aussiebrian

Avoid any dental clinic which offers "sedation"

Such techniques should only ever be used within a hospital environment.

If no hospital dental department in Chiang Mai will accept the very real risk associated with providing "sedation" you should go to one of the major

Bangkok hospitals/dental hospitals where such a service would be available.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Nitrous Oxide is available in almost every Dentist in the US, even the small offices. Light "sedation" is available, in office, at most medium to large dental clinics. IV sedation is reserved for the large clinics, but still not a hospital environment. My ex was a PA for an Anesthesiologist for many years so I am well aware of any risks involved. If we want to scare monger, even receiving an inoculation, injection, or minor cut can be fatal under the wrong circumstances.

I am saddened to learn that US dentists are prepared to take such risks .

Enjoy the content of the links

http://www.cricklaw.com/docs/Death_in_the_Chair_Article.pdf

http://www.cricklaw.com/docs/Death_in_the_Chair_Article.pdf

Such risks...? It is much safer be administered N2O at a dentists surgery than it is to drive there,

I am saddened that you are scaremongering to the point of paranoia .

I'm concerned about the safety too.

I don't want to get beat up by a Thai gang!

What a pathetic comment !

I have been here for many tears and have never been "beat up" by a Thai gang.

If you are one that attracts or looks for trouble then stay away!

edit

Removed typo

Coming here since 76 and lived here 11 years and I haven't been beaten up attacked yet or come close to it by man, woman anything in-between or even a soi dog. If you attack first they will turn on you.

20 years ago it was fine. Too many farang now.

I was on some islands there last week. I swear the tourists consisted of at least 90% Chinese and a few farangs. The place was awash with them. re there any islands in the south that don't have many tourists?

Many, but if you go to Phi Phi, Coral Island, James Bond or Ko Racha what do you expect? It to be deserted? Go a bit further north to Koh Chang (not Trat) or even Koh Phayam both in Ranong Provence if you want to get away from Chinese. Never seen them there yet, but the times they are a changing.

OP says Everyone around here uses the parking brake with our automatic transmission HILUX. It drives me nuts.

It reminds me of

A man walks into a bar with a steering wheel shoved down his pants. The barman looks at him curiously and says, ''Buddy, you know you got a steering wheel shoved down your pants?'' The man answers, ''Yeah, I know! It's been driving me nuts all day.''

The OP would fail a driving test in the UK !

http://www.highwaycodeuk.co.uk/waiting-and-parking---parking-239-to-247.html

And Australia too

In an automatic you should always put the handbrake first before putting it in park or you are putting strain on the pawl. (except in a Thai shopping centre where the road is level and you are parking in-front of other vehicles. Then select neutral with no handbrake and wheels pointing straight so it can be pushed)

Most vehicle manufacturers^[3] and auto mechanics^[4] do not recommend using the transmission's parking pawl as the sole means of securing a parked vehicle, instead recommending it should only be engaged after first applying the vehicle's parking brake. Constant use of only the parking pawl, especially when parking on a steep incline, means that driveline components, and transmission internals, are kept constantly under stress, and can cause wear and eventual failure of the parking pawl or transmission linkage. The pawl might also fail or break if the vehicle is pushed with sufficient force, if the parking brake is not firmly engaged.

DELETED

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking_pawl

Why does the Englishman wear a black scarf

Travelling with 3000 Pounds in the "pockets" in the Baht bus...

Smart traveller

Confusion all round: an alleged Brit, an alleged lady, and an alleged law enforcer!

4 people in the photo.

"Englishman","Ladyboy" (both debatable), so are the 2 cops tourist police from the Netherlands?

That's a ladyboy!!!??? Jeez, sure fooled me, I thought it was a proper bird!

Due to the lack of pointing, it is perfectly understandable that there is much confusion. I have it on good authority that the one with the beard on the left is the ladyboy, and the collar is really a niqab that she had on at the time of her arrest, but she rolled it down for the photo.. The guy next to her is a policeman who is looking to see if it is time to go home yet, next you have the English tourist of Asian decent and next to him is his wife.

Your reasoning with smoking is also wrong. As smoking is legal, more people have been persuaded to quit in the last decade, that at any other time in history. Do you think this could have been achieved if smoking was illegal?

You only have to look at Prohibition of alcohol to see what happens when drugs are illegal.

People still drink, unfortunately it is socially accepted to be OK, but at least with drink driving campaigns, AA, rehibilition and family violence information and help lines etc, people can and are helped but with the also evil drug alcohol, it was made far worse with prohibition in the 20's and 30's than it is today.

More people die from alcohol and alcohol related events, than all the illegal drugs combined.

I totally agree with bazza, and believe it is your mode of thinking is floored.

We have a huge drug problem, and making ANY drugs illegal, doesn't work. No matter how dangerous a drug is, it is much better for society and the addict to have them legalized so they can be controlled by the government rather than by criminal drug pushers (as is the current situation now) that don't have any morals to what they sell, and use the profits for corruption, to line their pockets and for terrorism. The more people they can get hooked,and the more addictive the drug is, the greater their profits are. When they are illegal it doesn't stop people buying them on the black market and using them so it serves no purpose having them illegal. It just makes a bad situation 100 times worse.

If you can't keep drugs out of prisons, how the hell do you think you can keep them out of society?

The war on drugs has been a complete failure, and some serious thought needs to be given as to the best way to fix the drug problem. Throwing people in gaol for drugs only serves to make the problem worse, but training them the best way to make sell and import them. Many people who never used drugs develop their habits in prisons.

80 % of people in prisons are in for drug related crime.

Imagine how many prisons could be closed if drugs were decriminalized as a first step and then legalized.

Legalizing them does not mean you condone their use, and then when legal, real education and rehabilitation is possible and people then can decide what they will consume knowing the inherent dangers and sereviry of harm each drug causes. With harm minimization understanding and compassion the horrendous designer drugs can then be controlled. Who do you want to control dangerous drugs, criminals or the state? As I said, they are both terrible, but I would rather the state controlling them than criminals. If you try to limit the amount or type of drugs people can get, that is when the black market moves in and the problem snowballs.

Also it is far better getting people off heroin by slowly reducing the amount they get, then using a far more harmful drug like methadone.

African American, he was ...

And if he'd been white...? ( hmm, nice coffee)

More likely that he'd still be alive if he was white.

That's another reason I'm against the death penalty for less than spectacularly heinous crimes.

The U.S. "justice" system tends to punish minorities more harshly.

It isn't an explicit policy, per se, it just works out that way.

It also of course punishes the poor in general more harshly, of any race, for obvious reasons. They can't afford good lawyers.

Exactly why one shouldn't judge an entire system based upon ignorant assumptions fed by projections of one' sown internal struggles.

More whites have been executed than blacks over the last 49 years at a nearly 2 to 1 clip. The potential racial bias has little to do with punishing blacks more harshly. Prosecutors, however, do appear less inclined to seek the death penalty for black on black murders,.

I worked on a state Supreme Court reviewing death penalty cases. They are subjected to unbelievably high scrutiny focusing on evidence to meet the enhancement factors. Race had zero to do with these reviews. In fact, I can only recall white defendants in the death penalty cases we reviewed.

Felony murder can be enhancement that makes a crime death legible.. I believe that felony murders are particularly heinous, senseless killings that need to be deterred.

The killing of innocent store clerks during commission of a robbery of a few bucks to eliminate the clerk as a witness to me is much worse than a premeditated murder of someone because of a personal dispute between the two. Think about it. Your child or liege done was killed while working in a store for minimum wage so they could not later ID the robber that stole $59 or $100 bucks. That is about as depraived as it gets.

Florida has executed 84 people since the Supreme Court announced the modern death penalty regime in 1976. Zero of them are white people sentenced to death for killing an African American. Indeed, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, “no white person has ever been executed for killing an African American” in the state of Florida.

African American, he was ...

And if he'd been white...? ( hmm, nice coffee)

More likely that he'd still be alive if he was white.

That's another reason I'm against the death penalty for less than spectacularly heinous crimes.

The U.S. "justice" system tends to punish minorities more harshly.

It isn't an explicit policy, per se, it just works out that way.

It also of course punishes the poor in general more harshly, of any race, for obvious reasons. They can't afford good lawyers.

It doesn't matter how heinous the crime is, courts still make mistakes. Once you are dead you are dead. The death penalty is government sanctioned murder and is barbaric also doesn't have any deterrent factor in murders or to decrease crime. The people that suffer the most in an execution is their family. Personally, I would rather be dead than spend the rest of my life in prison.

"Please correct me if I am wrong:

An accident on a motorbike makes null and void your "travel Insurance""

Depends and it varies from company to company. I take out 8 months cover at a time and you have to read the Exclusions carefully. Some wont cover bike riding at all, some want a home country bike licence, some also want a holiday country licence, some restrict to 125cc etc etc

My Australian travel insurance covers me on any size motorcycle with unlimited medical, dental and all the normal covers for only $700 a year, and has been for the last 10 years. You are right, some will some won't.

What kind of rental bike costs $5000 to fix?

If it wasn't a 650cc kawasaki or something similar has getting raped by that rental company....

Unless he is being totally ripped off, it wouldn't be just a wave. Many big scooters, and small motorcycles that would be worth that if it was a write off. Plus, they will charge every day the bill isn't paid at the cost of rental as they will say it is lost money till it is fixed or replaced. We have no idea if the bike was a write off or he just dropped it with cosmetic damage. A large motorcycle could get the bill to around that price if it just slid down the road. He said the accident wasn't his fault, so someone else was involved, so damage to the scooter and the car is the most likely scenario.

All these motorbike rentals that conveniently don't have any insurance for there bikes, of course they do, you cannot get a tax disk without at least the government tax which everybody has to have.

They should make it law that all rental bikes are fully covered including theft and not try and con tourists into paying over inflated price.

The people that hire big bikes don't have 1st class insurance in Phuket, but there are a few people with scooters who do. If anyone knows anyone in Phuket that rents big bikes with 1st class insurance, please let me know. I get many friends that come here for holidays and want this but it is not available to my knowledge. There used to be one company that had it for 650 Honda and 650 Kawasaki's, unfortunately they are out of business.

What kind of rental bike costs $5000 to fix?

If it wasn't a 650cc kawasaki or something similar has getting raped by that rental company....

Look at Nathan's huge cosmetic muscles. He wouldn't be seen riding anything less than one of those huge cosmetic Harleys.

My guess it wouldn't be a Harley as it wold cost him around 3000 baht to 7000 baht a day to hire.

Where is it? Phuket is a big island. I even googled it and all reports just say as in report. http://thainews.prd.go.th/website_en/news/news_detail/WNECO5901220010004

Phuket launches 8th Local Food Festival

22 Jan 2016 | 09:40 | (27 Viewer ) |

I just found this but it says starts on the 24th Jan 2014 this is 2 years old. So maybe in Saphan Hin

Overview

The same mosquito is now spreading an infection in Southern America, causing babies to be born with abnormal head size (BBC NEWS today)

Someone should catch this dam mosquito and kill it before it infects anyone else.

I'm on Koh Phangan, no decent retailers here, so ideally I'd like to buy one online. Bangkok would be another option.

I had the same problem when I was living in Ranong, it was worth the trip to Bkk to buy one.

^^ Very true with warranty issues.

I have bought my last 3 computers in Thailand two ASUS and one Toshiba, and I have found the warranty I have received here to be above what I could have ever expected.

One of my ASUS had global warranty, which was great when I needed some repairs done when I was in Australia. Some computers have global warranty, others don't, so if you need global warranty, make sure the one you buy has it.

where do you buy your computers aussie? I need a new laptop.

Where are you? I have bought 2 in Bkk and one in Phuket. What brand do you want to get? The Phuket one was at Bananas at big C but the after sales service was non existent, but that doesn't matter as when it is under warranty, just take it to the service centre, which was Toshiba in Phuket town. The girl in there was very helpful and normally fixes it on the spot, unless parts need ordering. The others were from Pantip in Bkk.

^{Koh Chang}

Which one? Koh Chang Trat or Koh Chang Ranong?

^^ Very true with warranty issues.

I have bought my last 3 computers in Thailand two ASUS and one Toshiba, and I have found the warranty I have received here to be above what I could have ever expected.

One of my ASUS had global warranty, which was great when I needed some repairs done when I was in Australia. Some computers have global warranty, others don't, so if you need global warranty, make sure the one you buy has it.

Travel insurance is for travellers, so its OK for tourists but will not cover expats or typically anyone who leaves their home country for more than 3 months .

Proper medical cover is expansive here, and in the 13 years that I have been here I repeatedly see people WITH health cover who are asked for lots of money in the hospital because the insurance company will not pay. In fact I have yet to EVER hear of a case where a serious matter does not end up with the holder of a Thai medical insurance having to pay up a percentage. Often because the hospital does stuff that the insurance feels is not necessary or because the room was to a higher standard than the insurance will pay (hospitals often lie and says cheaper rooms are unavailable).

The Thai private hospital scams can sting any of us at any time, be aware.

Having said that, even some insurance is better then none.

Not in Australia. In Australia your Credit MasterCard or Visa card normally insures you if you paid for the tickets using the card for up to 3 months away at a time for free. I don't use that as I am away for longer than 3 months. I am an expat and I get travel insurance when I go back to Australia usually every year or 18 months. I get 12 months insurance, and have even been allowed to extend it by phone. same company for 10 years. Previously, I was able to buy my excess out for $35 extra, but after 60 y.o. this option finished.

They pay for private hospital care, luckily as I wouldn't want to be seriously ill in most of the public hospitals here.

It is better to have a 12 month policy over say a short time policy, e.g. My policy even has unlimited dental and I can get a crown for the same cost of a visit to the dentist, checkup and clean in Australia, so if I need work done that can't wait till I return to Australia, they never complain about the crowns. Not bad for just over $700 for a 12 months policy. It is even worth having a trip back, if it was only to get re-insured.

The problem will be when I turn 70, it is almost impossible to get insurance.

Lock up and throw away the key ..

WHY ?

EASY - He is a drug dealer, and a criminal here in Thailand.

Why? Why? Did I miss something? I thought he was arrested because he was selling a low grade, improperly cured, bricked marijuana. Instead of locking him up and throwing away the key, the punishment should be more fitting the crime. He should be forced to write 20 times "I am a naughty boy, I promise I will never sell any low grade, improperly cured, bricked marijuana anymore." and not allowed a bong till he finished writing. Imagine the harm he could cause the Thai tourist industry if the word ever got out.

The unnamed informant who had contacted the suspect, would never have reported him to police had he sold better quality weed.

The OP had a massage without a happy ending.

The gun was in his hand, he must have done it.

Poor guys, evidence they have been at work at the time of the murders, but they will still be locked up for the next couple of years before their trial starts. They should be able claim compensation if they are found to have been wrongfully arrested and it should be paid by the police who framed them. Sorry I was dreaming.