HILLY

Not guest friendly and they charge a joiner fees that varies when they feel like it. Typical family hotel with mostly Asian guests.

Forget it. Thailand basically does not want second hand car imports and does everything they can to make it near impossible to acheive. Import duty alone will amount to more than the car is worth. In Eurpoe, Thailand has just one office that will deal with this and in Brussels if I remember correctly. I gave it a try on a Shogun and trailored boat and called them. The answer was a flat no but they would send me the forms so I could waste my time. Interestingly now boats can be imported with little or no duty.

I will warn the others then.

Most couses are offering terrific deals right now with green fees on certain days dropping to well below 1000 Baht but you have to add a buggy and caddy fee plus the tip so all in with transport a lillte over 2000 Baht is about right for many courses now.

Nor me.

Maybe the best in town but you need to taste the chips before leaving the shop as they are often under cooked and hard. They are also on Door to Door and there is an option for large Red Snapper and chips but guess that never happened as I am always told they dont have it.

Dumpy and sexy????? Hmmm Dave take a break mate.

Excellent deal when the cheapest available for Lon BKK Lon return seems to be Eva at 50,000 Baht for the same period and Thai 1000 Baht more. Unfortunatelly the journey must start Bkk Lon Bkk.

Behave Dave.LOL

My domestic Thai airline of chioce is Nok in business class for an extra 500 Baht each way. Bloody good airline IMHO. The air miles you get with Thai are pretty worthles on the domestic routes and as Udon is only a 1 hour flight, paying the extra to get the Thai air miles is not economical unless you are that close to gold status that the 1000 miles or so makes a real difference.

Medical Certificate????? I understood that you only need this for the first one and even for a Retirement Visa renewal they dropped it as well. Can you tell us more please and why did you get one as the rules dont say you needed it either.

This one is very important. If your Thai license is still valid even for a few hours then they will likely only give you one year again. Some Thai logic here then. If you let it expire and then get stopped driving to the license building then be preared to get a fine. Now I get it. lol

Possibly yes but I ned to know what you are looking for and how big etc

Many hotels will ask for top dollar for walk in's. Some will give net rates if they think you are leaving but the bluff does not alwys work.

Pete and I had this very conversation last night and I think the answer is no just because I anticipate downloading 24/7 and with HD movies being so big then I am going to get through those drives to fast. In fact I do back up everything that is worth backing up to disk regardless of the distractions of Pats so I will continue to do that instead. On with the story. The TV arrived yesterday and I have to say I am impressed. Absolutely zero screen reflection which was a big problem in my condo with so much glass. Even UBC which is a crap signal looks so much better than before but wont see a HD movie on it for a few days as Peter is copying his drives to mine which takes a long while. He already has masses of stuff including HD progs so it looks like I will be having a few months in. lol. At last (11 days) Ji Net upgraded the connection to 1 meg and although I know that is slow compared to other countries it just goes to show how things are improving in LOS. When I first moved here the best we could do was 256/56 with sat connections that went down all the time and never acheived much more than 50% of the promised speeds. Now it is zipping along. Downloaded a 1.2 gig two part TV series from Nova last night and got it in 2 hours. Before that would have taken me a day to get. Next problem to be sorted is my desktop PC that I intend to download to. It is not bad at Pent 4 but Pete discovered it has no network card and we intend to transfer info to the new PC by the TV. I am desperatelly short of HD space as well. However the PC works fine even after 3 years. So Monday Watana are coming to install the card and HD (500 gig). Then we are off and running. I bought my sound equipment from the UK with a sea shipment when I sold my house last year. It included a Pioneer amp and Technics home juke box that holds 110 CD's. That was installed at the same time and now have great sound as well.

Will find out in a few hours as it is being fitted today. I hope.

On with the story. Last weekend I took a look at the Samsung LCD 46 inch and the picture quality was amazing. However this is the lower resolution and not the higher res that the Samsung LA-52F71B 52 inch has so it should be better as the research we have done also seems to confirm. So decision made and paid the deposit for this one that should be here on Friday. Total cost 180K. Incidentally Mr Ji from Naklua continues to surprise as he sent a French guy around to see me last Saturday as he wanted a cheaper big screen projector TV which I have now in the Sony 49 inch. He took one look and bought it for 15K which I was happy with. Peter called me from Bangkok yesterday to say he will be back with the PC to run my set up at the end of the week also so we are getting close. Cost around 80K with 4 X 500 gig hard drives pre-installed.That should keep me going for a week or so. Back to Ji-Net and my 1 meg connection that I paid for a week ago and was promised the next day. Well it did not happen and this Monday I sent a polite chase email to support. Within minutes they called me back to say it would be done yesterday. After lunch I did a speed test and found that is was now getting 45/50 kps per second but not sure how reliable these speed tests are. Before I was getting max 40KPS so it looks like something has happened but no where near 1 meg yet. So now I am going to send them another email asking what is happening. Peter mailed me some info links to look at last weekend including a forum as this will start to familiarise me with the tech side of this. Much of it is confusing the hell out of me but the more I read the more it seems to make some sense now. We do seem to be getting there though.

That is what I said. It has been wrong for about 10 days now but in LOS it gets right around 12am to 6pm before going wrong again later and weekends.

No it has not. The Baht has been steady for over a week at around 69.?. This is a vaguery in the way the exchange rates are being shown abroad and here.

Having just found Pete's thread on this by accident I made the decision to get on with it and to get with the program. I had seen Pete's system a year or so ago and decided it was the way to go when he showed me Terminator in HD that he had downloaded previously. Well I am going to give you a blow by blow account of how things go and I started yesterday. My first port of call was to phone Peter on Monday 21st Feb and shout for his help as most of it is way over my head. Peter as usual was great and asked me to give him 5 minutes to get his trousers on before I arrived at his condo. lol. Not wanting to see him naked I gave him 10 minutes before taking the long slog in the lift 10 floors up into the sky. He took me though most of it and lost me at about word four so we sat and watched a downloaded HD nature program on his 50 inch Pioneer that was just like looking through the window at the real thing. I have to have this I think. So I decide that breaking this major task into bits and giving myself targets to reach was the way to go and task one was to get my Internet speed up from 512 to 1 megabyte. Here we go then. Monday night was on the heavy side so I woke at 2pm Tuesday and after several cups of tea it was quickly 4 pm but I had still not accomplished task one. I found my old Ji net paperwork (my Internet provider here) and called them. Chose the English menu option and got put in the queue with a message every minute saying I was number one in the queue. After 20 minutes I was still number 1 and not answered so decided to look for another number and hung up. There on my paperwork was a different number so I called that instead and after accepting the speak to operator option I got a lady with good English who said she would put me through to customer services. I was again answered quickly by a lady who spoke no English and let me listen to music and then another who did the same but the next one had good English and asked me if if was near my PC (I was) so directed me to their web site and the application form download which she said I needed to email or fax to jinet @support.com. I was actually enjoying the conversation when she put me on hold and then the line went dead but had got the general idea so I downloaded the form, printed it out, filled it in scanned and emailed it back at 5.10pm. I did not actually ever expect to hear from them again but 20 minutes later my phone rung and lo and behold there was a guy from Jinet who spoke good English. He explained that I had one more month left to run on the old contract so asked me to wait until the end of March and I explained that I wanted it done right now so he said OK and gave me March for free on the new 1 meg contract. I said I wanted to pay 1 year in advance (I always do as it is easier and they give you two more free months in return. The price for 1 meg was only about 500 Baht more than a 512 connection and for payment in advance I got my two free months but only after begging him to take my CC details before he put the phone down. He was helpful and efficient ending by saying that I will have my 1 meg line the next day. Well tonight is the next day and still no change but Peter told me that happened to him so will wait a few more days before chasing them as time is on my side. Job done (well almost). I had an early night last night and woke at the crack of noon with task 2 the uppermost thing in my mind. I left the condo at 1pm but had to go to the bank and then to my sons factory to load a bit of software for him so did not get to Num Chai electronics on Sukhumvit until 4.15pm. I like the helpful attitude and spent ages looking at Masonic TV's and brochures. I even found a late model 50 inch Masonic Plasma TV that was going for 199,999 Baht which was about what Pete had said but he said to go there first and then to his preferred supplier in Naklua where I went next. BTW I also saw a brochure for a Panasonic 65 inch that was only 399,999 Baht but decided that I did not have the room for it. Let me dream please. So off to Naklua I go and find the shop (I think) but it is not what Peter described to me and after persuading the only girl that spoke English to look up from her newspaper to talk about Panasonic plasma's I got my question in. That got her attention and then there were 3 guys running about like headless chickens making phone calls to the suppliers. This just did not feel right to me so I called Peter who told me I was in the wrong shop and where the right one was. It still took me 15 minutes to get out of there after I had overcome the arm locks and the amorous advances of the not so pretty Thai lady. So at last I get to the right shop and ask for Mr Ji who is in the air con bit of the shop that has the plasmas etc. He remembered Peter and the next thing was that me and my girl (yes she was getting bored by now) had a coke and an orange juice gratis Mr Ji. He looked a bit puzzled when I asked about Panasonic Plasma's. But Mr Peter had a Pioneer from me he said. I had just wasted the last hour looking at the wrong make and it was only then that I remembered the right one. Great I thought but all my own fault for relying on an ageing memory so he gets the brochure for Pioneer's and we start all over again. My girl thought it was funny though and I felt even more of a twat. And there it was in glorious Technicolour. A 50 inch Plasma that Mr Ji explained was two generations on from Pete's and only 199,000 Baht. I will have it I said as by now I was getting bored as well. No wait! Says Mr Ji as he goes to get another brochure by Samsung. He opens it at a page showing a 52 inch LCD model that has just arrived and then explains the benefits to me. To start with Peter had told me that soon there would be a full HD plasma in LOS with 1920 X 980 resolution instead of the 1366X 768 and when that came he would be tempted. Well here it was but LCD instead of Plasma. That just fucked my head right up as I know nothing about LCD TV's. He went on to explain that LCD TV;s had completely non reflective screens and showed me one that looked like a black board so I got that bit. I do have a very light room with lots of windows so this seemed important but it was that resolution thing that had me hooked. Don't have the foggiest why though. I tried to call Peter again but he would have been asleep by then so I left it until I got home. Peter is now looking into the new Samsung for me (model number LA-52F71B just in case anyone has ever heard of it). So this decision will be made in the next day or so and I will keep you up to date with the story of the most technically challenging thing I have tried to do in the last few years. Next to trying to read what was on the bottle at 4am that is.

I thought the 30% with holding to buy a house had been dropped!!!

All good reasons plus one more. Fuel varies in price at different destinations and then there can also be a VAT fuel rebate that can be reclaimed in certain places. This can far outweigh the additional fuel costs for take off and climbing to altitude. In my flying days a long time ago we used to fly to Europe via Jersey on min fuel and refuel there. The saving was enormous on a twin and worth the 15 minutes to go out of our way.

Now they are saying that the repairs are not as difficult as first thought and most airlies have said they will not move including Thai so the government says it will not need to be re-opened.

A new Jeep and a Volvo in the last 4 years. Excellent service and no cost for small repairs. Fast as well.

Its been a while since I walked Metro and maybe time to do it so look out for me tonight Mulphy. If we make it there then will be sure to pop in for one or two. Thanks for the heads up and long time now that I paid it a visited.