PostmanPat

Is there anything on netflix that you cant already download for free? For example, when a new netflix series is released in its entirity ( 10 episodes or whatever) it always appears, all 10 episodes, in the usual download places within 24 hours.

Suppose if Thailand started to block kickass, pirate bay, etc, then netflix would become an alternative but as of now, in Thailand, there seems no point in paying for netflix when you can download everything for free !!

I was socialising close to a Thai village community close to the Night Safari on Sunday. A local league football match was taking place, very very local, nothing important, and yet the match played out to the accompaniement of a match commentary over the village loudspeaker system. The noise was horrendous and went on non stop for the entirity of the match!

Only in Thailand !!

My Thai partner, (not married) who owns the house in which we have lived together for ten years has been advised by a friend in similar circumstances that she is now required to visit Immigration to "notify" them of a foreigner residing in her house.

Immigration is aware already of my presence in this house as every year I am required as part of my retired visa renewal to produce proof of where I live in the form of an endorsed ( by my partner) copy of the black house ownership book.

Can someone please confirm on this, thanks.

Hi. I wrote an email to British Embassy Bangkok on this and they didnt even reply. Sad sign of the times!

In August I will return to Thailand with a new UK passport but my "retirement visa" ( permission to stay) in the old cancelled passport.

I am told the Thai Immigration will only "transfer" validity from old to new passport with a letter which has to be obtained from the British Embassy.

Does anyone know how to get this letter? I live in Chiang Mai so hoping I dont physically have to travel to Bangkok to get the letter. Can it be requested by mail, if so, what do you have to send to Bangkok as I dont want to post my old and new passports by mail if this can be avoided.

Thanks in advance for assistance. It seems this forum is more helpful than the British Embassy itself !!

Thinking about revisiting Kenya next year but this time taking my Thai partner. Kenya now no longer requires a Yellow Fever Innoculation to enter their Country.

However, it appears that people re entering Thailand from certain Countries including Kenya cannot re enter unless they have a Yellow Fever Innoculation.

So. Kenya no longer needs it, but maybe my Thai partner needs it to re enter her own Country after a visit to Kenya? ( I already have a valid YF innoculation by the way)

Does anyone know the answer to this one?

Right now have quite a big job renovating the paintwork on the outside of my ( fairly new!) house. When they build here, the finish at first looks perfect, but the speed the paint peels off on the outside tells me that they must water the paint down significantly to go further, but of course it doesnt last.

Can anyone recommend a good proper professional painter to redo large parts of the outside of my house? Am happy to pay proper professional price for a proper professional job! Any recommendations gratefully welcomed, thanks a lot !

I think you just need to pop your head in any sports bar and look for the lone farang, head in hands and gently sobbing.

No. That ll be a Derby County fan as they continue to crash and burn away from championship promotion, or a Leicester fan as they prop up the Premiership as expected!

And horse racing isnt fixed in the UK ?-really??

You never hear of owners instructing jockeys to hold the horse back for a few races until they get good odds, and then the owner and his cronies pile in when they run it?

Maybe its less subtle here, but I guess you can watch where the late money is going and place a late bet,, no?

No, definitely not......the skill to succesful fixing is to make people think they know which horse will win, then everybody backs it, thus pushing up the price at post of the one that will win.....I would say at Chiang Mai Racetrack the skill would be to go to the window where nobody is betting, because that probably the one the Mr. Fixits have fixed it for!

All in all, its a fun day if you just go for a beer, a laugh, and a guess at what might win.....but if you think you can use skills like in UK, Aus, or USA to spot a good horse....think again! They even use the same horses with different names from week to week......so you ve got zero chance of following form !!!

Seems to be plenty of race fixing going on in the UK....

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2013/jan/27/chopra-race-fixing-heffernan

http://www.express.co.uk/sport/horseracing/512043/Richie-McGrath-and-trainer-Kate-Walton-charged-with-race-fixing

http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/66598/british-race-fixing-bans-handed-down

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/horse-racing/16186624

I m not denying that there may be "some" race fixing in UK, the same as sadly these days there also seems to be some fixing of football, cricket etc. At least in the UK if its done its done behind the scenes and you dont see it. At Chiang Mai Racetrack, all you have to do is go there and observe with eyes wide open and if you have any knowledge at all of Horse racing Procedures etc you can see the fixes happening right in front of you !!

As I said in an earlier post, the tell tale signs are that every race goes off about 15 to 20 minutes late, despite the horses already being at the start post, and when the horses approach the finishing post you can often see jockeys pulling back on the reins to prevent certain horses going ahead.

It really is that obvious, honestly !!

And horse racing isnt fixed in the UK ?-really??

You never hear of owners instructing jockeys to hold the horse back for a few races until they get good odds, and then the owner and his cronies pile in when they run it?

Maybe its less subtle here, but I guess you can watch where the late money is going and place a late bet,, no?

No, definitely not......the skill to succesful fixing is to make people think they know which horse will win, then everybody backs it, thus pushing up the price at post of the one that will win.....I would say at Chiang Mai Racetrack the skill would be to go to the window where nobody is betting, because that probably the one the Mr. Fixits have fixed it for!

All in all, its a fun day if you just go for a beer, a laugh, and a guess at what might win.....but if you think you can use skills like in UK, Aus, or USA to spot a good horse....think again! They even use the same horses with different names from week to week......so you ve got zero chance of following form !!!

No point in going Racing here. I love Horse Racing back in the UK, but here, all the races are fixed, you can see the fixing going on right in front of you if you watch the "senior uniformed guys" moving around the grandstand while the horses wait at the start post, sometimes for twenty minutes, until the message is relayed to the jockeys about which horse will win.

If you know about horsemanship, you can actually see some horses being pulled back by the jockeys as they come down the home straight!

Its just like buying a lottery ticket. Pick a number between 1 and 12 or 16, then hope for the best, thats the only chance you ve got !!

On my return visit to UK this summer I will obtain my new UK passport by personal same day visit to Peterborough Passport Office. Normally they cancel the old passport at the same time, but my Thai Visa will be in the old/ cancelled passport.

Heres the rub. I have been advised that Thai Immigration will only transfer the visa from old to new passport if there is a letter from British Embassy asking them to do so, and that letter can only be obtained by me reporting in person to the British Embassy Bangkok taking along both old and new passports.

Is this correct? As I live in Chiang Mai this would require me to fly down to Bangkok to get this letter, at fairly significant cost, flights, hotel etc etc.

Can anyone out there advise from recent experience? Thanks a lot !!

Just walked into O'Malleys and got completely ignored by staff. I was even wearing a green shirt!

Ah well, another venue took my money.

The worst of the "Irish" pubs in Chiang Mai, IMO. How was the Red Lion?

O Malleys is your classic worldwide example of a pub pretending to be Irish, and there are many of them all over the globe, just because they stick a bike, an old sewing machine, and a poster of Dublin pubs on the wall !! There is nothing, zilch, zero, Irish about O Malleys !!

The Wolfetones have always been very much Pro Republican, Pro Sinn Fein, Pro the IRA. All their songs, directly or indirectly are an indictment against "The British."

Brit Doggie would love them. Perhaps should invite them to play at your St. Georges Day event. Now that would be a fun gig I d pay quite a lot for.

I d also wear a very strong crash helmet !!!!!!!!!!

I'd offer a guess that a taxi or shuttle to most airports in the world are a better option than parking one's car.

So thats yet another of the "good reasons to live in CM" crossed off the list then?! Five years ago you could park at the airport easily, you could drive around the city without fear of gridlock, and you didnt have to get in line at four in the morning to renew a visa !!

Oh well, it was fun before CM became just another busy city in the big world we live in !!

I almost missed a Bangkok flight a month or so ago. Saturday around 1.30pm. Not a single spot and about thirty cars were cruising looking for a spot. I ended up dumping my car at Tesco on Hang Dong Road & managed to get a Songthaew to drive break neck speed to the airport. Got my check in with two minutes to spare. My partner picked my car up from Tesco later the same day. Will not risk attempting to park in the airport in future. Seems like the car park is almost permanently full.

Just tried to log on to Sky Sports to watch World Cup Cricket to find that all Sky Sports Channels except Sky Sports News are blocked. Any news on this? As a newcomer to Ilikehdtv is this a common thing occasionally, or have Sky Sports found a way to block access?

Yes, agreeing with the previous poster about the drinking culture here, and to be clear, in no way excusing or justifying drink driving, but the frustration is seeing a much less than even handed approach to policing. In the UK only a fool would drink and drive because there are police patrols everywhere, not just in city centres, and if you take the risk, theres a damn good chance you ll be caught before you get home even if youre driving quite a few miles.

Here, as the previous poster said, and we ve all seen it, if you live a few miles out of town as I do theres absolutely zero policing at all, and many times when I ve been on the way home from wherever you literally see bikes or cars weaving so erratically, with no pretence of being able to drive correctly that you know immediately that the person is literally blind drunk. I ve seen it in my area a couple of times this weekend and until theres proper policing ( which wont happen) it will continue.

In the meantime, the BIB set up their checks at exactly the locations where it is quite likely that they will get foreigners, and a few stray Thais too, whilst ignoring the sheer size and volume of the problem.. Like a number of situations here, its the "needle in the haystack" type of policy that causes frustration.

Last week I went out to an event, I had two small beers and several sodas, just to make sure I was complying, and yet as I approached my home 10K from the city, I had to negotiate my way carefully past a car which was driving so erratically that it was obvious that the driver was completely drunk. THATS the frustration in a nutshell !!

Yes, its chaos out there ! just had to abandon a trip to Gymkhana Club for a 6pm meeting due to gridlock on every road I tried to use. Combination of normal friday rush hour plus the convoys (why do they always seem to drive in lines of 10 to 15?!) of Chinese cars tells me to put my feet up, open a bottle of red, and enjoy a few movies this weekend !!!

( By the way, my route was Hangdong Road towards Airport Plaza.....gridlock, Mahidol Road towards the river......gridlock........both ways !! )

How to get to Gymkhana in that case:

https://goo.gl/maps/dsvJG

Wrong !!!.....at that time of day you cannot use the little underpass next to the Ping River which brings you out at the top of Changklan Road....the police block it and make it one way, coming out of Changklan, not going in to Changklan. The result of that fiasco is that instead of going under the underpass, you are forced left onto Mahidol Road, then you have to go all the way to Airport Plaza before you can UTurn to head back to Changklan !!!

Yes, its chaos out there ! just had to abandon a trip to Gymkhana Club for a 6pm meeting due to gridlock on every road I tried to use. Combination of normal friday rush hour plus the convoys (why do they always seem to drive in lines of 10 to 15?!) of Chinese cars tells me to put my feet up, open a bottle of red, and enjoy a few movies this weekend !!!

( By the way, my route was Hangdong Road towards Airport Plaza.....gridlock, Mahidol Road towards the river......gridlock........both ways !! )

The new arrangements for UK citizens to get a proof of income letter is to apply to Bangkok with payment in the form of a "Money order" which it says you get at the Post Office.

Has anyone any experience of getting a money order? Do you just go to any post office, give them the cash and they give you a money order? Is it like buying a postal order from a UK post office in the old days?

Any help appreciated as my Thai to explain within the post office is insufficient !! ( Yes, I know, I should have learned Thai, my fault I didnt!!)

Has anyone out there heard if this event which took place in the open air arena at Promenada on 1st and 2nd March 2014 is happening again this year?

I really hope it is because last years event was for those who attended for sure the musical highlight of the year involving Foreign musicians. I went along quite by chance last year only to find not one but two highly respected groups on the World Music festival circuit.

"Hot Water" were a South African band playing very much in the style of Paul Simons "Graceland" album, and "Akasha" were a Malaysia based band but with a strong Indian feel to their very funky music, a kind of fusion between modern rock and traditional Indian music, with Sitars and other unusual instruments.

The whole event was a great music experience, just hope it might be happening again this year, but fear it may not because theres nothing at all on the internet, and if they follow the same dates as last year its only three weeks away!

Thanks, everyone for helpful responses. It certainly sounds like this problem of minimal megabites in the morning, followed by speeding up later in the day is something widely experienced here, I am not the only one!

What is very curious is that if indeed its down to over usage in the mornings from businesses etc, why does it go down to very low even before most businesses have even opened....or is it all the kids playing online games before they toddle off to school......who knows, if TOT know they certainly arent telling !!!

Okay for me. Is the slow speed you are getting from International sites, or within Thailand?

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My speed test at approx 10am the last few days has registered at around 1mbps....thats the overall speed, obviously not differentiating between overseas and local.

Later in the day, it speeds up to 15 or more and is perfectly fine, but why this extreme slowness in the morning is what I am trying to establish!