forcebwithu

My experience too, and as recent as last night. Not sure what True was doing with their system in Pattaya, but my service and a friend of mine who lives a couple of km's away experienced an outage that began mid-afternoon yesterday. Not a problem for me as I just switched over to using 4G. What was a bit unusual is yesterday's outage lasted longer than the usual hour or two. In fact when I came back from an evening of entertainment around 10 pm I found the internet was still down. I then gave True a call, listened to the message that if I wanted an English speaking operator to say "confirm". Did that and still got connected to Thai voice prompts, TIT. Recognized enough of the Thai prompt to know they wanted my service number. Fortunately my limited Thai includes knowledge of numbers, so repeated my service number in Thai and was promptly connected to a CSR who's English language skills were almost non-existent. She then tried to connect me to an English speaking CSR, but after a couple of minutes on hold I gave up and hung up. Now here's where True actually shone in terms of customer service. About a minute after I hung up another CSR with very limited English skills called me back. In my experience, it's almost unheard of to have a company representative call me back. Even more surprising as I never had the chance to ask them to call me back. Anyhoo, within a minute of this CSR on the phone with me, and while still trying to communicate the problem to her, my internet service resumed. I suspect that whatever the reason for my continued outage, it was something they were able to resolve remotely. Given the language barrier, and the latest of the hour when they probably had minimal staff, I still think True did ok in quickly resolving the problem once they were made aware of it.

Depending on your usage requirements, you might find 4G sufficient.

Betadine is an antiseptic, not an antibiotic. It'll kill germs, but an antibiotic will help a wound heal faster. The ointment also helps to keep the wound "moist" as it heals, which is great when the wound is in the area of a joint. One the ingredients in the triple antibiotic is bacitracin, which can be bought in Thailand. Problem is I don't find it nearly as effective as a triple antibiotic.

Using Chrome I see the following displayed for about a second, but then the redirect to Agoda happens successfully.

I've never been able to find a source for triple antibiotic ointment in Thailand. In a tropical climate it's a must have for treating cuts and abrasions to prevent infection and speed healing.

I'm happy to report the spelling police finally stopped by and got somchai sorted. 99 posts on the road, knock one down, kick it around, 98 posts on the road...

I looked into using TransferWise and for some reason the fee for USD is almost double the fee for GBP or AUD. Not sure why that is, but for me the ACH transfer to NYC branch of Bangkok Bank has the lowest fees.

Buddha forbid they should ever listen to a farang. The arrogance of the Thai truly amaze me sometimes. Great pics Idefix.

Another good one is FastStone Resizer.

When booking at the resort I had asked them if they wanted me to book direct due to the number of rooms I needed. They said to use Agoda, probably b/c it's saves them having to have an in house reservation system. In this case though, Agoda's system is shit for handling multi room bookings unless the property happens to have enough room types in one category for the number of rooms one wishes to reserve. That not being the case I had to book each of the five rooms as a separate reservation, which made the reservation process take five times longer.

For the roundabout it's a nice touch. Hilarious they can't get the orientation of the compass points correct. My guess is some duffass figured since Beach Rd generally runs north and south and is parallel to the beach, then the Waterfront beach must be the same.

The Silver Lake/Buddha Mountain area is a great ride. A bit shorter, but still a nice ride is around Mabprachan Lake. There's a group of us that ride on Mondays (road biking), and Fridays (mtn biking). The rides are easy and at a comfortable pace. Check out our group's FB page (link) for meet time, location and pictures. "The journey, not the destination that matters" Safe riding.

I see in a prior post it was mentioned that you can save a bit on the room rate as well as giving the board a commission. Having just booked a room using the Agoda link I can give everyone a good example of the savings. The booking was for: Before clicking on the Agoda link: After: Savings much appreciated as I was booking five rooms for our group.

I agree. For a movie with a reported $100 million budget, thought they did a piss poor job editing out anachronisms. The director also did a poor job of emphasizing the scale of the evacuation. Instead of the 300,000+ needing to be evacuated, the most we see are a few hundred queuing on the beach. The movie even managed to make air to air combat scenes boring. I also found the non-linear story line to be extremely distracting. Finally gave up on the movie about an hour into it.

For lap swimming I use the Father Ray Foundation pool. 25m pool, cost is 60B/day. See this post for more info http://www.pattayatalk.com/forums/topic/49452-swimming-pool-info/?p=1143368

Having a driver arrive early is a big plus in my mind as it eliminates the anxiety of a late or no-show driver that puts my arrival at the airport on time at risk. The drivers I've had have no problem when I come out, tell them thanks for arriving early, but I sill have to finish packing.

Good to know. Thanks.

I thought there was only one arrivals Premium Lane, the one identified on the back of the Fast Track Pass. Where is the second one located?

Had a look at the Dr. fees from my last visit to Bangkok Pattaya Hospital in 2011. No surprise the ER visit was the highest at 1,600. The first follow up visit that involved lab work was 600. The second a few days later had lab and ultrasound work, Dr. fee was 1,000. It would appear a higher fee is tied to additional work performed by the Dr., or emergency care.

I'm no doctor, but from what I understand a five to seven day course of antibiotics is the norm. A three day course increases the risk that all the nasty bugs haven't been killed off.

It's rare that one can say this about a Thai operation, but they really do an outstanding job at Pattaya Immigration.

Went through the underpass last night and noticed only about 70% of the lighting now works, and the previously mentioned problems with the road surface seems to be getting worse. While not yet crumbling, the road surface has many dips to it that indicate a failure of the subsurface. Pretty sad statement on Thai construction quality given the the underpass has only been open a little more than three months.

The URL isn't a govt site. Was that a redirect from an Embassy page?

Another route to Buakhao is to turn left out of Mercure, walk about 50 m and take the soi up to Buakhao. That soi can be identified by the NETA Resort sign on the corner.

Green Bottle has been gutted.