leafmould

I had a friend that I knew from travels in India, first I thought driving around Koh phangan for an hour to find the cheapest pad Thai was mildly amusing as I didn't go with him but then I saw that he always filled up one cup in 7/11 with coffee and another with ice but would only pay for the coffee, sometimes arguing long time with staff that It was only one cup, then mixing it outside in his own bottle. I was with him in bkk once and he was on his way to Cambodia with his girlfriend, he wanted to change bhat to usd, so instead of using money change he stood outside the change place on ko San road at noon and asked everybody if they were changing dollers and if he could buy for the non comission rate of 2 bhat per doller more, it took 40 minutes in the sun to do. I took his girlfriend off for a drink as I think she was getting heat stroke. He lives from his girlfriend, now wife, giving body body massage in London and owns and rents out 2 houses. 

Nice Tesco Lotus just outside Roiet, that's about the highlight of the trip for me.

We have Rimping in Chiang Mai, I'll be stocking up before we go, french village bread and smoky cheese, bet they don't have that in the whole of Issan.

try weebly.com free and easy to do yourself, have to pay for "upgrades" like a .com rather than weebly.com but look worth it.

these guys are ok- http://www.phetprasert.com/index2.php?name=timetable&file=r829-2

As with angelbat above if you have a UK bank and a bangkok bank account in Thailand (easy to get), you can transfer to bangkok bank in london from your own account and as its a UK to Uk transfer there are no fees, they then charge you 20 quid and send it to your Thai bank account using TT rate in a couple of days. Its almost as good a rate as bringing cash. http://www.bangkokbank.com/BangkokBank/PersonalBanking/DailyBanking/TransferingFunds/TransferringIntoThailand/ReceivingFundsfromUK/Pages/ReceivingFundsfromUK.aspx

I'm a bit of a temple nut. Phimai and Phanom Rung are 2 of the best. Great fun.

http://www.renown-travel.com/khmer-temples-thailand.html

A bit out of the way for the way there but maybe a detour on the way back is now on the cards. Thanks

I'm driving from Chiang Mai down to Roi Et in a couple of weeks and wondered if anyone knew of anything worth seeing/visiting on the way (beyond Phrae as i know that quite well). Have a map with usual stuff, national parks, waterfalls etc but real knowledge of anything good would be appreciated.

cheers

leave CMX 2PM arrive phisanaluck 7PM, leave Phisanaluck 9.45PM, arrive Mukdahan 6AM. you can leave CMX at 4pm and change at kon kaen but at 2 am and 1 hour wait. so 16 or 14 ish. i preferred the 2 and a half hour wait and sleeping at 2AM option.

avocado, 1 a day,

I recently took an overnight bus from Chiang Mai to mukdahan. arrive 6 AM nicely in time for the 6.30 savanaket bus and the embassy for 9AM, not too bad a night sleep with a pair of earplugs, had to change at phitsanaluk, company was phetprasert.com . nakon chai air only go as far as ubon or khon kaen, I know this aint Chaing Rai but it might help.

On way back it left at 5 or 6 PM, good for picking up the visa and arriving CMX early next morn. about ฿850 one way. not too full so no pre-booking needed.

I will just answer you visa issue. You can get a multiple entry non-o visa based upon marriage in Savannakhet Laos with no financial proof. It will give your 90 day entries for a year.

Thanks, that'll be a step forwards anyway.

I'm a little late in posting here so maybe no body reads this anymore, I should check emails more regularly i guess.

I've been thinking about this recently as well. problem I have is although I am married I am only here on tourist visa. I was working in UK until October and was going to apply for marriage visa but the Thai embassy said they wanted original bank statements not downloads and tho I asked the bank for them they didn't come in the 10 days they said, I didn't want to wait another 10 days so got triple entry tourist as i thought I'd only be here 6 month. i now might have a way to make a living here but want to do it as legally as possible and that looks like the wife business set up is best but still tricky. I need go out of LOS to get new visa in a couple o weeks so maybe try to get marriage visa then but i only have about 200000 Bhat in bank now so would a job offer from my wife's yet to be formed business be better?

Umbanda do you know If it's a Thai only owned company that is not registered can it employ farang? I guess not but.... and can you do your own accounts at the 6 month period to save that 10000 Bhat? I probably won't be earning that a month initially! I do my own in the Uk and they are simple but still difficult to figure the accountant lingo sometimes.

The Thai employees, can they be part time? like real part time, aunts or cousins a couple of hours a week, cos the business don't need them much (at all, at least to start with). I'm also wondering which work permit office allows 2 employees? Is it how you approach them and how they feel deal or some known to be on the 2 rather than 4 side? I'm hoping CM.

Thanks guys

funny, I was just in rimping supermarket in chiang mai and they have a cheap plastic crap from japan section and I went in for a laugh. one thing I noticed was an inflatable crow "to scare away other crows". for some reason it needed to be slightly deflated to work.

not sure if having a plastic one to scare the others is also bad luck tho ?

I looked into doing something similar recently.

On exit from europe you need to fill out a declaration at the airport if its over 10000 euro. if not and you get stopped you can get fined 5000 gbp ( I was in the UK so the fine was in GBP but the carrying amount was in euro! who said only thailand was crazy!?) i figured it could be picked up during the security scan so would be sensible not just to shove it down your pants. there are no fees, tax etc just need declare. i did read somewhere someone said it might ease things if you had a withdrawal slip from your bank. i.e. proof not from ill gotten, if possible. ;-). i guess that would help with any visa application but not sure about any of that.

Thai side i guess in the red section of anything to declare and hope their cousin isnt outside in the first taxi you come to. maybe more reason to keep it down your pants Thai side!

I did find a currency exchange that gives the same rates (they say) as the best exchange guy i have found in Chiang Mai ( the camera shop at north end of the night bazzar, 10-20 stan better than taipeh gate or nimman good ones) but you got to deduct "landing fees" (2% or minimum ฿200, maximum ฿500) and any third party banks transfers i guess but i recon it's worth a shot. i will be transfering about 5G GBP to see if it works next week. it's a company called torfx, they seem ok but i've usually brought cards or cash in the past too, we'll see. i opened a bangkok bank account cos the last time i tranfered via my Uk bank to krung Thai it went via bkk bank anyway and got charged twice plus a missing ฿1300 nobody knows were!

well after getting a quote from them over the phone giving a good rate, then after spending days faxing passport pages, scaning and sending bank book pages to register with them, they offered 49.1 bhat as apposed to bangkok banks 49.77 and night bazzar 50.50 so I guess i was wrong about Torfx when it came down to it.

Im gonna transfer from my Uk bank to bangkok in london (for free) then 20 quid they will transfer gbp to my bangkok savings account then they change at TT rate wich today is 50.44 as apposed to their note buying rate of 50.1 which with the landing fee of 500 bhat seems ok to me, i know this aint to do with the cash bringing but stop your wingeing you misrable gits, I aint gonna fly back to yUK to bring it now am I. maybe next time but if this works well, much less risk.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s13e12-the-f-word

I looked into doing something similar recently.

On exit from europe you need to fill out a declaration at the airport if its over 10000 euro. if not and you get stopped you can get fined 5000 gbp ( I was in the UK so the fine was in GBP but the carrying amount was in euro! who said only thailand was crazy!?) i figured it could be picked up during the security scan so would be sensible not just to shove it down your pants. there are no fees, tax etc just need declare. i did read somewhere someone said it might ease things if you had a withdrawal slip from your bank. i.e. proof not from ill gotten, if possible. ;-). i guess that would help with any visa application but not sure about any of that.

Thai side i guess in the red section of anything to declare and hope their cousin isnt outside in the first taxi you come to. maybe more reason to keep it down your pants Thai side!

I did find a currency exchange that gives the same rates (they say) as the best exchange guy i have found in Chiang Mai ( the camera shop at north end of the night bazzar, 10-20 stan better than taipeh gate or nimman good ones) but you got to deduct "landing fees" (2% or minimum ฿200, maximum ฿500) and any third party banks transfers i guess but i recon it's worth a shot. i will be transfering about 5G GBP to see if it works next week. it's a company called torfx, they seem ok but i've usually brought cards or cash in the past too, we'll see. i opened a bangkok bank account cos the last time i tranfered via my Uk bank to krung Thai it went via bkk bank anyway and got charged twice plus a missing ฿1300 nobody knows were!

A crack down on Farang drivers whilst Thai drivers continue to run red lights, overtake on the left, fail to indicate whilst swerving in and out of traffic, make left hand turns from the right lane cutting across the path on trafiic going straight ahead in the left lane. Children sitting on drivers laps or jumping around unrestrained in the vehicle.

Yep the carnage of Thai roads is all the fault of the bloody tourists and expats.

When are they going to accept some responsibility themselves instead of always shifting blame to others.

Not that i don't agree with what your saying but it is legal to overtake on the left here, I think the highway code says "it is permissable to pass any car. When any lane is free" i guess that makes swerving from lane to lane technically legal too, even though completly insane.

the driving licence waiting room in chiang mai has footage from junctions around the city of, shall we say, highlights. Many quite disturbing, most totaly gobsmakingly stupid. And of course the vast majority locals.

I do hope some of the educating of foregners is aimed at chinese to tell them to stop standing in the middle of intesections seemingly looking at overhead streetlights.

A crack down on Farang drivers whilst Thai drivers continue to run red lights, overtake on the left, fail to indicate whilst swerving in and out of traffic, make left hand turns from the right lane cutting across the path on trafiic going straight ahead in the left lane. Children sitting on drivers laps or jumping around unrestrained in the vehicle.

Yep the carnage of Thai roads is all the fault of the bloody tourists and expats.

When are they going to accept some responsibility themselves instead of always shifting blame to others.

While i sure don't disagree in any way what you say i just wanted to point out that it is allowed to overtake on the left in Thailand. It's a while since i sat the test but think the book says "it is permisible to pass other traffic when any lane is free." i guess this makes the manic swerving from lane to lane technically legal too.

They have junction cctv footage showing in chiang mai driving licence waiting room. Makes "too shocking for tv" look tame

A crack down on Farang drivers whilst Thai drivers continue to run red lights, overtake on the left, fail to indicate whilst swerving in and out of traffic, make left hand turns from the right lane cutting across the path on trafiic going straight ahead in the left lane. Children sitting on drivers laps or jumping around unrestrained in the vehicle.

Yep the carnage of Thai roads is all the fault of the bloody tourists and expats.

When are they going to accept some responsibility themselves instead of always shifting blame to others.

I saw a TV program years back talking about, if parents come from countries speaking different languages and they raise their kids totaly bilingual (one parent only speaking one language, the other only speaking theirs, to the kids) the kids grow up using more complex parts of the brain for learning and later in life have a greater advantage when learning other things, languages included. Making for a higher IQ? It didn't say.

The example was an english father and french mother, not mixed race, but throw in the fact that asian and european genes split from each other about 60 000 years ago, according to DNA analisis, this would remove any chance of recesive genes as well, thus possibly pumping up the mix.

Yes, this shows how ridiculously lazy the people are here and what a third rate, third world place Thailand is. Thats yet another reason why i love it. I'd much rather have wood smoke than london or NY polution. Don't like the black smoke from tuk tuk and songthiew tho.

Juice does contains soluble fibre, as well as all vits and minerals, which is useful to the bodies digestive system where as the whole veg/ fruit wether eaten whole or blended containes unsoluble fibre which does nothing but provides bulk that uses energy to process but with no return. As with all health or alternative stuff, try it to see if it's good for you.

I have a hand juicer, auger type and the juice from it knocks my socks off i.e. it's very enrgising, potent for healing and nutrition, much more than from centrifugal type.

I'm after a hurom hu400 they look the business from the reviews, just heard juicerthailand have them but clicked this link insted as using phone hence bad spelling, honest.

I'm also looking for the Hurom 400 but have given up as far as Chiangmai is concerned. I assume you couldn't find one here either. I'm going to look in Bangkok when I'm there next.

sorry for belated reply, i just use a phone to surf often and it's a real pain to login on it, also i've been very transient, which is partly why i still havent got a HU400. But i have found 2 in Chaing Mai. one is at the id 68 guest house in santi tham but they got it from a web site and didn't know which (ebay ?) but the other is at airport plaza, top floor food hall, right behind the coupon seller, it's a juice and wheatgrass stall and they use a cheap, lexen single auger for the wheatgrass and a hurom 400 for the "mixed punch" so everyone can see it in action. the owner who apparently is there sometimes can get them for i think 14000 they are called A (not sure gender) and number is 0894534774. Those ones from thai orfanic life look pretty good too

I'm also looking for the Hurom 400 but have given up as far as Chiangmai is concerned. I assume you couldn't find one here either. I'm going to look in Bangkok when I'm there next.

sorry for belated reply, i just use a phone to surf often and it's a real pain to login on it, also i've been very transient, which is partly why i still havent got a HU400. But i have found 2 in Chaing Mai. one is at the id 68 guest house in santi tham but they got it from a web site and didn't know which (ebay ?) but the other is at airport plaza, top floor food hall, right behind the coupon seller, it's a juice and wheatgrass stall and they use a cheap, lexen single auger for the wheatgrass and a hurom 400 for the "mixed punch" so everyone can see it in action. the owner who apparently is there sometimes can get them for i think 14000 they are called A (not sure gender) and number is 0894534774. Those ones from thai orfanic life look pretty good too

on the subject of muesli, the swiss guy who invented it meant it to be soaked overnight, with either water or milk, then it's a very different dish and you need much less too. i know of some yogis who eat similar to this as part of a raw food diet from different source.