ExoticMatter

I also have to say that my wife is the best cook I have ever known and I consider myself lucky to have her -I would prefer her food over a restuarant any time, but getting quality ingredients in the UK can be difficult. Restuarants everywhere generally don't put the best and most expensive ingredients in, for example the giant wild prawns are rarely used -they are usually small and cheap farm prawns which are way different.

As far as finding good street food, we always try to get out of the tourist areas, the Khaosan road area has to be some of the worst and most expensive food I have ever had in Bangkok, although compared to the an average 'Greasy Joes' cafe at home, its still 2 levels above our bottom line, I suppose it depends what standard you start off with, Thais have further to fall.

Its a sweeping statement, but IMO the deeper cultural significance is the often lengthy (christian like) guilt complex that westerners seem to suffer from even on trivial stuff and Thais generally do not.

For example, baring a grudge can happen for like 20 years, Thais are good at not carrying over petty squabbles,

(look at western media - they will repeat the same nonsense for years and play on guilt, but thats another story best not go there as off topic)

Anyway, lets say I have carried over a 'heated discussion' from the night before, I seriously get told off for it, Thais do not like lengthy discussions, this I thank my wife for because she has taught me just to move on and not get stuck on repeating stuff (that no longer matters)

Thais are good at only living a day at a time, many westerners do not live in the 'now' they worry either the past or the future.

The Buddist way teaches not to feel bad about yourself and the lack of shame/embarrassment is part of this none derogatory mentality.

...Thanks. I never worried to get cash in Thailand because there are ATM's everywhere but never been to Lipe. So as i saw the topic and going there next week, Lipe seems very small and quite far, i wouldn't have any surprise.

Try to go the land route via Krabi/Phuket, the boat ride from phuket is tedious and long (as in 8 or 9 hours long) and it stops at the mainland and Ko Kradan on the way.

Best way is a minibus straught to Pak Bara, then take the 2 hr fast speed boat and do the zippy 90 km to Ko lipe, otherwise you are doing doing 190 km in 2 slow boats from Phuket.

Thanks. Actually yes. My plan is to go with my own car from Phuket. I am taking some time off and our original plan is to drive down south. We will stop few days in Lanta visit a friend and will do some day trip around (Koh RoK mainly) then going down to Pak Bara and catch a boat to Lipe. I am familiar with the area, just never been to Tarutao and Lipe area. I might also try a hop to Langkawi for a few days.

Just been told you can not take money out of an ATM on a visa or mastercard as credit(not sure this counts for all banks), it is only debit visa account types so be warned if you're maxing out your cards!

1 or 2 of the shops/hotels still do a visa/mastercard/foreign cash to baht for around 5-7% but there are no banks. So change your cash beforehand if you do not have a debit facility on your account.

...Thanks. I never worried to get cash in Thailand because there are ATM's everywhere but never been to Lipe. So as i saw the topic and going there next week, Lipe seems very small and quite far, i wouldn't have any surprise.

Try to go the land route via Krabi/Phuket, the boat ride from phuket is tedious and long (as in 8 or 9 hours long) and it stops at the mainland and Ko Kradan on the way.

Best way is a minibus straught to Pak Bara, then take the 2 hr fast speed boat and do the zippy 90 km to Ko lipe, otherwise you are doing 190 km in 2 slow boats from Phuket.(or fly to Hat Yai and goto Pak bara if from Bangkok)

When we came to Ko Lipe 3 years ago, we were lucky enough to catch the end of the full moon parties (mialuna). I believe they ended in April 2013, the organizers told me in february they were thinking of ending it because the island had become too commercial and crowded and kept to their word (I wonder where they have gone to now ?)

The good of Ko Lipe

The food is great for an island 90 km from the mainland, in fact we get better food than in Phuket and if you shop around Thai style its not expensive.

The beaches are lovely and there is good snorkeling within walking distance from the beach and some excellent island hopping.

There is still a local friendly heart to the place (old timer sea gypsies)

There is still one of the most mixed and cosmopolitan groups of people from around the world on any island I have been to in Thailand, Thai, mixed European, Chinese and even some south Americans make it this far, most balanced IMO.

The not so good

In 2013 there was no traffic and few roads, everyone walked basically, and only food and supplies were moved around in motorbike side cars. Now there are many more roads and much more traffic, I would say at least 30 vehicles racing around the island, including about 10 taxis. There is actually a rush hour of sorts (if you define 5 motorbikes as a traffic jam!)

High end (resort and spa types, yeeks!) development is taking over parts of the island and ripping the heart out of it. The Andaman resort has attempted to wall itself from the rest of the island and it is one of the routes to sunset beach next to the chaolay village.

The bar coolness party vibe atmosphere is fast dissappearing, I put this down to high end hotels with 2 week package tours, the commercialization is taking over, the 'fun-ness' is being taken over by (weighty) bums on seats for max profit per square metre.

Staying near Pattaya beach is not recommended as its the main gateway (floating pier) for inbound/outboud passengers and is noisy, dont expect a quiet swim there.

Tips

Goto where Mialuna used to be (road signed paradise moon party) nr sunset beach but with its own small cove) if you want a small beach to yourself.

Stay somewhere on sunrise beach, its quieter and more chilled out, and you can join the yoga and couples watching a beautiful sunrise if you're early enough

... Lipe has lots going on, with some great food and decent nightlife on Pattaya Beach. Both will be fairly quiet in May. Both are expensive for air-con rooms. On Lipe I recommend Gipsy Resort on Sunrise Beach, run by a cool Spanish guy and Moken (sea gypsy) guy who was born on Lipe and received a solid education on the mainland. They're fun to chat with.

I am staying at the (8 years old) Gypsy Resort and we stayed here 3 years ago, not much has changed, same prices for bamboo fan rooms with toilet (850 baht). The ownership is shared between a friendly Spanish guy (Roberto) and Kong (sea gypsy islander). There are 40 rooms and its usually fairly well booked up and tends to attract the more traveler types (not so many now on Ko lipe)

The restaurant is ultra low key with an excellent view of sun rise beach, in a quiet corner and closes early but there is a cool little bar right next door that keeps going.

Are there any cash machine (ATM) in Koh Lipe?

I counted at least 3 ATM's

Well done. excellent pictures, graphics and composition. Now to find the printer for this.

Make sure you don't run out of one of the inks in the middle of a big glossy print!

is well worth printing out and putting on the wall

Thats another year flown by, thanks for all the news updates and the calander, I wouldn't know whats going in the LOS otherwise

Thanks to the site Mods,Tywais,SamuiJimmy, Phuket Richard and everyone else who contributed to the 2014 calandar and Thaivisa generally. The calandar hung proudly on the wall with many reminders scribbled all over the dates everywhere. The printer is already buzzing with the 2015 edition.

With Thaivisa's excellent updates, Mrs TW says she thinks she knows more news about Thailand than Thai people actually living there do!

Happy New Year Everyone

All the cryptocurrencies which now number over 1000 are not illegal in any country as far as I'm aware. There is a bitcoin exchange in Thailand, they trade in baht/btc. I am not aware of local Thai laws banning any of them, in fact most countries like China are embracing them, there are over 200,000 businesses around the world that accept bitcoin. Bittylicious is an example of around 10 cryptocurrencies that are accepted for fiat money and paypal will be accepting it soon.

Hi Everyone,

No doubt most of you have heard of bitcoin, and a few may have heard of some of the alt coins such as Litecoin,Namecoin and Quarkcoin, although only 1 or 2 would have heard of Darkcoin.

Now anyone who has used bitcoin or pretty much any other cryptocurrency will have noticed how slow they are, bitcoin typically takes 10 minutes for 1 confirmation(although it is random) and transfering bitcoin into any exchange or doing business is tediously slow as most require 3-6 confirmations which takes over an hour typically.

https://blockchain.info/charts

The Darkcoin developers have created an incentive to create a global decentrailized network, using a buy in stake of 1000 Darkcoin in order to host your own Masternode, hosting a masternode currently gives 25% of all global mining revenue. The masternodes(currently there are about 1200 and climbing) will be used to authenticate transactions in 2 to 10 seconds (testnet simulations currently underway, processing time depends on number of masternodes/location/ping etc-not finished yet!).

There are only 4.4 millions coins in existance so far btw.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.0

All sha256 coins such as bitcoin/peercoin and all scrypt coins such as Dogecoin and litecoin(there are 100's) are now completely taking over by extremely quick dedicated ASIC mining machines(check zeus miner on ebay for example), due to Darkcoin's 11 hashing algorithms called X11, it is extremely ASIC resistant, meaning basically you can go and get a $200 graphics card from the shop and still 'mine' and produce the coin at home.It can also be mined on a CPU, the more cores the better.

If you don't know what I am talking about, I (tactfully) suggest you read and re-read Duffield's first post on bitcointalk(particularly the instantTX PDF), and download the bitcoin and darkcoin wallets, and update them over night, and then ask me a question about this.

Sawad dee Krup.

Disclaimer: I am not the developer btw, the reason for posting this is for those who missed the bitcoin train may have a second chance. But be warned do NOT use any money you can not afford to lose if you want to play this crazy and dangerous virtual world of cryptocurrencies and their markets(extreme gains can also mean extreme losses), there are many instantances of hacked wallets, I present you with this information for your elucidation and we are all adults so please don't shout at me if things don't go as planned and you get scammed or play the markets wrong. TIA

I respectively suggest people read the bitcoin whitepaper where it all started if they want to understand the genius behind the blockchain ledger idea,

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

I had to read it a number of times to start to get it, but is worth the effort

Unlike with your bank account or paypal, double spend is nearly impossible due to the nature of the blockchain as long as the confirmations (can be 15 minutes or more) are allowed to take place across the blockchain and in your wallet.Mount Gox were not allowing the confirmations to take place properly in their hot wallet for exchange speed reasons and hence it opened them up to hacking.

@sanuk711, yes, agreed, though some have gone straight to stage 2

http://dont-tread-on.me/?p=454

about 400 bitcoins sent to Richard Branson's wallet will get you a trip into space, now thats spending power,

http://www.coindesk.com/virgin-galactic-will-accept-bitcoin-space-travel-says-billionaire-entrepreneur-sir-richard-branson/

You can ignore and argue over something that you don't understand till the cows come home, but the fact is bitcoin is here to stay. Gold companies now accept it as payment so if the get physical is your thing then flip it into something more tangible by all means.

See the action visually here, China is loving it

http://fiatleak.com/

1) Most money does not exist, it is already fictional numbers inside machines.

2) Fiat currency is a promisory note to do work in the future and so is subject to those around, honouring that promise

3) Bitcoin coin mining is work done essentially in the past by finding very difficult to generate cryptographic numbers (gold is also work done in the past due to difficult mining conditions)

4) Bitcoin knows no borders and is the true virtual currency

5) almost impossible to fraud due to the fact every wallet holder has the entire blockchain on their computer (you have to attack 51%)

6) it is decentralized meaning there is no collection (in the future) from a single bank at the end of the chain, there is no one person to fraud.This is its proof of work in action. There is no chasing your bank up for payments, this is the genius of the blockchain.

7) due to fiat currency not being gold backed since 1971, the only proof of work the dollar,baht or any other currency has is other people's honour to do the work back (essentially in kind based on a piece of paper backed by the military)

8) the internet had no true virtual currecy until bitcoin, paypal etc do not count as they only work in local currencies.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_work

Btw the coin miners validate the next block of coins by using hash code number generation algorithims. I heard the btc blockchain can only handle the maximum of about 9 transactions per second, this may be an achilles heal of bitcoin. Other coins can do it quicker and better.

I have fitted alarms for a living and can say that some of the wi-fi ones are highly unreliable even the yale system can be glitchy as I found out on my own house (in the UK) when I got an email and text one day while in Thailand to say the house was burning down as the smoke alarm had gone off!

Well it hadn't but i had to get someone to check of course.

I compare wireless alarms to wifi connections, how many times have you had your own wifi connection dissappear for no discernable reason? It could be humidity,competing signals,loss of handshaking or faulty data from source but whatever it is can all be avoided by having a wired alarm sensor unit.

In my experience some models are fine and are very easy to install but others keep tripping for annoying and sometimes no reasons at all-my own house seemed to trip more when it was raining which was silly because none of the sensors were even outside so that shouldn't have affected them-I could only put it down to signal attenuation by the extra moisture in the air.

As a cheap and chearful security extra I'd say go for it but don't ever fully rely on it is all.

And try to choose a model someone has recommended and uses themselves and not those awfully cheap no name 'brands' from our good friends in China!

For god sakes guys its nothing to do with Thai's walking slower and it is a good point about Thai culture that a lot of foreigners simply don't understand or even notice (myself included!).

According to TW it originates from the King riding the front elephant and the Queen riding behind on the second elephant. Also it is that the man is boss of the house and shows respect for the man(and 'Gain Jai').

And the fact that traditionally the woman tends to stay in the house and the man is the leader, particularly in times of war (with the Burmese for example) where the man would fight on the front line and the women would stay back in the village only fighting if neccessary when the home borders had been breached.

TW says that their culture has been so westernized(but not so much in countryside) to the point where the daughters go out by themselves(to meet guys for example) whereas in the past they were only allowed to goto the market and do kitchen stuff- dating was definitely only allowed if permission from the parents was given(and usually for marriage and involving food gifts).

Hope this helps clarify

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_lance

''gives the maximum temperature to be 4,770 K (4,500 °C)''

''often used as a heavy duty demolition tool, the thermic lance can also
be used to remove seized axles of heavy machinery without damaging the
bearings or axle hole. This technique is most often used on the pins and
axles of large equipment such as cranes, ships, bridges and
sluice-gates.''

And sets paper on fire very well!

It can take a smart and fearless guy to realise when they've had enough and to take action-get mobile and to change the situation around them.

O, every time I come back to the UK from travels it looks smaller than the last time-in the end its going to look really really small!

good luck with your next chapter in life, NotStupid30

Btw if you can, please start a thread '6 months on...' after the summer it would allow us all to further chew over your life story

@Village Farang, these pictures will explain more clearly, we're definitely not talking seasonal variation because you can see from the markings on the rocks there are large irregular none returning dips(new dams?). Locals told me that most of the drop was about 5 years ago and its definitely not a rainy season thing thats for sure and the fisherman confirm that anyway. (Dont know the timeline for the dams and how that fits btw)

The reason the Mekong is dried up is because there are numerous dams siphoning all the water off upstream in China, came down that stretch of Mekong recently and even the small and light(but long) river canal boats scraped the bottom a couple of times.

There were water makers from 5-10 years ago and these show the Mekong at about 5 metres higher than what it is today.

Water volume wise theres less than 5 metres depth left in many areas so doesn't that make it less than half the original water flow rate.

Nice photos guys, pity we can't turn the clock back-would have loved to have seen Thailand back in the 70's. Nearly ended up in the Similian Islands recently but what you say only reminds me (yet again) that some places are best left alone inside fond memories of the past and not what they have become in the present- we can't turn the clock back can we.

Its good to hear there are rescue centres but it always seems to appear that so much is being done by so few-in extremes whole species have even been literally saved by one extremely dedicated person.

Yer and its not just the turtles,we're on the cusp of a mass extinction-levels have gone exponential,

http://efg-ec.webs.com/Extinction%20cHART.jpg

Only place I've ever seen a turtle rescue program was on Gili Meno in Indonesia, they had 3 large tanks - each with 100's of 3 different size turtles in an intense captive breeding type program ready for release. Perhaps there is somewhere in Thailand similiar but aint ever come across it though a quick google did reveal this..

http://www.ioseaturtles.org/pom_detail.php?id=67

The wife says she'd like one, is it possible to buy one of these cheap somewhere, should I look on ebay or something, surely the market is going to be flooded, they'll be turning up everywhere

Might have been mentioned already, details a bit sketchy but yesterday here in Karon, a russian driven car ran into a tut tuk and refused to pay the damage. Apparently it blew up so out of hand that some army had to come along to give the police a hand to get the russians under control.

We didn't see it happen, but by fluke, my mate saw the same tuk tuk driver today recognize the russian driver and he punched him in the face-that was one angry tuk tuk driver. (heard that they all went to the police station in protest b4 the army came ).

Haven't their visa's been reduced to 5 year limits now I heard (from the beach chair guy so don't quote me on that!)