SinghaJoe

My dental work is costing me quite a lot less in Sri Racha than it would at a Pattaya hospital (in fact it is costing me less in Sri Racha than it would cost me in most regular street-corner dental clinics here, yet in Sri Racha it is being done by a full-time implantologist who does nothing but that), and the standard of work appears to be fine. I also know that I could have had it done in a good place in Bangkok for about the same price, but it's further to travel so why bother?

Any hint of the dentist please?

Many bars in Pattaya where you can drink cheap, 45baht for a beer 35 baht for a thai whiskey, you just need to know the right places to drink, and most of these bars are thai run and sell always busy.

So where are they please?

And does it rain in those areas too?

In NEW PLAZA complex, nicknamed Soi Keeniow for those in the know:

http://www.pattayaphotoguide.com/?x3wRUD5rkc6A

Pretty near to where you were ripped-off, actually.

There you can have your chang a 40 baht per small bottle e thai whisky at 35 baht per glass, but beware that bars are very busy with cheap-charlie expats!

How many Russians and Indians live on the dark side?

I dont know about Indians but the Russians (and associated nationalities) are absolutely everywhere.

I've never seen a Russian around the areas i frequent and live.

In Khao Talo russians are everywhere, though not nearly as prevelent as in Pattaya city center

I am going to BKK on Monday on a mini holiday with my family, can anybody tell me where I can buy a V972 and what price I can expect to pay?

I haven't seen them in Pattaya.

Digilife 3rd floor Pantip plaza, Pratunam

http://www.digilifegadget.com/931114/onda-v972

Cambodia is a no-no for me: much dirtier and poorer than Thailand, and much less vibrant.

Decent health care facility are nowhere to be found.

Only for a very good salary I'd move there.

I got confirmed by Digilife that they have currently stock of all the tablets shown on their website.

You can order online or visit one of their branches, they have also a branch at 3rd floor Panthip.

Wow the Onda V812 suits me very well

According to specs, it's got it all:

- 8" screen size, portable yet still usable;

- new-generation CPU Cortex A7 quad core, which is powerful yet low-consuming, and that means much since battery is going to last longer and temperature is going to be lower;

- 2GB RAM, very generous on a tablet;

- 5MP rear camera + autofocus, a pretty decent resolution so you can leave your camera home ( at daylight time );

Wednesday I will be in Bangkok and will check this tablet, for sure

VOiP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Several apps that allow you to call using Wifi such as Skype, Google Voice, etc

http://www.cmpcc.org/tablet-phone/

http://virtual-offic...-tablet-pcs.htm

Thanks, so people with tablets are not making regular calls, just VOIP calls

Are you sure she is losing them rather than selling them?

Does she always have to get a new sum card?

How old is she?

If you insist on buying phones just get the cheap Nokia or Samsung phones @ 550baht.

sent from my Q6

She is 18 and she has that typical Thai careless attitube about objects, which as a Westerner I just can't stand.

Like "I lost my phone, so what, who gives a sh!t!"

She's not cheating, she just does not care much about things, like so many people here.

By the way, where do I find those 550 baht Nokia or Samsung phones?

Hi guys,

I apologize if you find my question silly, but I have this doubt in my mind.

I saw some Thai friends with cheap 7" tablets using them just like mobile phones, making and receiving voice calls.

Now how is this implemented from a technical standpoint?

As far as I know tablets with 3G connectivity only support DATA sim card, not ordinary gsm card, am I wrong?

How can one even uses a tablet like a phone?

I am very interested 'cause my daughter-in-law keeps losing phones faster than I can buy now ones, so I think giving her a tablet might be a better option: it is bigger so hopefully less easy to lose

I'd be happy to attend with my wife

can somebody confirm my booking?

I'd be happy to attend with my wife

Hanging around the Beach Road at wee hours is one of the few things that can get you into troubles in the extreme city, but in this case the Police has been very efficient.

If Ubuntu would release only 1 new version per year, but make it working without hassle than they have a real chance on the desktop.

I agree fully! I hate the current too fast cycle of releases. I wait for 1-2 months before installing new release due all kind of bugs. I'm currently using 12.04 and plan to stick with it a bit longer.

Same here. Upgrading 1-2 months after the date of release is the way to go to get a truly hassle-free linux desktop experience.

Did you get a Multi-Entry or a Single Entry? Does that make any difference?

I am an Italian national and would like to get a Non-0 Multiple-Entry.

112 £ would be rather expensive for a Single Entry...

Of course I got a Multiple one, and the big difference is that :

- the Single give you max 1 stay of 90 days

- the Multiple allow you to stay up to 15 months with a visa-run every 3 months.

Thank you very much for your feedback, this is very helpful for me :jap:

Anyone knows if it still works to send the passport/application from another EU country

Hi,

It still works

I am from France and just get last week a Non-Imm O visa "for visiting friend" from Hull.

I send my passport + docs as registered letter a Wednesday and received them the next Wednesday.

Price is now 112 £ (was 110 £ 15 months ago) for visa + postage for any Europe country (except UK).

You have to fill a new doc with the address of your friend. I put the name of a French friend retired in Thailand: no problem.

Hull said by email "The sponsor in Thailand does not have to be a Thai national"

See http://www.thaiconsu...-and-visas.aspx , "Ab" and "Ad" packs.

Thanks to Hull consulate :jap:

Great news for me!

Did you get a Multi-Entry or a Single Entry? Does that make any difference?

I am an Italian national and would like to get a Non-0 Multiple-Entry.

Having to leave.

Ditto.

Whatever the shortfalls, you're really gonna miss the city when you're back home

Totally, the right of public assembly should be classified as criminal, even terrorist, when it impinges on the freedom of movement of other citizens, whether airports, ASEAN conferences, Government House, or financial districts.

Lol you gotta be kidding: if that were really classified as terrorist then Abhisit is the head of a terrorist government

"illegal" means they didn't pay the "license fee"... while in the meantime they are busy arresting and booking "sex offenders" the Tuk-Tuk drivers harassing people who come hereto spend much needed money...

it quite a nut house...

Actually in Pattaya we don't have no tuk tuk mafia to deal with, mate.

Anyone knows if it still works to send the passport/application from another EU country? It work just fine last year. I had to pay £10 for postal, anyone know how it is know? I'll sent two e-mail to the consulate but no answer.

very interested in this so I up the question

I taught in a Thai school before and witnessed a Thai teacher telling a class that they should not sleep under a tree at night because the tree will take all of their oxygen! :0)

LOL !

thank you great find and very precious piece of information

Why the sarcasm ??

indeed! no sarcasm warranted

thumbs up smiley don't mean no sarcasm folks

by the way Naam thank you for posting your informative message

thank you great find and very precious piece of information

@ SinghaJoe one more thing, I had actually found the page you refer to with the FF plugins. It's slightly confusing with the 32 bit and 64 bit versions and so on, but I did actually follow the 32 bit install and guess what, it didn't work.

Sorry I thought you were running a 64bit installation.

And yes, I did *not* spend a lot of time searching forums or looking for help with what I was doing wrong because I simply don't care. I don't care to learn this. It should work. If it doesn't work, no thanks, I am outta here. No matter how fast I might find help in forums and so on, it's going to be much faster to follow the manual steps I found on the easy plug-in install page elsewhere - a lot more steps, but it worked on the first try.

You found it where? How did you find it without searching for it?

It's plain ridiculous and indeed a joke that you pretend to use an OS without even bothering to read the documentation or to search for the info you need.

BTW is not that time consuming, just google it on ubuntuforums.org:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=java+6u19%3Aubuntuforums.org

Result no.5 is what you're looking for:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1...light=java+6u19

It took me 1 min to find out.

Is that so hard? Does it take too much time?

It's just a matter of time and interest. If I buy an electric drill in the shop, take it home, and find it doesn't work, I don't go looking for help online, then proceed to take the drill apart and fix whatever may be broken. Instead, I take the drill back to the shop and get another one that works.

Wrong analogy. You didn't buy anything. Ubuntu Linux is a free OS which comes also with free productivity softwares included. Regular security and major updates are also provided free of charge, and automatically taken care by the system.

You should just thanks ubuntu developers and community, instead of senseless ranting at them

To clarify, yes my comparison with the Windows registry was meant as a slight. I said Ubuntu is worse, and I stand by it, because there are 5 different ways to do it that I am now aware of. There should be one way, and one way that is well thought out.

OS X does the best job here. Drag an application into the applications folder. The end. That's how it should be. That's what ubuntu should just plain out copy. It's not a hard concept, and it's not hard to implement. Of course OS X does this using a clever little trick that displays an application as a single .app file whereas in reality it's a special folder containing many sub-folders. On the level of unix tools, you only see the folders. But even so, it's not that hard to copy.

The Windows registry is a horrible idea, and indeed it leads to the gradual decline of every Windows install - but the good thing is, there is only one, and installs follow a certain pattern which is by and large adhered to.

In ubuntu, I can use synaptics, software manager, apt-get, aptitude, completely manual install, .deb packages... and I am sure there are 10 more ways to install apps. Some of these know about each other, others don't. That's just plain idiotic, it makes system maintenance a nightmare.

Admittedly this is a first impression. But it is one that makes me turn my back on this system forever.

Even unix tools... I mean.. come on so now Linux people are quite often hackers, and this system is written by programmers for programmers. So you would kinda think, 10 years after it arrived on Mac OS X, that Ubuntu would have a comparable terminal application installed by default. One with proper selection, unlimited backscrolling (by default, again), split windows. But no. OS X had a better terminal app in the year 2000 than Ubuntu has in 2010.

Linux distros are built upon the work of others. Ubuntu is built upon Debian and it takes the great dpkg and apt tools from that distro. These are back-end tools, i.e. tools which work directly in the OS shell. Aptitude and Synaptic are simply the front-end, i.e. are graphical user interfaces for that SAME tools.

Its as simple as that. No mess at all.

Ubuntu Software Center is meant to be the "easy-end" to software management, and it is in the plan to improve it until it will be ready to substitute the debian-derived tools. When that happens, Ubuntu will be much more like you want. For now accept that Ubuntu Linux has a plurality of tools to manage software.

I agree that Apple OS X is top notch in terms of easy-of-use though.

Anyway, installed OpenJDK/IcedTea and ... nothing! Neither Firefox, nor Chrome found the plug-in. No plug-in. Even though Software Manager lists both as installed. I took this as a sign to go back to the terminal, at least something can be accomplished there.

Followed the 20 steps to install the JRE, uninstall the JRE, install the JDK. All had the same bug. Got nowhere.

In addition to a huge community, Ubuntu also has a great documentation: perhaps you shoud read what's in here:

aaahttps://help.ubuntu.com/community/AMD64/FirefoxAndPlugins#64-bit%20Firefox%20and%2064-bit%20Java%20plugin

Along the way there's also some weirdness about running Firefox 3.6. You can't just install FF 3.6. You first have to search the web, there are then about 10 different ways to do it, some of which didn't work. One of them worked, forgot what it's called but always keeps FF at the latest version, kinda surprised a special tool is required for that.

In summary, software installation is a huge mess in Ubuntu. This is worse than the Registry in Windows.

Your comment is another joke. Windows registry is a true mess, and gradually screws up as time goes by and new apps are installed / old ones removed. Linux is so much better as its overall behavior is pretty consistent over time, while Windows degrades substantially.

To the above I hear you about the .deb packages - that's an improvement. But why is there no tool to automate this.

Joke again. You think you're entitled to rant about Ubuntu and you didn't know about .deb packages?

For debian-based Linux flavors .deb files are like .exe in Windows !!

And what do you mean there's no tool to automate? Again, Ubuntu has a centralized automatic update management, Windows has not.g

Ubuntu at the end of the day suffers from too much freedom in all the wrong places. Example, my manual Java install. I could install Java anywhere on the system I want. Why? No reason. Install in /etc? in /opt? in usr/bin/ in usr/local/bin? Why not! There is no sense or reason to this. It just makes it harder to create automatic installers and uninstallers. And it makes it impossible for, say, the Software Manager, to register my manual install, and perhaps display it in its list of installed software. I get the impression Linux / Ubuntu likes to shoot itself in the foot, make more work for itself or for the users, when it's not necessary. Make proper defaults for everything, is that so hard? Apps go here, libraries there, end of story.

Final word, I hate the way ubuntu organizes apps. I install something - then the guesswork starts where that was put. In Utilities? Network? Office? Preferences, even? Can this be removed, I'd really like a flat list of apps installed on the system. The organization does nothing for me, just makes it harder to find stuff.

Download "Where is application?" from here:

aaahttp://ubuntuwin.altervista.org/index.php?id=19

then double click on it and once finished add it to your gnome panel, it will tell you where any newly installed app is (in the application menu)

Oh, and remember that Ubuntu IS NOT Windows. If you look for something who works like windows just stick to it.