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Hopefully the government is putting those lines under heavy surveillance.
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Jun 3, 2014 02:22
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In coup-related news, you may hear the phrase "America mai dee!" a lot these days as the pro-coup propaganda is busy spreading the word that America is evil and should stay out of internal Thai business and so on. You know, because the US government had been openly critical. The Australians have put three coup leaders on a travel blacklist and other countries have also criticized Thailand's junta, but when you're the quarterback you get all the attention I guess. Kind of irritating because this is the US government being right, heh. As a tourist it shouldn't affect you, but it's worth knowing that the coconut telegraph is spewing venom at Americans. On a side note, I find out a bit humorous that pulling free money and various concessions from the Thai government is "interfering in internal business." But of course this is how international politics works. A few years ago i had red shirts yelling that the US supported Abhisit, and, before that, the first coup. Basically, the US always gets blamed, heh. EDIT: I had been warned about this since last week, but this week I finally started hearing it. A really nice guy at a local make to order place I eat at is cooking my food, saying hi, being nice and then turning to his friend and ranting about America. I was chuckling.
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Jun 3, 2014 03:48
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Yea, friends say KFC has become the locus of anti-American ire. People are boycotting KFC, a traditional favorite of Thais.
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Jun 3, 2014 04:18
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And McDonald's, a chain famous for being both red and yellow in its branding, was forced to issue an official neutrality statement. Where will the madness end!?
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Jun 3, 2014 04:36
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I had a $21 KFC bucket for dinner last night cos that's just how I roll. Wouldn't have had it if I'd realised they were the enemy though. #DeathToTheCoup2014
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Jun 3, 2014 04:52
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ReindeerF posted:And McDonald's, a chain famous for being both red and yellow in its branding, was forced to issue an official neutrality statement. Where will the madness end!? gently caress sake McDonalds, choose a side.
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Jun 3, 2014 06:46
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"All we want is to sell you cheap, awful chicken and rice dishes. THINK OF THE CHILDREN"
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Jun 3, 2014 07:11
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What's the cheapest way of getting between SEA countries? Flights seem to be around $300, but could we shave off any money by using bus/train/boats? Say we wanted to go from Malaysia, through Thailand, Cambodia, to Vietnam.
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Jun 4, 2014 05:19
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retpocileh posted:What's the cheapest way of getting between SEA countries? Flights seem to be around $300, but could we shave off any money by using bus/train/boats? Say we wanted to go from Malaysia, through Thailand, Cambodia, to Vietnam. Bus is the cheapest, then train/boat. I'm doing the same route but I'm going to Laos before Cambodia which is tomorrow. Looking forward to bad Internet and trying to count in the 10-100,000s. On the plus side, I'll be a millionaire for the first and probably only time in my life.
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Jun 4, 2014 05:43
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Buses are cheap and fairly reliable and faster than rail. Some people advise avoiding night buses because of somewhat regular crashes. I always take the government operated buses that run from the official stations -- private buses may be a little cheaper and claim door to door horseshit but always come with a catch or three (like having to wait outside in the elements while others show, a silly number of stops along the route where these middle of nowhere stations gouge you for food or else provide a miserable package meal, or stopping near only that company's ferry dock when you know there's another dock down the road with a ferry that leaves in forty minutes instead of four hours).
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Jun 4, 2014 05:56
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retpocileh posted:What's the cheapest way of getting between SEA countries? Flights seem to be around $300, but could we shave off any money by using bus/train/boats? Say we wanted to go from Malaysia, through Thailand, Cambodia, to Vietnam. Night train from Malaysia (assuming you're on the bit connected to Thailand by land) to Bangkok. That's maybe $25-35 each depending where you start, the Singapore>Bangkok route takes 24 hours. Train to Aranyaprathett or whatever its called from Bangkok, maybe 6-8 hours. This is literally like two bucks max, but you will need to get a tuk tuk to the border which is $3 if memory serves. Bus to Siem Reap is 3ish hours, more if it's rainy time. $5 on bus, $10 for a taxi seat ($25-30 gets you the entire car which is generally the quickest and most comfortable way to do it). Bus to PP is 6-8 hours, again more if its rainy. "Ibis Sleeper Bus" is the night bus everyone absolutely raves about, think its $15. Bus to Saigon is maybe $15 each. Probably about 9 hours so another night bus? Dunno, never done this one, can't see it being more than $15. So yeh YMMV but you can easily do that for <$100pp. duckmaster fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Jun 4, 2014 |
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Jun 4, 2014 06:01
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retpocileh posted:What's the cheapest way of getting between SEA countries? Flights seem to be around $300, but could we shave off any money by using bus/train/boats? Say we wanted to go from Malaysia, through Thailand, Cambodia, to Vietnam. Maybe look more csrefully? None of mine were over $100 between neighboring countries.
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Jun 4, 2014 06:34
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semicolonsrock posted:Maybe look more csrefully? None of mine were over $100 between neighboring countries. EDIT: Can get as low as $25 on sales. Flights over the Gulf can get pricier, and certain countries (HELLO LAOS) have stupidly uncompetitive markets that result in stupid fares, but you can get to a shitload of places for <$100. ReindeerF fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Jun 4, 2014 |
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Jun 4, 2014 07:53
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retpocileh posted:What's the cheapest way of getting between SEA countries? Flights seem to be around $300, but could we shave off any money by using bus/train/boats? Say we wanted to go from Malaysia, through Thailand, Cambodia, to Vietnam. Check Airasia for starters- you can get flights for cheap on some routes (KL/Penang to DMK should be pretty cheap, flights to Cambodia and Vietnam might be a bit more expensive, but nowhere near $300). Anyways, I watched the Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown Chaing Mai episode last night. For those of you in the know, is Chiang Mai-style laab way different than issan style? It looked way more blood-based.
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Jun 4, 2014 10:05
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I read retpocilehs post to mean flights would cost $300pp Malaysia > Thailand > Cambodia > Vietnam in total, not individually, so my way would only cost $100pp. Once again duckmaster saves the day  With the state of the roads, broken AC etc its always best to take the most comfortable option if you can afford it, but some people will literally travel for two days on a cow to save a dollar. Just last night I bought a tight fisted starving backpacker a pizza in the rather desperate and vain hope that she'd have sex with me. And she did. And yes, this post was a thinly veiled way of saying i had sex last night. Also i had pizza with cream on it, ffs SE Asia
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Jun 4, 2014 15:44
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The duckmaster saga continues.
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Jun 4, 2014 16:02
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Was it a happy pizza?
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Jun 4, 2014 16:14
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Happy pizza is only good for laughing at 18 year olds pretending to get high off of oregano. It was a carbonara pizza.
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Jun 4, 2014 16:18
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First time I stayed in Bangkok I had to cover my own rental and it was 30,000 Baht a month, second time was years later and the company let me stay at a house they owned on the river for like 4x that. If I were still single the second time, imagine all of the backpackers I could lure to my sexatorium/pizzaria. Too bad if I move back I would be too cheap to afford anything close to that again.
Shammypants fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Jun 5, 2014 |
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Jun 5, 2014 01:32
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I WANT PICTURES
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Jun 5, 2014 02:08
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quote:With the state of the roads, broken AC etc its always best to take the most comfortable option if you can afford it
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Jun 5, 2014 03:25
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We've got Filipino goons in this thread, right? I arrive in Manila on Saturday for ten weeks. A) goon meet, obv; and B) any advice about a phone? I have a Galaxy S3 I use back home, will I be able to get a SIM and use a data plan there or will I want to pick up some cheap nonsense once I arrive? Any plans for wireless tethering or whatever? I'll have a chromebook and kindle fire that are significantly less useful without internet... PS congrats on the pizza sex, I hope you made some kind of clever pun about toppings while topping her later.
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Jun 5, 2014 03:37
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CronoGamer posted:We've got Filipino goons in this thread, right? I arrive in Manila on Saturday for ten weeks. A) goon meet, obv; and B) any advice about a phone? I have a Galaxy S3 I use back home, will I be able to get a SIM and use a data plan there or will I want to pick up some cheap nonsense once I arrive? Any plans for wireless tethering or whatever? I'll have a chromebook and kindle fire that are significantly less useful without internet... I live in Manila. Do you know where you'll be living? As to phones, your best bet is probably a prepaid sim as I don't think they offer short-term plans. Most of the providers offer some sort of prepaid solution. I pay 1000 PHP for a monthly prepaid data plan with 5 gigs of data, but I don't really use it for surfing so ymmv.
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Jun 5, 2014 03:50
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CronoGamer posted:We've got Filipino goons in this thread, right? I arrive in Manila on Saturday for ten weeks. A) goon meet, obv; and B) any advice about a phone? I have a Galaxy S3 I use back home, will I be able to get a SIM and use a data plan there or will I want to pick up some cheap nonsense once I arrive? Any plans for wireless tethering or whatever? I'll have a chromebook and kindle fire that are significantly less useful without internet...  Actually, you're probably better off looking for them in the D&D thread. They seem to post there more often. On your basic question, you shouldn't have any issues. You can get a prepaid SIM from Globe or Smart or whoever pretty easily and they'll set it up at the store. Shouldn't be a huge expense.
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Jun 5, 2014 04:06
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Cynic Jester posted:I live in Manila. Do you know where you'll be living? It's a student internship with the embassy. I'm going to be in a housing compound of theirs just off Roxas boulevard I think, across from Mall of Asia. Not the glitziest surroundings I imagine but I'll take it. Know the area at all? Where are you? Kinda figured prepaid sim would be the way to go, that's what I've had to do in Cambodia and Yogyakarta. Do you bother with juggling sims for different rates or is that something people don't do much in Manila?
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Jun 5, 2014 04:19
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Haha, Roxas, drat. When they film the third film in the Escape From trilogy, Roxas will be the setting. I mean there's that weird smattering of poo poo there because of the attempts to make the area important (e.g. airways offices, embassy stuff, casino, large hotel, etc), but mostly the area looks like a total shithole unless something has changed drastically (nothing has changed drastically) (still a shithole). On that note, if you haven't googled around for the history, Roxas actually is kind of interesting. It was basically a giant reclaimed piece of land and the Marco's regime's failed attempt to create a Rodeo Drive or Ocean Drive in Manila. The Cultural Center was Imelda's brainchild and was a huge white elephant. The whole story is sort of like reading about the Persepolis party the Shah had as his empire was crumbling.
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Jun 5, 2014 04:36
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CronoGamer posted:It's a student internship with the embassy. I'm going to be in a housing compound of theirs just off Roxas boulevard I think, across from Mall of Asia. Not the glitziest surroundings I imagine but I'll take it. Know the area at all? Where are you? I've been to MoA a few times, but Roxas isn't really a place I head to for hangouts. Most of it is still pretty bad. I'm just outside Bonifacio and work in McKinley/Makati/Bonifacio. As to the phone thing, pretty much everyone I know went with Globe, so I don't juggle sims, but I know a bunch of people who do. Problem with Globe is that they offer free facebook to everyone, which leads to some serious congestion issues.
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Jun 5, 2014 05:00
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Arrived in Siem Reap last night, flight from DMK was about $70. Tuk tuk driver was drunk and frequently on the wrong side of the road but I made it to the hotel. Ate some rice at a roadside place around midnight surrounded by rubbish and drunk Khmers who taught me how to ask for the check. Cambodia owns.
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Jun 5, 2014 08:29
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Oracle posted:As someone who has been stuck in one of those mini-buses without A/C I cannot stress enough that you LISTEN TO THIS MAN. It got up to 105 in that goddamn bus and I thought my kids were going to have heat stroke. All the horror of forgetting your kids in the car on a hot day, none of the blissful ignorance or free time. And if you absolutely must get a bus get one as late or early as you can get away with. I feel sorry for people I see getting on buses at midday, are they mad? Don't worry about onward travel at the other end, even if its 3am there will still be a hotshot tuk tuk entrepreneur eager to deprive you of your $3 to take you virtually anywhere. Look closely and you can practically see the dollar signs spinning in his eyes. Who was the Finnish goon in SR a while ago? Him and his mate flew SR > Sihanoukville with Cambodia Angkor Air, which is overpriced for backpackers but again, if you can afford it you only live once. You time that one right and you can do the temples in the morning and have a late lunch on the beach, luxury. Rest assured that following this method practically guarantees that you will meet some guy who will spend half the night boasting about doing the same journey in three days for fifty cents on the back of a dog though.
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Jun 5, 2014 13:43
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Negligent posted:Arrived in Siem Reap last night, flight from DMK was about $70. Tuk tuk driver was drunk and frequently on the wrong side of the road but I made it to the hotel. Ate some rice at a roadside place around midnight surrounded by rubbish and drunk Khmers who taught me how to ask for the check. Cambodia owns. Goon meet?
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Jun 5, 2014 13:44
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I took the overland from Bangkok to Siren Reap once in the bad old days before the road was finished. Do kids these days even realize that having a road between the region's undisputed commercial and tourism hub and Cambodia's number one tourist attraction is a fairly new thing? Also that there used to be no ATMs in Cambodia and these happy tourist girls would show up and say "Brilliant! Cambo, yeah? Where's the ATayem love?" and as a reply get a bemused face and a steadily pointing finger back toward Thailand, meaning "About fifteen hours back that way in the same VW bus you came through rice paddies and over haphazard plank bridges to get here by." I can only imagine how often the paths of a hippy backpacker and a sex tourist were brought briefly together by those stars.
raton fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Jun 5, 2014 |
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Jun 5, 2014 18:12
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duckmaster posted:
That would be me. Might see you again this November if you are still around. 5 weeks of holiday time coming up again so i rather be somewhere else than here. Bangkok > SR > Sihnaukville > SR > Bangkok. It's not very cheap but it's not very expensive either. I can't remember what the price for SR>Sihnaukville was but i think it was 120~ ish dollars. You can book and pay online, it's just so easy and fast. I take that over a bus always, i'm done with 12 hour bus rides. Last one i did was in Myanmar and it sucked. edit: i do like long train rides, but that's because i work as a train operator/driver. And oh boy those tracks/locomotives  , especially in Myanmar.
Barfolemew fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Jun 5, 2014 |
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Jun 5, 2014 18:47
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Barfolemew posted:edit: i do like long train rides, but that's because i work as a train operator/driver. And oh boy those tracks/locomotives Netflix has a few seasons of Bourdain's No Reservations and these rails are featured fairly prominently in the Myanmar episode in Season 1, in case anyone in the states reading the thread wanted to see. My dad was an engineer (train driver) and he was scoffing and shaking his head during that portion of that episode.
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Jun 5, 2014 19:14
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I wouldn't even do an 8+ hour bus ride in the US. Just pay for the quick transport FFS
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Jun 6, 2014 01:00
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Sleeper buses are great but I've only seen those in China, Vietnam and Laos. My worst bus ride was 22 hours in Sumatra from Lake Toba to Bukittingi. The "Trans-Sumatra Highway" is just a 1.5-lane winding mountain road. After that experience I just flew from Padang to Jakarta, which was my only optional flight during my 16-month trip.
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Jun 6, 2014 05:06
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My worst bus ride was in America where the driver had "never driven in snow before" and I missed a connection and ended up in Greyhounds and in Greyhound stations for 36 hours. Was supposed to be a 10 hour trip that I used to drive in about eight (before I came back from Asia and had no car for a bit :iamafag: ) #2 was probably Siem Reap to PP because the bus overheated twice (which was fixed by the driver laving ditchwater onto it with a little bucket) then died, then we waited on the roadside while the cane juice vendor refused to sell to white people (loving weird) until another bus ran by that company came. Which didn't have a tow chain so, of course, they tried to build one out of bamboo they drug out the woods and quarter inch polycord, which obviously broke the minute they tried it out. They eventually bought a chain from a passing truck. So we head on down the road being towed by another bus, no aircon any more, in April, with all the foreigners stuffed into the back and the Cambodians and a couple of chickens up front. I noticed that the floor under my feet was getting really hot and the Hippie Backpacker next to me goes "duuuuuuude" and so I look out the back window and like two foot long flames are shooting out of the engine compartment like we're a jet bus or some poo poo. The loving driver had left the bus in gear the whole time we were being towed so the engine burst into flames. Now, how do you stop a bus with no power brakes that's being towed by another bus? You try calling the guy on your cellphone a few times while a bunch of white girls scream at you from the back of a bus because they imagine themselves exploding. Anyway, about fifteen minutes later we're all stuffed into the one working bus while the other one slowly burns behind us (despite the liberal application of even more ditch water), plastic chairs in the aisle, and finally on the last leg to PP. The bus eventually stops right in front of a guest house with the exact same logo above the door that had been painted onto the side of the two busses I'd just been on, the sun by this time well set. I'd been living there for like a year by that point though so I just found me a moto-taxi and got whisked away to a better place. 36 hours on a Greyhound was worse. raton fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Jun 6, 2014 |
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Jun 6, 2014 05:45
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Mine was definitely the scam bus between Bangkok and Siem Reap 10 years ago when I was a backpacker and the roads hadn't been paved yet there. I believe the entire trip took like 10-15 hours and they took us to a bullshit guesthouse out of town which had amazingly cool Khmer people and a couple of really nice dudes I hung out with. Anyway, the bus ride was loving Hell and included a fake breakdown and a colonial-era bridge that had steel bars laid over the top for buses to cross.
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Jun 6, 2014 05:56
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ReindeerF posted:Mine was definitely the scam bus between Bangkok and Siem Reap 10 years ago when I was a backpacker and the roads hadn't been paved yet there. I believe the entire trip took like 10-15 hours and they took us to a bullshit guesthouse out of town which had amazingly cool Khmer people and a couple of really nice dudes I hung out with. Anyway, the bus ride was loving Hell and included a fake breakdown and a colonial-era bridge that had steel bars laid over the top for buses to cross. I took that same route at about that same time but it didn't go that poorly despite me showing up on three hours of sleep and hungover. People had been hyping it as the worst thing ever so maybe that helped. I'm vaguely glad I got to do it the hard way before the hard was disappeared, but I of course wouldn't encourage anyone on a shorter timeframe in SE Asia to waste a day on a bus when they can fly for not terribly much more.
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Jun 6, 2014 06:01
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SE Asia Megathread: You kids don't know how good you have it. In all seriousness, the flaming bus story had me pissing myself laughing.
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Jun 6, 2014 07:17
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Chair Huxtable posted:SE Asia Megathread: You kids don't know how good you have it.  This was my minibus from Poipet to Siem Reap. My bag was almost on the very bottom of that big lovely pile. Things went smoothly on that leg.  Said ditchwater, bonus fancy horse, where the hell are that guy's legs?  So it turns out that there are four infallable people on this Earth, the pope and these three goobers  I should have made a video but that thing just dissolved as the first bus started to pull away. It didn't even make an effort to hold together. No pictures of the bus on fire unfortunately. I think I had forgotten to charge my battery as the day before I left I went to that Japanese place next to Ad Here The 13th, where I was for some unknowable reason their bosom buddy, and it happened to be three of the employee's birthdays. Maybe I was just fed up. Did I mention this was in April?  My moto-taxi driver and apparently guide to Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields. I didn't ask him to be my guide, he didn't speak a lick of English, he just would scurry ahead of me everywhere we went and bark in Khmer at different things and occasionally do torture pantomime. He had also been in a not-minor motorcycle accident a day or two before judging by the shape his leg was in and "scurry" is definitely the wrong word to use to describe how he was getting around. I took this picture when, after looking around the Killing Fields for a while, he began GWAP GWAPing at me and shooing me away with his hand. I was tired already, I just assumed he was as well and wanted to go, and we were basically at the most distal point from the Killing Field parking lot at that point anyway. After turning to walk back to the bike I realized he wasn't following along so I turned around and he was pissing straight into that mass grave nearest to him. I didn't get the shot in time (though looking at it now maybe he was shaking off as the shutter opened) but that just means I get to tell this story every time I run across that photo, as I did today, as it was in the same folder as my bus fiasco pictures.  When I went to PP 95% of it looked like this. There was only one publicly accessible air conditioned building (and I think Heart of Darkness was the only AC bar but I didn't go to every bar or the FCC so IDK). There was only one ATM in the city and it was a hush-hush secret for in-the-know people only. A man named Frank walked up to me at a bar there and said "Hi, my name's Frank. I'm a pedophile." I hear Cambodia has changed a little. raton fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Jun 6, 2014 |
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Jun 6, 2014 07:48
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