WinnieTheKhwai

Sheesh. Some people are dim. The point is that he's 'jealous' of the person who's in a position to enjoy Chiang Mai and with the time, freedom and inclination to ride around on a bike. Not this particular model per se, just the concept of enjoying Chiang Mai by bike, which he won't be able to do anymore after leaving.

It's an excellent price. But some people should buy themselves a life instead.

Go this week. It's dry, and still not too hazy. If you can't go this week, then May/June is also good. No haze, and limited rain (usually in the afternoon/evening only)

I don't have any idea what it is. And I didn't feel like Googling it either when I read the post this morning. I got to the second line to the word 'Rimping' where I stopped reading and filed this one away under 'Farang grocery issues'.

Not that those aren't interesting, back in the day, Bernard Trink's rants on which particular varieties of mustard were out of stock at Foodland were the most readable parts of his column.

Chiang Mai:

Lampang:

Chiang Mai:

Lampang:

Shit.

The only real selling point as far as I'm concerned is that they save paper, but, as I have said before, getting rid of books is not going to save any trees - that is more hype.

And ink. And no fuel is burnt in distribution..

One thing to note: He may be doing a different format for this restaurant. I'm not sure 100% but it may be downmarket from his previous restaurant. So keep that in mind, when setting expectations, to not set expectations. This may be a cheapo, basic place offering easy pizza / pasta dishes. So competing more with the Mike's of this world than the Giorgio's. Separately, there may be an upmarket place opening as well; different location, different market segment/ target group.

Nice building by the way, for a row/shophouse block. Similar in style to the older shophouses along the river. I think that's encouraging. (Separate remark from the restaurant, not saying that Sergio had anything to do with the building as a whole). Looking at some of the other things happening in that area such as what Stabucks did with their building on the corner, or what the elephant auntie did with her building (Elephant Nature Park), and a lot of boutique hotels, I think that area is on the right track, moving on from the VERY depressing construction of the past. (The past that people seem to call the good old days, even though the architecture of the era was truly horrific. (1970s/1980s/90/s etc.)

( Edit: ... though that lower roof overhang means there apparently isn't any place left to stick the aircon condensors... (see picture above) ... So the things ended up in front of the window shutters. Oh well. At least someone's trying. )

It's called freedom of assembly and freedom of expression. Some signs at least that Thai democracy still shows a pulse.

It's.. "interesting" to see that allegedly educated foreigners are actually advocating a police crackdown on those basic freedoms.

Absolutely, the key point being that these assemblies should be peaceful, whether red or yellow.

Agree 100%.

I recall that, at the time the PAD were protesting, some allegedly educated foreigners were advocating sending in the troops, and dispersing them with violence. Not to mention dear Seh Daeng's antics !

Well, not only educated foreigners wanted to send in the troops when Thailand was effectively shut off from the rest of the world through the airport blockade, the Thai government at the time ALSO wanted to disperse the protesters. The police/army however showed they take their orders from elsewhere (or from nobody), and ignored a direct order from the government and allowed the blockade to continue through inaction. The courts then did their part in a nice double-play and brought down the government over yet another silly charge (PM being on a cooking show, anyone? )

But anyway, we digress. The point I'm making is that the PAD was (and is) free to hold peaceful protests, but it's not uncommon in any country in the world to not let a protest end up in shutting the country off from the rest of the world, and doing damage that lasts until this day. If the Red Shirts do something similar I would ALSO be in favor of removing them of whatever vital part of the economy/society they were preventing from functioning.

Possibly it'll go the way of photographs.. We used to print all of them as there was no other way to even view them, never mind keep them. These days most of my pictures never make it beyond digital files, only the very special ones I end up printing and framing. It might go the same way with books; the usual fodder you'd read on whatever's your favorite digital device, the special ones you'd want on real paper so you can put them on a shelf in your living room.

Not any time soon though. And, used/specialty book stores will have less to worry about than the Barn's & Nobles and Se-Ed's of this world. We'll be blessed with excellent book stores in Chiang Mai for some time to come.

It's called freedom of assembly and freedom of expression. Some signs at least that Thai democracy still shows a pulse.

It's.. "interesting" to see that allegedly educated foreigners are actually advocating a police crackdown on those basic freedoms.

Good job.

Understood..! in many ways that makes it easier.. Don't have to worry about the status of the land. You hit mountains in every direction from town, so I'd plan an extended stay and look around.. Areas of interest may be beyond Sankamphaeng towards Mae On, the Mae Sa Valley to the North / Mae Rim area, and towards the South-West off the Canal Road, and the Doi Saket area to the North-East.. (Like I said, pretty much every direction. )

Im taking my parents there next month. Should I be concerned? Should I just hedge my bets - dad wears red, mum wears yellow? Would be a shame to lose both.

LOL. Don't worry about it. The absolute worst the general population or tourism in Chiang Mai has been affected in the past 3.5 years since the coup is 'a traffic jam in the outskirts of town'. Anyone telling you otherwise is furthering some strange personal agenda, which by the way includes some media publications originating in the Bangkok area; this is how we end up with head lines saying 'Chiang Mai in Chaos' when referring to "a traffic jam on Aom Muang Road on Thursday".

I wear red sometimes. And pink. I do avoid yellow. But honestly it's of no concern, it applies only really to the very primary colors and then only T-shirts and polos, often with a political statement written on it.. If you have a somewhat bordeaux or vanilla colored dress shirt this honestly isn't a political statement. You'll see when you get here.

(Pink is a color now symbolizing love for H.M. the King without ulterior political motives. It's what yellow used to be before it got hi-jacked to further a feudal / right wing political agenda. It's mostly worn on Tuesdays.)

Well... In the end you will end up weighing beauty against convenience. You will likely find that an absolutely stunning area may be far away from anything and everything. At the risk of stating the obvious, the most beautiful areas in Chiang Mai likely involve mountain views, possibly waterfalls and so on. Here another real-world-consideration enters the equation, namely that most of the natural beauty is inside national parks and/or in areas with un-defined land ownership. That make those areas more challenging to live especially if you're looking at owning the property: even a Thai wife/partner owning land in those areas is tricky, especially when they're not native to those areas.

You then added some requirements & considerations:

schools etc are of no importance to us, no kids.

1. security important

2. house with min. 3 bedrooms/bathrooms

3. large garden and if possible pool

4. no more than 30 min from CM centre/ ie shopping/food markets; but if Chiang Dao is so nice as member Maccheroncini says (link; thank you!) who knows; depends if there are nice villas for rent...?

5. fast Internet connection is an absolute must; can't do without.

6. no further than 30-45 min from CM airport; see 4.

7. buy or rent good 4-wheel drive

8. 1 or 2 staff (couple?)

9. view would be nice but not as important as other points.

The thing is, 1 through 6 are things you find in commercial developments though large gardens are rare there.

7 and 8 are completely unrelated to the place where you live: buy car, hire staff.

9 gets back at the original title of the post: beauty.

I think the challenge you have is weighing (sub-)urban conveniences with a beautiful spot with a view. That's the main challenge. The urban conveniences are fairly easy to find, good 3 bedroom houses are all over the place in any direction from town. The views by and large consist of the 3 identical houses surrounding you.

So, seeing that you're willing and able to employ 2 staff, that also takes care of security.. So to meet all requirements you may be looking at getting some land somewhere nice, and building a house to your specification. A big garden and views can be had that way, and with two staff who are always there, that takes care of most of the security concerns: two live in staff (live-near, in their staff house attached to the garage) that you get along with are always going to be better than the security staff at commercial developments..

So I'd make that choice first: commercial development or not. They're largely similar in any direction from town, with few significantly more beautiful than any other.

You can't go further down-market than Spicey. How about: "A smaller version onf Spiceys"?

I probably was at the "wrong place, wrong moment"

And wrong person. Probably.

We don't have a horse in the race, a dog in the fight...whatever metaphor.

I have one pony in that race, and one on the way. I hope that answers the metaphor.

And Thailand is still finding its way to democracy. And I have no doubt it will get there, someday. But not in the next week, unfortunately.

Agreed. And Thailand won't get there through inaction.

That particular spot is an awkward and unsuitable place to hold an event of any kind. That police HQ actually has a huge parking lot in there that would make more sense as a place to gather and would accommodate a couple hundred protesters, while still being visible from the road. Blocking most of the the road doesn't make sense and won't gain any sympathies for their larger cause.

Even with the current skewed constitution I think they have a good shot at winning it if they focus on organizing themselves better and preparing for elections. We've seen clearly and harshly that elected government rules only by the grace of the powers that be, but an election victory could go some way to turn the tide and start to rebuild some of what was lost on 19 September 2006. What was lost by the use of military force and threat of violence won't be gained back with an answer that includes (the threat of) violence and disruption. May not be fair, but it's the way it is.

If I had a loved one, one motorcycle and only one helmet for some reason, then the loved one would get it.

nuff said.

what causes the battery to expand?

Age. Like with people, really. Happens with phone batteries too. Chances are by the time it expands it doesn't hold much juice anymore anyway.

Apple parts are expensive, as you have noticed. A generic battery may be available. I don't have the information for Chiang Mai handy but someone might know the contact details of a company selling OEM / generic batteries in the right size. (And/or google it)

The Dragonfly Bar will be opening at 6 am on monday the 8th of February to show the 2010 Super Bowl between Saints and Colts.

Will the staff show up as well? (Or, still be there) ?

It's best to ignore people when

I think it's best to ignore people when they post stuff like the original post in this topic, and many topics like it. Could have saved yourself some time and effort.

This topic most likely violates the defamation rule that we all signed up to. OP includes pretty accurate information to identify the persons involved.

Sorry to dig up this topic, but I got something to add. Garbled Thai characters in MP3 tags happen on other systems as well, not just Windows XP. It's quite common when you obtain mp3's from some (web based) sources that you get a proper file name, but when playing in your MP3 player the artist for example shows up as "¤ÃÔʵԹèÒ ÍÒ¡ÕÅèÒÃ" (I.e. regular Latin high-ascii characters because the mp3 tags don't use the right unicode character encoding).

This is a Python script that fixes this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tag2utf/ The script does need a mild tweak to use Thai instead of the default Cyrillic. This page explains that very well: http://lj4newbies.blogspot.com/2007/07/con...to-unicode.html (For Linux / Ubuntu, but there's enough information in there to make it a useful starting to find (Google for) a Windows equivalent.

After fixing your files they then show up in proper Thai unicode, so "¤ÃÔʵԹèÒ ÍÒ¡ÕÅèÒÃ" then becomes "คริสติน่า อากีล่าร์"