grin

When I was young I spent some time living on a farm with septic tanks. I have also spent several vacations staying in some cabins in the US where they used septic tanks. We always flushed TP down those toilets. I was curious about this at one time and discovered on the web that you should not use TP like Charmin in septic tanks. In the article I read that you should be more careful about what chemicals you flush into septic tanks.

So one question is, assuming that you have decent plumbing, does flushing TP into your septic tanks mean that you have to get them pumped out more often? All I get is anecdotes and hearsay on this topic. Anyone have better or specific information? Is there something different about the septic tanks here in Thailand or something different about the toilet paper?

Grin

My Citi ThankYou credit cards are chip enabled and work fine In Thailand when pushed into the chip enabled machines and also when swiped if the machine has no slot. Exactly like they work in the US. Never was aware that a PIN might be necessary.

Grin

I was just in the US for Thanksgiving, first time in 9 years. The turkey was great but the spiral cut ham was spectacular. I was thinking that the spiral cut may allow more fat to melt into the center of the ham when it is cooking and thus enhance the flavor. Just a theory however. I was surprised years ago when Butterball turkeys showed up in Chiang Mai. I wouldn't be so surprised to see spiral cut hams around here some day.

Grin

Anyone know if spiral cut hams are available in Chiang Mai?

Grin

Agree about fruitcakes in the US. At one time I had relatives living in Corsicana, Texas, the self proclaimed fruitcake capital of the world. The best use I can think of for this kind of fruitcake is to be used as a doorstop.

Grin

No sardines from Sardinia?

Just a word of warning to any CitiGold members that were members based on debt like mortgages. These debts will no longer be considered toward CitiGold membership after January 1, 2015. So if your membership was based on debt you will lose it.

That means that the Thank You Premier and Prestige credit cards which have no foreign transaction fees will no longer be free. The Premier card is only $125 a year but the Prestige is a whopping $450 a year. The Prestige card has a lot of premium services that might make it worth it to some people. For me the Premier card is worth the fee due to being able to get daily transaction updates through Quicken direct connect. I now tend to use my Capital One cards and my PenFed cards for backup or moving cash around due to only being able to download OFX files and import them into Quicken which I prefer to only do once a month.

Anyone else use Quicken from Thailand? Any tips on banks or cards that support direct connect?

Grin

I noticed that the price for an implant has gone from 60000 THB to 85000 THB at Empress Dental since the last time I looked at their website. That's up to about half the average price in the US. I'm more interested in results than the price however. Can anyone comment on their experiences anywhere in Chiang Mai with implants? Anyone have implants done more than a couple of years ago and are you still happy with them?

Grin

From the intersection of Kaew Nawarat Road and Tung Hotel Road head south. A few blocks down on your right you will see a laundry with an open front. I lived in that neighborhood for years and always had great service from that laundry.

Grin

The only Indian restaurant I eat at these days is Taj Mahal. It is clean and comfortable and if there are better Indian places in Chiang Mai, I've never found them.

Toss up between there and Le Spice.. Taj Mahal could do with a bit of a scrub down..

Is Le Spice the one in the Night Bazaar? It is very comfortable, but I just don't like their base curry that is in many of the dishes. That might be a personal preference thing though.

I work for a U.S. company that has offices in Bangalore which I visit several times a year. Based on eating Indian food there I have to agree that some ingredient is out of proportion in the Le Spice curries. Having better Indian restaurants here seems like a good opportunity so I can only hope things will eventually improve in this area. Funny thing though, my colleagues in India like to try and impress me by taking me out to Thai restaurants there but the ones where we've been leave quite a bit to be desired.

Grin

Yep, we like the food court in the Airport Plaza basement as well. The other food court we like is at the Big C Extra, old Carrefour. It's hard to find a place to sit at either of these places at lunchtime.

Grin

My son has a cheap LG cell phone, no Bluetooth, no wifi, but it has FM radio. He paid less than 500 baht new. The redeeming feature was dual sims. You can only set 10 stations. Reception seemed fine to me. You can listen with ear buds or turn on the speakerphone.

Grin

How do geese get along with cats? I would gladly keep some geese if they could keep all of the neighbor cats away.

Grin

I love cats, no cats ever come near our house except our own, every time I see a cat, I just want to cuddle it. That will be me in Sheryls good books now.

Yep, I like cats just fine, always had a cat until I started to be away from home too much. Problem is that a neighbor is taking in strays and feeding them. And for some reason most of them want to go in our yard. The stench is awful and it drives my wife to tears trying to keep her garden clean of all the cat crap.

Some of the cats are approachable and will let you hold them but some are quite feral and I'm not too sure about trying to pick up a cat without shots.

Where are all of the Siamese cats? I would expect to see more here in Thailand.

Reading about the goose crap it seems if we got geese that we would just be trading goose crap for cat crap.

More on topic, I used to live on a lake that had swans hanging around pretty much year round. You wouldn't want to mess with them. I saw one chase away a German shepherd once and another time a group of young boys thought it would be fun to pester the swans. I still get a chuckle when I remember their faces when the swans charged at them.

Grin

How do geese get along with cats? I would gladly keep some geese if they could keep all of the neighbor cats away.

Grin

NBA League Pass has one more day of free trial, ends Nov 4 in the US. I use a Roku 2 box and it streams very well here in the US. I have generally had good streaming with TOT in CNX in the past with my Roku. One thing to figure about these season passes is that some of them have blackouts for what they consider your home team. I just paid for mine with a credit card with a mailing address in South Dakota, so problem with blackouts solved.

Grin

Edit: just noticed that on my NBA app on my iPad it explains that blackouts are based on your IP address. Maybe it was the NFL that used your credit card address. In any case they can pretty much change it at will.

My wife is quite afraid of dogs. One of the reasons we selected our gated community to build in was that the contract stipulated that no dogs were allowed. Of course that does not deter some of our neighbors. Strangely enough most of the offenders seem to be westerners. Fortunately only one dog in the area seems to be let out to roam the streets. All in all the dogs are not that much of a problem.

The big problem for us now is cats. A neighbor about 4 doors down the street started taking in stray cats. For some reason they really like to hang out in our yard. My wife's garden has taken quite a beating and she's tried pepper spray, orange peels, and lemon grass to some little effect. We don't sit out on the garden patio anymore due to the stench of cat crap and we try to clean it up every day. Now the cats have started hanging out on top of our cars and scratches are starting to appear on them.

When I was a kid I always liked the sounds of the night like the freight trains that ran through our little town. I always liked the sound of howling dogs especially when more and more dogs started to chime in. Of course we had crickets and cicadas and roosters which I liked as well. Unfortunately we can barely hear roosters now but the many birds around our house get an early start every morning. The new sound of nature since coming to Thailand that thrills me are the tokays.

I guess if I had a neighbor that worked on motorcycles or played really loud music then I would find that annoying. But the sounds of nature make me feel connected to the world. I think if I lived in a sound proof house then I would feel quite lonely and isolated.

Grin

Following up on the previous post, are there decent stargazing sites that are within an hour or two of Chiang Mai?

Other than that what would be the best place for an overnight stargazing trip?

Grin

ME Smith is right. There are now two cops on Loi Kroh , past Mc Donald's in the night bazaar, hiding down the street waiting for motorbikes to come straight across the Changklan/Loi Kroh intersection. There is very little danger in this, especially at the time of day that they are there, usually midday till 4pm-ish. Meanwhile around the corner, at the intersection of Nawarat bridge near the governors house. chaos reigns as cars continuously go through red lights and end up blocking the intersection for cars coming into town. The lights change 2 or 3 times and each time the cars coming onto the bridge block the intersection knowing there is no way out.

Grin

(still signing my posts)

Here's a list of shops that has one more in Chiang Mai:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~saparker/tps/stampshops.htm

Grin

No guessing is necessary if you set up your BBL account to send you an SMS for each transfer. The SMS tells you the amount in both USD and THB.

Grin

Oops, sorry, my wife says it was on the third floor of KSK. I was thinking of the basement at Central Airport, perhaps.

There is a small one man shop in the basement of KSK, assuming it's still there. It was on the opposite side from all the cell phone shops. We've been taking watches there for years but he did such a great job that we haven't needed to go back in quite a while. The most we ever paid for a repair was 300 baht.

Grin

there is something less crude in Thailand. They call it Bangkok belly.

The "sawadi craps"

I've heard of Thai-dal wave.

How about some new ones:

Chiang Mai chacha

Loi Kroh crouch

Temple trots

Bangkok blast

Pattaya potshot

Phuket rocket

Farang foxtrot

Last week we went to the AIS office at Central Festival on a weekday and the mall was nearly empty. We then stopped at Big C Extra (old Carrefour) around lunchtime and the parking lot was full and the food court there was packed. Interesting that Central Festival seems to have had little impact on Big C Extra as close as they are to each other.

We make it out to eat at Promenada every week or two and it kind of seems like it is getting better. Seems like they are slowly getting more tenants but it could just be my imagination.

The last time we were in Maya a few weeks back it was nearly empty. It might be a bit more interesting when they open the rooftop bar/restaurant or whatever it will be.

We also have been to Central Airport several times on weekdays lately and expected it to be not so crowded but it seems to be going as strong as ever. The downstairs food court was as jam packed as I ever remember it.

Interesting that Central Airport and Big C seem to have survived the onslaught of new malls so well.

Grin

Being an American can he set up a sole propreitorship business under the Amity Treaty?