FlorC

I think the real news is here : that an Adam Sandler movie sparked a debate.

Don't think that has happened ever before.

Yes, the Germans are coming!!! 555

Aldi, Lidl, .....

Time they comes to Thailand too

Hopefully with about the same products as in germany .

Otherwise it just the same crap but cheaper than big c & lotus.

I wonder what such deportees have to look forward to from their own authorities when they get back to China.

Back to foxcon making iphones for 3 bucks a day ?

Sad day for the man caught and the people from the growers to the users. What a waste.

The war on drugs is repression of happiness. Weed & coke & xtc are recreational drugs . People should be free to put in their body what they want , without hurting others.

Never got why they are so harsh here in SEA. Life sentences & death for some blow ?

Why import coke from Columbia ? Isn't thai climate about the same as there ? Why not grow it here , cut out the middle man & a lot of risk. Or is it thai's ratting out on each other for a bonus ?

People should be free to put in their body what they want , without hurting others.''

Does not work that way.

Losers get to do drugs. Then they want more and more. And they have to lie ans steal to get more.

Without hurting others,,,,, Very few people would be included in that statement...

If it isn't crime anymore , you can grow it yourself , at practicaly no cost . No lying/stealing , no druglords , no-one getting rich off it . Alcohol industry might have a problem with it...

Would bring in a lot of tourists though.

I can see the TAT slogan now : Come to thailand and relax with some weed (or coke)

No need for the nasty stuff like yaba & heroine.

It works for holland and colorado,...(well not the coke).

Sad day for the man caught and the people from the growers to the users. What a waste.

The war on drugs is repression of happiness. Weed & coke & xtc are recreational drugs . People should be free to put in their body what they want , without hurting others.

Never got why they are so harsh here in SEA. Life sentences & death for some blow ?

Why import coke from Columbia ? Isn't thai climate about the same as there ? Why not grow it here , cut out the middle man & a lot of risk. Or is it thai's ratting out on each other for a bonus ?

I'm not gonna try exFAT. My XP sp2 is stable and adding another formating seems risky.

If an update of 2009 imposed a risk, it would be well known I guess.,

Thread result/conclusion surprises me,

Your main risk is SP2.

Really not updated to SP3????

Oh not again ! Every update/patch has risks and changes stuff , changes that I don't want.

I have reviewed all of the sp3 patches and nearly none of them are needed. If you look up every KB on the windows site , microsoft itself says : only apply when needed or when you have the problem descibed

in the KB -update/patch. SP3 is completely unnecessairy.

Well I don't have a problem , so I don't need to patch. I haven't updated since 2009-2010.

I have many external drives and 2 internal drives , and my experience is that these are fickle things , so I do not mess with formating updates. Losing a 2 TB drive is a sh-tload of time wasted.

My xp sp2 machine is 9 years old and in excellent condition , as in like the day I bought it.

Kinda miss going to Mae sai & Myanmar every 90 days. But since the retirement extention kicked in , I only need to go to the post . But even 2 years ago , there where not many westerners in Tachileik when I was walking around .

Is the 101 from Rong Kwang to Nan completely finished ?

I'm asking cause I have to go to immigration next month , and if they are still working on it , I'll take the mini van.

While you're at it : is construction on the 103 (Rong kwang crossroad to Lampang ) , finished?

Did they widen the road in the little mountains too ? (on the 103)

4 & 8 GB went fine but 32 GB didn't work , so I installed :

KB934428 Hotfix for Windows XP that adds support for SDHC cards that have a capacity of more than 4 GB .

That got me to 32 GB (in FAT32). I haven't got any 64 GB SD's yet.

I'm not gonna try exFAT. My XP sp2 is stable and adding another formating seems risky.

Blocked ? I'm on TOT with firefox , and no problem for those sites.

Isuzu doesn't do aircon? that's news to me. I had my 10 year old Isuzu D Max regassed and new filter by the Isuzu dealership in Pattaya only 6 months ago.

I live up north with only 1 Isuzu dealer in the province. They don't do it.

I could go ask at chevrolet , = same as isuzu , but then I have to pay a lot more....

The Isuzu dealer in Chonburi , where I bought it , does it too , but not so keen to drive 2 x 700 km , (and of course being a retirement extention prisonner ).

With 95.000 km /7 year old car , the aircon is not as cool as it once was. At isuzu , they don't do aircon.

All around Thailand , you see these signs for "AIR" , from roadside shacks to improvised workplaces, complete with de double pressure gauges and blue can of 134a. Went to see a couple of them , prices from 400 B in my neck of the woods, but no-one speaks english and my thai is not enough for this kind of information.

It looks like every thai with a pressure gauge , thinks he's an aircon man.

Now I see on youtube video's about car aircon , and it is not that simple as changing oil...

My question for you is : What do they do for this 400 B ?

Is it just a top up , or do they vacuumpump the old stuff out and replace it ?

Is this really something you want to have done in one of those "shacks" ?

What about oil for the pump , the right high and low side pressure.

Too much pressure , and the seals & pump are going to be an expensive replacement , too low , and it won't be cool enough inside. In a closed loop system , how can there be water ?

With the worst month ahead , aircon is vital in the car .

I was in Mumbai airport on monday ...

A long busride from the plane to the terminal and again a busride to the plane to Bangkok ,

Why is there always so much turbulance between Mumbai and Bangkok?

I've flown 2 weeks ago. Bangkok to Mumbai was bad. 2/3 of the time we had mild to bad turbulance....the monsoon.

Small airbus , with few toilets in the back, and too many people that wanted to use them at the same time. It delayed

beverages and the meal.

The whole time I was worried for my computer and HDD's in the overheadcompartment. (too little space, hard turbulance!) . The liftoff in Bangkok was bad too , like a uneven runway with potholes with a heavy shaking airplane.Hard landing in Mumbai ,( but not as hard as the aeroflot pilots in Moskou , that was the worst for me so far)

Mumbai was ok, not much worse than a middle eastern layover. Long walks and wait at unorganised transfer desk.

More security checks than in Bangkok and more thorough.

Flight in bigger airbus to europe , was better. Didn't fly over "trouble spots" , not much turbulance and no 5000ft

drops...

I understand your concern , I'm nervous for the flight back...(.meanwhile enjoying cooler european weather, much better food, cleanlyness, hygiene, better bread , milk , cheese, .....clean water , electricity without spikes, glitches, and blackouts. )

If you don't have breakables with you , it is worth the much lower price compaired to the bigger airlines.

Love this !

But I won't give in like mr H.

Planning to re-install XP sp2 on a new bigger HDD, good for another 5 years....

You can go back to a FF version that didn't have problems. Newer is not always better. I 'm happy with FF 19 ....yes 19.

The only time it crashes or freezes , it is the flash plugin. You just end the plugin-container.exe in task manager, problem solved.

Hey, I didn't start this post to open the discussion again about XP and other OS's. nor the disadvantages of SP3.

I have searched for other programs like skype and can find more than 10 . Most don't specificly that they work with SP2.

What I do want is some input ( experiences) of OTHER XP SP2 users who are like me , locked out of skype.

This is for computer to computer audio calls ( and webcamvideo , but not so important).

We're all expats here , and skype was an easy way for free calls to home.

Remember that on the other site of our calls there are people who need to be computer savvy to install an alternative too.

Got locked out of skype yesterday. Need to update..but the lastest versions from 6.13 to 6.18 will not work with win XP SP 2. ( and no I will not update to SP 3)

Yes there is already another post a while ago:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/744818-your-desktop-version-of-skype-is-being-retired/

But this just happened 7th of august. Another way microsoft is trying to bully us out of a good working OS but it won't work!

My question for winXP SP2 users here in Thailand is : What are you using as an alternative to skype?

Easy install, small program that has no problems with your webcam/microphone, no extra crapware ?

(Comments about updating to sp3 or w7 or 8 will be ignored)

Thanks winXP'ers

Don't forget the Myanmar border officers that don't get their 500 THB /a farang...

Thank you very much for the GPS confirmation, Flor C. Your coordinates point to the same building in Street View as those of BENQ, but my marker was a bit off, as you've noticed, and I now moved it to the correct position (I hope)

Took them with my old but trusted Garmin 12 just outside in front of the building and ramp-up.

I don't see how in Gmaps or streetview , you can see the coordinates but is is the road that goes up , so you're climbing a bit to go to the office.

Lucky are the one that go there in the cool mornings of december and januari , not in May heat...

The new address for 90 day letters : M11 T. Chaichatan A. Muangn NAN 55000

First of all : Thank you Lotus , Big C ( and carrefour) for covered parking ! Driving around in Thailand in this bloody heat , is driving not from city to city but from supermarket to supermarket. They are an oasis in the desert .

When I first came here Big C was my favorite , then they became much more expensive than Lotus , so Lotus became my go to.

I liked Carrefour the best . Now Big C has taken over again.

Lotus is really goinig the wrong way. Especially in the provinces , not the Bangkok area .

Their website sucks. I want to see the promotions on the web and it is irritating. But it doesn't even matter because the promotions on their site are almost never in the Nakhon nowhere towns.

If Lotus has a local food promotion , you can bet your ass that there is something wrong with it.

Like a poster before , icecream that has been melted and frozen again. Veggies or food that taste "strange",...

Months ago , I let them weigh some vegetables and it weighed too much , so I went to the other scale at the meat station and there it was a lot less. Then they admitted that the scale was off....But I see they weigh and pricd with the bad scale for other costommers <deleted>?

Often prices shown on the rack are different on the checkout, promotions not the right price at check out.

Most of the time now Lotus is more expensive for the same product.

It is quite visible here, Big C parking always MUCH fuller than the Lotus one.

I buy maybe 1/3 or 1/4 at lotus compared to Big C.

Update:

I just went , and these are the exact coordinates: N 18 47' 58.3", E 100 43' 53.7". It is about 700m from the 1091 road.
Google maps doesn't show anything with these numbers, but google earth shows the spot. Due to the outdated satelite photo's there is nothing to see. But it is marked on the road.

Apparantly there are no songtaews or regular busses on the 1091 road. I've waited 45 minutes and started walking. Luckely I got picked up by a nice Thai man . On the way back , I got a lift from a nice policeman. Spend about 1h45 min on that road and did not see any busses or songtaews. Three people , that I asked , said there are no busses, what I find weird. 1091 to Phayao and Chiang Rai is not a very good road but there are villages...so how do they get to town?
There are light blue songtaews for schoolkids, but they don't pick up regulars. For the foreigners in Nan , they probably have a motorbike or other transport, the people from Phrae and Uttradit that don't come by car , are , like me,
screwed. I hate motorbike taxi so I rather walk or hitch a ride.
Parking at the immi office is not that good. No shade , no parking in front of the building , just a bit on the left side, or in the street.

The 101 between Nan and Wiangsa , is NOT ready after more than 2 years....And now they started on the Rong kwang- Wiangsa stretch . Doesn't look like it is going to be ready next year too ! So lots of bumps and stones. Every time the
rocks and stones hit the minivan, I was glad it wasn't my car.

(They don't allow us to buy land , but what a waste ....does a 2x2 really need the width of a 3x3 or 4x4 with the area between directions 4 to 5 m? They are doing the 103 in Phrae too...extra extra wide, so many big trees killed, so much waste , so much wasted asfalt, Thailand has too much money !! Same for the 101 . In Phrae they spend the last year resurfacing stetches that were good and leaving the bad patches and badly filled potholes untouched... SORRY for the rant )

The office is nice and new , bigger than the old one , a bit hot. More people than all the times I went there before , some Koreans, maybe because of the new regulations for border runs. It took about 2 h for the new stamps.

I have a google earth screen print of the position , but I don't know how to upload it.

FlorC:

The second link that Mario posted shows Highway 1091. Go up past the Global House store, and make a U-turn. That big Government Complex building will be visible on the left. Your van driver should have no trouble finding it.

Thanks Curtklay & KhunBenq.

Minivan stops at Nan busstation.

As if goinig to Nan wasn't bad enough (1h30 in minivan) , now the extra 4 km and a walk up the soi in this heat.