davidgtr

Anyone been out to the Jalae Lahu Museum, north of the Kok river & near Huai MaeSai waterfall?

http://www.hilltribe.org/museum/01-museum-banjalae.php

I went out there recently to try & increase my knowledge of the Lahu, but was disgusted by the amount of litter lying around.

Sort of impressed by the museum, but put right off by the litter problem 20 metres from the museum. What a shame & waste of money trying to creat a good impression is what I thought.

My understanding is that you submit the application form in Chiang Mai & they will forward it to Bangkok, & hey presto in a couple of weeks, the International Drivng Licence is issued from Bangkok.

Some expats in Chiang Mai have one via the local system & it works.

Have you applied yet, or are just thinking about it & stirring the pot?

I am considering sending a motorcycle to Australia and wonder if anyone has done this, and could advise me . All help would be greatly appreciated.

There's a detailed report on the export of a Honda Phantom to Australia here.

It's not just about the bike, it's also about your fellow riders, the "image" and culture and the feeling you get when you fire up your bike and head out on the road. Like when I went to Bkk on 5 December, and joined a couple thousand other (mostly) Harley enthusiasts from all over the country. A large group of us then proceeded up to Chiang Mai for the bike week there, spent a few days camping out and having fun before hitting the road for the next destination.

There were a few non-Harleys in our group (one Honda and a BMW). Don't often see large groups of "crotch-rocket" enthusiasts doing similar ventures. Usually they are in pairs or groups of 4-5ish. When you get a group of 20, 30, 40+ Harleys thundering down the road, people stop and stare.

Riding a Harley isn't about being able to slice through traffic Matrix-style at 200 km/hr, or going from 0-150 faster than a BG's knickers can hit the floor.

I guess it all depends on what you expect, or what gets your rocks off when riding. Maybe you just got to try before you buy and get what feels right for you. As Ajahnlau said "Some people never get it". Some do, but you'll never know from behind a keyboard. Get out and give it a try !

Different horses for different courses. Just so long as you ride, & it doesn't matter what - the best bike is the one that brings you the most enjoyment. But if you have to ride in large groups then I reckon you subscribe to the herd mentality & feel insecure riding alone or in smaller groups.

You probably don't get to many large "crotch-rocket" groups, because they ride faster & know it's dangerous riding in big groups.

But yeah people will naturally stop & stare if you're in a big group of bikes, no matter what the bike - it's not restricted to Harleys alone. They even do it in many places if you rock up alone on any big impressive bike.

Whatever, glad you're enjoying your new bike, even if a lot of it is about image. I hope you have many good safe long distance rides on it.

And life goes on..... Anymore statistics to tell us something that we already know. The weather & envirnoment aint that great in the hot season when the fires are burning.... funny but they probably say that in the US & Oz & Europe when there's lot of bushfires around. Living's not good for you when it's like that.

Talk about preaching to the converted, still I guess some people like to amuse themselves somehow. Perhaps they've got nothing else to do?

Perfect weather & views on the Samoeng Loop today.

You can all stop complaining now.

There will be a meeting of expat bikers in Chiang Mai at the Kafe tomorrow at 8PM Friday 4th April.

Dom Hetrakul who is the MD of BritBike the Thailand Triumph dealer will be in town with his staff & they want to meet up with Chiang Mai's expat bikers to forge rider friendships, regardless of your brand of bike. Anyone with a big bike is welcome to attend.

For more info look here.

What are the conditions for finance? Deposit, intrest, monthly installments..

Prices & Finance & models for Yamaha are here.

That is not really a 600 or 1000 bike, or we not count the last 300

surprising suzuki didn't have any of their 600/1000 liter sportbikes there.

Not sure about that

Ok, got ya, you were being specific & not general as I thought. My mistake, sorry.

surprising suzuki didn't have any of their 600/1000 liter sportbikes there.

Not sure about that

Oh yeah.. Any pics of the above Honda CZ motard ??

Got a bikes ' babes collection from the Motor Show up here, including 2 of the CZ Motard Concept bike.

Re riding into Vietnam, yeah it's a problem on just about anything now. Check out the repeated failed Nuovo attempts to get into here. But Laos & Cambodia are ok.

I am having a difficult time locating Dr. Siri's office. Can someone help me out? If standing in front of the Montri Hotel (facing the hotel) I know it is to the right - away from the direction of Black Canyon coffee. But how far past the Montri Hotel? Is it past the Wat or between the Montri Hotel and the Wat? A pharmacist wrote for me in Thai what to look for on the sign, but I don't see anything that looks like a medical clinic on that block. I called a phone number I found somewhere for Dr. Siri hoping for directions and it was the wrong number. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Gees, you don't sound very adventurous mate. Cant walk down the street a few hundred metres & look for a clinic?

It's a massive 213 metres from the Montri to the clinic.

Who checks the mail in your house mail box?

Well i plucked up courage and put my deposit down today. Get it on Tuesday with a few extras like 12v socket for gps, alarm etc

Congratulations. The guys at Charoen Motor are definitely trying to do the right thing & provide real service. You should have been on their Charoen Motor Yamaha Big Bike Charity ride to Doi Inthanon last week. It was a beauty, perfectly organised with no expense spared.

I use

Dr Sukitt Auripibul.

8/2 Sri Dornchai Road.

Clinic hours: 5.00 – 8.00 pm, Monday – Friday.

Tel (66 53) 282090

OK ... I finally got of my lazy ass and went looking for this.

Japita on Niman do silk screen for 350b + 70b per cost of t-shirt + 10b per cost of pringint each t-shirt

for min of 20 tho (350b + 80b x X T-shirts if plain white t-shirt)

There is one only I saw on Sirimangklajarn also called Japita.

Cost for small amount is 500b plus 80+10 per plain white t-shirt

I went to my fav printing place and he said i can get transfer sheets from KSK's IT World, which I got 5 sheets for 129b.

He was busy so haven't printed it on there yet, but will do so soon.

Does anyone know where I can get plain single colour (and white) t-shirts from for thai cost?

Isn't the shop called Jipata?

I think they have 3 branches (at least) in Cnx.

Well, here's the finished product. Not exactly pruning...

From this

Sickening!

There's not a great deal of hope for our city environment with staff / officials operating like this to look after our municipality. Where's the logic / common sense?

Funny you should say this because the bastards just came into our soi Sotsuksa in Chang Puak, got out a chainsaw, cut down a beautiful big roadside tree & left.

I wonder if it's a new big tree clean up policy going on?

Here's some pix of the butchers of Chiang Mai at work

No logic in this whatsoever, but then again what should be expect from the tessebaan. 5 phone calls to complain & no one cares or gives a dam_n!

I wonder what was the point of this exercise.

Well done Mayor. Congratulations on contributing to the further destruction of Chiang Mai's environment.

Funny you should say this because the bastards just came into our soi Sotsuksa in Chang Puak, got out a chainsaw, cut down a beautiful big roadside tree & left.

I wonder if it's a new big tree clean up policy going on?

I do believe that we should not just shrug our shoulders and say "This is Thailand", though. Do your best as an individual and communicate the importance of this to others, without preaching.

Yeah well my guess is that most of the farang on his forum are aware of the problem & already doing their best. So many complainers are simply preaching to the converted & I find that it does get a bit tiring.

BTW I wonder has anyone counted how many threads there about this subject on the forum?

I must say that I always find it intriguing why so many posters on this forum so often blame journalists and reporters for unclear or downright false information. It is like they accuse writers of deliberately distorting facts and sensationalising them.

Well I know some of them would never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

My favourite all time example was the long neck hilltribe village hidden in the jungles of North Thailand, (a few kms north of Tha Ton.)

There was a 3 x 4 metre sign beside the highway pointing to the hill tribe village 130 metres off the highway.

But that's another story.

I do feel though as some people have nothing better to do but crow about the pollution. Surely they must be getting a sore throat by now.

I agree it is bad & is a problem at times, but come on guys let's get on with our lives. It is not going to go away in the near future, & more than likely there will be much worse peaks in the coming years; but for me the deciding factor is going to be adverse weather conditions of the day / week, that will trap the bad air in the valley; & there wont be a great deal we can do about that. Last year was bad but so were the extreme weather conditions - early end to wet season / poor wet season.

The locals have been burning off rubbish for generations & it they all won't stop overnight, unless there is an alterative rubbish disposal system in place for them.

Most people want a car - there's too many vehicles on the city roads, but what is the alternative provided by the govt?

Unless education & realistic solutions to these problems are provided by the govt, the pollution will continue to get worse before it gets better.

It's price we are going to have to pay for such uncontrolled rapid development. And Chiang Mai is not alone.

Let's all contribute in whatever ways we can to the decrease of pollution, in Chiang Mai as in the rest of the world.

/ Priceless

So what do you personally propose to do, other than keep alerting us to the fact that Chiang Mai (like many other North Thai cities in the hot season) has a pollution problem?

Little reason for average folks to avoid Chiang Mai.

Does that mean we can all come out again?

Just in from the "Skin & Beauty" Clinic at Lanna Hospital.

They couldn't help me on the beauty side, but they gave (sold) me some nice cream for the anti-skin-cancer. (I apologies but there goes that word again - cancer.)

Fast efficient service at Lanna. Give them a go. Almost no waiting, plus decent English.

JOHN MACGREGOR : Chiang Mai has been blanketed in carcinogenic smoke for many weeks. For a large part of the year, Chiang Mai's air is more polluted than that of most cities. This is because of the high level of burning around the city and beyond, and the northwestern Suthep Range, which blocks the northwesterly and southeasterly winds - winds which would otherwise wash out air pollution - during the cool and rainy seasons, respectively. In addition, a drier dry season in the North means there is less rain to settle pollutants.

Thus, according to one study, in six of the seven categories of air pollution measured in both cities, Chiang Mai had higher concentrations than Bangkok - in most cases far higher concentrations. More specifically, Chiang Mai's level of particulates of less than 10 microns (

In 1999, 45% of Chiang Mai residents suffered from respiratory problems, according to Duangchan Charoenmuang, who has studied Chiang Mai's air at the Urban Development Institute Foundation. As for ultra-small particles - the

The broader Air Quality Index (AQI) is a measure of most known air pollutants. The AQI is frequently elevated above dangerous levels in Chiang Mai, on and off, for several months of the year - usually the January-March "burning season", but frequently longer. The city's AQI readings are more often than not higher than those of other Thai cities, including Bangkok.

Some of Chiang Mai's smog is carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide from industrial and vehicle emissions and cooking fires; and dust from building projects. The levels vary across the municipality, e.g. they are much higher at Wararot Market and along Thapae Road. But most of the "smog" is smoke, and this comes from the deliberate burning of crops and other vegetation, and of forests (often by villagers to trigger the growth of wild thob mushrooms, or by poachers to flush out game); and also from non-deliberate forest and grass fires. These smoke sources are local (Chiang Mai province), regional (northern Thailand) and international (Burma and Laos; but also the "Asian Brown Cloud" stretching from eastern China through Southeast Asia to Pakistan). No one knows proportionally how much smoke comes from each area.

As lowland agriculturalists in the North allegedly only burn selectively, and because so many forest fires are raging in the highlands, many deliberately lit, the current theory is that these highland forest fires - coupled with an abnormal cold front from China that is trapping haze in the northern valleys - are the prime source of Chiang Mai's recent pall of smoke. However, there is a certain capacity for denial and misattribution of blame in Thai officialdom, so this theory needs to be taken with a grain of salt for the moment.

In the short term, Chiang Mai's smoke gives residents coughs, headaches, sore throats, red streaming eyes, sneezing fits and more serious bronchial illnesses. It caused dozens of heart attacks in 2007. In 2003, there were 704,800 hospital cases of respiratory disease recorded in Chiang Mai province - roughly twice that of 10 years earlier. The Chiang Mai-Lamphun Air Pollution Control Project states that patients with general respiratory diseases in Chiang Mai outnumber those in Bangkok. Over the three days to March 20, 2007, the number of respiratory patients in Mae Hong Son rose from 416 to 3,541; in Chiang Rai, from 1,780 to 11,148; and in Chiang Mai from 1,370 to 4,514.

In the longer term, Chiang Mai's smoke raises the rates of lung cancer and other chronic or fatal ailments. Chiang Mai has the second-highest lung cancer rate in the world, according to Prof Sumittra Thongprasert from the Medical Ecology Department of Chiang Mai University - and higher than any other region of Thailand. The city's 139 lung cancer cases per 100,000 population is almost six times the world average.

from an article at aseanenvironment.info/News/44001908.htm

Ah well, that's it then. We are all doomed to die & more than likely our chances of dying from lung cancer are 6 times worse than anyone else. <deleted> what a way to go - the old cancer. And I thought we might all be able to die peacefully in our sleep from old age because we’ve been living in a (false) paradise.

What now? I guess we should all get out & protest how are lives are being stuffed up by pollution.

You can't enjoy life anymore, unless we move to the next paradise & wait 20 years for that to be stuffed up by development too!

Then there'd be nowhere to go & our lives would have been such a waste.

Shtye what are we here for? There's nothing but doom & gloom, pollution & lung cancer everywhere.

Best to go back to the cave perhaps.

Yeah, riding a bike at Songkram time is mad & totally dangerous!

But also have you thought about the New Year holidays running into the next week & embassy opening times.

If you're not on a tight schedule never mind.

Where are you starting from?

Whatever, you sound like a big boy riding an Intruder 750, so should be able to work it out as you go.