spacemand

Left 28 March 4:00am less than one minute at immigration.

Arrive April 4th 2:00 am at D gate first choice of immigrations seemed full went 250 meters to the next one and it were empty took less than 1 minute.

Arrived SFO on March 28th and it took more than 30 minutes 5 years experiences with LAX/SFO and BKK I would choose to arrive BKK over SFO/BKK anytime.

Much better map Gosompoi.

Has anyone used the new Surin office yet? Monday and Friday opening confirmed? I need to renew my driving license and Kantharalak driving license office is still directing me to go all the way to Phusing to get a confirmation of address letter (but I would not rely on them to be up to date).

The Sisaket office is still open Monday and Friday.

Depends on where you live but what I would do is:

Go to TOT and see if they service your area with ADSL

If not:

Check if your area have 3G coverage by DTAC, AIS or True but these a limited plans meaning you can use it for surfing the internet but download movies ect.

If not:

Go to Cat Telecom and see if you are close enough to one of their towers.

Badbanker

You come across like a decent person just trying to help, not sure you get paid for your work, unless you are an embassy employee, since it seems like most of the people you handle don't have the funds to pay you.

Thanks for your contribution and I hope you have the time in the future to give your input on what happens since you seem very informed. My rule of thumb staying here is I try to behave like I would like foreigners behave in my country, following the law and behaving decently. I had a 2 day overstay a year ago because I thought I could stay until the 25th and not the 23rd mistakes happen but overstaying months and months or 2-5 days again and again then its not a mistake and in my opinion those people should be barred from entering the country.

Thanks again for your work probably save a few people some scary nights in jail.

I live in Sisaket and we do not to my knowledge have anything like this.

Why not make it area based Ubon and bordering provinces? I would like to know more of whats going on in Ubon maybe some festival or something where I would want to take the wife and kids.

Do it as a hobby and hope to break even it will be a lot of work for no pay, talk to owners of farang restaurants and have them have a stack of copies to hand out to customers and set up a subscription covering the cost of sending it by post via EMS for the people in the sticks.

Again great idea but treat it as a hobby with the goal of breaking even.

I don't know the real story but supply problems is a lie. They haven't had Marlboro for over 6 years so don't hold your breath.

It were available about 2 years ago along with Prince (Danish brand) but I read something about some import duty issues with Phillip Morris since the duty frees are made in the Philippines. No issues getting Marlboro at the border shops to Laos but beside the fact that BKK is very expensive airside compared to landside about 5 times as expensive.

Last week I did a domestic flight 7-11 land side 7 baht for a bottle of water, air side 35 baht its a 500% mark up and not even in Europe you see that.

For at least a year or maybe two there have been a sign saying supply problems so its not available at the duty free anything changed since January?

I paid 550 baht for Lucky Strikes in January and if no Marlboro or even better my Prince, from the old country, which it were until Marlboro disappearred, is available then I would prefer to spend the 720 baht at Makro for a cartoon of Marlboros and bring it with me.

Its a joke that they can not work out the issue of duty free cigarettes with a company like Phillip Morris.

To the non-smokers we don't need you to preach smoking is bad we know! No need to remind us, I am simply asking a question on availability.

So no real news about the fire in the last 5 hours?

Only a bunch of keyboard warriors destroying yet another thread with their BS.

I usually fly SAS to Europe and their midnight flight have always been from C they are a Star Alliance member same as Thai so it make sense if the depart in the same area for lounge reasons, I think Thai have a regular biz class lounge there and a First Class lounge.

From the 1st of November 2012, aircraft from Thai Airways will begin departing every Thursday and Saturday. The time of departure is 20:45 from Arlanda Airport and the flight number of flightTG963. That basically means that there will be two aircraft from Thai Airways taking off from Arlanda every Thursday and Saturday.

There is already a daily flight from Stockholm to Bangkok

As this is a new route surely what is meant is ONE TG plane/flight on both Thursday and Saturday?

Thats the Thai spirit ! Get the Swedes straight into Phuket and clean out their wallets before Bangkok gets a dip.

A lot of Scandinavians fly direct with charter flights fro Scandinavia to Phuket and never see Bangkok.

The floods happened.

I live in the provinces and we are starting to see a little Coke Zero in 1.25L bottles now, before this we had cans of Pepsi Max/Diet Coke/Coke Zero in Tesco/Makro on a irregular basis and for about 3 weeks neither were available. I drink Pepsi Max a lot and have not seen a 1.25L or .5L plastic bottle in about 3 months.

I went through Suvarnabhumi yesterday and 7-11 had Coke Zero in cans, Family Mart had no diet soda at all.

The best option to find these products are to go to places that do not see to many foreigners.

I live in Sisaket in the north east and I can not drink regular soda due to the sugar. I prefer Pepsi Max and last time it were available here is more than a month ago, coke light and coke zero were available in very limited quantities up until a week or two ago in Makro/Tesco/Big C but only in cans.

What I found out is drive a little to a tesco express or a smaller tesco in an area where there are no farangs and you might find diet soda, 10 days ago did a trip to Udon Thani and found a small tesco in Suwannaphum that had loads of cans of coke light/zero. Did a 50km run yesterday to the nearest Tesco not in Sisaket and bought around 100 cans and we did not clear the shelves.

For the first time in a month I have seen regular Pepsi products on the selves 2 days ago so hopefully things are returning to normal.

I am in Sisaket and we have done it on birthdays. Getting a couple of tables and chairs and I think we paid no more than 200 per person including 5-6 dishes for each table and ice cubes and "servers" the different dishes were placed on the tables and the servers just took care of the drinks that we bought ourselves. The food were cooked elsewhere and brought to our house which is 5-10 minutes from where we live. They brought the tables and chair with them and set everything up and went back to get the food.

I think there were a fried rice dish, some pork, the whole fish thing, some more fish and another meat dish, typical thai food but they had a menu we could choose from.

We paid 4500 a couple of years ago for a taxi going to Sisaket from Bangkok normal car but it were a one way trip. If you do not need local transportation fly to Ubon and take a car from there for about a 1000 baht, I paid 800 baht 2 years ago and its less than an hours drive to Sisaket town.

For the booze same price as in Bangkok maybe a bit cheaper when you buy it by the case but not much.

All in all 200-250 should be enough. Tell her that the budget is 200 per person and she has to get a quote for it and what you get for the 200 per person then if its not enough or to much make the changes.

Salon my wife goes once a month to get her hair died and nails done (all 20) for about 300 baht so 1000 baht will go a long way.

A friend just sent me crucial information of Irrigation Dept about water pumping capacity.You would not believe it.

Sounds like one of those internet rumors mails and TV it reporting it as news?

I haven't taken sides in the yellow vs red since I believe both sides are to extreme and nuts to get this country going so I sit out on the whole discussion about who is right and who is wrong but the whole post in the "news" section seemed more like a I heard from a friend and he heard it from a 2nd cousin who heard it from his wife's deceased aunt.

I live full time in Sisaket and have been for a few years, any questions on the farang hangouts, the 10-20+ hotels you can stay at or anything else send me a pm or post here.

Sisaket is great, small enough and big enough for everything.

I second that.

Been there twice 5 months apart and he is great need any info on Savannakhet and he will hook you up. Our hotel felt through on our 2nd visit and he got us a good deal with what we needed.

Prices are fair and farang food is good. First time in town this should be your first stop. I think he has a facebook page to gather info.

I went Sisaket -> Ubon -> Mukdahan this week and only place were the road looked like it could flood were between Sisaket and Ubon and the first part of the ring road in Ubon. After that we did not see any signs of flooding at all.

We were very surprised that the Mekong wasn't higher that it were when we reached Mukdahan.

Passengers on flights landed @ Don Mueang airport have been stranded inside the terminal (via BKK Post) /via@AndersInNon

Stunning, when you think about it. The airline flew people straight into a refugee camp and left them without so much as a bag of peanuts.

You get what you pay for on an discount airline.

It;a cIear now there are going to be serious problems with the supply chain of food and other essential items, clearly the deliveries of food to supermarkets is severely disrupted ,I have moved up north to Khon kaen and TOPs have empty shelves of many food items and Makro have signs apologizing for some items not being available, and this may only the beginning if Bangkok and the Distribution centres have no products coming in and struggling to get them out to all parts of the country.

I am in Sisaket, I have only been to 7-11 the last couple of days but the shelves are emptying there I think shortage of basics supplies will hit most the country in a couple of weeks. We are running several businesses and we are stocking up on what we need for the long term.

I heard years ago that Beer Lao was actually Carlsberg. It'll be interesting to make a taste comparison when the imported Carlsberg arrives.

Not sure its the same but it is influenced by Carlsberg.

http://www.carlsberggroup.com/brands/Pages/BeerlaoLager.aspx

The article from the Danish newspaper gives a little more information for anyone interested they can google translate it.

http://epn.dk/branch...icle2574014.ece

Casual fans of the NFL are just screwed. Avid fans, willing to spend about $15 per week for 24/7 NFL games and information programming, should sign up for the "NFL Game Pass". All games available there, both live and on demand for replays; as well as the "NFL Network" 24/7 programming. The reception is not always perfect, due to the low Thai internet speeds. But it is good enough to fully enjoy the games and other programming. I've had it for the last 3 years, and have been satisfied.

Yes that is what I use + you get NFL RedZone as well with all the redzone action live from all the games. I can only recommend it.

You need to go to the land and transportation office which is located opposite of the new aquarium. On this MAP take the road to Surin/Utompon Phisai at the bottom of the map at G8. Its on the bypass road.

No idea about the process but shouldn't be more difficult here than anywhere else I heard they have the computers with the test in both english and Thai.

It's not the time of day, the arrival of jumbos or a lottery game. It's all in the hands of immigration. They know the exact numbers of arrivals and departures at any moment, and so there is no reason ever for queues of more than a handful of people. Civilized airports function this way.

Apparently not in Thailand. The chaos here seems to be intended. The only question is what's the purpose.

My first guess was: Immigration makes money selling fast track cards, and these will only sell if they bring a benefit to the buyer. But why is this game driven it to the point of making people miss their flights? And why do the airlines accept having their whole schedules screwed up?

Who has a better idea?

Yes they do know when planes arrive but planes get delayed all the time. Coming and going from BKK 3 times this year I never waited more than 20 minutes, so no complaints from me.

I arrived at LAX luckily I flew business class if not I would still be waiting in lane 7 months later, I arrived on a fully packed 747 and were first off but still had to wait 30+ minutes to get through immigration and it appeared that another plane or two landed right after us meaning the arrival hall were packed and with 5-6 immigration booths opened for non-US people must have waited hours to get through. BKK can have a bad reputation but I have not seen a bad report in the last few months seems like they got things under control but LAX is ALWAYS a nightmare.

Came back yesterday 2:40pm and 2-3 people in front of me and they were opening more booths.