Gonzo

This guy is quite good as well. I always liked good street baskers, trying to make a bit of money.

If I see him on my next visit to the MBK he will get a donation from me. Nobody else seems to take notice of him except the person who uploaded this video.

I like having breakfast or lunch in Pattaya once or twice a week at different good places, before the traffic gets to heavy on the way back to Jomtien in the afternoon. The Balcony Restaurant looks good to me after reading this thread and we will give it a try. I have never noticed the place before, but must have driven past the place hundreds of times.

Another great and timeless song

Hi Jacko, Your wife will only get the free or 30 baht treatment in the Government hospitals in the Amphur she is registered in. Forgive my criticism, but she should have changed her Thai I.D card to her new address at your place a long time ago. There is actually a Thai law saying she is required to do so. The same law applies for the Tabien Baan (house book). She will have to take your Tabien Baan along with her old Thai I.D. card, when she goes to City Hall to have her Thai I.D card changed to her new address at your place and have her name entered into your Tabien Baan as well. To have her name entered into your house book will not give her any more rights of ownership to your property. It only proves that she is staying at a new address, which like I said is a requirement according to Thai law. To go to City Hall on Pattaya Nua and have those changes made is pretty straightforward and simple. She can change her Thai I.D card and have her name put into your blue Tabien Baan at the same time and costs very little. She won’t need any passport pictures, as City Hall will take her picture for the new Thai I.D card. Thai I.D cards will have to be renewed every 5 years just like drivers licences. With her new I.D. card she will then be able to access the free Government hospitals in the Amphur she lives in. She then will also be able to vote there, without having to go back to the Amphur where she was registered before. In fact she will only be able to access the free hospital services in the Amphur showing on her new address and only be able to vote there as well. I mentioned in my previous post that I liked the Queen Sirikit Hospital best of all. I went there to register quite a few years ago with my missus, as I was told they had a good eye clinic. To register there was easy and I needed my passport to do so and the missus needed her Thai.I.D. She is not entitled to any free treatment there as the Queen Sirikit as it is in a different Amphur, but what she has paid so far our quite frequent visit, was very little compared to what we paid for treatments or consultations in private hospitals before. As a Farang I pay 50% more than what she has to pay, but again it is only a fraction of the cost what I would pay in a private hospital in Pattaya. The medicines prescribed there are normally priced and often cheaper than what one pays at Fascino. The doctors there we have dealt with were excellent and most of them spoke excellent English. Nevertheless, it would be better to have a Thai speaker with you, when dealing with some of the nurses and other staff. I give you a couple of examples of different good experiences we had at the Queen Sirikit. The missus had a slow growing pterygium in her left eye for a few years, a growth which normally starts in the corner of the sclera of the eye, a condition quite common in Thailand, but not so common in Western countries. She was advised not to have it removed until it got larger, except at the BPH, where the ophthalmologist wanted to remove it immediately at a quoted cost of 25000 baht, again just out of pure greed in my opinion, as it is was too soon for removing a small ptrygium, especially with the outdated bare sclera method he wanted to use in 2007. In 2011 her pterygium was big enough to reach the cornea of her eye and affecting her vision. We decided to have it excised by the best specialists in either the Bumrungrad Hospital or the highly recommended Rutin Eye Hospital, both in Bangkok. They gave us quotes of around 80 000 baht with additional charges for follow up treatments. I had no problem to pay that much as the delicate operation on her eye was more important and I wanted the best doctors available to fix her eye problem with the latest and best technique, a conjunctival graft using sutures, a rather complex operation. As it was rather difficult to get to Bangkok at that time due to the floods and political problems, we then went to see an ophthalmologist at the BPH. I was less than impressed, as he was inarticulate and wanted to use a totally different method to remove the growth on her eye, a procedure he could not explain well. We declined, despite the missus having lost half her vision in the affected eye and having quite a lot of discomfort with headaches as well. She then reminded me that I was successfully treated for blepharitis in both eyes, after being wrongfully diagnosed with conjunctivitis at the BPH and given the wrong eye creams, which caused my eyes more problems. Anyway, the missus convinced me to drive her to the Queen Sirikit, where I had a long discussion with a rather young ophtamologist, explaining the conjuntival graft procedure, which he said had done successfully several times on Thai navy staff. The recurrence rate of this complex procedure is less than 10%, compared to the bare sclera method where the pterygium grows often back within the next six months. The missus got her appointment in less than 3 months and after it was all over, with the operation involving lifting the cornea, removing the growth and then stitching the wound up again. The operation was highly successful and expertly done by that young Navy ophthalmologist surgeon. The initial pain after the operation must have been enormous, as the missus moaned for the next few days, after the injections into her eye wore off, but she has had no further problems with that eye for the last four years. BTW, the total cost for the operation, done as an outpatient, was less than 4000 baht. I have never been an inpatient in the Queen Sirikit, but believe that it would cost 1000 baht per night in a shared room and 1500 baht per night in a private room. It is a good hospital with well-trained doctors paid by the Navy. The doctors often moonshine in private hospitals in their free time to earn serious money, unlike what the get from the Thai government who paid for their medical degrees. Most of them leave the Qeen Sirikit Hospital to work in private hospitals, after the required time the must spend there as the Thai Government paid for their education. I remember spending two nights in a ward at the BPH after I went there after I felt really crook after a drinking session and possible eating some bad food from a street stall. They said they wanted to keep me in for observation. I agreed, which was big a big mistake. I just had a bad hangover with would have resolved itself after a couple of days. I was put into a room at floor A3, where they put all the alcoholics, late in the evening and then discharged after spending a total of 36 hours in a bed much too small with my long legs and put into a hospital gown, again very uncomfortable as it was much too small as well The nurses hardly wasted any time with me other than taking my temperature and blood pressure now and then. The missus stayed with me doing all the nursing, trying hard to help me to piss into a bottle in that small bed which was difficult with that drip attached to my arm. I remember seeing a doctor once for about 5 minutes and again for another 5 minutes before I was discharged. My decision to agree to stay there for observation cost me THB 68 000. Maybe I read too much about medical conditions like Delirium Tremens on the Internet. I found a couple of pictures I would like to share. One is of the missus for her eye appointment. One has to get there early to get a low number. It is first come first served unless you are a member of the Thai military or a monk. The other picture is her getting good physio at the hospital for some back pain. And there is me ready to see a very nice lady doctor to refer me to have blood tests at their very good pathology department. The lady doctor's fee was 200 baht. The missus usually pays 100 baht. To get all the blood tests done at the Queen Sirikit, similar to the ones what they do at the BPH at their check-up programs, will set you back about 1000 baht. Now compare that with the pathology department costs at the BPH.

It takes guts for a guy to play this kind of music played on PVC pipes in public.

We had a very good experience there versus your very bad one. I suppose that can happen in any hospital, private or Government ones. I was misdiagnosed in all of the three Pattaya private hospitals in the last few years. I had a fall coming back from the swimming pool in 2012and was told at the Memorial I had blood clots on my brain, which was totally untrue. I had a broken eye socket with a lot of blood behind the eye socket and a broken cheekbone. A doctor called Montri wanted to operate on my brain to remove the non-existing blood clots. I refused to be operated on and was then transferred to the BPH hospital, after ringing my Allianz travel insurance company in Brisbane. The neurosurgeon there, a Dr Alongkorn, did another scan and confirmed there were no blood clots. I was treated well at the BPH hospital for my large head wound, the blood in the back of my eye socket, which caused my distorted face to have double vision and the broken cheekbone. What they did not pick up at the BHP when I had several MRIs, was that I had a double break in my cervical spine at C2, a hangman's neck, which is a proper medical term for a C2 break, the most serious cervical spine injury of them all. The doctors in Darwin were amazed that I made it back there without any injury to the spinal cord, when I was taken to Royal Darwin Hospital, where I was treated for that injury in their spinal unit for nearly 4 months, after I could not get out of bed one night wanting to go for a piss. I made it back to Australia, carrying a 20kg suitcase. Most people with a C2 break finish up as quadriplegic or worse. I wrote a report on this board about that incident before, after I was released from the hospital here and declared to be fit to fly back home . I was surprised when you complained about some people being quoted very high prices at the Pattaya City Hospital. I have an American friend who visits there on a regular basis as he suffers a lot of pain from a severe case of gout. He gets injections there and often gets blood tests there as well. The most he has ever paid was 600 baht for his injection, a blood test and other medications. All Thais registered there get treated for free and I have noticed a lot of well-dressed Thais going there for treatment, driving their late model cars into the multilevel car park. I have another German friend who goes there frequently for check-ups and his heart medication and always pays approximately 600 baht every time he visits there. When I went to climb up Khao Kitchakoot again this year on January 25/26 with my missus with her strong Buddhist beliefs for her yearly pilgrimage there, we noticed a First Aid station manned by volunteers from the Pattaya City hospital providing free medical assistance to exhausted rock climbers feeling unwell for free halfway up the mountain. If things have changed that much since then I will try to find out. Changes in Thailand do seem to happen at times at short notice.

There was a discussion at the Pattayaexpatsclub yesterday morning about alternative cheaper ambulance services than the ones from the expensive private hospitals. The Bangkok Pattaya Hospital now charges 7000 baht to pick you up in an ambulance if you ring their 1719 phone number. Not so very long ago I took my partner to the Government Pattaya City Hospital in Soi Buakhao, to have a painful cyst behind one of her ears removed. A few years ago, she registered at the Government Banglamung Hospital to be entitled to the 30 baht treatments for Thais with ID cards within the Pattaya, Naklua and Jomtien area. We never went back there again, as it was a very substandard hospital in our opinion. After she filled in a card at the reception desk at the Pattaya City Hospital, she was assessed by the Triage nurses and then sent to another desk, where she was assigned to a doctor at room 7. We went to the hospital early in the morning without an appointment and were lucky she was all done within two hours. I was surprised when we went to the cashier and the pharmacy, that her treatment and antibiotic medication was totally free, despite having discarded or lost her Banglamung registration card a long time ago. My partner was still registered on the Pattaya City Hospital computer as a patient entitled for the 30 baht or in her case totally free treatment at the outpatients department as her prior registration at the Banglamung Hospital was still on their records. Now back to the question about a cheaper ambulance service than what the money-hungry and highly overpriced private hospitals, like the Bangkok Pattaya, the Pattaya International and the Memorial Hospital charge. When we left the hospital we noticed the four new-looking ambulances with crews ready for action. We approached the friendly ambulance crews and asked them a few questions about their services. They told us they would pick us up in an emergency for absolutely free. The emergency number for an ambulance there is 1669, but not shown on their ambulances. In conclusion the Pattaya City hospital in Soi Buakhao is an excellent facility with a highly motivated staff, where the health of the patients comes first, unlike in the three private hospitals, where it is of the foremost importance to make lots of money. These are hospitals where treatment will stop should a patient not be able to prove that he has sufficient funds for further treatment. Naturally, the BPH has some excellent doctors and at times there are health issues the Government hospitals with not enough funding and overworked staff cannot handle. They have a good emergency department at the Pattay City Hospital. They can handle broken bones and many other complex treatments, but when it comes to open heart surgery or similar advanced treatments, they might have to hand you over to one of the specialists in a private hospital, as long as the patient can afford their high fees or has a very good health insurance, which can be difficult to get in Thailand for people older than 65 years of age. There are two very good doctors at the Bangkok Hospital I like. One is Doctor Thitima from the Gastrointestinal/liver centre. She performed two colonoscopies on me with great skill in the last ten years, a gastroscopy of my stomach and an ultrasound of my whole abdomen and a Fibro scan to make sure my liver was still in good shape, all with positives outcomes. Another doctor I like is Dr. Ularn Janeborvom from the Heart centre, where I had an a echocardiogram (ultrasound), a stress test and vascular screening done, again with good results. The missus gets her yearly mammogram and breast ultrasound done there as well. A don’t mind paying for those outpatient services there, as the doctors there are the best suited and skilled ones I have met so far. The Pattaya City Hospital is also very farang friendly. I saw lots of them there getting treatment by the friendly nurses and doctors. Farangs will have to pay for some of the treatment, but only a fraction of the cost what they would have to pay at the private hospitals. I still like the Queen Sirikit hospital best of all for other check-ups and treatments and I don’t mind the short drive there and the long waiting times. Their eye clinic is excellent, but you have to be there early in the morning and then wait for your number to be called, which could take a very long time. They treat about 150 patients per day maximum. I have my next yearly appointment for a retinopathy check with an excellent ophthalmologist next month. Their pathologist department is excellent as well, where we pay a fraction of the price wanted by the BPH when they have those ridiculously priced check-ups at supposedly half price, twice yearly, which consist mostly of only simple blood tests. I am not a hypochondriac, but I think it is rather important to stay healthy when one gets older, especially in a place like Thailand. I have drunk my share of beer over the years and probably someone else’s as well. I have now cut back on that a lot, since I tend to binge drinking here once I start and cannot handle the bad hangovers any longer. When I was still working there was no alcohol allowed at all as working on the wharves and ships in the oil industry always involved operating heavy machinery, like mobile cranes, ships cranes, container cranes, heavy forklifts, bulldozers and even articulated vehicles with Mack prime movers with up to three trailers, which are called road trains. We had to undergo blood tests for drugs and alcohol on a frequent basis in the later years and even when they found the slightest amount of alcohol or any other drugs in your blood you were in big trouble. Three strikes and you lost your job. The money was great, especially when called out in the middle of the night, which happened often, as there were always problems out on the oil rigs with damaged drill bits and bent or broken steel casing, which had to be replaced as quickly as possible. I worked for companies like Haliburton, BHP, Woodside Petroleum, Santos and a couple of others for more than 30 years. It was not the easiest of jobs and was happy when there was a very good redundancy payments offered when I was 53 years old. I worked my way up to the position of port instructor, but still had to work on the docks or on rig tenders trying to sleep at times next to the noisy vessel’s engines. Rig tenders never turn their noisy engines off when they are operational and it needed half a dozen cups of strong coffee, when the supervisor of an oil company woke you up at say 2AM in the morning to lift a 30 tonne anchor or other heavy equipment urgently needed out on the oil rig with a big lattice jib shore crane, often working right to its limit of its safe working load according to the radius, the length of the jib and its angle. It is a really a young man’s job to work under those conditions and can take its toll, should one decide to keep going longer than I did. Money is then not the most important consideration, when the job starts to affect your health. Sorry about the long rave, but I am patiently sitting at home waiting for my brilliant Thai workmen fitting a new entrance door to the condo and a new door in the bathroom and doing a few other jobs as well, like checking out the plumbing and installing new ceiling fans. I had a new entrance door fitted not so long ago, by an idiot, who cut too much off the width of the entrance door with an electric saw, leaving a gap big enough so people could look inside our place. The missus is supervising everything the new guy seems to be doing with great skill, with me writing this lengthy and probably boring post when I only meant to mention the good 1669 ambulance service at the Pattay City Hospital in Soi Buakhao, which can also be accessed from Third Road.

Utapao is a neat little airport, only a few more kilometres from the corner of the entrance to the Queen Sirikit Hospital on the intersection of Highway A3 opposite Highway 331, which is only a 25 minute drive from my place place in Jomtien or approximately 25 kilometres. So I guess Utapao is about 30 to 35 kilometres from most places in Pattaya. I picked up a friend coming with Bangkok Airways arriving from Koh Samui several times. Bangkok Airways seems to be the only regular airline using Utapao, other than the many Russian charter flights arriving there. I don't know anything about the cost of taxis or minibuses from there, but I guess they would be easily available when flights arrive there and would cost less then a taxi from Suvarnabhumi airport, which is about 90 kilometres away from Pattaya. I would not be concerned about getting reasonably priced transport from there without making a booking in advance.

And what would I be supposed to do with the other hand? No, don't tell me. It would be better if you and grymsbyuk don't tell me what is acceptable behaviour in Grimsby and Manchester.

To clarify the difference between ringing a mobile or a land line a bit. When I ring a mobile (cell phone) in Australia for instance, I ring 006 plus the Australian country code 61 and then the mobile number of the person I want to ring minus the zero in front of it. , So the number I ring will look something like 00661 123456789 and not 00661 0123456789, which would be the Australian mobile number of my friend when used within Australia. When I ring my friend on his land line I would dial 006 plus the country code of Australia 61 then the area code of Northern Australia 08 minus the zero and then his land line number, say 89819933, which looks like a typical Darwin NT local number. So the whole number I would dial would be 006618 89819933 and not 0066108 89819933. If I rang that same number within Australia from a different state or Territory it would only include the area code of Darwin NT 08 with the zero included and the number be would be 08 89819933. Should I decide to ring my friend from within the Darwin NT area, I would only use his Darwin number 89819933 to be able to reach him. Some states in Australia have different area codes, like Queensland 07, NSW 02 and Victoria 03. Then the use of the different area code will be necessary to ring a friend in Darwin from there. South Australia and Western Australia have the same area code as Darwin 08, but I will still have to use them should I want to ring from there. This is less confusing than what it sounds like and one soon gets used to ringing friends back in Darwin from overseas, from other states in Australia or from within the Darwin NT area. Most countries I ring in Europe or other countries in Asia I make phone calls too follow similar procedures. One only has to use the different country codes. Like Jacko mentioned, a phone call from Thailand to Europe or to Australia costs about 6 baht per minute when using the 006 prefix. One of the most expensive places to ring seems to be Cambodia. It has been a while since a made a phone call to Cambodia and the price might have changed since then. Ringing Thailand from Australia is more expensive, unless one uses the cheap phone cards available from newsagents with lesser quality but acceptable phone connections. Then it will be cheaper to ring Thailand from Australia than to ring Australia from here. Ringing Germany or Austria using a phone card is even cheaper still, costing only 2-3 baht per minute. I hope this helps.

It.s not difficult after reading MM's post on BOARD BUSINESS. http://www.pattayatalk.com/forums/topic/62351-how-do-i-post-youtube-videos-so-they-show-up-in-the-post/

brotherbuzz, great covers of music by Beethoven, Brahms and Bach.

At the moment it seems very difficult to get THB 13500 rent for a 2 million baht condo. Have a look at some of the agents websites and you will find hundreds of empty condos advertised for rent or sale all over Pattaya, Jomtien and Naklua. A friend of mine has been trying to rent a very well presented 60sqm. condo for the last three months with several agents. Two years ago he used to get 15000 baht rent for it on yearly contracts. Now he has come down to asking for a measly THB 10000 and their are still no people interested.

I drove into town this morning at about 9AM. The traffic from Jomtien to Third Road on Thrappaya Road was quite congested, as a lot of drivers appeared to intend to avoid the difficult traffic on Sukhumvit. I then turned right on Third Road and drove the short distance to Soi 16 to get to the the multilevel car park behind Tukcom, to go to my Kasikorn branch, which opens at 8.30 AM now and then went to the Farang friendly Friendship supermarket to stock up on my favorite goodies. I then drove back to Third Road and went all the way to Pattaya Nua, from where I turned right to get onto Sukhumvit to drive to Toyota in Banglamung, without any hassles. On my way back at about 2PM, drove all the way on Sukhumvit, instead of using the railway bypass Road, which is normally my preferred route. The traffic on Sukhumvit was the lightest I have seen for a very long time and it took me about 15 minutes to get back to Soi Watboon despite all the partial road closures. I bet it is a different story now with people returning home from work and all the hordes arriving from Bangkok for the weekend. The moral of the story is, drive along Sukhumvit North as early as you can in the morning and then back South not too late in the afternoon and with a bit of luck there won't be many problems.

Here is a really good anti war commercial. http://youtu.be/63b4O_2HCYM

Good song, MM and right to the point (of those great nipples).

The energy and skills of this guy seem quite amazing to me. http://youtu.be/lhY6uIvt6yg

To add to my previous post, Mrs Gonzo won't leave her English text books alone and at times ask me all day long to assist. I don't really mind that as she is making good progress and according to her teacher from England on of her best pupils. at the Muang Pattaya School.By the way, from the 60 pupils starting the class there were only 26 pupils left last weekend. When she gets her certificate after successfully completing the course it might assist her with the partner visa for Australia. I will never return to live there again without her. After more than 10 years together we still get along like a house on fire.

Yes it is. The non-refundable application fee for a partner visa went up by 50% last January and is now close to the $A 7000 mark.

You must be a very handsome man to get an additional 30 days from the Immigration lady. Did you get her phone number?

Mark Knopfler with another version of of of one of my most favourite songs

Thanks for your supporting words about getting a permanent partner visa for the TGF. Australian Immigration rules have to be the toughest in the world. She has been there with me 4 times on tourist visas , but getting a permanent partner visa is a lot more difficult with a waiting time of at least 12 month.

I enjoyed reading about your travel experiences. We could talk about our past travel experiences for a very long time. I think we have a lot in common, but I don't think talking about the old days would be appreciated by many of the board members. Maybe we could have a beer together one of these days in Jomtien Soi 9.

I used 009 and 008 before, but for the last 2 years 006 seems to be a cheaper option.