Fraktalkid

It'll be interesting to hear your conclusions. Personally I was going to go and do the Tai Chi course over near Payap (the one you're not so keen on). I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that.

Hurrah to Khun Churn :-) GREAT place!!

Cheers,

Frak

Hey X-pat,

Unfortunately Chiang Mai is somewhat barren on the computer book front. Normally Amazon.co.uk or I pick them up in Bangkok (Pantip Plaza bookshop, I think 3rd floor is EXCELLENT because all their English language computer books are imported from India so you pay close to Indian rupee prices - normally about 50-80% discount on European costs). I have a veritable library of programming E-books which you could print out cheaply (like most Thai students do) or read on-screen - email me offlist and I can burn you a few CDs :-) Also my print library contains a quite a few technical computer books, so maybe we could borrow some stuff off each other.

Also check out CMU library, you can pay a fee and get a non-student membership.

If you want to buy your own printed material, at Pantip near the night bazaar, the bookshop on the ground floor has the best selection I know of in CM. They stock about 3 shelves of English language computer books.

Suriwong and DK in CM don't really carry them (although DK did recently have some old stock computer books). Occasionally you'll get a few at a secondhand English language bookshop, but most of those shops are unwilling to touch computer books because they go out of date so quickly (and probably because they don't know what's useful to others and what's now a waste of space).

Hope that helps.

:-)

Rich

... I'll ask some friends. Do you speak Thai? Or do you need a class oriented to farangs?

:-)

I hear pretty good things from the Tai Chi place over near Payap's main campus - www.taichithailand.com. Not cheap though, and they really give you no discount if you already live or have accomodation in Chiang Mai.

scrap that you've been there..

Also Thai friends tell me that people practice Tai Chi at Buak Had (CM's park , southwest moat corner) early in the morning.

Hope that helps

Frak

If anyone's gonna manage to do it, it'll be Lamphun. They seem to have an active bike culture down there, and I was pleased to see their annual bike festival, promoting the use of bicycles within the town.

So, I'm that crazy farang who has a mountain bike and cycles round Chiang Mai (as my main mode of transport). Which actually isn't so bad on account the city being relatively small and me relatively young. And at times when the weather is cool it is actually rather enjoyable.

I've started to see more and more cyclists in Chiang Mai - both Thai and farang (not so much now actually, it really is HOT). But I think it's catching on slowly.

However, I'd imagine though that if cycle lanes were put into the roads, they'd become motorcycle lanes and still wouldn't really help the cyclist. No, really, I think the only thing that is going to help the situation is for cyclists to feel more safe on the roads. And that comes down to better education for Thailand's drivers, and the same courtesy that is extended in real life to manifest itself on Thailand's roads. Pipe dream? Perhaps, but I remain optimistic.

There have been times when I've had near accidents because some 4x4 hasn't watched where he's going... or a crazy farang driver not used to driving here causing mayhem for other drivers. Not to mention the Thai girl chatting to her friend and not keeping her eye on the road. When I cycle round Chiang Mai, I have to take a very defensive stance in terms of my riding, even more so than if I was cycling in London.

Cycling can be a great way of getting round Thailand's smaller cities if you take as many precautions as possible (helmet, lights, reflectors, proper footwear, etc) and learn to understand how Thais drive.

As much as I don't want to say it, regarding Bangkok - driving there to me seems absolutely inhospitable. There's no way you'd catch me cycling in that city!

But really, if the government was THAT interested in saving oil and halting pollution, they'd start by inspecting existing vehicles on the road via emissions tests and force drivers to properly service their engines to make them more fuel efficient. Then ban vehicles gas-wasting vehicles for personal use above a certain level. It seems Thailand's got a lot of inroads to make with existing vehicles before it starts getting into cycling schemes, as much as us cyclists appreciate this gesture from the government.

Rich

Sabaijai,

Thank you very much for those detailed directions. I think that'll make it easy for me and anyone else to find the place :-) Will let you know how I get on - 24 and already getting lower back pain... geez that sucks. *makes mental note to get away from the computer and go and explore the city more*

Fraktalkid

Drive up Chang Moi Rd going towards Kat Luang (Worarot Market). Just before you reach Kat Luang the dispensary will be on your left, right on Chang Moi Rd. You'll see a sign with Chinese characters plus Thai and maybe Roman too. The Thai letters, if I recall correctly, read จิบอังตึง, which I would transcribe as Ang Teung. The Thai may have additional tonemarks to make it Chinese, I think one or more of the names has a mai tree tonemark to make it/them a high tone.

The Roman on the sign (or maybe it's only on the biz card, I forget) is something like 'Chip Aung Tong'. I have the card with phone number and address here somewhere but can't find it at the moment. It's not hard to find if you search that block on foot. Big open-front place that is obviously the largest Chinese pharmacy around.

Apols for re-opening this one,

Sabaijai, would you be so kind as to provide more detailed directions / landmarks for Dr. Wang's pharmacy? Or a telephone number from a business card?

I can read Thai and no doubt that I can find it with a bit of patience, but more info would be extremely useful (e.g. what Soi it's near) as I live on the other side of CM and don't frequent that area too often :-)

Cheers!

Nam Kao I don't see how my post can be seen as obscene but you’re entitled to your opinion. I am Caucasian but I don't stick with other Caucasians. In fact I don't have any Caucasian friends here and I don't go looking for friendship from them. Buki explained the reasons why Filipinos stick together and I might also add that many Thais, when abroad, stick together so much so that their English language skills aren't what they should or could have been when they returned to Thailand. I have met many Thais who have graduated from abroad who cannot speak very well. I would guess that they spent most of their time in the company of other Thais instead of talking with the locals.

I can confirm this based on my experience of speaking with some Thai people recently in London.. (whos faces were genuinely stunned when I started speaking to them in [broken] Thai!)

What I would add though is that it possibly is about a balance - a minority culture has to feel welcome in their host culture in order to start engaging with them..

Perhaps why a decent number of farangs in Thailand engage with Thai people to a greater or lesser extent.. it has to go both ways.. despite my own country (Britain) trying its best to be politically correct and culturally diverse, my Thai friends in London haven't felt particularly accepted by the native Brits, and so I'd say that the attitudes of the host culture have just as an important role in terms of the social dynamics between foreigner and local.

What my Thai friends in London told me was that whilst British people were generally quite friendly to them, they hadn't made really made friends with any native British people and that most of their friends were people from other countries (incl other European countries). Sadly, they said to me that most Brits didn't seem particularly interested in being friends with them.

Has anyone by chance seen this amongst other Thai communities outside of Thailand? e.g. what's the situation like in places like the USA or Australia etc?

And what about the whole Chinatown phenomenon? Is this something more poignant than the British or Irish pub abroad?

Fk

I'm curious. I would like to know the people in the neighborhood. Do you know the people in the neighborhood?

Tell me something about you...

Hey there! :-) Welcome to the neighbourhood!

Ok, you asked for it, so here goes!

I'm Fractalkid, the Buddhist globetrotter...

24

British

Piscean

Lived in Thailand (originally Phuket and now Chiang Mai) for almost 2 years, learning Thai language, meditating, hanging out with friends, planning my business

Now just commited to spend half my time in London (business taking off) and wondering if I'm

making the right decision

Had a couple of relationships with Thai guys.. nothing long term though

always looking for new friends (any nationality)

Will certainly keep an eye out and report back if it's gonna be shown in Chiang Mai.. *fingers crossed*

I went with my friends to see in London at the UGC Haymarket - played interestingly to a predominantly gay audience (well I guess with the relative proximity to Soho.. )

Hope to take my friends to see it, it's a very important film.. Ang Lee once again has really pulled it off and created something that is poignant and with meaning :-)

For anyone who hasn't seen the film, it's worth making the time to see if even if you're not gay..

fk xx

For those wanting a map:

Chiang Mai Bus Map (rotate left 90 degrees)

Personally I wish that their route covered Chiang Mai university as well, surely there are lots of students wanting to go into the old city and beyond so including that would get a large number of younger people using the service.. but I guess there would be political issues there...

Welcome to Chiang Mai, Maurizio!

*smiles*

I've just read that the official UK release date is the 6th of Jan.

I feel lucky that I'm in London until the 15th before I return back to Chiang Mai and will definately go and see it when it comes out...

I'd like to take my Thai friends to see it so hopefully they'll release it at one of the cinemas in Chiang Mai!! If anyone finds out more info regarding if/when it'll be shown in Chiang Mai I'd also be interested to hear!

Happy Christmas everyone!

I've also just used Bestminutes - works great.

Two points to remember:

1) some charge more for calls to mobiles rather than landlines

2) the rates change - so it pays to check before you call each time

Another link for updated charge rates (includes mobile/landline choice):

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/callchecker/

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Hey Steve, everyone else,

Any experience of using one of these number from a UK mobile to call Thailand? The reason I ask - I got my mum to try one of these so-called cheap rate services to call me from her O2 PAYG phone in the UK (I can't remember off the top of my head which service it was). The website said 2p/minute for her to contact me here in Thailand (Thai mobile), and so we had a 20 minute phone call. However, it ended up costing her in the region of 6 quid!! (30p/minute) Unfortunately she's on a tight budget and that 20 minute call ate up most of her credit for the month! So if anyone knows of a service that'll work well from a UK mobile (particularly PAYG) phone that would be excellent.

Cheers!

Rich

Rich: Essentially, if you're a multitasker on a PC, this gives you the most bang for your baht.

Rich, what you say makes a lot of sense to me. A little "Berlin wall" of LCD displays on my desk would certainly look good, although I will probably feel a bit walled in.

Good to know that OpenGL works with this kind of equipment. I spend much of my time developing, so multiple screens seem to make sense. Of course it's not the same with every application. For example, Eclipse may look a bit funny spread over two or more screens.

Then again, one could run the IDE in one screen, a browser in another, skype and instant messaging in a third.... I suppose there's no limit to this idea, except that one goes crazy at some point. 

Are there any triple head video cards? 

Thanks for the input & Cheers,

X-Pat

BTW, last week a sales lady gave us a demo of high-powered digital projectors. 2 x 1.5 meter image crystal clear in daylight conditions, larger if the room is shaded. I would say, this definitely beats plasma TV (and it carries a price tag of 100k - less than a plasma screen). The only drawback is that the projector gets extremely hot and that it has a lamp that costs 20k to replace.

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Hey X-Pat :-)

Yes, the last time I worked in this environment on a daily basis (at a job in London before moved to Thailand) it took me about a week to get used to the sensation of 2 screens, and so from my experience working with this setup it's important to get your desk setup correctly so that you've got the two panels in your field of vision, otherwise you'll have a tendency to dominate things in one panel and not make full use of the setup.

Yeah, in fact I found most applications to look kinda funny spread across the two screens - even Photoshop I would move th toolbars to the left screen and work on the right but never the whole app maxed out. I tell ya what though, I do remember a day when I was given a rather wide Excel spreadsheet to extract some data from... which I then stretched across the two panes... speeded up the task in hand by about 300%

Triple head cards do exist, the most respected one being the Matrox Parhelia.. not sure if you'd be able to buy that in Chiang Mai though

Matrox Parhelia

The projector is also another great idea - the only caveat being that the resolutions tend to be pretty standard (800x600 or 1024x768). Probably safer to have a monitor at least stored away somewhere - it's not like you can nip down to the local 7-11 and get a replacement bulb if you're doing a massive coding session at 3 in the morning

Rich

Yeah, I would personally agree with Chanchao that Chiang Rai / Golden Triangle isn't that interesting. Still, you could do a 1 day tour trip of that area via a travel agent in Chiang Mai for about 700 baht.

Actually, I did this trip quite recently as I had to do a visa run up to Mae Sai and the schedules with the tour buses meant I couldn't get a direct bus there one the day I wanted to go so.. anyway, yeah, I guess as an expat who's lived here for 1.5 years and can speak a reasonable amount of Thai, I was quite unimpressed with the trip insofar as it seems like one big tourist thing. But you know, my views, and the views of others here who live in Thailand may be somewhat different from the views of other travellers.

Personally if I had to choose between Chiang Rai or Pai, I'd choose Pai, but then I guess it really depends on what your looking for from your vacation.

Certainly Pai is good, because heading up into the mountains you get some really nice cool air. (Remember to take a jacket!)

I also quite like heading down to Lamphun and Lampang for a weekend trip, which is quite easy to do.. but maybe I'm too much of a city boy? :-)

I dunno if you've ever been to Thailand before, or what you'd like to experience from your trip.. I guess if I was coming here as a tourist with 1-1.5 weeks, I'd probably land in Bangkok, take the train up to Ayutthaya or Sukothai, spend a few days there, head up to Chiang Mai, a few days there, do a 2 day trip to Pai and then come back down to Bangkok for a final day or two.

Yeah, once again, I'd agree with Chanchao that Laos really needs a longer time period, particularly if you want to travel up to Luang Prabang. You could grab a flight from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang if finances weren't an issue though. Vientiane is interesting for a couple of days, but is the sleepiest capital city I've ever been to!

Cheers,

Rich

Hm, that's an interesting suggestion. I suppose this would work great with applications that maintain floating windows, such as Adobe Photoshop or Dreamweaver. Not so great with classical MDI applications or games.

I'm also not sure whether the video card would be compatible with OpenGL and DirectX. I definitely need OpenGL for Google Earth. 

Thanks and Cheers, X-Pat

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True, dual panel setups tend to work better for people who are designers and developers (and also stock market traders who, back in their native office environment would have about 4-5 screens on their desks).. At least, with this setup it works well because you could have a game playing on one screen, your emails coming in on the other

Essentially, if you're a multitasker on a PC, this gives you the most bang for your baht.

So even with MDI and gaming applications it works well when you've got one showing on one screen, the other using the other.. Personally, I like this setup for web development work in particular - browser in one window, text editor or db editor in another. I still haven't got round to implementing it on my desktop as I could do with another screen, but my laptop supports dual head so I occasionally plug my desktop monitor into my laptop for more demanding tasks across applications.

AFAIK, most of the video cards are compatible wtih both OpenGL and DirectX - if you were to go for a setup like this, sounds like you'd probably want a dedicated 3D card (but it also sounds like you know what you're talking about so I won't patronise).. But briefly, the great part is that most of the cards out there feature some level of 3d support these days - if they're missing a particular feature, the library e.g. OpenGL or DirectX does some sort of emulation trick, at the expense of processing power.. Of course, that's not the case for every single feature, but the reviews out there will tell you what's best at the time.

Even the card I've got at the moment (a lowly Radeon 7000) handles Google Earth just fine and also does the dual head thing.. (by adapting the video out port to another d-sub connector). I paid about 3500 baht for the card about 3 months ago so it wasn't what I call expensive (I didn't want an expensive cards as I don't do a lot of 3d stuff, and instead invested more money in an extra half a gig of RAM, which really does get used).

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear about what you go with in the end, I think you can see that I have a preference for the two-screen option, but I can also see the merits in one big screen (toyed with the idea at one stage of getting a 22" Apple Cinema display working on the PC )

Cheers,

Rich

PS if you do happen to choose two screens, best practical advice I can offer is to go for panels with the thinnest outer bezel possible so that you haven't got too much gap between the two panels.

I personally reckon that unless you want a 21" flat panel for movies, it's far more sensible and economic to buy 2 17" flat panels and run them with a dual head graphics card -

14k baht * 2 + say 3-10k baht for the graphics card (depending on what you want) = 31-38k baht

VS

I dunno... 75-80k baht for a 21" LCD (price quote on a conversion from UK pounds to Thai Baht done on a lookup from froogle.google.co.uk)

Also, 21" LCD screens normally have an effective resolution of 1600x1200 pixels - with 2 17" LCD panels, you get 1280x1024 x 2 - effectively 2560x1024 - a LOT of screen space to play with for a fraction of the cost!

:-)

At any rate, if you ARE hellbent on a 21" LCD, it's a high value item, so you'd probably save money by flying down to Bangkok and doing a spot of bargaining work at Pantip Plaza..

At least, all of the big IT purchases I make from Pantip in Bangkok as there's more choice and greater ability to bargain.

Hope that helps,

Rich

Much to my delight, Tops supermarket at Kad Suan Kaew have started selling hummus (marketed as Lebanese hummus, in the cheese section). Quite reasonably priced, but interestingly, they're making it with powered soybeans - all of the hummus I used to eat in the UK was made with chickpeas (garbanzo beans)... anyway it tastes good, very garlicy... so I guess now we just need to find some good feta, kalamata olives, aubergines, okra and pine nuts :-) mmmm or take a trip to Athens! :-)

Hi everyone,

I'm curious as to whether anyone has managed to get one of those IT visas the gov't was talking about some time back? Was it a cloud of smoke or do they really exist, was it difficult to get, and what was the application procedure? And, if anyone did manage to get one, were there any advantages between this and the 1 year Non-Imm B?

Rich

I've not had experience of this, but I guess that would be kinda dodgy, as you'd have stamped into Malaysia for 3 months, sent your passport back to your home country.. chances are a consular official at that end would see your open stamp into Malaysia and would wonder why this is so.

Also I dunno what the penalties are for being in Malaysia and getting stopped without a passport, but it certainly is a risk.

I think doing the yearly run back to your home country is a great excuse to go back every year - I'm certainly looking forward to spending Xmas with my family

Hopefully someone else can advise better on this though.

Rich

Thanks for replying. I guess I was mainly looking for other people to share their experiences of dealing with this company, not particularly specifics on whether they supply my soi, as I doubt anyone on here lives on my soi.

I'll make contact with TRUE and share my experiences with them to other people on the board.

Sorry my questions aren't genuinely worthwhile *runs and hides in the corner*

They speak English and - yes - they reach outside the moat area.

Hey Guys - Please can we keep our questions posed on the forum to those that are genuinely worthwhile. Questions like these just display a level of laziness as they would be far better answered by the service providers themselves, (in this case, TRUE). Members of TV can never answer specific questions; "Do they supply my Soi?" etc. All we can do is give you the information to say something is available - the rest is up to you.

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Yuyi's right, web standards with XHTML really is the way to go. It produces neater code that people can view on many different browsers, it's more easily indexed by the search engines, and it just plain makes sense. Do a google search for the words 'semantic markup'. You'll probably get sites like alistapart.com and webmasterworld.com. Once you've got a thorough grounding, resources like these will provide many useful tips. Also check out Eric Myer's CSS book, which is quite handy (I don't own a copy myself at present, but had it and learnt a lot from it when I was in the UK).

Learning to Handcode will eventually speed you up vs. a WYSIWYG editor, although I sometimes like to template in Dreamweaver and then work outside this environment (my content management system is powered using PHP and a templating engine called Smarty, so I create my base templates in DW and then code them up as Smarty Templates by introducing Smarty's logic into them).

Also beware if they start showing you whizz-bang DHTML. I hate to say it, but the quality of Thai web design at present is poor because they're more interested in putting together features that have a wow factor instead of adhering to usability and accessibility principles. It sounds like you've got a thorough grounding in that though, so hopefully no flaming logos and <blink> text on your sites! :-)

Let us know how you get on with the course - I think several people would be interested to hear back :-)

Rich

Make sure they teach you modern webstandards based XHTML and CSS webdesign, and not the old style of the last century using browser dependent HTML only.

You can see it easily: If they start teaching you to use the font tag ("<font ...>") then it is old style, but if they use style sheets (CSS = Cascading Style Sheets) to separate document structure and design then you are on the right way.

And do not touch MS Frontpage, it does not produce good code, not at all.

Have fun!

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Does anyone know if TRUE reaches outside the moat area (I've got a house on a soi off Huay Kaew near Chiang Mai University).

Also, what's the situation regarding work permits? Are they asking for one of those? And do their telephone staff speak any English (I speak conversational Thai but not enough to talk about cable connections)

Cheeeeeers!

Fraktalkid

Hi ,

I'm interested in how you get on with these courses. I'm an experienced web developer, so if you fancy meeting up for coffee sometime and talking about techie and design stuff PM me.

Rich

+2005-06-27 16:39:46-->

QUOTE( @ 2005-06-27 16:39:46)