petedk

I started to reply to this post last week but decided not to but then today something happened that made me change my mind.

I often take motorcycle taxis and find most of the motorbike guys quite pleasant. Yes, I speak Thai to them and ask the price. I usually get the same price as Thais.

Having said that there is one place I constantly have problems. I travel from the university at Sukhumvit Soi 23 to the main road and back nearly every day (and up to 4 or 5 times a day). The motorcycle guys there are absolute monsters. The normal price is 10 baht but often when I approach them I hear them saying to each other "farang! Perm 10 baht" and they demand 20 baht or more from me. The highest they asked for was 50 baht.

Only last week I mounted a bike after agreeing to pay 10 baht. On arriving at Sukhumvit Road I gave the guy 10 Baht (I always make sure I have a 10 baht coin) and he immediately grabbed my arm and dug his nails into me and said "farang khi niow". He didn't let go for a good 10 seconds. When he did let go I just walked away and said nothing. I didn't want to start a fight with all his mates around him.

The other thing that often happens is that the guys on Soi 23 drive crazily. Sometimes they don't give me a chance to get on before they speed off. They also dart in and out of the traffic taking enormous risks.

I guess some of you will ask why I don't take a taxi or a bus along Asoke Road. Well sometimes a taxi is very difficult to find and the traffic can be very bad along Soi 23 during rush hours. I could walk (10 minutes) but I am one of those people who sweats so much that I would be absolutely wet through 4 or 5 times a day walking backwards and forwards along the road.

On a final and very sad note, I learned today that my very close Thai friends daughter was killed today falling off the back of a motorcycle on the way to or from the university on ..... yes, Sukhumvit Soi 23.( I don't know the exact details yet as her father was very distraught).

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I have 2 numbers on one sim.

This service is from AIS. Both numbers are open at the same time and phone calls can be received on either number. It's also easy to switch from one number to the other when making phone calls.

I often go to Pattaya and wonder why I can travel from the bus terminal to any hotel by bahtbus for about 20 Baht but............ when going the other way (from hotel to bus terminal it costs 100 Baht. I have tried to argue many times but nothing helps.

Do they pick up any other passengers on the way to the hotel and conversely on the way to the bus station?

Maybe their (perverse) logic is when leaving the bus station and headed back into town, they can stop and pick up fares on the way or are getting back onto the regular circular 'routes' on beach road and #2 road. Whereas they consider the trip from the hotel to the bus station an individual hire? Or maybe when they get out to the bus station, they have to get in line to get a fare back into town so mark up the outward excursion to make up for that time lost waiting for a fare back into town.

You tell me.

I can understand your logic and accept the idea if they go directly from the hotel to the bus station without picking other people up but I usually walk to the main road (#2 road) and stop a passing baht bus. More often than not there are other people in the bus and others get in and out on the route. Often the bus will park at the bus station after dropping us off and wait for other passengers.

(Maybe it's headwind going to the bus station and they use more petrol.)

I agree entirely. I joined up to answer a posting and was quite irritated over the effort required to fill in the information.

Since then I have never thought about it. Personally I don't mind writing about my interests and such but basically I am too lazy to fill in the info. Who bothers to read it anyway and for what use?

I often go to Pattaya and wonder why I can travel from the bus terminal to any hotel by bahtbus for about 20 Baht but............ when going the other way (from hotel to bus terminal it costs 100 Baht. I have tried to argue many times but nothing helps.

Sad to say I have been given the same advice by my Thai friends.

I don't really know what I would do though as thankfully I haven't been in that situation in Thailand and I hope I never will be. I have seen enough accidents though and usually the scene of the accident has been surrounded by many many bystanders. Not sure if they help or just gaze.

In England I did stop to help 5 badly injured young people from a car that had overturned. One guy died on us and it was a pretty traumatic experience. I still slow down when I am in England and pass that particular spot even though the accident happened 20 years ago.

What they need to do is round up all of the street dogs and have them spayed-neutered. I can bet it's much cheaper and more effective to pay local vets to round up strays and sterilize them. There are enough vets here that could take care of the problem in their area. It will be expensive but the sooner they do it the less of a problem it will be in the future.

I seem to remember watching Thai tv some time ago (can't remember how long ago ... maybe a year or more) where they made a big issue of the fact that stray dogs would be rounded up and sterilised. They showed many dogs that had been operated on and put back on the streets. What happened to that campaign? I guess like everything else it died a slow death and people forgot all about it.

My girlfriend has just told me that Charn Isara 2 Tower (Petchburi Road) was evacuated as they felt the shake there.

I was on Asoke and felt nothing.

Strange no one else felt anything!

I've been sending money abroad for 6 years now and every time the bank asks for a copy of my work permit so I guess it's normal practice.

Do you really always know what you are eating in Thailand?

How many three legged dogs have you seen hobbling down the sois? What happens to the fourth leg? My friend always says he going to get a "dogs leg on stick" when buying BBQ pork or chicken at the vendors.

I see rats almost every day in Bangkok.

Take a walk in Benjasiri Park next to the Emporium. There are hundreds of them dashing around between rubbish bins and bushes.

I was eating in a cafeteria at a university recently when something brushed against my legs. I thought it was a dog or a cat but no it was a rat. I can understand when I see the Thai staff putting food out on plates every day. They mean to give to all the stray dogs but most of it gets eaten by the 10 or 20 rats that live under footpath

Before I came to Thailand I don't think I ever saw a rat running around in the streets but now it's an every day occurrence.

It would be interesting to see the test.

The English exams at our university always consist of multiple choice questions and sometimes I'm asked to proof read them. Often all 4 choices can be correct or all 4 choices can be wrong. I haven't a clue as to how they mark them and what answers the students give.

There are also examples of students writing perfectly good, grammatically correct essays but are given poor marks because they disagree with the Thai teacher's own personal opinions or they are based on Western culture or habits.

I have the Gold package and believe me there is enough football.

I love the Premier League and can see up to 10 matches a week on the Gold Package. No need to upgrade.

This incident was first reported on the 24/6. Post mortem results were expected to take 30 to 60 days.

It's now 22/8 so maybe soon we'll hear something.

I'm only interested in this case because I had a friend who died very suddenly under similar circumstances some 30 years ago here in Thailand. At that time we were told it was "drug related" but we were almost 100% certain he never touched drugs.

A couple days ago I flew in after the long holiday weekend and the immigration queue was probably the most screwed up thing i've ever seen in any airport. It was even worse than the last time that I flew in. I estimated there were at least 10+ immigration counters open with slow as molasses frowning immigration officials acting the role of incompetent turds. The people waiting were VERY upset and the line did not move at any of the counters for a solid 20 minutes. I observed what the officials were doing at each counter and saw the following..one bored looking female official chatting with her friend. One sitting there staring blankly at a screen and not moving. one shuffling paperwork back and forth and slowly, another actually LEFT the counter to go get a drink and stopped to chat with her friend.

Finally one of the immigration pu yais told people in our line to shift over to a newly opened section about 30 meters away in a different part of the airport. A few people took off running to that counter and it slowly filled up to a large slow moving queue as well.

All told it took a solid hour to get stamped through. In contrast my experiences in Changi and Hong Kong took about 15+ minutes with about as many people waiting in line. Things aren't even this bad at Los Angeles International..the longest wait i've had there was 30 minutes even with the new homeland security song and dance regulations.

Uhm I have exactly the opposite experience. A few weeks ago my wife and I traveled to Hong Kong. We arrived at immigration at 10.45 am and passed through at 12.01. Yes, that's right we waited 1 hour and 15 minutes!!!! Even my wife who is very patient started to complain.

The queue was one of these winding queues where you from side to side as you approach the desk. As far as I remember there were about 5 or 6 of these queues and each one was serviced by 8 desks. I noticed people in other queues seemed to be moving faster but it wasn't until we almost reached the desk (after a good 50 minutes that I saw the reason. In all the other queues all 8 desks were manned. In our queue only 3 desks were manned.

Anyway upon arrival in Bangkok I decided to do a time check through immigration. It took 5 minutes! No complaints whatsoever.

previous reports on TV has alluded to the fact that bording passes have been asked for due to the fact that people have been doing 'visa runs' in the airport. ie. checking in, not boarding the plane, and then somehow making it to the arrivals hall and re-entering Thailand, probably with a little help from a dodgy airport employee. ie. the person never went anywhere.

Hence, immigration - a sepearate department to AOT are cracking down to catch these people out.

As for reporting addresses, that is pretty standard wherever you go. The US and the UK are particularly inistant that you know where you are staying the first night from my own personal experience.

I don't think that is the reason.

I recently traveled to Hong Kong with my Thai wife and upon arrival in Thailand she was also asked for her boarding pass. She has a habit of keeping it with all documents (and taught me to do the same) simply because we have had problems with Thai Airways and registering of air miles.

I have no idea why Thai immigration want to see a boarding pass but then I am always surprised in Thailand at what documentation the different authorities want to see.

Yes I and my friends have had the same problem on several PC's.

We found that typing "hotmail.com" (in other words leave out the www) helped in some instances.

I personally use Firefox and have had no problems whatsover (so far)

I have many friends who work for Thai Airways and when I talked to one of them today her reply was "What's the big fuss? It happenes every day. Why should every little incident be reported?"

This is Thailand and if people can get away without doing a lot of paperwork or investigation they will do so even if it is regarding public safety.

I have been having a few problems recently with my ADSL connection and therefore perform bandwith tests 3 or 4 times a day.

This evening I decided to test again even though I thought the speed was "reasonable". I was surprised to see a speed of 276 kbps. I am using a 528 kbps connection. I tested from 2 other sources (one is Thai Visa) and the speed was 437 and 408. I performed the tests several times from each source over a period of 20 minutes and got pretty much the same results from the same sources.

Why the big difference?

I'd just like to tell that my experience of using USB 2 devices on USB 1 ports proved to be disasterous.

It wasn't a notebook but a desk top (about 3 years old). There were only 2 USB ports and they were at the back of the computer and quite difficult to access. I had a USB mouse, modem, digital camera, mobile telephone and thumb drive so I decided to buy a USB hub and have on top of my computer so that at least the detachable devices could be attached more easily.

Everything worked fine at first but then I started to get many error messages and fatal errors. My computer crashed constantly with error warnings about missing or damaged graphic drivers. I updated the drivers several times and nothing helped. One day my monitor just fizzed out. It was unrepairable so I invested in a new flat screen. After a few days I started to get the same messages and my new LCD screen froze and made lots of fizzing noises (like short circuiting). In desperation I performed a completely new installation (including new partioning of hard disk) and hoped that would help. A few days later I started to get the same messages. I remembered seeing a little message everytime that I was connecting a USB2 device to a USB1 port and that "the device may not function properly".

I then invested in a USB2 Card and since that day have had no problems at all. That is maybe 6 months ago now.

My advice therefore is to add the USB2 card and avoid any problems.

Just spoke to my friend who lives at Floraville and he said he knows nothing of it.

Ok It's quite a large complex.

Not sure OMR, but if you go to the JSat website and look for the 'multichoice' package, (which is the S. African package), you will find about 8 Supersports channels listed, which between them, seem to cover every conceivable sport I'm interested in from football, to cricket, to tennis, to rugby, to the grand prixs to the open Golf, to athletics and goodness knows what else - all live. If you hunt around a bit you can find the schedules, and then scroll through all the SS listings by either sport or day. (I'd give you the links but I'm not allowed. )

There's also Sky news (for us Brits), BBC Prime, Hallmark, some other movie channels, series channels, and a load more besides. All for a lump sum payment of around 21K.

I pay 24K a year for UBC, and most of it is Sh..te

J Sat did a site survey today, and can install next week.

I'll also keep UBC Platinum until my sub expires in Dec, and then make a decision on whether to keep it or not. I may have to so that the wife can watch the movies with Thai sub titles, and anyway, I quite like some of the BBC entertainment stuff, and some of the Star World comedies - and of course.. horror upon horror...American Idol.

I'm retired, and I can afford to spoil myself - so why not?

I am having the same package installed tomorrow by BKK cable TV at a price of 12,500 Baht

plus 300 Baht / month for automatic code feeds. Do Jsat charge this or is it free or do you have to do it yourself?

I have never heard of BKK cable Tv. Do yhey have a website (I'll check myself in a minute or two).

I sincerely believe the time has come to find an alternative to True. At this very moment True are down so all I have is snow on all channels. I don't know if this is local or not as I can't get through to them (which probably means other people have the same problem)

Yes I understand True is in business to make money and don't care about ex-pats at all. Look at all the Thai music channels now. This is what young Thais like. There is less and less foreign music available.

Regarding English Premier League Football I have noticed that they say that for "Season 2007 to 2008" they will be a certain number of matches sent free on the new sports channels. It doesn't say anything about the following years. My guess is that they'll introduce some form of pay tv in 2008. Just do it little by little and people forget how things used to be. (I have noticed that with many things in Thailand but that must come on another topic).

The people at True obviously only see and hear what they want to. I seem to remember seeing many letters in the Bangkok post complaining about the commentary only being in Thai. There were also numerous comments here on TV. True also replied to those comments at that time saying something about the English commentary being provided by another companyand was nothing to do with them. Right now the name of the company slips my mind. (Duosprech, duspeak or something like that.)

To add to my previous posting. The girl mentioned was from upcountry somewhere so maybe these beliefs were forced upon her by her parents.