or else apply for a 7day extension.

So with all this in mind, should I give my notice on July 1^st or delay in order to create an overlap? What should my future employer do (do the documents need pre-arranging before the actual start date of work)? Can I switch to a new Non-B immigrant visa from the current one(or will I need to re-enter Thailand on a tourist visa with at least 15 days remaining)? Can all this be done after I start work or must the visa switch be done on the start date or before the start date? If there are days in-between on what basis can I remain in the country without messing up the visa process?

If I need to leave the country and re-enter because the visa change is not allowed/botched etc. then can an emergency visa be used for all the necessary visa/work permit and other issues arising? How long can an emergency visa last?

If I was to apply for a new passport now, this would seem to mean that I will need an emergency visa for all the visa changes. Would I first have to transfer stamps to the emergency passport and then later add to the new passport or is a visa transfer etc. not necessary for an emergency passport.

I am not sure whether there are any issues or whether there are multiple issues. (I am presuming my current visa (that I have only just renewed) cannot be used for a different job.)

Thank you in advance.

There have been close but no cigar similar topics in the past.

I need to get a microsim for my Samsung S5. My old SIM is a Truemove. I want to keep the old number, get a microsim and move to Turemove *H*.

Just who do I talk to ?

Do I go to Truemove H as a separate company or do I treat them as Truemove?

Do I ask them for a microsim with the same number? Or do I need to talk to the old sim company (Truemove)?

I am baffled by the coordination between companies. Literally, what do I do?

1. go to Truemove H store?

2. go to Truemove to ask to change number?

3. Go back to Truemove H....?

I don't know.

Thanks in advance.

I went to the Major Suksawat today. I was simply amazed at the bias to favour the whiteys.

The 'three group' (Laotians, Cambodians, Burmese) of arund 100 were made to line up in three long lines and guided by orders to the windows to wait for the three staff.

The whiteys-- all 6 of us-- were given three windows to ourselves with three staff and no demands to stand up and form a queue...

We were all there to do the 90 day notice.

Thainess = Consideration

You mean graeng jai? Ah yes the most useless of words. Spoken more in hope than practice. The only country to have a word to express this supposedly national trait where it is completely lacking.

Graengjai translates "I will do what a pooyai tells me and will tell those beneath me what to do. I will exercise this with zero consideration for whether it is appropriate, it is the way the world is". It is not consideration it is obedience.

au contraire, it is precisely that which is lacking that is narrated to represent the nation. This is because its rarity makes it distinct. Hence the trope of the 'gentleman' for that land of drunken Friday nights, merry gin-soaked England, and the insistence of Canadians of their exciting differences with the USA.

Thainess is the process, the narrative, the epistemic framing, not the contents.

By all describing the contents (it's about smiles, it's about girls dancing on poles) you have found yourselves manipulated by this empty signifier. It is a power-play. It's intention is to allow certain things to be truthier than other things.

The expression when used in Thailand ("kwambpenthai") has a complex series of rules attached to exactly what it allows to be said and what effects it has. It frames the way reality is conceived. Politicians declare other politicians to not be Thai when they criticise conservative ways of doing.

Prof Pavin (in Kyoto University, read his 'A Plastic Nation') and Prof Thongchai (read his stunning 'Siam Mapped') have written extensively on this.

The right question the OP should have asked:

"

Hi I just wonder why farang like to find friends when they travel to Asia, especially in Thailand or Cambodia

my ex and I was broke up ( we met each other from Dating website and been together for almost 2 years )

but now we broke up .. So I just wonder if you by meeting people from internet does it mean you are looking for a girl to have fun with (like holiday gf?) or is it just to find somebody to marry?

Ps,My ex likes to read this website but I don't know which forums hope he can see this one and just wanna say I miss you

"

Thanks for your advise guys. I guess I could try to stick it to myself ... Sounds abusive... Hahaha

What would be the best type of Testosterone to buy ? And needle, can I use just about any ? Size ?

Needles

Id go for 18g 1 inch for sucking and 23g 1 inch for injecting. If i were you id learn to inject in your legs its the easiests and the amounts you need to inject are not a lot.

I would go for testoviron depot from Bayer (good German brand) it comes in a box of 20 250mg ampules. So you might have to go for half an ampule per week (depending on how much you want).

I know friends of mine who use it for HRT.

There are millions of good instruction videos on injecting yourself and millions of people do it.

I also have very low levels. I got tested and have the levels of a 90 year old, even though I;m in my 30's.

But I don't like the idea of injecting. What are the best gels (brands etc.)?

Thanks.

This raises an issue of how westerners' learn of the east. The exotic other. We are all products of our time and conditioning. All of us.

Take Zen Buddhism. It reached the west via the fringe, radical Buddhists such as Suzuki. And it proved appearling to westerners because it converted their metaphysics in eastern esotericism.

This has an analogy to a tourist. They go to Thailand not to see Thailand but to find their provincial image of Thailand; once they find that, they can Instagram it for those waiting back home.

I would rather read Eastern philosophy than Western ...too scientific and not spiritual.

I find this more interesting than you might imagine.

I find it fascinating that you are put off for something for any reason, if it can get you where you are going. So instead I imagine the way you imagine the western philosophy is written has qualites that you define as 'scientific' and the in contrast the work of the east you offer a positive meaning of 'spiritual'.

Let's pull these apart.

'Scientific'. This notion is now so dominant that it is effectively a kill argument in the world if your side of the argument is shown to be scientific. The impression is of test tubes, carefully calibrated guages and so on. But and yet there is also an underlying negativity in it. It feels as though it has lost the real purpose in a desire to find a plastic, surface of truth. It does not involve incense, candles and gorgeous rainbows of colour. This criticism was the origin of 'unweaving the rainbow'; that science tramples on all that is majestical to find its view of reality. This helpfully links us to the next word...

'Spirituality.' The term is used to denote a lack of depth in science. It is also used to disparage atheists. It suggests that something is lacking. They have not gone far enough in their thinking. They are failing to grasp the ungraspable. The irony is the science fans equally use the word spirtuality as a disparaging term against its advocates on the same grounds. They see religious spiritualists as vacuous and empty of thoughts and so on.

My point is you could have said the exact same thing and meant the exact opposite meaning. You are allowing yourself to be trapped by binary discourses that are shaping your world view. Go to the primary texts. The Schopenhauer is gorgeously poetic (read: spiritual).

Example (after googling for 5 seconds):

“Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom. This is direct proof that existence has no real value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life—the craving for which is the very essence of our being—were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.”

The irony is modern Buddhism is a product of the extraordinary domnance of western thinking. Just look at the work of McMahan. A book review by the famed David Loy makes this painfully clear: http://www.tricycle.com/reviews/how-buddhist-modern-buddhism

You are being gamed.

My biggest influence was Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. It is enormous and obviously his magnum opus.

He had been impressed by Kant's attempt to explain all that we can know about the World ( in the virtually unreadable THe Critique of Pure Reason). Kant had been jolted into this ('awakened from my slumbers") by David Hume's radical skepticism. Hume had argued we can know nothing of what causes everything. We may think the white ball causes the red ball to be knocked into the pocket, but we can never know this.Schopenhauer's brilliance was an awareness of inductively reasoning from our sensory awareness of the world the very small glimpses of the real world (noumenon) beyond our sensory perception.

Schopenhauer's ideas pushed western philosophy into the same realm as Indian religions. After writing his work, he came across Buddhism and felt it was closest to reality. Everyday (, however,) he would read a section of the Uppanishads before going to bed.

If you buy his ideas, you find yourself confronted by a world that is wholly pointless. This was why he was described as the pessimist philosophers. That all that can be done is to be detached from it.... this may sound familiar......

Strongly recommend for those educated in the western tradition/religions/education systems. Best to read Hume's An Enquiry into Human Understanding. This will generate the momentum. it certainly changed all of science.

Enormous changes in the last two years.

Fake Club is not as good as it used to be. The old terrace bar was converted into a second disco. That means it is simply two very crushed discos. However, like 2 years ago, there are almost no farang. Obviously there is an effective age limit of 30~35.

Soi 8 was completely demolished about a year ago so the clubs had to relocate. Soi8 Disco moved to the Indian Temple location on Rachadapisek, and renamed itself Soi 8 Redbeat. It has been a disaster. Soi 8 disco ws clearly the greatest disco for gays or straights in Bangkok. Absurdly cheap pricesd drinks, absurdly friendly atmosphere, a unique 'maze', not too crushed but the boys/girls/others averaged around 20 years old. The new one is largely empty. maybe only 20% of the numbers that were seen at the old disco. Where have they all gone? The other disco on soi 8 also moved to a soi down a soi near the Indian Temple but it's tough to escape from at night with few taxis and so on.

Silom remains a niche for Thais that like farang. It is certainly not on the main queer circuit.

I am all a little stunned with this. I knew you were more into the magical and myth side of things, but this really stuns me...

Your hero is mentioned in the The Guinness Book of Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries. His particular occult is known as Rampaism.

He claimed one book was dictated to him by his cat. In one book, explains axnimals can use telepathy but not people. In another he explains how to use a crystal ball.

Well, we all can use different methods to get to the same goal...

My own way to enlightenment is via Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, and onto the Indian ancient texts.

1. the village quality of the old district of Bangkok. Bangkok has a very low road density (as anyone who has tried to get around can attest). Consequently there are vast areas far off from any main roads. And these areas were once villages, and still resemble villages. Go off the Charansanitwong and walk into any soi to the east and see the old villages of Bangkok.

2. the commuting long-tail boats of the old klongs in west Bangkok. These are never mentioned in the English language internet, but there are large numbers of them criss-crossing the klongs every morning and evening. In the evening, they zoom past in the almost pitch black doing tight turns from simply the drivers past memories of the location of twists in the canals. Mesmeric to the eye.

3. the open doors/ entire walls of the old town houses. These--again-- are mostly on the west side of the river. A magical atmosphere of intensely close community lives. SImilar to towns in southern italy, and probably what England community life was like 200 years ago.

4. intellectual development. This city is paradise for an intellectual. Any book can be photocopied for almost nothing. Anything can be found, always somewhere warm and dry to ponder and read and discuss. Every academic and thinker is accessible.

by Lothrop Stoddard

With a title like that, and in the context of today's extreme sensitivity towards race, this book probably wouldn't make many best-selling lists today. But in 1920 it was a serious best-seller. It is mentioned in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, when we hear about "this man Goddard". President Harding praised the book.

What is often noted is the presience of some of the ideas in the book, such as the rise of Japan.

But let's look at the racism. There are several types all flushed together. If you dig, he is clearly a white supremacist. But at other times his racism is not unlike later notions of folkways (see, for example, the 'Albion's Seed' bestseller book).

Also, this issue deeply interests me because of two points that are coming to ahead. Firstly, the dominant political correctness of favouring peace over truth has reached a crescendo of criticism and turmoil.

But even more importantly the scientists of today have awkwardly noted a point in the last 5 years or so. There are seemingly huge racial differences. At the prestigious theedge website the renowned scientist Jonathan Haidt writes:

"

A wall has long protected respectable evolutionary inquiry from accusations of aiding and abetting racism. That wall is the belief that genetic change happens at such a glacial pace that there simply was not time, in the 50,000 years since humans spread out from Africa, for selection pressures to have altered the genome in anything but the most trivial way (e.g., changes in skin color and nose shape were adaptive responses to cold climates). ...

But the writing is on the wall. Russian scientists showed in the 1990s that a strong selection pressure (picking out and breeding only the tamest fox pups in each generation) created what was — in behavior as well as body — essentially a new species in just 30 generations. That would correspond to about 750 years for humans.

"

This alone makes a read of this very old book fascinating in its predictions on race relations. I give it 3/5 for readability, but 5/5 for relevance in today's world.

Clearly Hitchens was not even remotely thinking of Bangkok when he wrote this lyrical description.

Indeed, a brilliant and literary mind such as his would have been bored to tears with the Bangkok ex-pat bar patron -- if typical of the regular posters on this forum who know nothing of Thailand, the culture, or language.

What could you have told Hitchens that he wouldn't have already known?

Well, i didn't exactly want to put it that way...

But i have met some fascinating and brilliant people in bangkok; there was a guy kidnapped in Afghanistan, a tiger tamer, and a guy who recalled meeting Hitler at his local village-- twice.

I suppose they don't go to the bars.