BlissfullyIgnorant

Agree about Homekitch not building inhouse. Used them in past and when repair time came, the counter tops are outsourced in Bangkok and replacement must come from there. (could not repair formica counter top) Also their suport for appliance repair leaves a little to be desired.

We spent a lot of time talking to Homikitch when building our most recent house, and they were quite upfront about which designs they could do in-house and which they couldn't. Mind you, we were trying to get them to make something similar to Modernform's/SB's designs (their own just lacked style for our eyes), so custom cabinets/shelves were necessary. In the end the only finishes they could offer us were those they made themselves, and their price came out at 300K vs. Modernform and SB's 160K. Ouch. They did call us back after we had already committed elsewhere with a price of 230K, better but still way off the mark. I suppose if you were only using their standard pre-made cabinet designs/sizes your mileage with them could vary though, so don't write them off on my account.

In the end we went with Khun Tan (pronounced "Darn") from SB @ HomePro however. They dont' have any kitchens on actual display there (I did go to BKK to view their fit/finish in person however) so you'll have to go up to the fitted closets section to find him. He was the only consultant that truly understood where we were coming from - no struggle there at all (for a change), and he managed to get the price down from 240K to 160K through discounts and creatively massaging the design.

It was however a very close race between Modernform and SB - we quite literally didn't make our final decsision until the 11th hour. In the end SB won because they did a great job on our closet built-ins previously, wouldn't charge us any extra for fitting applicnaces, and because we fell in love with their African Zebrano wood veneer. Modernform was a more modern/stylish design, but they wanted an extra 12K for appliance fitting, and also had a little less character about it.. For reference, Starmark came in at 220K after discounts.

Anyways, here's some links for those interested:

http://www.modernform.com/

http://www.sb-furniture.com/

http://www.homikitch.com/

http://www.indexlivingmall.com/

http://www.starmark.co.th/

Have done this twice, here's my 2c:

Index (Index Living Mall, level 2) - cheaper end of town, the quality of their demo kitchens turns me off but still worth the effort if only for providing a comparative base. Discount available if fitting to a Land & Houses built home. Design crew speak zero English. Don't like you asking why the melamine is peeling off thier demos either

Modernform (super highway near Tesco) - upper end of town, proper fitted western kitchens with all the trimmings. Some very nice designs here. Design team are OK but slow, designs are only hand-dawn (roughly too!). Push them for a discount - 20-30% off their sticker prices makes them quite reasonable. Beware of exhorbinate fitting fees for your extras though (e.g. 3000B each to fit a hood, oven, sink etc). Also beware not to specifiy a composite benchtop - it'll cost as much as the kitchen itself..

SB Furniture (at Chiangmai Isaan Ban House on Aom Muang rd near the Ping river bridge, also @ HomePro) . The design consultant @ HomePro is excellent, not so much so @ Isaan. Speak to the owner of Isaan and you will get the best price no doubt, however even @ HomePro you'll manage 20%+ off sticker when pushed, and their consultant will work hard to make your kitchen fit your budget. If buying @ HomePro you'll probably get a bunch of freebies associated with HomePro "sticker" promotions as well. Installation crews come ex BKK and are thoroughly professional.

Starmark (HomePro) - upper end of town but with better sticker prices than Modernform. Some really nice & unique fittings/designs/finishes. Consultants are only so-so, so you'd better knoiw what you want. Big discount (40% ish) if you're fitting to a Land & Houses built home.

Homikitch (you know where it is) - lower to middle end of town. Incredibly expensive for what they are. Design team is OK, but slow as a wet week. Their more stylish designs are apparently not actually made in house - they come from another firm in BKK. Only reasonable if shopping for basic/cheap IMHO - their more desirable designs are at least 50-100% more expensive than any others listed here, in my experience.

Thai Contractors (Ban Tawai is a start, they're everywhere though) - IMHO, great if you want a full teak wood kitchen only. Quality varies, prices are usually reasonable. Do not expect the accessories, fit nor finish af the specialist places listed above. Their Western style designs (i.e. not teak) leave much to be desired on all fronts - cheap and nasty comes to mind here.

I think that is somewhat definitive - I'd be quite surprised if I've missed someone

Edit:

Both Starmark and the HomePro SB Furniture will fit your appliances for free if they've been purchased at Homepro, otherwise they will charge an additional 1000B per appliance (quite reasonable as this includes electrical wiring/plumbing as necessary).

30K Baht is a ridiculously expensive oven, 40K+ is just insane. My 10.5K Baht stainless steel fan-forced Fagor cooks a mean Lasagne - what else do you need?

Great story. Every couple of months another friend or acquaintance meets with strife on the road and not too many have the nuts or wherewithall to stand their ground.. +1 for the farangs, scoreboard now only -1,785,368

on a more serious note. good that you came out without paying a dime.

That is, assuming he got all of the particulars of the motorcycle rider.. Otherwise he'll be paying for the damage to his truck out of pocket, or via his lost no-claims discount.

Ethanol-free benzene is branded "Alpha-X" at PTT stations, from what I can see there's two varieties - the yellow font one is 95 RON, the red/orange font one is 91 RON.

Running 91 RON anything in a turbo car tuned for 95 RON isn't something I'd do - detonation (pinging) is far more severe when you have forced induction. Being a '94 yours would have the SR20DET engine - helluva an engine for tuning.. Your new car is going to feel like a wet sponge by comparison

Well yesterday went to the Jet station on Hang Dong road that I have been using for years only to find they only have 91 regular, 91 gasohol an 95 gasohol. I set there for a minute trying to decide what to do but since my gauge was low had them put in 95 gasohol. Mine is a 2 liter turbo charged and makes me nervous. Wonder if one could use 50% 91 regular with 50% 95 gasohol to dilute the alcohol content? Any one using 95 regular and know a station that still sells it?

Been postponing a new car until sometime in the new year. Guess better start looking again.

2.0L Turbo.. What is it? If it's what I expect (a 90's or early 00's jap import) then you probably don't want to run gasohol as there's little chance the fuel system was designed to stand up to the water content in it.

AFAIK, most PTT stations still sell 95 benzene, well at least the ones I go to do..

Try www.zest.co.th

Back on topic (man can you lot stray)

I was driving past the scene of the accident today, and noticed that they've now closed off that particular U-turn spot with those large red/white plastic barriers. Knee-jerk, or something else?

I guess it also depends on what you're looking to clean - if you're talking about painted surfaces, plastic surfaces or any other surface that's easily marked/scratched/swirled I would recommend picking up some Meguiars microfibers from the auto section in Tesco's or from one of the Meguair's auto detailing centers around town. The 3M style cloths are great for hard surfaces like granite, glass etc, but will scratch the hel_l out of anything softer.

Roundabouts - Get rid of most of the @#$@#@# traffic lights on the highways and replace with roundabouts.

+1

Great for crushing black fortunas!!!!

get it!!

+1

Wattay Noi? never heard of that.

my travel agent tried to find LuangPrabang to Vientianne, but failed.

I somewho intuit a Lao gov't endeavor to increase tourism to LuangPrabang...

whatever the cost, it'd be a lot more than the bus. I did take a bus once, almost 9 years ago.

It was not VIP, and I would hardly try that again - all night with knees scrunched up pressed against a seat in front -

until I got a front seat, which had it's difficulties too...

but the 24 seat buses to BKK are not bad.

\

"Wattay Noi" is the name of the international airport at Vientiane.

The Chiangmai - Vientiane route has always been via Luang Prabang - nothing new there.

flights are only to LuangPrabang or UdonTani!

Not true - Laos Airlines fly Chiangmai to Wattay Noi albeit via Luang Prabang - you don't have to get off the plane however. The best deals when flying are the return ticket + 2 nights accom deals, here (not up to date though).

No ideas on bus options, did the VIP to Udon once, will never do it again..

If you're a farang, you can forget any form of financing unless you've had full-time Thai company employment for 6+ months, along with a valid work permit and 1 year visa extension. However, I assume you mean "lease" as-in "long term rental"? - If that's the case, all of the usual car rental outfits will do special deals for monthly contracts - typically about 30-40% cheaper than what the daily rate would work out to.

Do WeTV do any HD programming? or even just SD 16:9 widescreen? or are they stuck in the last century too?

There are a lot of immature wack-job foreigners living in the far East. It is better to make friends slowly but surely in order to cut down on future problems.

sage advice,,and the truth

I've lived here for just on 6 years, and in that time (out of literally 100's of acquaintances) have met just two expats that I would consider normal and psychosis-free. So my experience with "making friends slowly" is a new friend every 3 years. Guess I'm due for another one somtime soon

Which Bank?

Looks like pretty much all Thai Banks are able to withdraw PayPal funds now:

Cost for withdrawing are 50 Baht for <5000 Baht, or free if >5000 Baht, but be warned that PayPal do as bad, if not worse, exchange rates than your Aussie bank does. Transferring AUD to Thailand in this way still just throwing away money IMHO. The receiving PayPal member will also need a credit card (or Web Debit Card - i.e. Kasikorn "K-Web Shopping Card") in their name in order to verify their account before making any withdrawals.

On a side note, just in case you haven't noticed the AUD has been absolutely massacred since last week - from a high of 94c US to less than 88c this morning. I'd hold off transferring any money from Oz for at least a couple of weeks, based on the assumption that it's just another repeat of August's over-reaction to the US sub-prime woes.

Mums the word.

Actually, the word is "special promotion"

Recently I learned that international bandwidth is restricted (no idea how) to Indy subscribers and an upgrade to the Premier package can resolve this, in fact the call centre told me that "Indy is for Thai, Premier is for farang"!!

From what I have gathered from talking to Maxnet there seems to be some sort of filtering/rationing system in place for international bandwidth - I have no clue as to the technical details but that could possibly explain the patterns you mention.

Differences between Indy and Premier:

Indy apparently has international VOIP capped at 40KB/sec, though their capping system either doesn't work very well, or Skype's technology is able to work around it somewhat effectively. Premier is apparently not capped in this way.

Indy has a high share ratio - initially (i.e. a few years ago) it was published as 20:1 but my guess is they're stretching it out to something more like 50:1 these days (which would be inline with the other budget DSL plans). Similarly, Premier used to have a 5:1 ratio but I'm guessing they've stretched it out to something more like 10:1 now.

Neither Indy nor Premier are capped for international data over the "regular" ports (e.g. HTTP:80, HTTPS:443, FTP:21, NNTP:110 etc).

Going back many moons ago, it took most Western ISP's many months to work the kinks out of their DSL networks - for early adopters back then the situation was not much different to what MaxNet users are seeing now. The question is: how long will it take their Thai counterparts to get on top of it?

IF you transfer the money from Australia as Thai Baht. If you send Australian dollars there is a transfer fee by the Bank of Ayudhya for the conversion to local currency.

The problem with this system is the massive difference between AUD-THB exchange rates in Oz vs. local, e.g. based on today's National Australia Bank and Siam Commercial Bank forex rates, AUD $100 would give you 2660.70 Baht if changed in Oz, or 3097 Baht if changed locally, so even if it cost you AUD $10 to send as THB, you'd still be ahead when comared to sending it as a "free" THB transfer - i.e. AUD$90 would convert to 2787.30 Baht here..

IMHO, the smartest thing the OP could do is open a Thai bank accout for himself, transfer a lump sum into it to minimise fees, then setup a direct debit to his GF's account from there. The only potential downside to this would be if the AUD suddenly shot up in value more than a few percent.

Edit: To CB - I really hope you're not sending any reasonable amounts of money to yourself this way - the losses at even just few grand a month would be heartbreaking.

Edit #2: If anyone Aussies here want to send money to Thailand in the way CB has mentioned, do it through me and I'll guarantee 5% better AUD-THB exchange rate than your Aussie bank is offering*

* Offer valid while the BOT continues to buy ~$100M of forex a day.

My Stepdaughter is in the Prathom 5 (Primary year 5, i.e. 10yo) Bilingual program at Varee and our latest term fees were 28K Baht - 40K Baht sounds like the English Program pricing.

Chiangmai Ram does it on the 4th floor for 70 Baht (3 week old price) - in and out in less than 15 minutes. Used to be 50 Baht a couple of years ago, but either way it's hardly expensive or lengthy.

However, there seems to be this standard black Durex condom everywhere, but they're way on the small side....so not good. I only use them in a pinch - literally.

You can get actually force one of them on?!? Lucky you

Hey

What kinds of car (SUV or sedan, not truck) can I buy with $10,000 in Chiangmai?

Which one is most reliable?

Cheers

Well, depending on which country's $ you're talking about you're looking at somwhere between 258K Baht and 340K Baht, which places you well below the new car market. For that kind of money you'd probably be looking at a 4+ year old small sedan along the lines of a Soluna/Vios, or perhaps a slightly larger car (i.e. Corolla class) if you're willing to take on something older.. There's definately not any SUV's available in that price range unless you're willing to classify an old Kia Sportage or Suzuki Caribian as such.

IMHO you'd be hard pressed to do better than a Soluna or Vios for the kind if money you're talking about - they're in plentiful supply, will continue to hold value well, parts for them are cheap, and every mechanic in Thailand will know them inside and out.

Still, your best bet would be to look around some of the used car websites in Thailand to get a feel for the market - if you're a gambler some of the older European makes can be found for bargain prices, but be prepared for serious repair bills. Here's some starters:

www.one2car.com

www.rotbarn.com

www.taladrod.com

There's also a number of weekly used car buyers magazines printed in Thailand which generally have a used car price guide. One that springs to mind there is called "Rot Wanee" (Car Today). These are readily available at most book shops and supermarkets.

I know there's been talk of some areas being slightly better than others, but what's good today may not be tomorrow - the only guaranteed way to get the best possible service is to get yourself onto a premium plan with a lower share ratio.

Check out the "medium business" plans here for some ideas: http://www.ji-net.com/home/

The new, re-styled, accord comes out in November. Waiting to take a look at it.

http://paultan.org/archives/2007/08/23/200...ils-and-photos/