scratt

What's the likelihood that imported oils like Olive Oil (which are already sold at a vastly inflated price) also go up!

Oh, and how come it "costs" Tesco Lotus 50 baht a bottle (over £1) to provide it here when it is only £1.30 in the UK?

Good grief.

Why would anyone complain. It's easy to get to. 20 minutes from BKK. And eminently better then Suan Plu. I send a rep. anyway.

There are far more important things to get worked up about.

"It should be a couple of years before banks can recoup the loss with other kinds of revenue."

Translation : We'll still get the same amount of cash from each customer, and probably more. We just haven't figured out the scam yet.

The rest is pretty much untranslatable. But basically when a goose sits on a log under a full moon and you are doing an ATM transfer standing on one leg then you might get it for free.... or not.

Hmmm.. This is the same hospital that charged my wife around 1000 baht for a 150 baht bottle of pills that had a Bangkok Hospital sticker placed over the original products label to make it look like it was something other than generic stock from superdrug.

This is also the hospital that asks you to sign a waver when you undergo any medical treatment which indemnifies the hospital, staff and doctors from any legal action in future, even if their actions are criminal.

I know who I believe in this story.

As far as I am concerned I am in the camp that if I pay for a connection of speed X, I expect to get that speed all day long, every day - regardless of what type of bandwidth I am using.

Of course we all know the reality is different.... in Thailand particularly. But also in most other countries to some degree. Because all ISPs manipulate their sales pitch to sell apparently all singing all dancing "unlimited" packages - which aren't.

When you pay for a connection speed in Thailand you supposedly get that speed on the local network (in country) and your international bandwidth is shared between all users. So YMMV.

I reported here about a year ago that True have been experimenting (in my area at least) with blocking torrents, and killing connections that use a large percentage of torrent traffic. People here called me on it.

Since then in Nonthaburi I have found workarounds. But rest assured that the current censorship of sites like justin.tv and the like is not simply because of the political situation. It is because the ISPs here, particularly True, want to control the TV we watch as well.

Expect this situation to get slowly get worse.

I'll have one 16GB or one 32GB iPhone 4 going spare on Sunday evening / Monday morning. Basically I got one of each size for someone who was not sure of the size they want, knowing I can sell it at MBK if no-one else takes it.

Will be selling the 16GB at 30,000 Baht, or if it is the 32GB it will go for 36,000 Baht. (UK Model and Unlocked.)

PM me if anyone is interested. (No Offers. No TIme Wasters Please. Meeting in Bangkok on Sukhumvit somewhere public.)

Coming from the UK originally I find it hilarious that road legal diesel will be died red!

And in any case (particularly in Thailand) how is a fuel die going to give me any confidence that fuel is not just some bogus fuel with some colouring in it?!?!?

Disclosure : I don't think I've ever been ripped of for fuel in Thailand anyway. What is this all about!???!

I haven't followed the latest developments on the various models of body scanners but understood that, when/if implemented, you can opt out and go for a pat-down type "scan". Also, in most countries minors cannot go through these scanners as this constitutes a form of child pornography.

Also, these scanners cannot detect items hidden inside the body, nor even externally in fat-folds.

Once some these videos get leaked to the internet hopefully there will be some push-back.

Agreed. I for one will not go through one. These knee-jerk reactions which push through the introduction of equipment of which the full implications have not yet been considered are yet another example of the idiocy of the security situation the world over.

So, advice is to chase after the crazy animal that just bit you and "quarantine" it.. and then go meet with Physicians (who have no medication) so that you can be vaccinated. <deleted>?

What is it that makes government in the West think they can impose their own morality as to when a person should be working and earning money? I am sure they would be more proud if the kids was out stealing, starving and/or abusing drugs and dying at a young age. You know, the LA way...

One of the most significant failures regarding this 'protect the children' hysteria is that it has missed the point ('save the children'), as seen when factory-owners in India and Nepal got caught up in boycott-calls, their western customers imposing trade-rules and the companies then summarily dismissed all underage (by western standard) workers, leaving them to poverty.

Even UNICEF write of the plight caused in Bangladesh after the Child Labor Deterrence Act was introduced in the US, an estimated 50,000 children were dismissed from their garment industry jobs, leaving many to resort to jobs such as "stone-crushing, street hustling, and prostitution", jobs that are "more hazardous and exploitative than garment production". The study suggests that boycotts are "blunt instruments with long-term consequences, that can actually harm rather than help the children involved."

( http://www.unicef.org/sowc97/report/ )

I agree with you. It's simply not possible for one country to apply it's value system to others.

Just as it's not possible to bring political systems from your own country to others that have a different culture / dynamic.

Unfortunately this is what the British Empire tried to do, and now the "US Empire" is revisiting the sins of it's parents.

Why not offer it here also, when that is allowed, with some details or Private mail me. Thank you.

Good idea.. I'll look into it. I have also PM'd you a link for the entry on Isaan Properties.

In fact here it is for anyone else interested.

http://www.isaan-properties.com/index.php?...p;listingID=552

Please note the pictures of the land are from when we bought it. I am waiting on some updated pictures with the equipment and farm buildings shown in more detail.

And http://www.farangconnection.com/

That's brilliant. Thank you for both links.

Hi all,

We have about 8 Rai of land just outside Surin which has all the infrastructure for a Pig Farm already built on it.

It's operating at low capacity at the moment, just ticking over.

I am looking for a real estate agent or for recommendations from people for real estate agents so that we can put this on the market.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks.

The main benefit from the card (IMO) was easing the visa hassle. If the government wants to make money from a program like that, they could offer five or ten year visa packages. I would be interested in a long term visa package for sure. Discounts for various things don't enthuse me at all. Issuing long term visas would save the government money. The price would be higher for the long term per year. Maintaining staff to process regular extensions is costly, it would be a win, win situation for them.

Agreed. When I was originally offered the Elite card I turned it down instantly as I wasn't interested in getting discount on golf or a limo from the airport.. What I actually wanted was a long term visa which did not require me to juggle six things at once and hop back and forth through a hoop all day long..... It's yet another Thai product which is billed at Western prices and yet only offers "bright, shiny intangible things" to try and justify / mask it's own ridiculousness. It's kind of like buying a new furnished Condo by the beach from a large developer, rather than buying a condo yourself privately and employing some local people to renovate it.

I also assumed it would get shelved / go bust eventually and the people who did take one would end up getting ripped off...

Thanks for all the feedback.

Re-installing XP is not going to help me a lot as I am on OS X!

We also just carried out a test at a friends house in the same area. Exactly the same happens on their connection there.

So it does seem to be on this exchange, rather than local to my home!

So be warned this is not local to my house, it is perhaps local to my area (for now), but I expect it will start to become more common across Thailand.

I wish we could switch to Jasmine, but the last time I checked (even though their HQ is just down the road) True were blocking them having any access to our exchange...

Not sure on the number of connections. Whatever is standard with Vuze / Azureus. I will check.

Upload speed as far as I am aware is not limited. It rarely reaches our limit anyway.

Many people do not know that in order to download, you need to upload as well. Data are sent in packets, not a flow. When you download, your comp receives the data packets, and after a predetermined amount is received, it will send out an acknowledgment to the sending source that all have been received. If the other party did not receive this acknowledgment, it will retransmit the same data packets.

When you do not limit the global upload speed in your torrent program, it will congest the upload bandwidth, and your comp cannot send out acknowledgments in a timely manner. Thus, your may be downloading lots of retransmitted data.

We usually limit upload speed in the torrent program to 50-60% of what your ISP gives you.

Hehe. All good advice, but I am well aware of what you say. Disclosure : I have been a software engineer for over 30 years!

As I have said very clearly True *kill* the internet connection to your building in Nonthaburi if you use torrents. I am not talking about no torrent traffic, or torrent throttling, I am saying that web surfing, mail, the whole kit and caboodle is cut, and only the ADSL base signal remains.

I need to investigate more and see if it's linked specifically to trackers, torrent clients and commonly used ports or not and what True are doing exactly. Once I have done that I will tackle them directly, and if necessary put a web site up about it / contact various NewsPapers. The problem on their side is that I assume they are doing this to pay lip service to copyright holders requests. The problem for them (and the effect on us) is that we use it as both an inter-office / home-office and personal file transfer tool and they are cutting off a connection that is using torrents for legal purposes.

I have to wonder if True are testing it in certain non-critical areas for later roll out Nationwide...

Are you running torrents through a wireless connection? What limits did you set for total number of connections and global upload speed?

Nope the machine I am doing this from is directly connected to the router via ethernet.

Not sure on the number of connections. Whatever is standard with Vuze / Azureus. I will check.

Upload speed as far as I am aware is not limited. It rarely reaches our limit anyway.

Download speed as I have said I have both left at Max, and tried throttling per torrent to about 20 or 30k/sec. So with 4 torrents going this never reaches much more than 120k/sec when limited. But True will still kill this connection within minutes of Vuze starting time after time. I wouldn't mind if they simply blocked the torrent port, but the connection is useless. ADSL still shows as connected but all PPP had gone.

Our package is supposed to be around 350 - 400k/sec maxxed out, and can quite happily do that all day long pulling down files from either our own server or that of Apple (for example). It's simply torrents at any speed and of any type that mean that the entire internet connection gets disconnected.

Interestingly my wife's machine (which is connected via Wifi) will quite happily get around this problem, but I cannot tweak Vuze to get any decent speed out of that because of vagaries of our home network.

For a couple of days I have not used torrents at all. Internet has been stable all day long.

As of this morning I can get torrents to run for about 5 minutes before my connection is kicked by True.

A quick reboot of the router and I get internet back again for another 5 minutes.

Kill Vuze and the internet is stable again.

I can confirm with 100% confidence that True has a policy of disrupting internet connections of those using torrent software irrespective of whether the torrents being downloaded are illegal or legal.

I can rinse and repeat this test over and over again. None of my torrents are running at any greater speed than 20kb/s and all of them are legal.

Time to change internet provider, unless someone can point me to a source that will allow me to hide the fact that I am using Vuze / torrents.

Cheers.

I meant to add that I can pull stuff down from Apple or our own servers via ftp and the connection will run at max speed all day long. So this does seem to be directly related to torrent traffic, and is not simply throttling, it's disruption of service.

For the record here in Nothaburi they are actually kicking connections all day long that use a heavy amount of bit torrent traffic.

This doesn't just affect torrents, it also affects PS3 gaming as well.

As of this week I started running tests..

I ran torrents in the morning and had our connection reset about 15 times. Their servers are so sluggish that it then takes 5 - 10 minutes to get a connection again. This may also be because they kick the connection but keep the line alive and when you try to reconnect their server refuses as it thinks you still have a connection until that times out.

In the afternoon I have been running without torrents and the connection is solid again.

I have also swapped the times I do this at around so that I was using torrents in the afternoon / normal surfing in the morning, and so on.

I can repeat this every day without fail and get the same results.

I don't think Interpol can arrest anyone, can they?

Exactly my thoughts. They are simply a liaison agency which relies on local police forces.

Just wanted to clear this up in case anyone stumbled on it and got the wrong impression of MSM.

After meeting with the manager of the office for the condo block it was explained to me much better today.

The 20,000 Baht is a deposit for while my engineers are here. This was not explained at the weekend.

My "visiting" engineers must complete the work to our building engineers standards and they advise prior to work commencing and inspect on completion. I was told there was no risk of my deposit being kept for any reason.. Which seems kind of dumb, because if that is the case then no deposit is required!!

Anyway, it is not a rip off like the forever deposit for items on the roof.

In the end we wrote a cheque, which the office held, and once the job was done they brought the cheque back to us.

Bizarre!

Laws etc., about condominiums, the management process and rules which must (by Law) be practised in Thailand has been upgraded several times in the last few year and are becoming more detailed.

We had one incident a couple of years ago when a large pot fell off a balcony and injured another resident.

The owner of the unit which had the pots asked their insurance company to pay compensation. The insurance company refused and claimed it was the law that a deposit (into the common funds of the condo) has to be lodged for anything which might fall.

At every annual meeting this gets discussed again and again, and our lawyer reminds that this is the law and we should be taking actions to remain within the law.

Of course (like in any country) we have some owners who would rather see the building fall down than contribute 100Baht to a maintence pool etc.

But this of course involves individual deposits. Many of our owners are totally convinced it's a scam and refuse to even discuss it.

So far we have no resolution.

That's interesting, and kind of makes some sense.. Seems that anyone doing anything "new" on our condos is having to stump up to cover this fund for all... Because 20,000 Baht seems like quite a lot of money for one air-con..

Well when I discuss this tomorrow with the management I will mention that I am going to send a letter to other residents asking their feelings and what they have paid.... with a view to getting it back, if anyone else feels aggrieved. I'll see what the reaction is..