Gary

When I want a cup of coffee, I just want a regular cup of coffee. I don't need 2 dozen different brews and the bottom line is that I absolutely refuse to pay 100 baht for any cup of coffee. Trendy shit means nothing to me.

I am of the opinion that NOTHING on the Internet is truly secure. Anyone who comes up with the encryption system leaves holes and there is always someone who is smarter than the author who can get around it. As far as the average user, is is likely that we have nothing valuable enough to steal.

I consider myself pretty lucky. I had told myself that if any stock that I held came back to the price I paid, that I would sell them. The majority of my holdings did come back and I did sell them. I even made a small profit. I have two ETF's that are still down over 40 percent from what I paid per share. That's not as bad as it sounds. They are/were high dividend paying funds and I still get over 4 percent dividends based on my original investment. Today the 4 to 5 percent return is not too bad so there is no need to take a loss selling them. If they come back to what I paid for them (doubtful) I will sell them too. In my opinion, investing in anything today is a dangerous thing. The stock market is risky enough let alone an investment that you risk losing it all. There are NO guarantees. This economy is no place for the little guy. I took risks when I was younger because I could always work and make more money. My working days are now over and there is no way to earn more money. Shaky high return investments are tempting but at some point in your life, you have to protect whatever you have accumulated.

Sex tourism will not go away as long as there is a huge demand. The only way it will go away is if the prices go out of sight and If the government finds a way to tax the industry out of business, that could effectively kill it. If I still had a family of my own with young children, I could easily find other more family orientated destinations. I certainly wouldn't choose Pattaya. The danger of the government taxing the industry out of business is that it will drive prostitution underground. There are always women who are willing to sell their bodies and there will always be a market for them to exploit. The major problem with that is it will bring in pimps and the mafia who will love being in complete control. I say let it be and encourage the family tourists to visit more family orientated destinations. Why kill the Pattaya goose who lays golden eggs? The do gooders in Western countries have gone so far as to entrap and jail the customers who try to pick up street walkers who turn out to be cops. This has destroyed families and ruined lives. Men are men. No way will anyone be able to eliminate the oldest profession. If you don't like the sex scene areas, don't go there.

I posted this before but it disappeared; I'm not really paranoid but I do use this program; http://www.ghostery.com/about

Sometimes Chrome is better and sometimes Firefox is better. It seems like both eventually develop glitches. I use both and am using Chrome as my default right now. It's a sure bet that Chrome will have problems and I'll be back using Firefox. Both are great until the gremlins show up. Sam, download a little program called TDSS Killer. It is from Kaspersky. It will remove that major pain in the ass Babylon. I complained to BitDefender that their antivirus cannot find or remove Babylon and was told that they don't consider it a threat. I asked them to re-consider that position.

A bicycle is even more dangerous than a motorbike. At least a motorbike can pretty much keep up with traffic and outrun dogs.

I regret to tell you that your life will be altered forever. It gets in your blood and no where else will appeal to you the same as Thailand. I tried to get away and the first two weeks of living in Southern California, I wondered why I had ever left Thailand. I did make it back and am happily retired here.

It all depends on the condo complex. Some have good security and others don't. My condo is unoccupied most of the time and I have never worried about anything I keep there.

There was a bum in Jomtien who went into the bars to drink then couldn't pay his bar tab. His 81 year old father who lived on a very small UK pension eventually paid his tabs. The police were called many times and they did nothing. He had no passport with him and no money. He couldn't pay a bribe so the police left him alone. His father passed away and this bum has disappeared.

From Thomas Cook Holidays - listing some of the guest's complaints during the season. 1. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts." 2. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned 3. "On my holiday to Goa in India , I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all." 4. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels." 5. A tourist at a top African game lodge over looking a water hole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the sight of this rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel "inadequate". 6. A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she'd been locked in by staff. When in fact, she had mistaken the "do not disturb" sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain in the room. 7. "The beach was too sandy." 8. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white." 9. A guest at a Novotel in Australia complained his soup was too thick and strong. He was inadvertently slurping the gravy at the time. 10. "Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women." 11. "We bought' Ray-Ban' sunglasses for five Euros (£3.50) from a street trader, only to find out they were fake." 12. "No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled." 13. "There was no egg slicer in the apartment..." 14. "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish..." 15. "The roads were uneven.." 16. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England it only took the Americans three hours to get home." 17. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller." 18. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers - will we be OK staying here?" 19. "There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners." 20. "We had to queue outside with no air conditioning." 21. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel." 22. "I was bitten by a mosquito - no-one said they could bite." 23. "My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked." (They walk amongst us and they Vote!!!, Democrat in the US, Socialist in Europe)

That old rumor has been circulating for many years already. Allegedly the businesses on the sea side of Walking Street are all illegally built and must be torn down. If there is a statute of limitations regarding that construction, and there probably is, I'd guess that it has long ago expired. View Talay 7 in Jomtien is obviously built too near the beach and is clearly illegally built. I don't see it being torn down despite the legal objections and lawsuits from Jomtien Complex.

I'm not a techie by any means and I don't have a super computer. I used a system monitor for a while but neither the processors nor the RAM came anywhere close to maximum capacity. I uninstalled it. Today I loaded Firefox and opened five tabs, opened Chrome and started Photo Shop and had a look at the performance monitor;

Resource hungry? Most modern computers have a huge amount of RAM. None of the browsers take very much of what is available. I have Firefox running and my computer is using 1.7 GB out of 8 GB.

That portion of map came from my GPS so there is no link. The place is on Thapraiya right before you get to Theprasit heading into Jomtien from Pattaya.

I think both Chrome and Firefox have occasional glitches. I had a lot of problems with Firefox and changed to Chrome. Chrome had problems so I tried to go back to Firefox. I finally uninstalled Firefox and all the settings. I reinstalled the latest version and Firefox is once again my default browser. I would rate Firefox and Chrome as being way better than IE. Both Firefox and Chrome can import all your bookmarks and some other settings from each other so it's not difficult to swap back and forth.

You're right, no pool. My memory must be failing. I actually had to look on Agoda to be sure; http://www.agoda.com/pages/agoda/default/DestinationSearchResult.aspx?asq=tTOQk3mFmlABxgVjJPrsxhEtUfjmnERA53TPdJw%2b6cdc8nXVGHzKk3eWdxMMrsjInUBNvip%2fLxkSL%2bJhKgTA%2fP8cYSuRqleFZjQXZWWcI3V4GT%2b%2b9%2basPnk4UX9MT%2fbR

The Jomtien Boathouse is a nice place. It is on Beach Road and the beach is right across the road. Good restaurant and swimming pool. Not too expensive and it is directly on the baht bus route.

All genuine bee honey is antibacterial. I wouldn't worry about a brand name, just worry if is it is genuine honey.

To my taste buds, there is a big difference between lemons and limes. I don't really like limeade but I love lemonade. I do prefer lime juice in a gin tonic.

I have heard from a fairly reliable source that an Issan farang had many actual yellow lemon trees and they did quite well. He didn't have enough of them to sell commercially but he did try to sell them in the fresh markets. The Thais wouldn't buy them. He gave up on the project.

Like everyone else, I hate cattle class. I just booked a trip to Fort Wayne, Indiana for about $1,300 round trip. Business class for the same flight was $3,800. I can't see paying three times economy fare for business class. As a matter of fact, I hate travelling even if it were free. My mother is 91 years old and it is my duty to make the trip.

Over the years, I have probably flown most of the airlines. I think they all have good and bad flights. When I shop for a ticket now, I pay no attention to the airline and concentrate on price and schedule. I am willing to pay a bit more for shorter time flights and better connections. Philippine Air was the absolute worst airline I have ever taken both coming and going. That was mostly because of the ridiculous delays and flight cancellations. United had the rudest flight attendants. The old cows would do nothing to make your flight better. China Air usually had the best food and good service. I always was satisfied with Thai Air but they usually are not price competitive.

Gabor, the 450,000 shell price was a number of years ago. They have appreciated nicely since then. I had thoughts of buying two side by side units and making a single decent sized separate bedroom unit. My idea ended up being more expensive than just buying what I wanted to start with. I very nearly bought a nice front corner unit in Tieng Tong on Soi 7. The day I went to make the agreement with the owner, the electric went off and I found out that they had no emergency generator. I didn't like the idea of walking up or down 17 stories. I called the guy and told him I was no longer interested. The price of that unit then was 1.6 million. It recently sold again for 3.5 million.