nglodnig

This can't be right:

Figures released by the British government showed that between 2011 and 2012 there were 296 British deaths in Thailand.

In the 12 months up to April 1, 2013 there were 389 British deaths in Thailand, while in the same period up to April 2014 there were 362 deaths and 267 hospitalisations of British tourists.

Is that the falang price? I tried to get across from Isaan to Loa by way of the so-called "Friendship Bridge" near Udon Thani and was told I would need to get a visa costing a couple of thousand baht I think.

I told them what they could do with their friendship.

I learned to drive in Bahrain, got my license there, and then after returning to the UK drove for a year on it and then took my test to get the UK driving licence. During that time I managed to rent a car with no problem on a Bahraini licence (not an international one). Howver, my policeman brother told me that this only works for foreign nationals and not for UK citizens. Still he's a stickler for the rules and luckily no-one pulled me up about it (he didn't arrest me so that's something). Tip - I did the test after six lessons or whatever it was for the maneuveres - reverse round a corner, emergency stop, park and all that sort of stuff - cos I had road sense already as I had been driving for three years. Do the maneuveres and don't crash into anything and the examiner will pass you - because he will see you know how to drive a car, which is what they look for. As my instructor put it, when we got blocked on a narrow road and I reversed back to allow the other car out "I wouldn't have allowed another of my students to do that". But driving on Arab roads for a couple of years giives you you some survival instincts.

Better just to take all the tourists money when they land, herd them into camps for their own safety, then put them on their planes when their return trip is due. Amazingly Safe Thailand! Should do the tourist industry a power of good.

A mate of mine who was involved in programming the original NCR cash machines told me if you don't take the money out - it will suck it back in and credit your account. I did it once and he's right. I haven't noticed about cash first then card (normally in Europe you take your card then cash) but I suppose the "Anything else you need?" question after you've taken the cash out would facilitate holding the card inside - and I would imagine that the cash machine was programmed to suck it back in if it wan;t taken after a "reasonable" time for bank staff to retrieve it and send it on.

Apparently when they were developing the software the office they were using was closed down on Friday and they still hadn't finished so they decamped to an apartment they were using, with cash machines, server and network equipment and set it all up in the flat and finished off the coding over the weekend (deadlines). One cash machine was on the dining table, the kitchen had the server and the other cash machine was in the bedroom. Network switch in the hall. With lots of pizza everywhere. I can imagine the scene.

There's a famous equation (google it) that shows how often intelligent life will occur in our galaxy - which is 10 billion years old. Even if they survive a million years with 100 plus billion stars out there with maybe a billion of them ever producing intelligent life - the chances of us and them co-existing on the same time scale (and to be able to communicate with radio at light speed across a galaxy 100,000 light-years across) are slim. The best we'll ever find (if we ever get out there, say with generation star-ships or hibernation or super-fast fusion drives or star-trek like warp drives) the most likely event we will see is the remains of lost long dead civilizations. Comforting to think we are producing a sea the size of Texas of plastic that will survive for a long LONG time to tell any future visitors - we were here. Keep throwing those plastic bags away!

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

Suprisingly robust - before the first exoplanet was discovered, just as Yuri Gagarin went into space in 1961.

Excellent news! Although I cycle from Hang Dong to Chiang Mai along the 108, I always think how tenous my protection is on the so-called "clcyle lane"

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I have never encountered an ATM skimmer - they must be few and far between. But I can check my transactions daily with internet e-banking and spot a fraud. My point is - travellers cheques are almost the same as cash and make you a target for thieves - but with PIN numbers on plastic your cards are virtually useless. The only fraud I have encountered with them is when one was stolen in the Nat West mail room (I know that as fact, the police phoned me up as part of their investigation) of high-value international cards being sent out. They bought a car with the card and used it to run up parking tickets and buslane violations and finally the car was used as part of a robbery.

The safest way to carry money is plastic, and a memorized PIN these days. Lose it and phone the bank they stop the card almost instantly. Anybody can forge a signature on a travellers cheque and if they got your passport as well nobody looks like their passport photograph anyway. OK so the bank will re-imburse you but it makes you an attractive target for thieves.

Travellers cheques reminds me of when I was an "oiler" working for a haulage company in Saudi Arabia in my youth, in the early eighties. I broke my flight home (9 weeks on, 3 weeks off) in Amsterdam, walked down from the train station with my backpack, wearing jeans and t-shirt into the Dam square, and walked into the five-star Hotel kraponolsky or whatever it was called, and asked for a room. The receptionist sniffed and said I would have to pay cash in advance so I took out my per-diem as a (fairly thick) book of 100-dollar travellers cheques and said US dollars OK? and began to sign. Those were the days! Nowadays of course I wouldn't be so gauche.

"krasnapolsky" google just told me.

Been going to Thailand since 1980, at least once and sometimes several times a year - never been asked to show funds or even a confirmed return ticket (which I didn't have for the first few years as I was using a "sub-load" ["subject-to-load" i.e. only get a seat if not full] ticket for airline staff). Just try and not look like a pauper. (e.g. "will work for food" signs around your neck are a dead give-away, try and avoid these, or at least take them off going through immigration).

Yep, climate change caused by the rise in man-made CO2 in the atmosphere - except - the rise in CO2 is linear, the temperature is anything but - for instance it dipped in the forties and sixties. Plus it has stopped warming globally as "everyone" agrees for 17 years now. Plus it started to get warm in the eighties just as North America and Western Euroipe cleaned up their coal-fired power generation to stop pumping sulphates and the like into the high atmosphere - so consequently the albedo (cloud cover) was reduced and it warmed up a tad.

Climate HAS always changed - it was warmer in the Middles Ages, now proven to be global (evidence found in the Antarctic, not to mention the "greening" of Greenland during this time) - go back 8000 years and reisiduals from the last ice age had caused sea levels to rise cutting Britian off from mainland Europe - sea levels have risen a 120 METRES since the last ice age of 20,000 years ago, a few mm a year is nothing, a metre or so a millenia - and finally - "the heat has gone into the oceans" no it hasn't - the temperature rise since the fifites is reckon to be 0.06 degrees or the same amount of heat the Sun gives us in a few days - scorchio!

Plus plus - temperatures have only been monitored by weather stations (outside of the US eastern Seaboard and Western Europe) globally in the last fifty years - "evidence" of GLOBAL warming is taken from tree rings - which doesn't work in deserts, tundra, mountains, savannahs, is affected by overhanging coverage of trees above, disease and drought - better to use tea-leaves and chicken entrails.

Sorry to see him go - I liked it when he turned into a goodie in Moonraker - but to be honest he was lucky to have reached 74. He had acromegaly (a disorder of the pittuitary gland which produces excess growth) and people rarely survive into middle-age with that condition. Lucky he lasted as long as he did.

So your talking about a bicycle......hahaha I thought a motorcycle....I wouldn't even pay 10 grand and your saying some cost 250 grand....without a engine..???

I bet my Huffy from Walmart will do what those do.....60 bucks usd....took me to Khon Kaen and back many times over the years 60k round trip

Yes - real bikes.

Check for BUPA, the amalgamation of the earlier BLUE CROSS and BLUE SHIELD. This insurance company does not have shareholders to satisfy.

https://www.bupa.co.th/en/individuals.aspx

They appear to stop at age 65

I'm not touting for BUPA in the slightest but when I rang them up they promised to cover you to the bitter end. Do you mean they won't give new cover after 65?

If you've got a rocking crib at the foot of the bed, when he/she wakes up stick your foot out from under the duvet and rock em back to sleep. Works 50% of the time :-) If it doesn't up you get for nappy change and/or feed.

At times with my little uns I had to sleep in the spare bedroom so I had enough zzzs to go to work the next morning.

I'm grateful my heart is still beating!

When I were young we used t' live in shoe box by  side o'road. Kids today just don't believe us....

First visit in 1980, seem to remember only getting a two week visa (and needed proof of a confirmed return ticket too, and not a sub/load airline staff one I often had, but nobody ever checked).  I seem also to remember that US and German citizens had special privs - at least a one month visa automatically, or maybe was that two? US citizens got it because they had just recently finished defeating communism in South East Asia, or at least had come second. German citizens got it because it ws one of the few governments that allowed Thais in automatically on arrival - a process that stopped when many Thai girls set up "business" in the various places apparently and the Germans withdrew this - and so did the Thais in retaliation, Germans were just like the rest of us, after that.

Quite honestly, it has been shown time and time again that if you put an impressionable child in jail then the career criminals there will "educate" him and he will leave jail a professsional criminal. Lost for life.

Tough love. take the playstation or whatever away from him. NEVER leave money hanging around or give any opportunity to steal. Starve him of cash unless you know exactly what it's for - if it's for a bus ticket, insist on seeing the receipt.

Feed him - and give him his essentials, clothes, sanitary stuff, etc. If he needs money make him earn it through chores in the house - money is never given for free. A contradiction in terms I know from the "starve of cash" but it is a step towards adult responsibility in earning a living.

Good luck.

Been there. Two wonderful daughters and one wayward son.

Isn't it simpler and quicker to come up with a list of Thai food that DOESN'T have MSG? It'll be a short list I bet!

What is slightly skewed in the BBC report and in the argument against "low" wages generally in CH is the rent for a one-bed flat in the city-centre - CHF1800 or almost $2000 a month.

The answer is - don't live there - rents are extortionate - live out in the suburbs and commute as I do. Rent and mortagage costs can be halved by moving 20-30 km out of Zurich for example.

That is good news. I blame my wife actually. She visited England for the first time back in the eighties and we went up to York Minster (burned down six months later) and then Hampton Court (same thing). Last October we took a trip from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai to see the White Temple and six months later what happens?

If the owners of the Taj Mahal are on this site I could make an offer to keep her away from it. Meanwhile next year we plan to visit Anghor Wat in Cambodia. See it now - last chance before it crumbles into ruins.

By mistake I picked up a receipt once from a Swiss ATM that I was using that showed how much money was loaded in and paid out. It was probably an audit note for the filler-upper who failed to pick it up.

Roughly a million francs = more than 1.1 million US dollars. Twenty thousand notes at a 100/200/500 francs a time = a lot of dosh.

Must be twenty years ago now but when sending my wife and children off from LHR to BKK I messed up my eldest daughters name on her ticket - they didn't match. This was on a Saturday - frantic finding of a new ticket for and off she went the next day on TG - and they did her proud. Escorted all the way to the flight and she said she ended up in business class! And no charge for this service as well - I think that has changed though.

I got a refund on the original ticket btw. Again I doubt if this will happen now. Last time I went through BKK (in February) Bangkok Airways refused to fly me because I had used my short name on the booking and my passport had my long name. Luckily I had a credit card with a photograph on it (mine naturally) with my short name so they let me on. First time that has ever happened in over 30 years of flying.

However, I believe that most banks will not renew Debit or Credit cards unless you have a UK address and they will not send them overseas.

NatWest have been sending my debit and credit cards to overseas addresses for decades. These days I do get them to send everything to a UK address though as I expect to be moving about quite a lot over the next few years and remembering to update mailing addresses can be a pain.

Ditto barclays - I don't know about TH but Europe is fine - we're all Europeans now!

They may TELL YOU they only do it for two years but I know someone who has been doing it for many many years - typical efficient post office, they don't check. His reason was he wanted to keep all his old credit cards but I told ALL my issuing companies I had moved and EVERY one just changed my address to the new one (in Europe not TH) - no problem at all. Sometimes the post room didn't recognise their letters were going international and I waited months for some to arrive - but in the main it works fine.

Alternatively you can simply redirect mail from any UK address to a post office box or international redirection.

The last time I enquired with Royal Mail they would only redirect mail for a maximum of two years. So unfortunately I think redirection is only a temporary solution.