joekicker

You can't legally do that on a tourist visa without leaving at least once. You should ask your hospital for the best advice on how to deal with Immigration on this. Immigration are permitted to give extensions based on medical need, and I'm sure the hospital will have this problem aced.

"What you will." It's simply quite funny, although to me it's faked and not at all "live".

Here's a pretty good country song. The Big One

Some excellent options here: http://www.bangkokpost.com/060708_Outlook/...2008_out009.php

The 00x explanations are excellent but the Deedial part is not right. After pre-charging, you phone DeeDial on their Thailand number, they connect you to a line and you dial the foreign number as if you were in that foreign country. There is no obvious callback per se, it is all transparent - you dial, the foreign number rings and answers, you talk at about 1.5 baht per minute. The full Thai charge is usually a total of 3 baht, as usual for a local call, presuming you live in a place served by Deedial. The Deedial (and Zeyhai and others) are all involved in time-renting from various wholesalers. From the standpoint of the caller in Thailand, there is no callback involved. Plus they can be used from landline or mobile at the same cost. The drawback as you say is that the precharge is on a specific phone line, which must be used for calling.

I can tell you for a fact that "30 seconds" is BS, as is the idea that the Master Mod is sitting there pushing the button to enable that. It kicks in automatically and it ends when the number of operations recedes, usually in a couple of seconds. It's an automatic reflex that kicks in so that too many things cannot try to happen at the same time. It's about as clumsy as it gets in technology. I remember seeing it in 1973 on the first computer network I ever saw - and then the next time I saw it was here.

OP, note the above. This is the very least requirement to get into business in Thailand. You need help and guidance - a wife, a lawyer, a partner... something.

Your post is pretty naive. You don't LEGALLY have "anything to fall back on" as you will be unable to work legally at any of those professions unless someone hires you which is barely a possibility. You seem unaware you have to have Thai partners in any actual business you do. You're not starting at the beginning at all. The only advice is you have to do a LOT more basic research before you even dream of opening a restaurant, and probably on-site research.

A lot. Maybe a majority if you count the people who are really pixxed off that their car has no pickup, they can't go far on a tank, and they have to wait an hour in line for a fillup once they find a garage with the fuel. But a warranty? I doubt you'd get one - for all those reasons.

The current newest SP3 has been almost trouble-free. There is no such thing as totally trouble-free on computer add-ons.

About 50,000 baht. Lots of garages advertise they will do it. I urge you to ask around to see who are actually qualified because there is a LOT of cheating around on this right now.

... but apparently even that is not as iffy as trying to get more than about 16kbps actual download speed. They had a huge collection of letters in the Post Database last week or the week before, just for example.

All DSL is shared, everywhere. That is not necessarily a problem - or, or course, it could be. It's not the number of people on your "party line" so much as their surfing habits - something you can't know when you join.

Sorry, I meant in the box with the router. But do check before you leave the store, splitters are only a few baht and it's maddening to have to go back. MaxNet is getting VERY bad press for any speed below the 1,000kbps service, which is getting very good press. Just FYI. The Thai techie press is full of this at the mo. The router is the "modem" (so to speak) for DSL. Yes, you'll need a splitter, which allows you to use the phone/fax and the Internet at the same moment.

Normally, it's in the packet.

Ozzies only, I think? But I speak Strine reasonably well. I like it.

I've seen them in every Internet mall, Central department store, you name it. If you are getting in a new line, the company you get it from should give you one - TOT, True or TT&T usually do.

Stev, Is there some point at which yours will start?

And this is not all bad by any means: Hong Kong (dpa) - Hong Kong's flagship airline Cathay Pacific Friday increased fares for first and business-class passengers by up to 15 per cent to counter soaring oil price rises. The airline, which issued a profit warning earlier this month over the impact of rising fuel prices, is expected to impose its biggest rises on routes to Europe, Canada and Australia. The fare rises ranging from 3 to 15 per cent will come into effect from Friday, the airline said in a statement. There will be no fare increases for economy class passengers.

THAI is probably close to or at the top of "extra" charges. The reason is that all fare rises have to be approved by the government at a formal cabinet meeting. That doesn't happen often, but several understandable reasons, so the airline puts on extra charges.

And now, as usual, we get to the urban legends part of the thread. I think we should be told the artists who recorded these "country and western" songs. There is a song called My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, And I Don't Love Jesus by Jimmy Buffett. Which country singer recorded your Number 20?

Gee, I don't know... Pussywhipped Again, Three Biggest Lies, Beer is Good for You. I figure Asian people would like them okay.

... whose most recent hit included (sic) the perfect country song: Well, I was drunk the day my Mom got outta prison. And I went to pick her up in the rain. But, before I could get to the station in my pickup truck She got runned over by a damned old train. In my opinion it is not perfect. There's no little gal, but much more importantly there's no dawg.

Some people think these are made up. The Number 1 song is just a year or three old, and was on the charts for quite a while. It's by a hugely successful country star. My favourite line: Oh, my life has become / A country song. http://www.lyricstime.com/vince-gill-it-s-...ght-lyrics.html I think David Allen Coe has my top five or six. Funny, they are both from that centre of country and western culture - Florida!

I had one of those. Jeez, I am really getting old. I lost it when the buggy whip factory where I was working went broke. While I had it they paid for one very expensive hospital workup in a foreign country, and a couple of years later bitxhed for three months before they finally forked over for a Bangkok treatment (no hospital) because they insisted my claim was TOO LOW! They thought I'd come back for more later, and when they were finally convinced that "that was it" they paid. "Just send us the bill" was all they ever said, to me at least.