rohitsuk

Has anyone successfully used the re-entry visa service which I believe may be available at Suvarnabhumi and Chiang Mai airports and is it manned 24/7 or just whenever ?

Cheers.

Thank you dvg I shall pop on over and grab a bag.

Does anyone know where you can buy the wood chips for a stove top food smoker.  Ebay has them but coming from USA and I was wondering as the BBQ shops sell smokers, where the wood chips to fire it up might be bought.

Cheers,

Is the Priority Line still operating as last year it was in the third floor office which is now dealing with the TM30 ?

I have five lovely mature trees in my front garden but three of them are close to the boundary and now overhaning my neighbour's roof so need cutting back to my side of the fence. The last time I had this done the vandals just hacked the lower branches off instead of topping out the trees, leaving a very ugly stuck up like sore fingers mess, that took months to grow back to anything like reasonable.  

I am desperate to find somebody who can do a proper tree pruning job and would be so grateful for any recommendations as the prospect of anoher hatchet job is breraking my heart.

Thank you Sally, that is very helpful and I have found their website and location in Chiang Mai.

Regards.

Lots of cookery classes available in CM but does anyone know of classes in baking ?  I thought maybe some enterprising foreign person or Thai for that matter,, might have seen a niche in the market.  I would like our excellent Thai cook to learn to bake western style.  

Having seen the posting of other members about ProAuto I took a friend there last week whose Nissan Sunny Neo had a loud knock coming from the front end when reversing on right lock.  I am happy to confirm that our experience in dealing with K.Ton and his staff was exactly what had been reported previously. 

The problem was quickly identified as being the upper shock absorber mountings and rectified for B2k.  Ton pointed out to my friend that the tyres on his recently bought car were five years old and despite looking quite OK, needed to be replaced.  At my suggestion they also replaced all fluids and did a general check for other problems.

We were dropped off and collected again from a point convenient to us a few hours later and by the end of the day my friend had a much improved, far safer vehicle and all done with the most pleasant and polite of customer service for a very fair price.  And as we all know a good mechanic is worth his weight in spare parts !

Thank you K.Ton and your staff – both Sai and I look forward to being your regular customers. 

So glad to have been of service - save me a bottle !

I wonder if anybody knows a general builder / contractor from Hang Dong called Chang Boot ? Eight years ago he did a great job organising the renovation of the house we bought and it now needs further work but I have lost contact with him.

I should be very grateful if somebody could put me back in touch with him.

Many thanks.

I had SiNet installed on Thursday and my house is only 200 metres from the connection station but it is totally hopeless. Sure to Bangkok it is 30mb but once you leave Thailand it drops dead. 1-3mb = too slow to live stream video from my providers in the UK so only You Tube works and only just at that.

On Thursday evening a nice lady with good English called from SiNet and when I told her it was very slow she said, oh yes we have been having trouble for a couple of weeks now with slow speeds, I will pass this on to our service team.

Fortunately I did not cancel my 3BB 13mb package which returns twice the speed of SiNet and only occasionally does it stutter on video streaming when it is having a bad day. I did a parallel test today with my desktop attached to 3BB and my laptop to SiNet and tried to stream from the same three UK websites on both machines. 3BB managed all three, one at a time, and SiNet froze in seconds on two of them and would not even open the third site.

In the UK I pay B125 a month for unlimited broadband of around 10mb and have never had a problem streaming anything from anywhere and the service is close to 100% reliable. Yes, I know, “every like is not the same O Caesar”. But I think that internet is expensive in Thailand and not very good either. Too much power in too few hands and no nice ferocious watchdog with big sharp teeth !

Tomorrow I will send SiNet an email telling them if they cannot do better than this then I want to cancel and I hope I won’t have a fight over the B5,400 charge for cancelling after only five days !

You may want to pm drtreelove (a botanist who has been living in CNX): http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/user/74166-drtreelove/ .

He knows about pruning trees: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/474577-tree-pruning/

and he may be able to refer you to someone here.

And otherwise contact the person recommended by Tywais in this thread: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/564350-tree-pruning/?p=5419974&hl=%2Bpruning+%2Btrees

Thanks so much for that, I shall do as you suggest. I was beginning to feel a bit desperate as most replies simply confirm my own observations of the hack it down to the roots approach. I have watched these trees grow for the past six years and it would just be valdalism to ruin them now that they need a little careful pruning and they shade my house wonderfully from the sun.

you really need someone that is qualified and knows what each variety needs to have done or they could kill them or ruin their growth.

55555 good luck with that. I'm sure they are around but 99% will typically top them (worst thing you can do to a tree, making them unstable) and hack the things up. The wrong trees are usually planted in the wrong places.

Thing to do is to just ask around your neighbourood, someone will know a pack of monkeys to come and rearrange them for you for sure. ;-)

Yes, you are right and I have seen lots of that about the place which is why I am trying to find somebody who can do it properly and not ruin my lovely trees but perhaps I am looking for something that is not here.

Sorry only know my local guys which is far from you. Good luck

Thanks anyway for your reply.

Where are you located?

Thanks for your response.

I am at Montfort Villa, close to Montfort College just off the Mahidol Road before the intersection with the Superhighway at Don Chan.

Regards - rohitsuk.

I have several lovely trees in my garden but they are getting dangerously large and near the overhead electrical wires and the roof of my house and my neighbours house.

I should be very grateful if somebody could put me in touch with a tree pruner who could cut back and shape my trees and not just hack them down to the roots, which seems to be the usual approach.

Don't forget these.

Where to buy a pair in CM

"One day, when we get back to 70 Baht / £1 it will bet better"

And UK savings rates back to 7%. Please God but I fear no time soon.alas

CM TV forum members, especially if they are British, may wish to know that a support fund has been set up for the officer, P.C. Rathband, who was so cruelly blinded recently, in Northumbria UK by the maniac Moat.

Mr. Rathband, despite being permanently blinded in both eyes and other severe facial injuries, has said that he is determined to return to duty. It is that kind of courage, determination and sheer guts which once made Britain truly great and is so sadly rare today but so entirely deserving of our support.

Donations may be sent to:

P.C. Rathband Support Fund

Northumbria Police Federation

Apex Business Village

Cramlington

Blythe NE23 7BF UK

Aladin's Lamps are on the second floor of Airport Plaza right in front of Robinson s entrance. You can call Khun Narit on 0814267700 or long onto www.aladinslamps.4t.com Their lamps and shades are certainly inexpensive by western standards but not cheap in any sense of the word.

Not for the first time, I find myself in total agreement with Orang37 whose calm, well-reasoned and thoroughly sensible assessment of the situation is the perfect counter to Al Jazeera's typical media desire, to exaggerate, sensationise and inflame. But many thanks, nonetheless, to Hatchi for making us aware of it.

My hope is that the good people of CM, be they red, yellow or sky blue pink and covered in yellow dots are far too sensible and way too proud of our lovely city to allow it to be damaged by hatred, ignorance and rank stupidity.

Right thinking people, of whatever political persuasion, will acknowledge the just cause is some of what the more moderate red brigade are saying and this has certainly been accepted by the PM, who needs all support in his efforts to heal and reconcile a seriously damaged society and nation.

For our part, let the foreign residents of Thailand miss no opportunity to express our sadness for the loss and damage, our encouragement for reconciliation and rebuilding, our support for the voice of reason and moderation, our love of Thailand and our undoubted loyalty to His Majesty, our most beloved King.

Traitors Gate, the bloody tower and off with his head. Then he really will have found the justice he claims to seek so ardently.

Unlike his own buying and almost total dominance of the Thai media which was infamously professional and ruthlessly efficient.

Yes, you cannot hold a candle to the "master" Mr. Abhisit when it comes to propaganda and media manipulation. You should enroll at the Shinawatra University for a MBA and choose the option, Domestic and International Corruption Management. And the course leader is, you know who....

A shocking and dreadful story of anger, violence murder and the total failure of the rule of law and justice in our lovely Chiang Mai.

God knows this kind of thing can happen almost anywhere in the world but it does seem that there is an element in the Thai psyche which is prone to disproportionate reaction. Nobody likes to lose face, of course, but it seems to assume monumental proportions with some Thai people and often leads to very destructive consequences.

I have long believed that a seriously contributory factor to this kind of violence in Thai society is a lack of the effective rule and enforcement of law and equality before and trust in the legal system. No matter how inconsistent and unacceptable it may be in a civilised society, it must seem to many Thai people that in the last resort violence is all that is left. That needs to change in both reality and perception, if resort to violence is to be reduced.

Although I am anything but a supporter, this is at least in part what the more genuine amongst the red brigade are complaining about: The total failure of successive generations of Thai politicians to secure for all Thai people that equality before the law and the right to expect justice, which has quite simply been bought by only those who can afford it. Perhaps when that is achieved we will read far fewer of these horror stories.

Can't be to many people going about Chiang Mai that can remember the WW2. You would have to be 75 years old or more

In a place like Chiang Mai there are more than you might think who do remember it, anyway, you don't have to have lived through the war to want to celebrate the liberation of our mums and dads etc!

Well said Millwall, I arrived a year or so after VE Day but:

"...at the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them".

Sorry, cannot be at the sing-song tonight so blast our a chorus of Land of Hope and Glory for me.