canopy

I would like to build a house stemwall out of Vermiculate and need 15 cubic meters. Is vermiculate for this purpose available in Thailand? If so, sources are appreciated.

A viewpoint from a pro:

People always ask me how the heck they could possibly gain or even maintain muscle on a vegan diet.

That's because they have been brainwashed to believe that without eating a billion grams of protein per day their muscles will shrink faster than their wang in a cold pool.

This simply isn't true. Not even close.

The body can only assimilate so much protein on a daily basis and you can only build muscle so fast.

If protein were really the key to building muscle you would see tons of 250 pound behemoths every where you went.

They would be sitting next to you at the movies, serving you in restaurants and rubbing elbows with you in the waiting room of the dentists' office.

Because, let's face it, everyone and their mother drinks protein shakes these days. And if that's all it took to build muscle there would be a lot more huge dudes walking around.

I'm sure plenty of you have tried this before.

You decided to start drinking an extra protein shake or two per day in the hopes of packing on new size.

Or you decided to really jack up your protein intake by adding an extra three eggs to your morning omelet and another two chicken breasts to both lunch and dinner.

And what happened after a month or two of this?

Absolutely nothing.

But why would it?

After all, it's just protein.

It's not like you were taking steroids.

I only wish it were that easy.

But as we have all found out the hard (and expensive) way; it isn't.

Total calories are more important than grams of protein when it comes to packing on muscle.

Having said that I will point out that some protein is necessary for those that want to build lean muscle.

But this is far less than what the muscle mags and supplement companies would have you believe.

Most people will need about .7 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day to build muscle.

More than that doesn't seem to offer much benefit.

So a 180 pound guy looking to gain size would need about 126 grams of protein per day.

Now, you're telling me you can't get that on a vegan diet?

Lentils, beans and peas are loaded with protein.

Almonds and pistachios have 7 grams of protein per serving and both pumpkin and hemp seeds have 11 grams per serving.

People usually only count protein grams from animal sources but this is a huge mistake.

Vegetables have protein, brown rice has protein and even your morning bowl of oatmeal has about 10 grams per cup.

If you eat a decent amount of legumes, nuts, seeds and veggies on a regular basis you should be able to hit your protein mark, no problem.

If you can't, you can always add in a scoop or two of pea, hemp or brown rice protein powder.

After a recent shoulder surgery incapacitated me for a few months I had lost a ton of weight.

I gained almost thirty pounds back so far eating nothing but the foods I just mentioned.

This week at the gym I deadlifted 455 for 5.

Last night I did heavy military presses, chins, shrugs, face pulls and finished up with 20 Prowler sprints.

Some of the meat eating college kids were on the floor after 10 sprints, but at almost 35 years old, I just kept on sprinting away long after they had all fallen out.

I've had no trouble regaining size or strength on a vegan diet and have never felt better in my life.

Trust me; you don't need meat to succeed and you won't lose an ounce of size or strength if you decide to go vegetarian or even Vegan.

And that's the bottom line,

Jay Ferruggia

Cuba has been sanctioned how many years? Any failings of the dictator are summarily blamed on the sanctions as an easy scapegoat allowing the dictator to retain power. Glad to see Abhisit has noticed sanctions don't work rather than rubber stamping flawed western policy. He just went up a notch in my book.

It's hard to see past the marketing to know what the good ones are. Are there any shampoo brands available that are designed to be good and healthy for a person and the environment?

Is it required or advisable to put stickers on the windshield showing insurance and such? I would rather have the increased viewable area than cover the space with those big opaque squares.

KK, you have some kind of obsession about people on tourist visas??? Makes me really wonder about you...

Yes, KK is barking up the wrong tree. I too am not on tourist visas. While I can open a Thai bank account, I simply do not want one. Opening one is a can of worms I don't want to have to deal with. Setup, communications, change of addresses, funding, etc. Just one a big unnecessary waste of time for something I don't need. No thanks.

I live in Thailand and do not have a Thai bank account. Being in the "minority" does not make dealing with these charges any easier so please do not dismiss and marginalize people in these circumstances. We do exist. Furthermore, a poll may be useful to understand to what extent expats have or do not have a bank account.

I am interested in a plot of land for a residence. 15 rai has a Sor Bor Kor and the other half has no title. Wishing for chanote is not going to help since such titles in Kao Kho are nearly non-existent. So I would like to seek legal advice on how to approach this and understand what the risks are. Are there any lawyers that serve Phetchabun? Any input from the board is also welcome.

Tamarinds are planted on every available inch of space in this area of Phetchabun so they must make money relative to other crops. But I suspect this is all land people bought for 10K/rai if even that. It was explained by more than one person that they raise asking prices for land every year just because they figure that's the way it works. If it was x last year, it must be worth x plus plus this year. I don't get the feeling there are buyers, just sellers. And in this case the seller is the naa yok who is short of money and needs to sell at a so called firesale price.

I count 240 trees on the 12 rai. Here is what they look like today and notice the ground is covered with plants from the rains we got in March. I have an idea to reconcile this. I will ask them to provide volunteers in advance to work the trees for 20K/rai per year for a 6 year lease and they can keep all proceeds. Since this is a guaranteed gold mine some years raking in 100K/rai the whole town should be lining up for it. But alas, there will be no takers will there? Will be interesting to see the himming and hawing that ensues.

There is 12 rai of land for sale for 1.4M baht in Phetchabun. It has chanote and is all mature tamarind trees. The Thai's tell me some years you make nothing, but other years you make 100K baht profit per rai. They say within 5 years it absolutely will pay for itself. Can anyone provide a bit of sanity or experience here? Being a complete newbie I really appreciate any input. And by the way I absolutely will consult a lawyer before purchase.

Thank you for providing these optimistic possibilities. I hope you are right on all counts. I find the information on this forum extremely valuable and have been doing a lot of reading with a lot more to go. I plan to have a wide array of organic plantings after getting some land so appreciate the offer. Just about all land for sale around here has tamarinds on it and the first thing I will do is assure they have an organic future.

A totally organic tree, The Tamarind

I live in Phetchabun where tamarind is the OTOP product since they do best in this province and they are grown just everywhere. In my observation the farming practices are anything but green. They occasionally go walking around spraying the ground with something that I think of as agent orange though surely not. One day there are green weeds and yes, weeds do regularly pop up. The next day they are brown and dead. I also see them spraying up in the leaves of the trees with chemicals. The amount of bags of fertilizer I see stacked around is enormous, though not sure how much is for the trees vs the fields. The runoff is already a real water quality problem and there is no drinkable water here. Whoever said all they did was add fertilizer once many years ago and let the trees go natural from then on I take with a grain of salt. I have no doubt tamarind can be grown organically, it certainly was until a generation or so ago. But in my observation there is absolutely no desire to do so. Chemicals are cheap and easy and used generously to remedy every problem so when you buy tamarind at the store, that is what you are going to get.

What happens when the elevator doors open in Thaland and you try to step out? You get trampled by those trying to get in. I think turn signals are the same deal. There seems to be a lack of awareness or concern in many cases for others that happen to be in the vicinity.

there are very few customers.

I don't think there is an appreciation of the tidal wave of expats who are going to start showing up as the new rules mean everyone from Phrae, Uttaradit, Phitsanulok, Phetchabun, and Nan itself are going to go to that small room. Do you think they have upped staff and facilities to to handle 10 times the work load? Looks like not, they seem to process people serially.

If you do not have all the documents copies, yes you will have to go down the road to the copy machine shop to have them done.

Right, but I see no way people can be expected to know they need 2 copies of everything. This has never been the case in Bangkok nor does it seem documented anywhere on the web. Ultimately it will waste time of thousands of people running off to get the extra copy which is pretty good drive away from that office. If Nan needs an extra copy, I would think they could get a copy machine and do it themselves or save a tree and scan it in.

Plan on a day out in the clear fresh mountain area

When I went the forests throughout the north were all being burned and the atmosphere was awful. Visibility was very limited. Most of the day the sun or even blue sky were never visible. I never had the opportunity to get a good view of anything the whole trip due to the smoky haze shrowding the views. I was very happy to get out of there and be back in Phetchabun with clearer, healthier air.

and enjoy the drive !

It takes a good day to drive there from Phetchabun, much further than Bangkok of course which really makes the new rules wasteful. At one point I found myself navigating on a road that the map showed as a regular highway, but turned out to be a one lane dirt road through the forest for miles and miles. It was a bit nerve wracking with gullies washed through the road that only a truck could traverse, rubble, and no guard rails on huge cliffs as I drove slowly praying no one would meet me on the blind curves. That's the furthest I have ever driven in Thailand and I do not wish to make that harrowing journey again. It was also a very sad trip to see all the forest burning. Some places in what should have been tropical forest looked more like the surface of the moon.

What does the temperature tend to hit during the hot season in Khao Kho? Areas like Lom Sak / Phetchabun city / Wichianburi seem to frequently push high 30's by day and 30C give or take by night.

What is the land situation like? I hear land titles are Tor Bor 5 which seems limiting as I read elsewhere one can only build a house on ns3 or chanote. And what ranges is a rai selling for lately? Like elsewhere in Thailand does land for sale have all the trees cut down?

Perhaps it is related to how every hill and forest including the national parks and reserve land are burned every year.

Had the exact same problem. I took a file to a cheap torx blade until it fit. Worked well. If you can find easy out, that would be another way to go, then put in screws with regular heads.

Excellent information. To get a balanced viewpoint, does anyone have insights on reasons NOT to build houses on stilts?

The maintenance schedule for at least the '09 new vigo is as follows:

1 month or 1000km*

6 months or 10,000km*

12 months or 20,000km*

18 months or 30,000km*

...so on and so forth

* whichever comes first

Note I am not talking about graphical Windows programs that show Thai characters just fine already. Is there a way to display Thai characters in command windows? For instance, if running "dir" in a folder containing thai filenames it would display Thai characters instead of garble or question marks. I know how to set the system to default to the Thai code page as well as run "chcp 874" to explicitly do it in a command window but these don't allow me to see Thai characters there.

PVC breaks down when exposed to sun. This results in toxins leaching into the water. It is a code violation in the US for PVC used for drinking water to be exposed to sun. Another vulnerability of PVC is fire that would not be the case say with copper.

According to that graph, the PM10 in CM never actually reaches the 120 standard over any month of the year. I don't know that much about the burning season, but do occasionally check the air qual and see much worse PM10 soaring well over 200, even 300 which lasts over great periods of time. If that graph is accurate, the burning season would seem to be no big deal or (less likely) too new a phenomenon to be fully reflected in the data. If it's true great, but I have difficulty accepting it since it goes against the anecdotal evidence I have accumulated thus far.

Priceless has added good information backed by statistics, but at the same time seems to be hiding behind year averages. In many cases the human body doesn't work on year averages. We know too much of anything is bad for you and moderation is often the key. Think alcohol. A few drinks a day is ok. But if you load up and binge drink too much at once it is unhealthy even if you stay under year averages. This seems a valid way to look at how air quality affects a person. In the north, you get a massive seasonal dose of bad air. These extremely high spikes of bad air could in fact be worse for a person than dealing with a little bit of pollution year round even if that is a higher average.

Another point. Besides the general air pollution being monitored, there is the local air pollution. You know, next door they are burning rubbish and plastic, burning wood all night to stay warm, or god forbid making charcoal. You get acute doses of very unhealthy air compounded onto whatever the general level is. No one seems to be monitoring this!

Final point. Many in the north live an open air lifestyle so they get the full brunt of harmful air. Comparatively people in Bangkok tend to live in filtered, AC environments day and night rarely exposed to outside air. If you look at the air quality in shopping malls, offices, and residences, the air people in Bangkok are getting is far better than the outside measurements indicate.

As a concerned resident of the north I welcome your rebuttal.

I agree that Bangkok Smog is better than Chiang Rai Smog. At least in Bangkok, you get your smog 365.25 days of the year. Too bad in Chiang Rai, we only have to suffer through this madness for 2 to 3 months. Tsk tsk...

Ha ha, but Bangkok has safe air year round. Chiang Rai presently has the worst air in all of Thailand. The brown haze is plainly visible from the photo above and indeed the air quality does not meet safety guidelines. The Air Quality Index (AQI) for Bangkok is in the 20's-40's today. The Chiang Rai AQI is 168. The standard is 100. It is unbelievable to me that this burning is not just tolerated, but also contributed to by national parks. Provinces AQI snapshot from today:

For more data: http://www.pcd.go.th/AirQuality/Regional/Default.cfm

It isn't clear from the first post why a second trip is needed. How long does it take them to process the visa--hours, days, weeks?