bob2005

The guy asks Pattaya lovers 'where is better than Pattaya?'. WTF?.

Air Asia

The answer to ATM charges was in your original post anyway... Nationwide. He pays Council tax, maybe 1,000 a year, so his 840 GBP income per month goes down to 750 GBP per month, which is about 50,000 baht a month. Take off rent at 9,000 pm and electricity 1,500 pm, he's got 1,300 a day to eat and have fun. Not marginal by any means. It seems he's thrown his hands in the air and stopped thinking. And, I'm sorry to say, you're not helping by throwing in all kinds of side issues which interfere with focusing on his basic survival. He certainly can survive. Are you sure he's not just

The familiar cynicism of an old hand bolstering his ego by putting down a newbie. Cynicism (from Wikipedia): Presently the word generally describes, somewhat pejoratively, the opinions of those disinclined to believe in human sincerity, in virtue, or in altruism: individuals who maintain that only self-interest motivates human behavior.

I have a 786 Kbps line so photobucket (etc) slowness may be why the pics take a while to download and bounce the page. Often I stop the page to stop the pics loading because I've usually seen them on a previous view. Just hoped there was some software that could look up the pic sizes and pre-format the page.

Can the webpage format (HTML) be adjusted so that when a page has photos it doesn't jerkily bounce up and down as the photos load and the post I want to see disappears?

The QV closes down early and you have to use the fire escape to get to your room, so it's unlikely they'd have a gorilla on the stairs collecting joiner fees!

18185 says there is a 4p connection charge, are there any BT line charges?

MoneySavingExpert.com has a lookup for cheap calls, just put in destination country. Plus a load of other stuff.

Looked at them a couple of years ago. Each room is about 40 sq meters and long and thin-ish. One bedroom is two rooms joined together. Quality varies but generally OK. Usually a lot available. At that time a one-room was 9,500 baht a month if you walk-in, which is a lot better than 700 a day, 21,000 a month (which seems about the same as 2 years ago). Pattaya Rent A Room does rentals and is just outside, next to a couple of decent, cheap restaurants. Walking Street is an 8-10 minute walk but you go past a number of Boy Bars who don't care that your TGF is with you. I always answer them in

30% in 5 years is 6% pa, or maybe 5% compound. I'm happy to get 4%, avoid the hassle and have the independance. Each to his own.

Invest the money at 4% and rent. No purchase hassle and lawyers fees (or screw-ups), no annual property insurance and maintenance, freedom to move if there are problems eg noisy neighbours, local building noise.

http://www.bangkokair.com/discoveryairpass/

Nova Park one bedroom suite looks pretty bare, 'DeLuxe' is a bit of an exageration.

Back in 1981 I was working freelance and planned a tour of SE Asia for 6 weeks. I stayed in Thailand, with some trips to the Philippines, for 6 months.

I bought a torch on Beach Road with a taser function (1,000 baht) but the arc of electricity looked so evil I didn't try it on myself. Then soon after I was talking to a guy who had one and he had tried it and I asked 'did it hurt?'. He just said 'I won't be trying it again". 'nuff said.

Bangkok exchange rates for cash/TT etc at http://www.bangkokbank.co.th/Bangkok+Bank/...es/FX+Rates.htm

I've used asiarooms.com a few times when they were cheapest with no problem. But sometimes they're cheapest, sometimes not. It's always worth checking 10 or so sites when you've decided on the hotel. Precision Reservations can be pretty good.

Yes, no problem, used them for two hotels in Macau and Hong Kong last week via www.RatesToGo.com which uses hotel.com to book but has excellent rates.

Watch the guy in there, when he took photocopies of my passport he removed the Departure form from it's staple and put it into his pocket. You can get this at Bangkok airport too, but it takes a halk hour or so.

Thank you.

Yes, it was the Networking tab of TM showing mystery activity that started me looking at this situation. Can you give me a link please ?

Thanks to all. Yes I use Firefox, except when a site requires IE. How can a guy get to be the richest in the world by producing rubbish. The ARP was most interesting, thanks jtiger. I was relying on the XP firewall but it kept turning off (many discussions about this on tech forums) but have now put in the Kerio firewall, which might fool the probers, and it tells me in/out internet activity.

I have antivir, spybot, ad-aware, spyware blaster and a few cleaners, keep them up-to-date and run them after every session. I have been infected in just 3-4 days, hardly ever before on dial-up. But I would like to id the mystery traffic. Surely Windows knows what process sent a packet to be 'internet'ed'.

Just got broadband and there is quite a lot of activity on the line even when I'm just reading a webpage. I can understand a little constant hand-shaking to the server, but this is quite a lot. Is there anything that can tell me which program/process is causing this?