Razzler1973

They ran out of money and wanted to stay? Here's a thought. Go home, work, get some money and come back

Terrible news.

I remember there being 2 drivers sometimes but in the old times just one guy all the way through with his M-150 but things have changed since then.

If I go anywhere long distance now I tend to either fly or get the train. I prefer the train to the bus all day long, more comfortable for starters in those sleepers and I can never sleep on buses or planes. Not a fan of overnight coaches at all

Ah, the 'nothing is free' line. Always a good one.

I don't really like seeing two people of the same nationality speaking English if they're not English, it's stupid. Of course they'd speak their own language.

A Thai friend of mine would get annoyed to find Thai people speaking English amongst themselves in London and I kind of agree actually

I understand the concept of notifying the authorities to attempt to stop you from leaving the country, but this being Thailand, I have little confidence that anything would actually happen.

Also, if I wrecked a bike that I had rented and wanted to pull a runner, I would organize it so that I was out of the country before I turned the bike back in. That shouldn't be too hard.

But this is taking things to an unlikely extreme.

More realistic is when you drop a bike (this is apparently very common on KP) and the shop totals up the "damage" and it is absurdly high. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have seen this. The "damage" could hardly be considered to the point of having to replace the slightly scratched plastic, but the shop owners insisted that every blemish, no matter how trivial, needed to have that part replaced. A guy I knew at a dive shop in KP said this practice was so rampant that he told me that some people start renting bikes primarily in the hope of renters scratching them.

And if you have a deposit of 3,000 baht, and the owner wants to say that there is 14,000 baht worth of damage (Hey! There's a contract, but nothing that says what constitutes real damage), it will be difficult to get any more money out of the farang renter.

I assume KP is Koh Pha-Ngan?

I must say I have not had hassle with invented damage but I am usually there when it's not full moon and a bit quieter

Flying domestically from DM using Nok Air. I don't mind it but if you need to go between the two airports then obviously it's a pain.

Does the train still stop at DM station on their way up North?

I have wondered for a while now but why does Loy Krathong get its own forum on here? I mean sure it's a prominent holiday but Songkran doesn't have one

Good question! But it's probably because many of us really want to be here to enjoy Loy Krathong as opposed to leave the country to avoid Songkran!!

Very true. I always wonder if I am being grumpy but no, I do not like having water thrown at me and don't like Songkran :/

Razzler - everyone here is offering differing advice from their own personal perspective.

That's good. I just wanted to know what he accepted as a renter. If I hear of lots and lots of people saying they leave 5K then I'll maybe offer 5K up to these guys instead of a passport is all so want to gather info

We can't persist with a central midfield two at the very top level of international football but Hodgson does love his 4-4-2 so it doesn't look like it will change anytime soon :/

I have wondered for a while now but why does Loy Krathong get its own forum on here? I mean sure it's a prominent holiday but Songkran doesn't have one

*sigh*

It's disappointing but not unexpected. Yes we didn't have a lot of preparation and some people thought we'd not get out the group. This is kind of where I expected us to go out but we've done it winning the group for a change and not to someone like Spain but to Italy. Not a vintage Italy but still a very good side but this is a game I thought we really had a shot in. I don't mind the defensive play but tbh despite all that they did create too many chances and we rode our luck. We failed to deal with Pirlo all game too.

This is where we are now. 1/4 finals and a bit of luck here or there and maybe a semi sometime. We didn't really impose ourselves on the game as an attacking force at all aside from the opening 5 or 6 minutes and the usual failings are there, not keeping hold of the ball. This was beyond not keeping hold of the ball to actively trying to give it away at times. It's so frustrating. Technical deficiencies blah blah blah but it's really not so difficult to pass a ball 5 or 10 yards and it comes back to out fear of having the ball at our feet and the confidence to receive and not want to move it on and run quickly.

The performance in the game was resolute but disappointing we weren't in it as much as I'd hoped.

Penalties ... we got our nose in front, just like Portugal in '04. I was watching with the g/f and said of Young's pen that if he misses I reckon we'll miss the next as well, no matter who takes it. Ashley Cole usually puts a nice penalty in in these things but he sort of like between thoughts, not sure he knew what he was doing with it. No point in making villains out of players, I think we're all past that but the collective failure at pens is getting ridiculous now.

We got our nose in front, <deleted>. Why Young didn't pick a corner and put it there I don't know. Rooney and Gerrard's pens were ace but he just blasted it. Sooooo frustrating as I thought that this was it, we can finally win one at a 1/4 final stage. I am sick of 1/4 final exits on pens, <deleted> I don't care about how poor Italy's record is at pens, they have won a bloody World Cup Final on pens, that says it all!

I am not sure where we go from here. We have a decent-ish side. We're still a solid 1/4 final team but we do need to make improvements. It's a shame that players like Wilshere have basically lost a season of development now and promising players that McEachran is unlikely to get a chance to develop at the top level ... not cause 'he's not good enough' but there's no patience to allow a player to grow. He needs a seriously effective loan. I don't want these players going off to Villa or Sunderland they need to be playing at the top and in Europe regularly.

The front players weren't good at all. Ashley Young did not have a good tournament and neither did Milner although you kind of expected a bit more attacking threat from Young. Rooney was pretty disappointing for England, once again. I thought Carroll did well when he came on. We have got to impose ourselves on games more and get more out of players going forward. Having this defensive platform is great but we can't play like this all the time otherwise we'll be in exactly the same spot come World Cup time, hardly seeing the ball, giving it away when we do have it and losing on pens after a hard fought 120 minutes.

It's great with the build up we have had for the tournament but I do hope things develop. I do think Hodgson is a good coach and the players have responded to his instructions. How often can we say that about an England Manager? Time after time players don't do as they are told but he got them playing a particular style which was effective to a point. Hopefully he can take this further. I thought against Sweden we came out a bit more but we don't have any fluidity to our game and that really, really needs to change.

Oh well ... onto the Quals then

I like the build a station across the bridge idea too with the walkway.

Even if they build the walkway they seem to plan it'll be like the one at Central in Hong Kong when you get off the ferry. Can go for ages on that.

If the station was always seen as temporary as people are saying when orginally built was this always their solution from the beginning? Tear down the station?

Is there really, really no room a few hundred metres away where they could build the station whilst knocking down the existing station and allowing two lines to go through? I'd assume this is the first thing people thought of but ... you never know

Really? What do you want now then? Whenever I rent on Koh Pha Ngan or Koh Chang they always want, perhaps different on Samui

Cool. I assume they'll have to make all the changes to the Skytrain and Underground and Airport Express to link it all up then. I quite like Hualumphong, easy to get to but I guess it makes sense

Yeah, totally agree with you there. Prefer an older bike so they're not as bothered by a little scratch or two.

I have to say I don't think I have damaged a bike and never had an issue with anyway trying to claim I did it's just the viciousness of people saying noooooo, don't leave it that made me wonder if everyone else did

What's the 'ol night market like round there for a bite?

Depends on the circumstances. I do find you can sometimes revisit the sexual element of your relationship down the line but without he committment, it's like ease of being in your company sort of thing. I'd maybe keep hold unless they were a nutter and I'd be open to meeting up.

Have met up with ex-G/F that ended up married to another, older than me, farang previously down the years. Slept with her once but not more lately (conscious on her part, I think) and another ex from waaaaay back would write to me (get an email, darling ) every now and then but can't be arsed meeting up with her

Yeah, I do recall that from Bulls Head, was quite small and same people night in, night out, which is cool. Ah forgot about Londoner, they do have women in there IIRC.

I don't mind it being packed with women all the time although that's a bonus. I guess for the packed with women option you need to be heading to Thonglor these days.

Not sure too many women like coming into lower Sukhumvit though with all it's joys

What's the deal with places like that CheckIn? Seems like a pub or is it a thinly disguised hostesses type place as well?

What are some of the better bars with women in Thonglor? Names, please, as well as street names?

Thanks.

That Witches Taven? I think there are some newer ones around too. I just think they seem to attract your after work staffer for a drink over places in Suk

These call centre things are low. Always open up in places where people would like to live, Bangkok, Bali, etc and attract people that want to stay in those countries. Every single 'traveler' that wouldn't mind lingering about and making a buck or teacher jumps all over it and eventually they get caught and chucked out.

Is there expected to be flooding again?

I am not a fan of using an ATM card overseas or drawing money on a credit card. Old Skool, prefer to just take my money but as safely as possible and the Middle East does not like issuing traveler cheques now for the last few years. I'd imagine they'll die out at some point with credit cards, etc and the banks love that, don't they, constant repeated charges for using your own card/money :/

You hit a lot of them already! Thonglor?

It says the Scot is a teaching assistant. Is that back home or on Phi Phi as mentions she's a 'promoter'. I have seen this 'promoters' before and do they even give them money, I am sure they just get free drinks and maybe a room, if they're lucky.

Is this the biggest non-story ever on the back of a serious story (Canadians)? She's hardly stranded. She's been doing her thing and wants to move on but can't until she pays. This will be resolved in a matter of days when he Dad sends the money ... problem solved.

I am not getting the stranded aspect of this coming across too strongly here. Just a big deal cause cause she's actually met those Canadians then?

This is terrible, 12 pages in we don't know anything. I read back a bunch but not all of it.

My initial feelings were some kind of liberal use of poisons to combat rats/insects that the girls somehow ingested, impossible to say of course and just speculation.

Reading all that magic mushroom stuff from a few pages back I can understand a guide giving them to travelers as that's the kind of thing travelers want. I remember being up in the North of Laos many years back and near enough everyone there just wanted a hit on the pipe in the hills.

I assume Mellow Mountain is still open in Haad Rin down South, they used to do Mushroom Shakes so this stuff happens but they do it all the time, I assume nothing untoward happening in Haad Rin full moon after full moon related to mushroom shakes.

Why on earth would people put ground up mossie coils in the shake to pass it off as shrooms? I mean the dangers of that, no one wants their customers falling ill, surely you'd put something else in or nothing and tell people that was a bad batch. I just struggle with the ground up mossie coil thing, seems bizaare

shrooms , is that a Yiddish word ?

too lazy to type 'mush'

They're need to make Bang Sue a bit better then, won't they? What will happen to Hualumphong?