kuripot

Flew Sin-Fra-Man a few weeks ago and there was no problem buying duty free booze or transporting it. The EU rules are (taken from Fra website) :

Passengers are permitted to carry through the security checkpoints all liquids purchased duty-free on the day of their flight at any airport in the EU, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Croatia, as well as at Singapore-Changi Airport, Kuala Lumpur Airport (Malaysia), all international airports in the U.S., selected airports in Canada or aboard aircraft of a EU airline, provided these items are placed in a transparent, tamper-evident bag sealed on purchase by the duty-free sales staff. These duty-free items have already been previously controlled.

Liquids in duty-free shops outside the EU are not being controlled according to EU standards. Therefore, passengers changing planes at a European airport are not allowed to carry in their hand luggage any liquids purchased in duty-free shops outside the EU. If you have made any duty-free liquid purchases outside the EU other than at the above mentioned places, please check these purchases in with your airline along with your hold baggage before your onward flight.

The emphasis being Sin & Kul. They refused to sell me booze in Hkg on a Hkg-Lhr-Man trip but was able to purchase aboard the plane and transit security at Lhr without problem.

Just check if you are allowed to use them first. Bungsamran does not allow it. My bait boat is big and it would require a whole suitcase. The battery is a normal motorcycle battery so that is not a big problem.

Hi Robblok,

I discussed it with the guides there on Saturday and they said they had been used before down there. I will however check with Stuart when he returns from the UK. I expect to have no difficulty in getting a Bike battery next time in Krabi and job sorted.

most bait boats use lead acid baterries. They weight a ton! Would be lighter running off LiPo but I bet that's definately not allowed to fly. Bursts into flames even on impact.

NiMH might be viable. So were the spots hard to reach because of cover or distance?

I would think cover because with the long rods used at Gillhams you must be able to reach most parts?

It was actually distance casting down to the water hyacinth margins in the bottom of the bay but was having difficulty delivering ground bait to the location. The Spod rod did not have the range or maybe my casting ability was not up to it. I could however manage the distance without problem on the supplied Free Spirit Cat Tamers supplied to get a bait down there.

I have actually found a supplier of bait boats within walking distance of where I live (ebay shop) and have a telephone number so I may make further enquiries upon my return to UK.

I am seriously looking at getting one of these bait boats as I know it would have definitely improved my catch rate over the last 3 days at Gillhams as some of the areas I was fishing were out of range of my catapult and had to rely on one of the resident guides dumping ground bait in the vicinity of where I was casting as I hooked up almost every time and usually a red tail cat on pellet or chicken heart. My best fish was an Arapaima of 100kg yesterday which although not large by fishery standards is the largest fish I have caught to date. My ugly mugshots will be in their March newsletter no doubt.

I have not had chance to research bait boats fully but my main concerns are weight and whether the battery used (IE sealed gel) would cause problems at airline check in.

I installed it on an external drive on my MBP 13" and up to now is reasonably stable and as a previous poster mentioned little snitch does not currently work. I have also installed it on my Hackingtosh desktop based on a gigabyte motherboard and all is working fine. I have got the cmos reset loop when trying it on my Asus X53E and have the required files on board (fake smc etc ). I may get time to play with that upon my return from LOS

Looks like the strike is now set to continue until Friday 2300 hours.

Most of the Man-Fra flights have not been affected by the strike but the early evening Man-Fra LH947 is consistently late enough without the strike to miss the LH778 to Singapore connection which may mean an overnight in Frankfurt unless they are prepared to re-route passengers. I will have to see what happens when I turn up at Manchester on Sunday.

Recently converted an Asus X53E (aka K53E ) laptop to run Lion. Specifications are 15.6" screen i5 cpu 8gb ram 320 hdd . Cost was a little over 19,000 baht equivalent.

I found enough information to do it on the Tonymac and Insanely mac forums. It is extremely stable and has all but replaced my mac desktop. It benchmarks using geekbench very similar to similar specification macbook pro's.

I booked a couple of Air Asia flights from Krabi to Bangkok and another from Bangkok to Singapore this last week using a Natwest Visa debit card. Just ensure you complete the transaction in local currency when prompted to continue in your home currency.I have also used my UK Visa debit on Thai and Bangkok Airways websites as well.

Robblok...

I am heading to Gillhams for a few days fishing myself in a few weeks time and was wondering how it is currently fishing. The website currently does not sport a newsletter for November.

I had intended bringing a couple of rods over but Lufthansa want too much as they are over 1.49metres in length so will have to resort to using the hire tackle. There will however, be room in my bag for an 8 weight fly rod and I was thinking of bringing a 4 piece Shimano exage texasbt3050 rod coupled with a TLD25 loaded with 150bs braid as per fishery recommendations for tackling the freshwater stingers.

Yes,It's not cheap but compared to chasing a white ball around a manicured lawn represents value for money.

Just to make a few things clear here. I was talking about regular fishing. That means going there every week 1 or 2 times. I am not talking about the occasional trip to a lake.

Also i was talking about lakes holding mekong catfish not the predators. These damage easier.

Anyway i had a great experience as Gilhams a few days ago. So much better as palm tree. For almost the same price. The lake is better, much larger. The fish are treated much better. Scenery ten times better. No funny stuff with prices.

I would certainly return there, but its not a lake for regular fishing even if it was closer to me. Its just too expensive for that. I would go there once in a while.

The lake was fished by about 10-15 anglers on the days i was there. You were not crowded (though if a mekong was hooked problems would arise). I found the rods and reels a bit under powered (for mekong). But that is because i use different gear now. Fish were treated for wounds with a kind of anti biotic, mekongs got an injection after a fight to help them deal with the stress of the fight. I never seen fish being treated better.

I am also of the opinion that a mekong lake is a lot less costly then a predator lake so those things must be taken in consideration.

I went to Hardware House, Pantip and various branches of The Mall/Central.

They all have Kingston RAM and when they fitted it the Macbook crashes on the Apple logo (even the icon that shows that it is loading crashed).

I will try the site mentioned.

Thanks very much.

Ian

Try using the mac scanner on the Crucial website Crucial as this will identify your existing ram and come up with a list of options. You could then print this sheet off to cross reference. The 1066 is available from Crucial and costs £40.79 for 2@ 4Gb sticks as a kit as my MBP also runs the 1066 ram. If you know someone coming out from the UK maybe they could order it and bring it out to you. They also have a stateside store and an EU store so this may be your solution.

Yes, it's not that difficult to build a hackintosh these days, I have 2 hack pros and a real mack book pro(2011).

As another forum member stated "gigabyte"mobos tend to have minimum problems.

You could take a look a site called"insanelymac" for more detailed info.

Good luck with the project.

Cheers.

I have built several hackintoshes over the least 3-4 years and without doubt the gigabyte motherboard has been the least problematic. I would reccomend using KAKEWALK with gigabyte boards Kakewalk which has versions for Snow Leopard and Lion and is free of charge.

For Lion installation I have used X-Move from the TonyMac site and found it the quickest way to get Lion operational (with or without multibeast). For installation I usually have the drive in a caddy so if I get any kernal panics I can't get around with booting -v,-x etc then I can plug it into another mac and remove the offending kext manually.

I have just completed an Asus Laptop model K53E which is i5 cpu, Intel 3000 gfx, and 8Gb ram.It is running 10.7.2 and is virtually flawless with respectable Geekbench and Cinebench scores. The beauty of it is that it was completed for 25% of the cost of a genuine macbook pro.

I can help there is a waiting list and unless someone gives the nod you will not get anything if you do get something you will get one or two.

I am also trying to establish the current price for a heifer or two for the inlaws, who are just outside Kalasin, but the price they are telling me I am sure must be for a herd as there is no way I buy the 30,000 baht story. They currently have 1 cow and 1 heifer.

Thanks. I will be fishing there for a few days late September, so hopefully I will have a decent catch report to post on the forum.I am glad to hear the cabins are fine and food is good. Thanks again.

I have been fishing fairly regularly at Dream Lake for a number of years now and can recommend it.

The lake is quite small but deep and is very peaceful and surrounded by mature trees. Small but well fitted cabins are positioned over the water and there are no restrictions on when you can fish. The lake is stocked with a wide range of species and must have the largest Aligator Gars in Thailand with some well over 30kgs. It also has a good head of siamese carp over 20kg. Lure fishing is allowed. That said you cannot call Dream Lake an easy lake so don't expect the fish crawling up your lines like at Bung San Run. I think tackle (rods and baitrunner 4500s) are included in the price.

Food is excellent there and the owner very helpful. They also organise snakehead fishing trips to nearby reservoirs which are worthwhile at certain times of the year.

Good Luck

I was wondering if anyone here has fished Dreamlakes up in Chiang Mai before and what their experiences were of the fishing and accommodation etc. Any info would be helpful.

Dreamlakes

Casting reels/multipliers. I only recently bought a spinning reel, a Penn Liveliner 760L. My first spinning reel for 30+ years as I have used multipliers exclusively since the early 1970's.

I intend to get to grips with my old Accurate multiplier once I get new bearings in it. It is an old Boss 460 ( cant remember exact model number but a few years old now ) which suffers a common fault regarding bearings seizing in the earlier models. I am quite happy with my Abu 6500/7000 series multipliers and Daiwa SL50SH for casting and rarely suffer overruns/birds nests. Currently my biggest reels are a couple of 6/0 and 9/0 senators which are superb for wreck fishing for conger eels and a rather fancifull Fin Nor 30Lb class twin speed. I am currently looking for a reasonably powerful rod for Cat fishing that is suitable for travel purposes. The long Free Spirit Cat tamers would be ok had they been 4 piece. I understand that the Loomis stik that's around 4'9" is ideal for BSR due to the piers. Hoping to try out Dreamlake in Chiang Mai in a couple of months when I return to Thailand for a few days vacation/fishing.

I have been using shock leaders for many years for saltwater uptide boat fishing in the UK and I have never had a problem with a properly tied and trimmed blood knot. More often than not a 6-12 Lb bs main line to a tapered 15-60 Lb tapered shock leader ( Daiwa ). Other than the knot catching a little weed from time to time I never had a problem casting and catching in the rod rings.

Blood Knot

Regarding fishing tackle prices comparing the UK with Thailand I recently bought a Penn Liveliner 760L in the UK and paid £90 on ebay with most tackle shop prices being around £98 currently. This compares with an advertised price of 3800 baht on Parknum

Comparing the UK price for an Okuma SLR-10L at £120 and a Thai price of 3100 baht there are significant savings to be had (if the genuine article) as already mentioned by a previous poster. I also compared the Shimano TLD 15 the UK price being approx £100 and the Thai price showing at 4800 Baht so no real saving to be had there. I shall certainly be comparing Baht/UK prices in preparation of my next trip to Thailand in a few weeks time.

A handy site for unlocking dongles for free is Calculator and covers Alcatel, Huawei and Zte dongles and phones. I have used it on Huawei dongles and Zte phones. If you are using an Android phone there is an app called Barnacle wifi tether which allows you to use your phone as a dongle providing your phone is rooted.

Its always personal choice but at one time i also used spinning reels at most fishing parks in bkk including bsr, Then at one point i turned to baitcasters...my 2 main reels are avet sx 6.4 2 speed and a new shimano jigger 4000LD 2 speed, The avet now comes with optional 5 setting magicast (magnets) with this there really are no birds nests or over runs on the spool and very easy to master, In my opinion the avet is the best value for money and powerful enough to handle all that comes along at bsr, To be honest myself i built in my own magnets in all my reels and it works fine but i notice that after 150+ bugs the single dry drag washer on the avet is worn and with very large fish i,m sometimes having to thumb the spool...only costs 65baht for a new drag washer but have been to lazy to replace it as i,m so often using the shimano jigger now,Both have the lever drag system,

As robblok said the GT1 rod from loomis is a good choice but i was curios about the very short rods with small baitcasters which seem to be the fashion at bsr of late and some days ago got to try one from a young thai guy, It was a jigging master 4.9ft 5-10pe paired with an accurate 400bx reel spooled with a power pro 50lb braid line and i imagined casting any distance would be a problem on such a short rod but infact i managed the middle of the lake on the first cast! and the whole experience of the fight with that tackle was good ...once up close to the pier when the fish wanted to go under it was a piece of cake to stop him but tackle like that will cost you around 30,000+ baht (not sure where these young thais get the money)

Cheap and unbreakable way to go in my opinion is an avet sx mc (circa 7500bht) with a GT1 rod (2500bht) or an ugly stick (1500bht) I have seen so much tackle break at bsr and am sure this setup will never let you down.

Many Thanks for your input. I will look into adding these items to my tackle bag but would definitely buy in Thailand as the Avet sx mc is over 11,000 Baht here in rip off UK. I actually have an ugly stik rated 30-80 line so I guess this would pass, but if the Loomis are only in the region of 2500 it's hardly worth bringing a rod across next trip. Presumably these can all be bought at the tackle shop at BSR.

I am looking at sorting out some tackle for the bigger cats etc and wonder what the thoughts are on some of my existing rods/reels.

Penn Liveliner 760L fixed spool. I know this should be a capable reel and have a performance similar to the baitrunners with a 260lb cat at Gillhams taken on one of these reels recently.

Daiwa SL50SH which is the largest of the range and has a good line capacity.

Accurate Boss 870 twin drag. Not so good for casting but has a superb twin drag system. I would say it's similar to the Abu 7000 series in line capacity.

As for rods I currently have a few Stand-up sticks of the type favoured by

Kiwi Anglers Bangkok

these consisting of a Shimano Beastmaster 5'6" 30-80lb line model BR-1556rf all roller guides which would be no good for braid but ok for mono and casting ability restricted, although I have seen quite a few photo's of similar type rods being used.

Penn Mariner 5'6" 20-50lb line

Star Rods Deluxe 6" 30/60lb line

I currently don't have any longer rods such as the Free Spirit 10" Cat Tamers 6lb test curve that seems to be popular at some fisheries. Possibly some of the heavier "uptiding" rods in the UK may be suitable as these are slightly shorter.

Any constructive comments welcome as it's going to be a learning curve.

could anybody provide a google earth link, or a gps coordinate, of Jomtien Fishing Park? thanks!

Jomtien Fishing Park

Hopefully the link may put you somewhere close to the fishing park. If not it's down Chom Thian 14, crossing a new road then down a track for a short distance. Just zoom in on google maps and you should see it.If I'm wrong blame the Leo! It was around 10 minutes from Jomtien Boathouse on Beach Road. I fished there last month and although nothing spectacular was caught I did manage to catch 12 plus Cats during a morning session. Prices were very reasonable and including food, drink, hire tackle and bait came to a little over 600 baht.

I usually try and buy in advance when leaving the UK. As a matter of interest there have been times when I have been in the UK and using a UK Vodafone Broadband dongle the site has refused to allow me to log-in being insistant that I am not in the UK even though I was.

I have Sygic AURA for Android loaded onto a ZTE Blade which works fine. The official site is Sygic Aura and it is around €80 but it can also be found on applanet which is an alternative android store! The download will require a broadband link as it is around 500mb in total. Tomtom also released a Thailand map recently although not for Android.

We applied for a German Schengen and had an interview ( just a document formality) and made the trip to London part of a weekend break living in the North west. Subsequent Schengens were renewed by post without fuss. I think this can now be applied for by post without interview the last time I looked at the website. We also got 2 Canadian visas by post although they did charge they were issued without fuss.Now my wife has citizenship they are a thing of the past.