Lee4Life

Actually as far as the person taking the video goes, I haven't seen anybody say for sure whether or not they could swim, but at the same time it doesn't seem that they were jumping around screaming at anyone for help.

It did appear that one person tries to swim out to them and save them, but it was too late. They may have been too tired once they swam that distance to be able to be of much help.

It is really too bad that these two young men drowned, my condolences to the families.

If you're just making a "bridge run" then you could just hop on one of the border buses that just runs back and forth across the bridge, the price is 20 baht from the Thai side and 4,000 Kip from the Lao side. (roughly the same) On the Thai side you buy the tickets at the counter just after passing Passport Control and board the bus there. On the Lao side the tickets are sold at a booth just past the customs card gates and the bus boards there also.

The turn around time for the trip will vary, you hit everything right and it's 45 minutes, hit it at the wrong time and it's 2 plus hours. Right and wrong times just depend on when buses or vans show up from either side.

I dont think Thai drivers ,not only bus drivers know you should save

your brakes going down hills by using your gears.

Using the brakes to slow down while descending any kind of gradient

is a no no,the heat builds up and the brakes fail when you need them,

brakes need to be cool as possible to work properly.but this is Thailand

an unfortunately this will not be the last bus crash,they go to fast,and

don't seem to know how to control a vehicle properly,do they have

Tachographs fitted in buses ?, if not they should,it would tell how many

hours the driver had been at the wheel,the speed and lots of other things.

regards Worgeordie

I agree....I would bet that the brakes on these "brake failure" bus and truck crashes were fine until they were ridden into failure by the drivers. On most of the mountain highways here you can smell the smoking brakes of the trucks and buses long before you can ever see them. So what is the remedy? It would seem that educating the drivers would be the best way to avoid this, but this is much easier said than done.

So sorry that people have to go through such grief and suffering, thoughts and prayers are with the victims and families.

If you follow this train of logic then which country in the world is the "copyright owner" of New Years? (the Jan.1st version), and Christmas? the list goes on and on.

One of my local friends asked me, "isn't it true that Pepsi was invented in Asia and then stolen by the Farangs?". Another friend said " how come you foreigners have taken our word for beer?"

Just smile! because that's all you can do!

I am no doctor...but based on my recent experience I would strongly suggest getting vaccinated. The chickenpox virus (Herpes Zoster) never leaves your system once contracted, but stays incubated in your nerve ganglia. If your immune system becomes compromised later in your life it can reinstate itself as Shingles. I came down with Pneumonia last August and then before I could recover came down with Facial Shingles as my immune system had been compromised by the sickness and the meds (prednisone), something I would never, ever wish anyone to experience.

As a side note, there is an immunization for Shingles also....sure wish I would have had one!

I'm sorry....will someone please tell me if that's good or bad ?

This is not a Thai thing - it happens in virtually every city on the planet.

It does get worse. Go to any city in the US or Europe, and you will find restaurant owners who place tables and chairs right on the footpath, and if that is not enough, then they remove the traffic cones they have placed in the street to block parkers and put more tables and chairs there.

Sorry.....I don't know where you got your information, but it's certainly incorrect. I'm not Thai Bashing but if you tried keep the taxpayers from parking on streets that their tax dollars paid for in any of the cities I am familiar with in the U.S. the police would be paying you a "not so nice visit" and quite possibly fining you.

The wife and I were at an exchange place last week and we complained because our bank here wouldn't accept our US 100$ bills even though they looked like brand new, the owner of the exchange place brought out three counterfeit US 100$ notes and showed us the differences....and to tell you the truth I couldn't tell them apart, (but the wife could of course!)

The paper was just a touch stiffer than the real notes and the detail around the presidents right eye was not as clear, the serial numbers were also all 2003 series...as were the numbers on our bills.

I have heard our married Thai and Lao friends and relatives call each other "mom" and "dad" in both their own language and some also in English. It struck me as odd at first but I guess I have heard it often enough that I am not surprised anymore. I'm not talking about Thai or Lao married to foreigners, I mean Thai or Lao married to people of their own nationality. Maybe that has had some affect on her calling you "daddy"?

It's great to hear of this "Clarification", just too bad the misunderstanding ever happened...the bad feelings caused by these misunderstandings tends to linger on.

I have had problems many times changing 100$ bills here at NongKhai, I use the bank at Tesco that we have an account with, and I always have my bank in the U.S. go through their bills and give me nothing but the best with no pen marks.

Last time I went in their with three one-hundred dollar bills, all looked like they just came off the press. The teller took them and held all of them up, then singled one out and started waving it in the air with one hand, while waiving another in the air with the other hand, then she held it up on the flat of her palm while holding the other one up on the flat of her other palm...as if trying to compare their weight.

She then gave me the one in question back and told me she couldn't change it. When I asked why not, she said that "it's not the same color as the other ones". I then told her that I couldn't see any difference at all and asked her why the banks in Thailand don't use the counterfeit checking marker pens like the stores in America...but I already knew I was beating a dead horse at that point.

If at all possible I just use wire transfers to my Thai bank account, it's just not worth the hassle to me to go through that every time.

quote: "....leaving Mr. Gates looking rather awkward."

It has been said that if Bill Gates saw a one hundred dollar bill laying on the sidewalk that it wouldn't be worth his time to stop, bend over and pick it up?

I don't really know much about Mr. Gates, but that hardly sounds like an awkward man to me.

"All these people were trained to kill," Pol Lt Gen Somyot told reporters at a police airport in Bangkok, where the suspects were flown Thursday from Phuket.

Mr Hunter was officer in the US Special Forces??? I doubt it. The article also says he was a US Navy Seaman (E3) which is a low ranking enlisted.

Maybe our BIB are playing loose with the facts to make this story more entertaining.

I was kind of wondering the same thing....." Mafia....Outlaw motorcycle gang members....International Drug Ring Leaders...Asassins?"

Really?

I thought the same thing about the BIB making a lot of noise about this story, but then I also wonder what the BIB told the press and then what the press actually reported?

Don't get me wrong, I am not "Muslim Bashing", but just out of curiosity, what percentage of the population of Phuket is Muslim? And where did the Muslim influences come from and how long ago?

I wonder if the multi-country one-visa agreement will only be valid for tourist visas? What about foreigners who have business visas in any one of those countries? Can't imagine they would be able to cross borders without a tourist visa in the country they are travelling to.

I really don't have an opinion as to what an adequate wage is for the Thai workers, but I don't quite understand how anyone could think that if you force companies to raise employees wages that you are automatically "injecting" those raises into the economy. Wouldn't it be more likely that the companies will adjust the prices of their products to compensate for having to pay higher wages? And if this happens, isn't this going to just raise the cost of living for the very same people who receive the wage increases?

The only way I can see a variant here is if the only companies that had to raise the amounts they paid in wages were export only companies.

You are the first poster on TV who really doesn't have an opinion - but, if your living here don't you think you should learn something about your adopted Country - things like how much people need to earn to live?

Sorry, maybe I should have worded that differently. "I really don't have the time to sit down and do an in depth study on the cost of living for the average Thai" may have been more appropriate.

How much people need to earn to live is subjective. (in any country)

We showed up at the Vientiane Embassy on 5/20 at 9:15am, near the embassy gates we were approached by a local trying to sell us Que tickets! We went in and found an embassy staff member trying to fix the que ticket machine! Waited for about ten minutes and they got the machine working, got ticket number 345, looked around and saw that there was not many people there and figured that the ticket hawkers had most of the tickets. Sat down and waited for number to be called, saw other ticket hawkers come in and keep punching the button on the que ticket machine until they got a handful of tickets and then left. Saw many numbers called but few people going up to the windows, also noticed that the line was being held up because of incomplete applications, some of which appeared to have been filled out by the guys outside the gate that charged a fee for filling out visa applications. Total time to apply was less than one hour. We came back the next day at 2:00 pm, only two people in the waiting area, walked up to the window and recieved the visas. total time for pickup was less than five minutes.

Our visas were double entry tourist visas, there was no charge. I asked if we could get triple entry free visas but got a smile and a "no".

Still not free as of today in Vientiane. Other than the news article listed in one of the previous postings I am unable to find any official confirmation, the embassy staff said that while the proposal has been made they have not recieved official notice that it has been approved.

6:00 am to 10:00 pm

I looked around up here in NongKhai, found the same thing, 200k baht for an import ride-on. On a recent trip to ChiangMai I stopped and bought fuel at a little gas station in th mountains near Loie, I saw a local using a type of a walk tractor with a mowing blade on it that had a very small trailer with a seat on it behind it, the setup wasn't really overly large and it didn't look home-made either, looked like it worked pretty well, I wish I would have asked them about it but I was pushed for time.