nisakiman

Being new to smartphones (I only got one a month ago), I'm not sure how this works. How do you register online? Via the AOT site? Presumably they text you the password? Dunno, but it would be handy to be able to skype the wife to let her know if I made the flight or not. My connection was a reasonably easy one until all this crap with Suthep started. Now I'm not sure if I'll make my connection.

Thanks for the link, Lakegeneve. They only leave on the hour at that time of day, so it looks like it's a taxi ride. Presumably all the taxi drivers will be up to speed with the situation, and will know the fastest route avoiding protest problems.

There is a departure at 07:30 as well as 8am Sent from my i-mobile i-STYLE 7.3 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Yes, but is there one at 8.30? Because I don't know if I'll make the 8.00 one, and the 9.00 will be too late.

Is it still leaving Suvanabhumi every hour on the hour? My flight is due in at 7 am, and it's debatable whether or not I'll make it through customs / immigration in time to make the 8 o'clock bus. My flight from DM is at 11 am, so it rather looks as if I'm screwed for the shuttle now. I hope a taxi can make the trip in reasonable time.

No Airport closures ... Bless their little coloured socks ! ......

But what about people getting to and from Swampy to train stations, bus stations, Don Muang airport?

Yes, I've been wondering about that. I'm scheduled to arrive 7 am on the 15th at Swampy, and then have a flight at 11 am from DM on to Ubon. What is the route between the two airports? Does it entail going through Bangkok? I've never had cause to go directly from one airport to the other before, so I have no idea about the routes available. I was going to use the shuttle bus, but I think now that maybe a taxi will be the better option. At least a taxi is flexible, route-wise.

Shutting down Krabi airport sounds like a classic case of shooting oneself in the foot. The action will be a mere fleabite to the Yingluck administration, but it will impact heavily on the people of Krabi who rely on tourism for a large part of their income.

I'm really not sure what they hope to achieve with this. Even the mere threat of an airport closure will cause a lot of potential visitors to change their plans and go elsewhere. There seems to be a singular lack of nous among the protesters, and I can't see their actions in Bangkok and elsewhere garnering much popular support, given that it is the average Thai working man who will suffer and pay for their irresponsible approach to the situation.

Ha! beaten to it by both of you!

Yia sou

What city has the biggest Greek population in the world outside of Greece .? No the anwser is not Thailand . it's apparently Melbourne, Australia, which is home to 300,000 Greeks, making it the largest Greek population outside of Greece itself.

When I lived in Melbourne in the 70s, it had the largest population of Greeks after Athens - it even beat Thessaloniki, which is the second largest city of Greece! I think Thessaloniki has now reclaimed the No 2 spot.

As my mother language is not English, gives me the opportunity to improve my writing skills and knowledge of the English language.

They say……that it’s never late to learn.

Τα αγγλικά σας είναι εξαιρετική! (Your English is excellent!) I wish I could speak and write Greek as well as you do English, Kosta!

I read TVF because there is a lot of useful information disseminated on this site, and I post here because I'm a compulsive commenter all over the place, and have quite strong opinions. That's not to say I post comments just for the sake of it - I don't. My posting rate is much lower than many here. But if a topic interests me, or espouses an opinion I agree/disagree strongly (or even mildly, sometimes) with, then I'm moved to comment. Also it can be an invaluable source of specific information. On several occasions I've asked a question in the travel section, for instance, and received really useful feedback from people who know the answers to the questions I ask. That sort of thing is priceless.

TVF is a lot of fun, as long as you are fairly thick-skinned. There's no hope here for the professionally offended. The posters here pretty much reflect people you would meet in all walks of life, from the timid to the aggressive, from the intelligent to the stupid, from the honest to the dishonest. It's a microcosm, and there is a lot of entertaining banter. For all the heated arguments that unfold on these pages, it is a community bound together by Thailand, in one way or another, and the people here are for the most part a pretty decent crowd, even if I don't always agree with them!

Satire it may be, but it is not very clever, and so not very funny. I'm not referring to the subject matter, that's neither here nor there to me, but it could have been much better written. It's clumsy and heavy handed.

A friend of mine here had to have a variator (?) replaced on his scooter, and the guy asked him if he wanted one that would give him high top speed or one that would give him better acceleration, so it would seem there are options available.

Try google 164cc honda click there is a company making a big bore kit for the click here in Thailand that will have you pulling 150kph, personally 110 feels fast enough for me.

The 164 kit is for the Click 125 which uses the old PCX 125 engine. But the conversion alone won't nett you anywhere near 150kph. Nor will all the extras.

If you start with a PCX 150 which has higher gearing you might get 130 Kph (indicated)

Back in 1962 I used to have a Lambretta LD 150 and it would cruise all day at about 90 kph which was about 90% throttle.

I'm an Li man myself. It ended up as 200 with a kit from Speeedwell of Acton. Had to go 16T on the front, I think, and a larger rear tire as it didn't have the longer GT gearing.

I always lusted after a Arthur Francis 225 S Hence my reference to the 140 kph. There was also a Raffety-Newman Widcat also 225cc.

Ah, the days of the mods and rockers. I was firmly in the rocker camp myself, not for any ideological reasons, but because I preferred motor bikes to scooters. On a Saturday night at the Manor café in Camberly, you could see some stunning bikes. Classics like the Vincent Black Shadow and Ariel Square Four, modern bikes (at the time) like Triumph Bonnevilles, hybrids where Vincent 1000cc V twins had been shoehorned into Norton Featherbed frames, and many, many more. There would usually be at least a hundred bikes there on a Saturday, lots of them polished and gleaming. Me, I had an old Norton Dominator 88 that leaked oil everywhere.

I always rather liked the cosmetic treatments to the mods' scooters. Chrome bars on the front bristling with mirrors was a favourite. I remember seeing one guy who had mounted dozens of highly polished brass taps on the front of his Lambretta, with matching/complementary paintwork Not sure about the thinking behind that one, but it did look unusual! Maybe he was a plumber's mate...

Social engineering is a euphemism for eugenics. Interested parties juggle the figures to their advantage, because there's a well paid sinecure in it.

In a revealing article in Effective Clinical Practice (March/April 1999) Lisa M. Schwartz and Steven Woloshin conclude that the number of people with at least one of four major medical conditions (actually risk factors) has increased dramatically in the past decade because of changes in the definition of abnormality.

Overweight:

Body Mass Index (BMI) is defined as the ratio of weight (in kg) to height (in meters) squared and is an inexact measure of body fat, though it supposedly establishes cutoff points of normal weight, overweight, and obesity.

Old definition: BMI > 28 (men), BMI > 27 (women)
People under old definition: 70.6 million
New definition: BMI > 25
People added under new definition: 30.5 million
Percent Increase: 43%

The definition was changed in 1998 by U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

http://easydiagnosis.com/secondopinions/newsletter17.html

One of the main reasons we are being constantly hectored about smoking, drinking and eating is because the would-be prohibitionists have got their snouts deep in the trough of taxpayer funding, so the alleged 'dangers' inherent in all these personal lifestyle choices (which in reality should be nothing to do with the state) have to be constantly hyped up to keep the funding rolling in. How else will the Righteous pay the mortgage and run the SUV?

That's why there is so much junk science bandied around these days. 'Research' nowadays involves some single-issue lobby group funding a research project, but basically telling the researchers what answer they expect, and to build a study which will generate the required result. It happens all the time. They are quite blatant about it. Those results are then put out as a press release to a supine media who never check the facts, merely print the results verbatim. And that is why we end up with such idiocy as 'recommended units of alcohol' (a figure that the 'experts' admit was plucked out of thin air with no scientific basis), and 'Passive Smoking'. the theory of which has been comprehensively demolished by all the major studies. But as long as the media are too lazy to actually indulge in what used to be called journalism, the lies will continue to be propagated, and believed, by the media fed masses.

People are bigger now because we have more food available due to modern agricultural methods. A hundred years ago starvation was a real threat, and only the rich could afford to be overweight; but now anyone can afford to overeat, so naturally there are a lot more overweight people. The answer lies not in state interference - there's far too much of that already - but in simple dissemination of the facts (not hyperbole, as is the current fashion), and to allow people to make their own decisions based on those facts.

Can't see what the problem is - unless you've got something to hide, of course??!!

Ah, "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear". One of the nastiest little soundbites to appear so far this century, which rides roughshod over a person's basic right to privacy. Well frankly, I for one don't want government sanctioned peeping toms peering through my bedroom window, even if I'm not hiding anything.

I think fingerprinting at entry points is way over the top. I don't know quite what they expect to achieve with that - I very much doubt that they have access to any international fingerprint database, so all they will be able to compare prints with is their own database, and I would imagine the number of criminals crossing the border who have their prints on record in PP could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

It's pure theatre, just like all the misery of 'security checks' we are subjected to every time we fly. Complete waste of time, energy and money. Merely a political gesture.

And I suspect the Khmer fingerprint collecting is just the same. An exercise in bureaucracy and control.

They're not on the side of Thaksin or Abhisit

They're on the side of democracy.

"What Democracy"

Like it or not, the Thai people voted for the current shower.

So what if it was on the back of populist policies? Populist policies aren't illegal, are they?

What government hasn't promised the earth to win a freakin' election?

"What Democracy"

Oh come on "Hardened Soul" you know very well,there is no concept of Democracy! Thaksin has already stated,that he has no interest in Democracy. And don't you remember his speech "The United Nations is not my Father" ?

"The United Nations is not my Father"

Probably the most intelligent thing he ever said.

The United Nations is busy working on the New World Order with its fellow travellers the WHO and the EU. If they get their way, the world will be controlled by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in an unknown location, and will regulated to death. The UN spells the end of any type of autonomy for any individual. You can see it all around you. Laws restricting things on the basis of 'Public Health'; laws restricting freedoms based on the carefully constructed 'International Terrorism'; the destruction of the family by promoting the 'gay rights' movement (I'm not anti-gay, by the way, just pointing out the bigger picture); the marginalisation of religion; the diluting of nations (and thus national pride and patriotism) with huge influxes of incompatible immigrants; ever increasing centralisation; the list goes on and on, and people are sleepwalking into it. If Thaksin actually rejected the UN (I haven't read the speech you refer to), then he has suddenly gone up in my estimation.

And no, I'm not a tinfoil hatter. I've just read an awful lot of unsettling facts about the UN and it's modus operandum.

I've had similar concerns to the OP. I'm flying in on the 15th, and then have a tight(ish) run to DM to make my connection.

My gut feeling is that even if they had it in mind to do a repeat performance at the airport, they would find so much opposition to the idea that they wouldn't be able to do it. Too many people depend on the money that flows into Thailand via the airport.

I hope I'm right, anyway!

If Suthep gets his way, there won't be any year-end peak travel period.

It shows for UK citizens that no visa is required prior to arrival in Australia, but last time I went there (which admittedly was more than 10 years ago), I had to apply online for an e-visa. It may have changed since then, but I rather doubt it.

JSixpack, on 15 Dec 2013 - 14:57, said:

Quote

Not to mention the first day of moving here, one of the shop workers asked how much I paid for rent. I basically told her in clear words to mind her own business.

That was quite rude of you when you might have had a pleasant interaction w/ the worker.

It's standard Asian culture to ask you how much you pay for things. Even Japanese, most polite people in the world, do that. They're shocked when you tell them that back in the West it'd be bad manners.

You must be Fresh Off The Boat w/ much to learn. Chill and learn w/o all the provincial righteousness.

To my life.......I can't understand why is it sooooooo bad in the west to ask how much rent are you paying!!!!!!

I do come from the west and never encountered that problem in any of the countries I have been.

Saying that.......May be......only in England!!!!!!!

Kosta, the English consider it very bad form to ask how much someone earns, or how much rent they pay. In Greece, it's quite normal to ask those things.

However, in England, when people advertise in a local paper to sell something - house, car, second-hand washing machine, whatever, they will always put the price. In the Greek local newspapers, you can look through pages of advertisements, and none of them will have a price! It drives me crazy. If I'm looking for something, say a car or motorbike, I have a budget, and I don't want to waste my time calling people if the price is too high.

So - different strokes for different folks, as they say in England.

Thanks for some good advice. Useful tip about avoiding weekends - I hadn't thought about that.

And hanuman, thanks for that offer of a good contact. Closer to the time (somewhen in January) I shall PM you for that.

While I'm here and I have your attention ( ), do any of you have recommendations for a hotel in SR? Up to, oh, about 1500 Baht, I guess, but 800 would be better! I look for comfort and good and friendly service, not luxury. And what are the transport options (non-rip-off, natch...) from SR to Angkor Wat? Is it far?

Edit. Just upped the max for hotel from 1200 to 1500 Baht. Broadens the choice a bit!

Erm,

form of transport?

Public. We can borrow FiL's car for local stuff, but not for cross-border.

Surin bus station to Chong Chom Boarder crossing 60 baht by van. Chong Chom to SR as low as 1500 baht by taxi limo to SR. 2 hour trip black top road.

Do I take from that comment that Surin is the better option rather than Sisaket? The comments in the old thread I linked to seem to be saying that the trip from Sisaket is viable (and closer to Ubon).

She had to let it go as she knows there are 10 more girls ready to take her place the moment she leaves. Free rent at Thonglor, free food, spending money, not having to kiss someone her grandfather's age, white racial background, physically fit and a guy that doesn't beat her or take all her money can be quite appealing for many Thai girls.

I can't quite believe I'm reading this! It's like a line from a particularly low-budget 'B' movie!

A word in your shell-like, sunshine. The guys on these forums eat onanistic popinjays like you for breakfast, so save the bragging for when you're with more naive and impressionable company.

Maybe you should just pop in and ask. There will probably be different qualities at different prices.