gkinbkk

I am in a new house out of town (Samut Prakan) and waiting for a phone line so I can get my DSL connection. In the meantime I have had my computers connected to True 3G using my iPhone as a hotsot. Works surprisingly well, I have been streaming sports to my big TV upstairs all weekend and it hardly ever buffered. Last week when we moved out here I bought an AIS aircard and unfortunately the coverage here is rubbish but I had a much better solution all along!

So, as the other poster says there are many wireless options these days. In Siam you may be able to pay 100b a month for True Wifi?

If you are playing for fun and not receiving money - sure you can do it.

Rock on dude

My understanding is a little different in that from a legal perspective even playing for free in a bar is considered work for a couple of reasons:

1. Having live music in a bar is for commercial purposes. i.e. to attract people into a bar for the purpose of making money. Even if you are making zero dollars you are making someone else money and that's work.

2. If the bar wants to put on bands for the purpose of making money (which is really the only reason for having live music), the owner should typically be hiring and paying for a band. In this country that band is normally made up of Thais and by playing for free you are eliminating a potential income stream for a Thai. if a Thai complains to the police about a foreigner playing music in a bar they are obliged to investigate.

Having said that, this being Thailand and all, though the law is black and white on paper it may be a little more forgiving in practice. Usually the law becomes more forgiving upon payment of money to the authorities and I would expect that the owner of the bar would be taking care of this for you and this has been the case for me when I have played in Bangkok before. When you are talking to someone about playing in their bar this is an important discussion to have up front.

I don't know what happened in Chiang Mai for it to get like that (and I'm sure the true story is lurking somewhere in the subtext) but it doesn't seem to have filtered down to Bangkok. You do need to understand the risk you are taking by doing it though.

Having said all that, Bangkok's music scene blows big time unfortunately. I don't think you are going to be making a nice retirement income off gigging through lack of venues and the idea that Country Roads and Hotel California are a staple in any set.....good luck though!

New shop Tattoo OD in Soi 53 near ThongLor BTS. Opened by Thaitanium the Hip Hop band.

No idea what they charge (I can bet its high) but its always busy with a mix of Farangs and HiSo Thais. Some stunning looking girls hanging around there too for what its worth

Moving out to the burbs and thinking about Sat TV. Some Q's:

1. Big big price difference between guys like JSat and BKK Cable. What am I missing? Yes I know that Thais NEVER disclose the full cost when selling something (another topic entirely) but can the add ons possibly add up to more than the JSat cost??

2. Astro a must for Sports. If I get an 'Astro Package' and decoder/card etc can I get a separate box and get other services off the same dish? eg Setanta/Thai TV

Thx!

The question should be "Is Soi 11 a great place to live?"

I answered that myself when I saw a woman carrying bags of groceries form Villa market pushing through tourists milling around vendor stalls and on past a group of drunks to get to her apartment building.

My colleague answered that through his other half who gets propositioned by a different fat white guy every time she goes downstairs to check the mail. Every morning and every night he gets hassled by pimps, taxi drivers, tuk tuk drivers, vendors, touts etc etc and cant wait to get out of there.

Noise, pollution, crowds, sleaze....not my idea of a great neighbourhood~!

I went to Tokyo Joes once. Was OK if you like the blues and the band I heard was v good BUT jeez it was boring as hell...everything sounded the same 12 bar thing over and over.

Saxophone MUCH better!

There are other places with decent bands but in general the music scene in Bangkok blows unfortunately

Nope I'm on DSL not cable. Was originally told no you have to have ToT or 3BB but the wife persevered and we managed to get it, not without some hassle.

We are moving out of town and again the management company in the estate has told us you must get ToT but once you've done that you can install True over the top of it and keep paying the 100b ToT bill every month.

As with everything in TH everything is possible and nothing is a problem BUT its always a hassle to get it done......... my experience anyway

The easy thing to do is get your Thai partner to walk out onto any main soi and look at the telephone poll. She will see a small poster usually with a phone number with Thai text that says movers. Get her to call them and negotiate.

Assuming I'm a bloke with a Thai partner of course!!

I was expecting around 10k.

We have moved most of it out in the car so its really only the sofa, TV, lounge, dining, beds x3 and whitegoods.

I called a company called JVK and when I asked if someone could come out and look they said 'no, its a flat rate in BKK for 15k'

Going to look elsewhere, the telephone pole idea is a good one....

Saxaphone is a bit more than Jazz and Blues.....they do have a fairly big variety but later in the night it moves into the funk/dance/pop territory.....

Hi,

Searched the forums but nothing that seems relevant or up to date......

Need to move a houseload of furniture from downtown to Bang Na. Called a couple of moving co's but they are quoting around 15k which seems on the high side? Does anyone have a better way or a cheaper company I should look at?

It decent stuff so I dont want to entrust it to the local pickup truck driver.

I have been staying in Soi 53 near Thong Lor and have no complaints about True internet. For the money I pay I should expect nothing less than what I get and I do get the advertised download and upload speeds.

There is a coverage map on the True website for cable. I believe we can have it here too.

I might be wrong but for DSL you will have to have and maintain a TOT phone line that you can then install True on top of. The management in our building tried to talk us out of getting True as there was some work they had to do on the wiring downstairs. No idea what the hassles were because it was all discussed in Thai but we got there in under a week.

So, yes internet good...very good actually....... TV and phone is a whole other discussion......

All Blacks were as good as I've seen them in a long while but I did think the same thing about some of the passing that had intercept written all over it. Its been a long long time since the ABs put in a 'complete' performance? Cant think when? They are usually very slow starters but for a change went for it from the first whistle today which was pleasing to see. Teams are no longer going to rack up cricket scores against weak opposition with all the time lost to the setting and resetting of scrums. Reckon that was about a 65 minute game this afternoon if you took all those stoppages away!

AIS have been planning this for a long long time. Preference was to get proper 3G through the auction but when it increasingly looked like the auction was going to be stalled they started activating 'plan B'. Nothing to do with the change in government even though the new PM used to be the CEO of AIS!

Ahhh but there are MANY devices that do the same as Apple TV that ARE on sale here. The only thing about Apple TV is you have the iTunes store access but then you are paying for content.

I have WDTV which I can stream HiDef movies/youtube etc etc to from my main computer downstairs in my house...download and stream....easy. Or I can attach a hard drive and watch directly from that.

Most TV's these days have some kind of media player built in too. I can also stream to my PS3 which is a decent media player.

Maybe a different Borgias? I just finished watching the 2011 version about a month back via downloads We downgraded from Platinum to Silver recently and added the kids channels through the disney package. The only thing I missed were the top flight EPL games. About to move into a house though and probably get Astro put in on Satellite with no True

Get decent ones first up, you dont have to spend a fortune but some of the cheap ones are hard to play and kids give up very quickly on them. Music Collection in Ratchada/Siam Paragon/Siam Discovery is a good place to start. Also Music Connection in Central World has (or had) some kids size Asian made Fenders.

Langsuan/Ratchdamri/Ploenchit seems to be a the one place in this town where no one has invested in a English/Irish/Aussie/Sports bar/pub.....business opportunity?!

I work at Ploenchit and we are always bemoaning the lack of a decent pub in the area.

You are best off to pop up to Nana and take a look at Soi 8 pub where there will be a good atmosphere but be early, the place really fills up for the rugby. Also Mollys in Silom (Convent), The Clubhouse in Suk 23 ,The Office Bar in Suk 33 and maybe Bus stop in Nana (soi 4) are probably the other places I'd watch rugby.

Having said that I watched the Fiji game at home streaming off the internet...some dam_n good free streams around at the moment.......

In the Can

It can now be revealed why bottled beer and beer from a tap tastes different from beer in a can.

Be forewarned: if you're a six-pack enthusiast, you're not going to like the explanation.

When you sip a can of your favorite brew, you are savoring not only fermented grain and hops but just a hint of the same preservative that kept the frog you dissected in 10th-grade biology class lily-pad fresh: formaldehyde.— Ed Cohen

Full article:

Most 'chemical' beers have formaldehyde in them. Tiger is no exception and a Tiger hangover, to me, is unequaled. I hate the stuff.

The best beers in Asia ironically are from the the poorer countries i.e Beer Lao and Angkor as they do not have the money to invest in brewing technologies i.e. putting chemicals in beer....brewed the old fashioned way!

I agree about Asahi though, very nice beer. 6 months back it used to be priced between the local sh#te and beers like Heineken but I notice as of late the price has jumped significantly in our local supermarkets......

Good relationship with the landlord...told her we were moving back to Oz and asked if we could stop paying rent and should keep our deposit. Offer accepted without hesitation.

The laws here favour the tenant so there is really not much they can do (legally) if you stop paying

Yes!

The last 2 times I've had a couple of cans of Leo on a Sat afternoon I've come home with an upset stomach, indigestion and a general feeling of blah.... from 2 cans.

Starting to think you might be on to something.......

Homerun: Not questioning the quality of the food but how does that place stay open?

Went there Friday night 930pm a few weeks back, 2 of us, the only people in the place the whole time...1 very expensive hotdog and a couple of beers later still hadn't seen anyone else (including staff for the most part) so took off for greener pastures..........

Drive past every day, always empty.

I use a cyberlocker service (filesonic) and get links from places like Oneddl.com and The Viper Files

We used to like Chokchai on 23, would take the kids there once a month. Went in recently, menu has changed in order to pump the prices up. Now the pricing is in line with Tenderloins/Bullys etc and its nowhere near as good. At 500b for a steak it was ok. At >700b its a ripoff. Went into the 'under new management/ownership' Bullys last week and had a steak that was superb. Cant remember the price as it went on the bosses Amex but it wasn't expensive. Tasty and Tender, will go back for sure. Havent been to the 'new' Tenderloins but the Argentinian cut in the last place was an almost perfect taste/cost combination.....