canopy

Loei does get smoke, but the levels are nothing like the upper north. I live one province away from it and was once driving through Loei during the burning season, curious what it would be like. The haze was noticeable. I asked a local about it and they said it was the mist in the air this time of year. I can clearly know the difference between mist and smog unlike this person so it's important to get your information from a reliable source. The other thing about Loei is the city is night and day compared to Chiang Mai. Loei will seem barren compared to what you can find and do in Chiang Mai. Loei is known as the province with the coolest weather. Just note you need to be at high altitudes within Loei to get this cool weather.

Online you can look at current air quality index (AQI) levels all over Thailand and look through historic data for just about anywhere. Just remember that to be within international standards an AQI below 50 is good, above can be harmful to health. Don't let the Thai government sites fool you into believing 100 is quite ok.

I concur with others Kanchanaburi seems a decent choice to throw in the mix.

I too went through this decision. I would have loved to live around Chiang Rai, but very very fortunately I visited there one time during the smokey time of year which was all it took to understand there would be just no way. It was like a volcano had erupted nearby and ash was clouding everything, everywhere you went. That night in the hotel i was with my dad and even though the room was air conditioned the smoke smell was sickening. We tried using blankets as masks to help get to sleep. The next day we agreed it might have been the most difficult night of sleep we ever had. We couldn't help but notice even the hotel was burning a giant garbage heap with lots of plastic. We could not wait to get to Bangkok to get out of that. It's terrible to me that it never used to be like this and of course doesn't have to be like this today. We talked to a nice, well educated Thai girl we met on the plane about it and she just shrugged, accepting that this is just how things are.

I enjoyed the video presentation posted earlier in this topic:

Air in Thailand that is twice as bad as other countries is being called good. An AQI of below 120 is classified as safe air in Thailand. In other countries it must be below 50 because over 50 impacts people's health. The medical community in Thailand is not happy about this discrepancy because there is absolutely no reason Thailand should be any different than anywhere else. So what that means right now in January is Chiang Mai has lots of burning, the AQI is 70 and visibility is down and yet no one is talking about unhealthy air even though it's already been unhealthy for a long time.

The unhealthy air is less than a half century old. From the beginning of time everyone in the countryside in Thailand had great, pure air to breathe year round generation after generation until now.  Solutions are easy and available, but the people prefer burning things and the others accept this.

Anyone visiting the north should avoid the unhealthy times (i.e. when there are no rains roughly October-May) and living there should be a last resort. A half million people can end up in the hospital for respiratory problems linked to air pollution in a given year. If one is there during the unhealthy part of the year, the only solution is the boy in the plastic bubble approach: confinement to the inside of a filtered house with doors and windows tightly shut, when venturing outside always wear a high quality mask (the cheap ones the government hands out have been proven useless), and avoid exercise.

" After the legal proceedings against the men got media attention, Tawatchai said PM General Prayut Chan-o-cha stressed that authorities should educate people about laws so that they can avoid inadvertent violations."

I'm all for what he said, but it's a strange comment for this particular case isn't it? Because remarkably in this case everyone was aware there were legalities involved and made some effort to have the law applied correctly to one extent or another The guy started going down the approval channel (commendable), the pyb knew he didn't have the authority (good on him), and neighbors knew the law and busted him (good work).

According to the other paper the tree was not in the national park and was on his land. 

It doesn't matter on a protected tree just like an endangered species cannot be hunted even on one's own land. These amazing trees are sadly disappearing from Thailand and SE Asia as a whole. Do a google and look at the wood. Dead trees are protected because they have to be. Otherwise they would all end up dead so they could be harvested. Another fly in the ointment is land title type can come into play. If the land does not have ns3 or better, there is just no legal way to take such a tree off the land, even if one planted it themselves. Thailand has laws to protect natural resources on land without strong ownership. It includes trees, rocks, dirt, etc.

2 hours ago, greenchair said:

Did you read the post. It said the 80 year old first reported the tree was blocking the road

 

I am afraid you are the one who misread it because the word road does not appear in the article at all. It was called "the path of locals who needed to dump their garbage", hence my query on whether the dump site was even legal. Wouldn't be unusual if some of the locals were tossing trash into a public ravine for instance. Just look around. Don't give up though, maybe if you keep trying you can find something legitimate to complain about in my post. Because apparently opening one's mind to the possibility that any of the answers to the questions I posed could actually point towards guilt would be unthinkable.

The 80 year old did the next best thing to clear the road, which in fact put people's lives in danger if someone did not see it on a dark rainy night

Apparently they were so happy about him taking matters into his own hands to clear this "road" that they called the authorities to bust him.

1 hour ago, JAG said:

I wonder if the rural Thais, amongst whom you have lived for so long, have a similarly high opinion of you?

It should be rather obvious to most people that how a rural thai feels about me +/- is completely irrelevant to this thread. I am just reporting what I observe, not pulling any punches. I can only surmise you find truths that do not match your assumptions about this part of the world to be unwelcome.

Living among rural Thai people as long as I have, I find it highly improbable this was simply a good samaritan pushing a million baht over to the side for the benefit of others. I'd like to know more before forming an opinion. It's plainly obvious that as any tree ages in Thailand it gets to the point where it must go because the benefits sitting on the ground become too great for greedy people to leave it be. How did the tree die? Was it deliberately poisoned like so many are? Was it a legitimate garbage dump or were they merely dumping garbage illegally on  government property? Where was the wood going? Were the locals warned not to disturb the tree? Did the tree have a sign on it? Why were people upset enough to rat them out? How many trees have these gentlemen planted in their lives? And how many have they cut down? It's no wonder chainsaws are a controlled item here.

There is also online ordering such as thai central garden and nana garden though a thai speaker may be needed. Selection is astounding and they deliver to your post office.

8 hours ago, jerojero said:

Appointments with for Thai services don't seem to work.  Time and timeliness moves at different pace in Thailand,  especially non-urban areas.  Pace is at one's own.....including most services. 

You don't understand the problem. The people providing services are the ones giving the start date. They blow it off and do not bother to notify you and go into hiding even when they have absolutely nothing else going on and have no money. Their price, their schedule--remember that.

ex 1. I offered someone a high amount of money to do some gardening work for a day. I also offered to pick him up and bring him home. Simple and he agreed to do it the next morning. Next day the guy was nowhere to be found. I asked around and apparently he went into hiding rather than face me and was never serious. He was poor, had no job, and I could have used the extra cash.

ex2 & 3: I invited a builder to do some concrete work who I have known for a long time. He came out happy as can be even bringing a small gift and recommended his team start first thing the next morning and I told him I would pay above what he wanted. Next day no show and he refused to answer his phone. Found another promising builder for the same job. Again I asked him to name a price and time of his choosing. He wanted to start in a week and I agreed to that and his price and extended a bonus on top of that. I called him several times including the night before to make sure we were still on and he assured me we were. Despite touching bases with him the night before he never showed that next day. And he went to the extent of shutting his phone off all day long.

I totally agree with this topic: "Why Say It, If You Don't Mean It". It's a peculiarity of Thailand. I have never had problems like this in my country and I would just never, ever think of doing something like this to someone but it's commonplace here. My post is not a rant, just posting observations. There are also great, dependable workers in Thailand.

I have many experiences like the OP. If I need something I ask them to choose the day and price. Most of the time they are a no show. They won't tell you they aren't coming which is impolite and furthermore will not answer their phone when you try to find out what happened. This is beyond laziness. Why agree if you had no intention of doing anything? This causes them to lose face because anytime you see them afterward they are in that awkward position of having deliberately broken a promise for no good reason and you both know it.

As noted, q-con sells two types of blocks. The standard lightweight block called G2 and a denser, heavier load bearing block called G4. But this is just the first of countless details you need to consider when going load bearing. The next is the block thickness. A load bearing 150mm block may not be suitable for your structure; the thickness is not just chosen on a whim like a non-bearing block but rather must be calculated based on the loads.  For instance, a thatch roof might be able to use a smaller block than a concrete tile roof. You must have a slab/beam suitable for load bearing, install appropriate ring beams, and so on and so forth. One thing easy to miss is to assure the panel sizes do not exceed the render capabilities which is written on the render bags, otherwise expansion cracks will form.

I've been to this waterfall a number of times. A local told me all 9 have now died. Depressing.

You are right. Every plot of land around the guy who voiced the objection is grown using ample chemicals, burning, and poisons and yet he has absolutely nothing to say about that? On that mountain in particular growing cabbage is popular which by all accounts is one of the heaviest poisoned crops. Going organic is just a pipe dream and they have never been serious or successful in getting farmers to do it. His objection thus doesn't make sense so the reader is left to surmise the objection is bias against the "giant company" for reasons one might guess; nothing to do with potatoes.

If Thailand is to be competitive on the world stage, they are going to have to change the way they farm. Once upon a time a family subsisted fine on a few rai of land. Today it is a recipe for poverty that should be abandoned to unshackle the poor from this debt spiral. Is contract farming a solution? I don't know, but I hate to see someone go out of their way to prop up the existing model of poverty and deny the the poor from trying something else that at least has the possibility to work better. 

So it seems the lesson here is the dams in Thailand are too small. If there is more rain than predicted then they flushed too little and bangkok gets flooded. If there is less rain than predicted then they flushed too much and farmers don't have enough water for their fields. I saw in the news they want to take action against Yingluck as she was biased to the farmers. And ever since the flood year, it seems they have been biased towards saving bangkok. 

It wasn't immediately clear the accessories included so I stand corrected.

And to the bloke who mentioned air fare, you are not thinking of the entire picture. A tool may make sense up to a certain cost. When it is 2x or 3x of where of what the manufacturer intended then it may no longer be the right tool for the job. Not speaking in regards to this particular case, but in general for cars, tools, or anything else. Price comparisons are more important than ever as international shipment options become more common to Thailand from all over the world. But Li-Ion will probably always be tough to import.

prices seem a lot higher than the US so no breakthrough here.

16 hours ago, somo said:

 

Most of what you say is is correct but the poor did not build anything. They are poor!! They don't have the money to build resorts. Rich people will have bought the land from the poor often forcibly to repay a debt. The rich people then build the resorts. They took a gamble as even buying such land is not legally possible. To then plant illegal buildings instead of legal crops was another risk they thought was worth taking.

I can confirm this is also a typical model. But describing it as forcibly is too strong. Poor people are deep in debt here. This is a choice and typical way of life for them. Selling such land, which doesn't have a land title allowing sale is better defined as greed. Every single one of them would sell their land in a heartbeat. Only problem is you have to pay market price and when your jaw drops then you learn there is no legal land title to boot it tends to scare off 99.99% of the buyers.

Do realize that at the same time poor people actually do build their own resorts without selling or leasing the land to someone else. I know people in the village who built resorts on their plots and am appalled as they are quite poor, simple farmers. But also keep in mind they use the word "resort" here to describe what is merely a concrete box with a cheap roof.

The ONLY reason this Lodge was illegal is because the Junta.

I live in this area. Building the resorts was never legal and they knew this all along. Nothing to do with the Junta other than they finally had the resolve to do something about it.

If not for that, these guys would have been getting rich off their ancestral properties.

Not exactly. Look back from past to present. Long ago the poor ravaged this, the tallest mountain peak in Phetchabun province much as they do places all over Thailand. The forest, trees, and wildlife are all long gone. They have no regard for these things. Since it was technically still in the forest and not belonging to the poor the government then "gave" the degraded land to the poor for farming purposes only. The poor then deliberately built illegal resorts on this land. Resorts here are not terribly profitable however as the place only gets substantial tourism a few months out of each year. But farming cabbages isn't necessarily so lucrative either. Now after clearing the illegal resorts, the land will be given to by all accounts more poor people. Hopefully lessons have been learned and safeguards are put in place this time, but maybe not.

It seems like before there was only yellow pvc used for electrical. But now white pvc is becoming widely available next to yellow also apparently for electrical usage. I have asked the sales people at various places about the differences only to hear inconsistent answers like "only difference is the color" or "yellow is imperial, white is metric". Does anyone know what the actual differences are and when to prefer one over the other?

I am wiring a new home and would like to install cat7 or cat7a for future proofing. Another reason I prefer cat7 is in some cases the cable will run near AC power cable and cat7 is shielded to reduce picking up noise. At first the cable will be used for POE cameras and the home audio system.The smallest quantity of cat7 I have found is 305 meter spools at lazada, but hopeing to find 100 meters or even less. Anywhere else worth a look?

I have 2 questions:

Despite all their efforts cloud seeding last year it was one of the driest years in the recorded history of Thailand. So why are they so quick to take full credits for this year's rain?

They claim to have created more rain than what occurs naturally for an entire year. To put this in perspective, if the average rainfall for a year is 1 meter and this year was average then they are claiming it rained 2.55 meter--1 meter naturally and 1.55 meters from seeding. Does the governments own rainfall statistics comparing this year to average support this?

I happen to live in the area so I have a good understanding of what goes on there, but would like to hear an outsider like ratcatcher what you think regarding the poor hill tribes being the root of this problem.

Previously, the hill tribes and others had ravaged this mountain as is common in Thailand all over. The government decided to take action since this is the highest mountain in Phetchabun province and an important tourist attraction. It must have seemed like a good idea to someone at the time to help the poor in favor of reforesting the mountain. So instead of kicking everyone out, the government granted hill tribes plots of land to farm out of good faith to help the poor in need. The government wished the hill tribes would make fruit tree farms to add beauty and reforestation to the area, but instead only vegetables were grown with lots of poisons used and seasonal burning taking a heavy toll on the environment, but that was still OK and legal.  But then unfortunately one by one, they disobeyed their agreement and got greedy resulting in the rickety resort eyesores now plaguing the mountain. It's sad because if the hill tribes had just stuck with what they promised the government they would do, none of this would ever have happened. Not one single resort. I can't imagine how many of them have taken out loans they cannot repay, even if the resorts remain as it's hard to make any money when you only get tourists a few months out of the year. I've talked with many of them about this and have many hill tribe friends and know resort owners.

4 hours ago, Johpa said:

 

Perhaps pompous is far too polite for one who would describe as "greedy" the poor and the subsistence farmers. You want to lay some blame on wrecking the place up in the hills look no further than the CP Group which encourages and facilitates the destruction of the environment to feed its pig production facilities and then exports its profits to be invested in China.

Again, just because one doesn't like the truth is not a rational reason to be demeaning to the messenger. No one forced these people to illegally build and it was not necessary for their survival. That's called greed. And yes, the people doing this are actually poor and hill tribes. And don't even try changing the subject to the CP group to try to weasel out of this. This subject is about illegal resorts on a mountain in Phetchabun which is where I happen to live.

My post is not pompous at all, but rather an honest assessment from someone who has observed what's going on in the area for years.  And sorry to dispel another of your conspiracy theories, but I have no involvement with Christianity, NGO's, or otherwise "converting" anyone to anything else. I understand some people don't like to hear the truth, but I'll repeat: I see endless clear cut cases of the poor, working class, and hilltribes wrecking the place out of greed for their own personal gain. Here is an idea: try to accept the truth and learn even if it differs from your knowledge rather than attack the messenger. Might do some of you some good.

It's a shame they allowed the hill tribes and lower class Thai's to completely ruin this mountain before lifting a finger which they have now retracted after the protest, sigh. They aren't demolishing anyone's homes; they just want to rid the mountain of the illegal businesses. Living among hill tribes in this area I find them one of the most destructive forces against nature. It's a strange revelation as we are taught how they are living in harmony with nature when in fact all they do is ruthlessly exploit and ruin all reachable land, flora, and fauna that isn't theirs out of greed.