nisakiman

Maybe someone has inadvertently imported some Crazy Ants from the US.

"As the ants have advanced into new habitats, they've had the annoying habit of swarming inside electronics..."

http://www.livescience.com/37720-crazy-ants-invade-electronics.html

I got a letter for the Vietnam visa a couple of weeks ago. Someone in a previous thread on the subject recommended not picking a company from the first Google Search page that came up, but to check out the places on pages 2 and 3. He was right. On page one, the companies advertising charge $15 - 20 for a letter. I found one on page two which offered the same service for $8. No problem with them. They were very quick, and a couple of days after I'd paid, they sent me a PDF file with the required document, plus the form you have to fill in on arrival to save time at the visa desk. Very efficient. If you want to PM me, I can give you their website URL.

It is usually best to open an account at a branch you can easily get to as there will be certain things/problems that "only the branch you opened the account at" can help you with...just the nature of the Thai banking system.

Yes, that is a pain. I opened an account with Bangkok Bank in Hua Hin several years ago, then because I hadn't used my card for a couple of years (I'm in Europe) forgot the PIN. We were in Ubon last year, and I tried to get a new PIN for my card from one of the local branches.

No deal. "You have to go to Hua Hin to do that" they told me. Bugger. So this year, we will have to go to Hua Hin for a few days just to do that and hopefully to organise internet banking.

Oh well, Hua Hin will be a nice place to spend Christmas day! I can think of worse things to be doing!

Does anybody have any old pic's from the 70's or 80's.

please post.

PKG

I have seen a picture of Patong from 40 years ago and there was nothing but palm trees from the beach back to the mountain. There was one building higher than the palm trees.

Patong approx 35 years ago .. the one buidling doubled from a restaurant to hotel.

I went to Patong in 1970, and it was just like your photos. Virgin beach with a few fishing boats pulled up on it. I was staying in town (I believe the hotel is still there, albeit somewhat upmarket from those days), and made a few forays out to different beaches. It was idyllic. The only reason I went to Phuket was because I was travelling down through Thailand (hitch-hiking, bus, train, whatever), and the name of the island tickled my youthful sense of humour.

"Wow, I've just GOT to go to a place called 'Fukit' (close enough ), if only so I can tell people I've been there!"

Patong has changed a bit since those days...

Edit to add that I was the only farang there that I was aware of. (I'm sure there were others, but I didn't see any.)

I predict that shortly there will be a ban on mentioning his name or posting articles about him here on TVF

That would be grand!

I agree, the sight of Thaksin's face makes me want to puke, and the mention of his name reminds me of dead alleged drug dealers who weren't given an opportunity to go to the Olympics....and not return.

This is not about Thaksin, Yingluck, Suthep, Abhisit, but about freedom of speech!!

If the PM had ordered the media, to avoid reporting on Suthep, I would have reacted in exactly the same way!

Agreed. It looks like the Thought Police are ready to move into the mainstream. Thus far they have more or less restricted themselves to a particular issue, but expansion now beckons. Prayuth's velvet glove is slipping from his iron fist.

As I understand it, Bangkok is built on essentially marshy land. I wonder how deep they will have to go with the foundations? Quite a long way down, I'd imagine. That could well be the solution to the 15000 parking spaces if there are multiple levels below ground. Are there any estimates on cost yet?

I got a double entry tourist visa at Hanoi 2 months ago; but I think you'll need to show air tickets for travel in & out of Thailand.

Ah, that's interesting. I'll give it a try.

Ah! That's something I didn't know.

So given that I'll be 62 days (yes, bad planning, I know; I wasn't really thinking when I booked the tickets - it was two calender months) from arrival in Thailand to departure, should I apply to immigration when I return from Hanoi? Before immigration, presumably. Also, I have the marriage cert in Greek and and official English translation (we married in Greece 7 - 8 years ago), but not in Thai. Would I have to get an official Thai translation, or would English suffice? Also, I'm not visiting a spouse. She's living with me here in Greece. We're visiting her parents.

Edit to add that we will only be in Thailand for about two weeks before we fly to Hanoi, then about 5 weeks after we return, during which time I'd like to pop over to Pakse for a couple of days.

Thanks for the link, paz. Some useful info there.

You may not even need the tourist visa since being married to a Thai you can obtain a 60 days extension at immigration for Bt 1,900.

Surely, to get a 60 day extension, I have to have a visa to start with? If I'm on an exemption, there's nothing to extend. Or am I getting hold of the wrong end of the stick?

I'll be flying into Thailand and getting a 30 day exemption stamp. A couple of weeks later, I'm going to Hanoi for a week or so, where I'll apply for a 60 day tourist visa. According to an archived thread I just looked at, the Thai embassy there will only issue a single entry tourist visa, not a double entry. When we return from Hanoi, we'll be going to stay with the in-laws in Ubon, and I had planned to pop over to Lao for a couple of days while there. Does the single entry tourist visa mean I can't leave the country apart from when I fly back to Europe? Or is there a way to convert it to a double entry at a land border? Does anyone have any experience of this?

Drat ............Thought I was going to read...."British REAL ALE in Ubon"..............

Don't think a cask conditioned ale would travel too well, particularly after having sat on the dock at BKK for a couple of days in 38° heat!

But Belgian beer is good. Usually expensive, but good. Handily, it's just up the road from the outlaws' place where I'll be staying in a couple of months, so I'll give it a whirl while I'm there.

According to Danish research, all these nannying lifestyle interventions (by people who think they know better than us how we should live our lives) has absolutely NO impact on health. This article has its main focus on the impact of smoking bans, but also includes alcohol consumption. The links are mostly to Danish sites, but Google translate does a reasonable job.

...........................................................................................................................

Public health failure: Lifestyle improvements do not lead to less disease and death

Translated from Danish article by Klaus K, 180grader.dk:

Sundhedspolitisk fiasko: Livsstilsforbedringer udskyder ikke sygdom og død

“Lifestyle disease”: – Politicians’ eagerness to push the Danes to improve their lifestyles is beginning to look like a gigantic health policy failure. It is now clear that the political focus on the prevention of “lifestyle diseases” will not lead to less disease and death.

Despite the many expert claims that smoking cessation, exercise, and other lifestyle improvements will prevent illness and death, there is actually no proof that this will happen. Even if you could make all Danes stop smoking, it is unlikely to reduce cancer, according to high quality studies.

Experts talk nonsense about smoking again

This is shown by solid evidence from 40 years of costly human trials – the so-called random controlled intervention trials – where health researchers have succeeded in having thousands of healthy subjects switch to healthier lifestyles – including smoking cessation – without any effect on the participants’ disease and death rate over time (1 – 2).

The negative results were recently confirmed by a large Danish random trial, the Inter99 study, which examined the effect of medical checkups and “intensive lifestyle advice.” Despite the fact that many of the participants improved their lifestyle, the study ended after 10 years with no effect on morbidity and mortality (3), just like the other studies.

Health checks of the population is money down the drain

And there is reason to pay attention to the results of the random trials. For unlike the comparative statistics of lifestyle and diseases, which is routinely mentioned in the media, random trials can actually tell us something about causes. They are simply of a higher quality than the normal statistical studies, and therefore often called the “gold standard” in statistical studies of diseases (4).

The methodology of these random trials is that the subjects are divided into two groups at random, one group is helped to a “healthy” lifestyle – including smoking cessation – while the other group continues its “unhealthy” lifestyles. Researchers then compare diseases in the two groups over time – for example after 5, 10 or 15 years.

The results have been a big disappointment to the health sector – but they have been clear-cut: Switching to a healthy lifestyle, including smoking cessation, led neither to the reduction of disease nor increased lifespan in healthy subjects. The results of all the trials has been a big round zero.

Result after 10 years of lifestyle improvements in huge Danish study: No effect

At the start of the Inter99-study a team of Danish doctors and health professionals gave intensive assistance to 6,091 locals to get them to improve their lifestyle – with great success: Participants in the “healthy” group stopped or reduced smoking on a large scale (5), they ate more healthily (6) they drank less alcohol (7), and the men did more exercise (8), while the control group continued its “unhealthy” lifestyles.

But alas – after 10 years of lifestyle change, there was no difference between the two groups in any of the measured diseases, neither in heart disease, stroke or in total mortality.

Results: Although significant changes in lifestyle were described among participants after five years, we found no effect on development of ischaemic heart disease, stroke, combined events, or death in the entire study population over a 10 year period.

6.091 people in the intervention group participated at baseline. No significant difference was seen between the intervention and control groups in the primary end point, ischaemic heart disease HR: 1.03, CI 95%: (0.94 – 1.13) or in the secondary endpoints, stroke HR: 0.98, CI: (0.87 – 1.11); combined endpoint HR: 1.01, CI: (0.93 – 1.09); total mortality HR: 1.00, CI: (0.91 – 1.09).

And as the authors note in the article, no one has ever succeeded in reducing cancer in similar trials.

Stop health paternalism – it does not work …!

There is, in other words, still no evidence that it will lead to less cancer and heart disease or fewer deaths if you get people who otherwise are healthy to stop smoking and start living “healthily”. Indeed, there is strong evidence to the contrary: that it will have zero effect.

This evidence is a blow to supporters of the ruling public health paternalism and to successive governments’ health policies focusing on prevention of so-called “lifestyle diseases”.

It has already been shown very clearly that health paternalism does not work: Diseases and hospital admissions in Denmark have skyrocketed since politicians began to interfere in people’s lifestyle – with the smoking law in 2007 as the most significant intervention, and with the other health paternalism that has followed: (The link is to a chart)

https://cfrankdavis.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/alle_indl_graf560c.jpg

Significantly more disease in Denmark after smoking legislation and health paternalism

According to some doctors the disease increases may be due to the so-called nocebo effect: When politicians and the media start talking a lot about health and disease, people tend to speculate more about health and disease too, and thus the fear of getting sick increases. This anxiety itself may be causative.

Health Politicians have naively thought that they could be seen as “good” by making the Danes “healthy”. Instead of respecting people’s chosen lifestyles, they have spent billions of tax dollars on an at best completely useless and at worst harmful crusade upon peoples private lives.

This crusade has been organized with advice of pharmaceutical lobbyists who orbit the politicians at Christiansborg on a daily basis. The situation is starting to look like a public health disaster – and pharmaceutical lobbyists have reason to be satisfied. After all, disease is what they feed on.

................................................................................................

So it would seem that the main reason for all the money spent trying to stop us from doing what we enjoy is:

1.) To increase the profits of the pharmaceutical companies

2.) To keep all the parasites in 'Public Health' in nice cushy taxpayer-funded jobs.

Heh! I think that shows a true entrepreneurial spirit, hijacking this thread to promote Mr Pichai's hardware store, his portaloos and his free pizza! Well done that man!

<script type='text/javascript'>window.mod_pagespeed_start = Number(new Date());</script>

Can't find anything wrong with that.

Hope at the end they will ban smoking from everywhere.

And I am a heavy smoker.

You can always go live in the UK or California where your wish is already a reality. In CA you can't even smoke in your own condo.

No heavy smoker would make a comment like that. Ah I bit lol

Or you could accept that smokers are a hunted species right now and rightly so their habits have caused cancer to many a bystander. Thailand is just catching up with the rest of the world.

That is complete and utter tosh. You've obviously been thoroughly indoctrinated with the anti-smoker propaganda. But don't feel bad about it, robblok. Millions of people have been gulled in the same way, including the media and all the politicians (well, they live in a parallel universe anyway) who have enacted all the economically disastrous and socially divisive smoking bans at the behest of the fanatical anti-smoking zealots.

"Although numerous studies seeking to find strong (or any) evidence of a link between SHS (secondhand smoke, or “passive smoking”) and lung cancer have failed to find such, the popular wisdom (shared by most scientists) is that SHS is indeed a cause of lung cancer. One reason for this widespread mythology is the failure of news media — both general and scientific — to take note of these studies."

http://acsh.org/2013/12/two-stories-one-link-found-secondhand-smoke-lung-cancer-one-seems-care/

"A large-scale study found no clear link between secondhand smoke and lung cancer..."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2013/12/12/study-finds-no-link-between-secondhand-smoke-and-cancer/

"THE world's leading health organisation has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect."

http://web.archive.org/web/20021128202555/http:/www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/03/08/wtob08.html

If you only listen to (and believe) fanatics who are committed to a warped ideological agenda, then you are bound to entertain some pretty kooky ideas; ideas like a whiff of cigarette smoke causing cancer. If you actually engaged your brain and directed just a tad of commonsense towards this claim (that SHS is somehow dangerous), you might come up with things like 'but I thought the first rule of toxicology was that the dose makes the poison?", or "well how come back in the 1940s and 1950s when nearly everyone smoked everywhere, lung cancer was much, much less prevalent (per 100,000) than it is now?". You know, the sort of critical thinking that we used to be taught in junior school and were expected to deploy in higher education, rather than just accepting unquestioningly what any Tom, Dick or Harry says. Particularly if that Tom, Dick or Harry is a member of a fanatical, agenda driven group of zealots.

When we're staying with mum and dad in Ubon, we take them out to eat quite often, and they invariably want to go to MK (and then Swensen's for dessert). I quite like the food there, and the duck is always good. I don't think it is particularly cheap by Thai standards, but it is a very slick operation, and service is usually fast and good. I'd probably only go there once a flood if the choice was mine. If I'm going to a place like that in a mall, I prefer to go to Fuji.

Our rice cooker (Sharp Computerice) cooks sticky rice without pre-soaking it. Makes nice sticky rice, too. And being quite new, it's fairly energy efficient.

That said, I'm all for these kids pursuing new ways of doing old things. Made from bamboo? Sounds interesting. I'd like to see it in operation and taste the fruits of its labour.

Good luck to them. If they can patent the idea and find a commercial partner willing / able to market it at reasonable cost, they should be on a winner. Lots of people in Asia like good sticky rice.

Did she specify what you should be doing in the bedroom? Demonstrating the consummation of your marriage perhaps? The mind boggles...

Yes, I could cope with that. A tad upmarket from my economy seats on Qatar in a couple of months.

Perchance to dream. Keep doing the lottery....

Edit to say that the link doesn't work for me, either.

None of the above, I'm afraid.

My reading habits vary depending on:

1) How much interest the thread holds for me.

2) The direction the thread seems to be taking.

3) How much time I have.

Sometimes I won't even get half-way down the first page.

Sometimes I'll read all the pages.

Sometimes I'll read the first couple of pages and then skip to the last page.

Generally though, if the OP is interesting and the comments are for the most part sensible (regardless of whether I agree with them or not), I'll read all the comments. However, if the OP seems initially interesting (which is, of course, why I clicked on it), but the thread looks like it's turning into playground name-calling and "My dad could beat your dad" direction, or "You can't trust a Thai, they're all the same" type of thread, then I lose interest and go read something else. I've got better things to do than read the outpourings of the intellectually challenged.

So sorry, Kostas, I couldn't tick any of your options. Perhaps you could add a category for me and those like me!

A lot of negativity here. What's up with you guys? Were you never young?

When I was young and trawling around Asia in the late 60s early 70s, I was living on a lot less (in relative terms) than what the OP is proposing. And I had a ball. Sure, at my age now, I want a bit more comfort than $8000 could provide, but when I was in my late teens/early 20s I was quite happy with a cheap hotel (sometimes sleeping in my sleeping bag on the roof), eating basic street food, smoking the local dope and generally 'chilling out'. I loved it, and didn't feel in the slightest bit deprived. I was seeing different places, experiencing different cultures, meeting different people, eating different food. And I'm not talking about a two-week holiday. I spent more than three years in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Thailand and Malaysia, with the odd break in UK to earn a bit more money.

Of course it's doable.

Well the safe dose depends on the person.....there are people who drink a bottle whiskey per day until they are 80, than they reduce it a bit. While I know girls who get an hangover if they drink 2 glass of wine.

That's not a valid reason for omitting any recommended safe dosage. Average or median values derived from statistics could be used. Any substance can become dangerous if too much is consumed.

One effective way of raising the average IQ of the population would be to remove all the warning labels and let nature take its course.

One problem with that appraoch is that the people who engage in dangerous drug consumption behavior may affect the health or lives of other innocent people, especially in the case of driving a vehicle whilst experiencing the effects of recreational drugs such as ethanol. Should there be a safety guideline on ethanol products that suggests not to drive within x hours of consumption? Such a written guideline may at least cause some consumers to rethink their decision to drive a vehicle and then change their mind.

Like a lot of you, I don't agree with having ugly pictures being displayed all over the packaging of your much-loved drug ethanol. But do you agree that some safety guidelines should be included for such a powerfully psychoactive drug? You may not need them, but there are others in society who could be better informed.

I would have thought that unless they've been living on another planet, everyone these days is aware of the dangers of drinking and driving, and also know that it is against the law. I seriously doubt that putting warnings on the label will make any difference at all.

The U.S. public health establishment buries overwhelming evidence that abstinence is a cause of heart disease and early death. People deserve to know that alcohol gives most of us a higher life expectancy—even if consumed above recommended limits.

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/truth-wont-admit-drinking-healthy-87891/

The usual puritanical prohibitionists singing their usual song of exaggeration and scaremongering. Those people (a small minority) who have a problem with alcohol will be unaffected by any gruesome photoshopped medico-porn or hyperbolic warnings; they will simply ignore it. All it would achieve (same as in the garbage plastered all over cigarette packs), is the further uglification of the things around us, and the massaging of the egos of the self-righteous. Nobody takes a blind bit of notice of the message. I can just imagine how that expensive bottle of claret will look on the dinner table, plastered with pictures of diseased livers. Lovely.

If you cannot go for a few hours without an alcohol fix, I think you may have much bigger problems than you may realize.

That misses the point entirely. Given that drinking alcohol on trains almost never causes problems, and given that it is very pleasant to while away the hours on the train sipping a cold beer or two, this seems like a sledgehammer solution to a non-existent problem. These people proposing stupid laws like this really ought to get a grip. We are not children, we are autonomous adults, and capable of making our own decisions. We don't need (or want) interfering busybodies trying to coerce us into a lifestyle that they personally approve of. If that's the way they want to live then that's fine; I'm a live and let live type of person. But when they start telling me how I should live my life, then they can just f**ck off.

Maybe because 90% of passengers are obese.

And therein lies a whole can of worms. A couple of years ago, my daughter visited me here in Greece, and I took her to the airport for her return (Easyjet) flight. She was 5kg over the weight limit, and they were demanding something like €60 excess baggage. I pointed out to the check-in girl that my daughter weighed not much more than 50kg, and that the chap currently checking in at the next desk had to weigh a minimum 95kg plus his luggage. They were unmoved, and my daughter had to leave a 5 litre box of wine she'd bought as a gift for someone, otherwise it would have made it a very expensive box of cheap wine!

There is a fundamental injustice in situations like that, as the whole issue of luggage limits is down to the fact that more weight = more fuel, which is the justification given for excess baggage charges.

There is an airline in Samoa that now charges tickets by overall weight, person + baggage (mainly because most Samoans tend to be very overweight, I believe), and I think that it would be much fairer if all airlines adopted some sort of structure which took into account the overall weight of passenger and baggage. I've never been charged for excess baggage myself, but I know I would be very brassed off if an airline did charge me, since both my wife and I combined weigh less than some people I see boarding.