|
eviljelly posted:It would all be tolerable, I suppose, if the country was absurdly beautiful or had some other amazing redeeming qualities. I can't get at my Vietnam photos right now (waiting until May to re-up my Flickr Pro so it's in line with my birthday instead of a random day in January), but in my opinion it's one of the most beautiful countries I've been to. I'm a mountain person though. People in podunk northern/central Vietnam were great in my experience, although I'm kinda waiting to go back with a Vietnamese-American friend so I can get more out of the experience.
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2012 11:24
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 06:44 |
|
|
ReindeerF posted:Is there any American who doesn't have this as their first reaction? It's the first thing I and everyone I know thought after setting foot back on the homeland. GOOD GOD. I can still taste the pulled pork sandwich and mac & cheese I had at Dallas/Ft. Worth International on my way back to Japan 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2012 08:26
|
|
|
Dj Vulvio posted:Can anyone confirm that crossing the border from Cambodia to Thailand is far smoother than the other way? Enjoy your lovely 15 day tourist visa for crossing a land border instead of arriving at an airport and getting 30 days. Why? Because Thailand 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2012 10:12
|
|
|
Dj Vulvio posted:I refuse to throw away 250 USD over a stupid 50 minutes BKK-REP flight Air Asia flies Bangkok to Phnom Penh. My sister and I paid like $25/each for our one way tickets back to Thailand a few years ago. It's a pretty painless 5 hour bus ride from Siam Reap to PP.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2012 13:27
|
|
|
brendanwor posted:Last time I was walking along that strip to the left I saw this ad, wish I'd enquired If they're looking for passengers they'd probably want you to pay; if you've got a modicum of sailing skills you can get free rides across the Pacific/around the world without too much trouble, lots of yacht owners could use an extra hand or two.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 29, 2012 00:38
|
|
|
ReindeerF posted:Should I wear my new shirt through Thai immigration? Fuckkkk did you remember to get me one?!
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2012 15:00
|
|
|
Senso posted:Is it true that Vietnamese Dongs are accepted in Phnom Penh? I've heard that from a Vietnamese colleague but I don't know if I should mostly stock up on USD or VND before leaving. You're not even supposed to be able to take VND out of the country IIRC. With that said, it's entirely possible some places in PP might take it, but I would definitely take USD/riel instead. I was surprised when I went back to Laos in 2008 and people near the Vietnamese border were more willing to take my dong ( ) than the USD I'd exchanged most of my remaining Vietnamese money for the previous day. At that point the dollar was fluctuating a lot and there was a marked preference for kip in other parts of the country, even. It probably helped that they rolled out a 50,000 kip note (about $5, the biggest used to be 20,000 kip), and I noticed a number of government propaganda billboards urging people to use kip. No idea what the situation is now.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2012 01:50
|
|
|
Helmacron posted:I want to go on this tour around Ha Long bay. It's overnight which is okay, but on the itinerary at 1515 it says "swim and jump off the boat" and I can't swim and I don't want to be that guy so I'll be betting on there being at least two overweight girls who forgot their bathing suits. Sounds a lot like the one I did (actually, exactly the same). It was a good time, and I lucked out booking a double-occupancy room but being an odd-numbered guest, so I got my own room for no extra charge. Kayaking's easy as gently caress. If you're going tubing in Vang Vieng, probably a good idea to get a handle on the whole swimming thing beforehand so you don't become a statistic.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 18, 2012 10:47
|
|
|
Northern Peninsular Malaysia is the most religiously conservative part of the country, Sarawak and Sabah are barely Muslim at all. You can still manage to get woken up by the call to prayer in the morning or have an old man make a rude remark if he thinks a lady isn't dressed properly (to which my Malay friend told him to gently caress off), but I think most people kind of loosely do the animist thing there, or are Chinese.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2012 05:01
|
|
|
I think a lot of the dregs in Thailand slouched across the border to Cambodia when you stopped being able to renew a tourist visa indefinitely. I lived in Bangkok for a year in college and never visited Pattaya, but I'd love to go now to do some street photography. As one of my German buddies who loves people-watching once posted on Facebook: "Blissfull sleaze..."
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2012 11:55
|
|
|
Modus Operandi posted:I've seen the various bike clubs riding around way out in the sticks. Anything that gets Thais out of their econo-box cars and in the sun exercising should be considered progress. The risk/reward for riding around dodging Bangkok traffic and dickhead drivers deserves a medal in itself though. I can't imagine how dangerous that is i've seen a few of these guys and they ride right in the traffic lanes so I don't know how they avoid getting killed by some minivan or taxi driver who thinks it's cool to ride right up your rear end before slamming the brakes on at high speed. I think a year or so before I studied in Thailand, there was a Bangkok mayor who tried to encourage bicycles (IIRC some bike lanes were built at considerable expense). We read an article and discussed it in class. It was a total flop because: 1) Bangkok is hot as balls 2) Motorcycles used the bike lanes, kind of defeating the point of having special lanes for bicycles 3) oh no my skin get dark I don't doubt some Thai hipsters don the two-wheeled hair shirt (a fixed gear bike) though.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2012 14:58
|
|
|
Macunaima posted:I can't imagine cycling in SEA though. The combination of heat, traffic, and culture make it sound suicidal to me. Some people do it; at least one goon (dwoloz?) did a trip around Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia on a bicycle. Whenever my Minsk broke down in the middle of nowhere, I found myself wishing I had a bicycle (and promptly forgot about that whenever I was tacking mountains in Vietnam/Laos, lol). ReindeerF posted:There's actually a pretty large and growing SERIOUS CYCLING movement, at least in Bangkok, and they travel around a lot to cycle in new places, but by "large and growing" I'm guessing I'm referring to four figures, max. And, yeah, everyone else has one of those stupid fixed-gear neon bikes OR, my favorite, the folding bike. Folding bikes would make sense if you could bring them on the MRT/Skytrain though, would put the squeeze on those motorcycle taxis guys* that people use for the remaining short-to-medium hop home. One of the things that really grinds my gears about the public transportation in Japan is that you can't do that; the best you can do is put a folding bike in a bag and lug it aboard. I'm trying to imagine a Critical Mass event in Bangkok and the images in my mind are both hilarious and tragic. *For the record, motorcycle taxi guys are the poo poo and I recommend at least one jaunt on one (with video rolling), if you like rollercoasters or near death (or possibly just regular death) experiences. You can more often than not get the Thai price by handing them a 50 or 100 baht note and waiting for change; distances Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 06:27 on May 15, 2012 |
|
#
¿
May 15, 2012 05:31
|
|
|
I have basically nothing to contribute to profanity-chat. Thanks for nothing, Chula education  Speaking of which, I'm still in regular communication with one of my former professors there. Apparently the Intensive Thai program I did is being nerfed from this year, and is now part-time and a lot easier. That probably makes the program at Chiang Mai University (I know the US government sends people there) the most rigorous in the country, in case anyone's interested.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2012 02:16
|
|
|
ReindeerF posted:There is some third priory type language only used inside the court historically, but I doubt that's really true anymore (I read somewhere that it's basically Khmer, which would be funny if true). The issue, from what my Thai friends say, has more to do with the personal background involved. If you're talking about Royal Thai, it's actually used in the news or whenever you want to talk about the HM King (peace be upon Him), as well as to him. I can't remember how it works with the rest of the royal family; luckily I never ran into princess whats-her-name when she was studying at Chula (we were in the same faculty at the same time and I saw her security detail waiting outside every week, but obviously didn't have any classes together or anything). You're right that much of the vocabulary is derived from Khmer, although granted from hundreds of years ago. We learned a tiny bit of Royal Thai in the Chula program; my professors admitted that even the vast majority of Thai people don't know very much of it (to give an extreme example: "to go" is "pbai" in standard Thai, but if you want to talk about the King going somewhere, it's "praraachadamnoen"... but with a lot of verbs you can toss a "song" in front and be okay). There's a well-known story about the King going for a haircut somewhere in Chiang Mai and the barber (who spoke Standard Thai perfectly fine) being too terrified to speak to him because he didn't know proper Royal Thai. HMtK is apparently a good sport about it and always tells the chaobaan to just use regular, polite Thai, he won't get mad. Accidentally using the perfectly normal pronoun "khao" for the King in class earned me a quick reprimand from one of my professors; it's "pra ong". Outside of that I've really only used it once; in a different lecture I asked if the king votes (he doesn't) and it really surprised the (other) professor who I was asking that I was able to use it correctly. I think Royal Thai is the ultimate Thai language parlor trick; for shits and giggles I picked up a pair of scrawny references at Kinokuniya because Thai books are cheap as hell, but they were pretty lacking (confirmed by professors), and you'd have to already be pretty familiar with regular written Thai to get anything out of them. And yeah, it's basically useless unless you're either a scholar/weeaboo of the royal family, or run in some *really* high circles. ReindeerF posted:Granted, it takes a minute for them to adjust to my accent (and my poor pronunciation), HAVE YOU NOT LEARNED YOUR ก ข ค‘s YET?!  quote:but we can talk about farming and the weather and family and where they're from and so on. The thing I've heard is that some super-duper-rural Thais in provincial areas speak only the local dialect and haven't been assimilated in the Central Thai collective via television and radio and so on, so they actually can't understand Central Thai. Still, whoever these people are I haven't run across them - and I go out jogging into farms and plantations and all over and end up talking to the most random landowners imaginable. Usually, in fact, the biggest problem I have is escaping to finish my run without a 30 minute discussion, a glass of whiskey and the like. I suspect the language issues was probably much more of a problem 30 years ago than it would be today. I think I may have recommended it to you a year or two ago, but I highly recommend tracking down a copy of William Smalley's Linguistic Diversity and National Unity: Language Ecology in Thailand. It's a little bit dated being from the early nineties, but still it's a fascinating look at language politics and sociology in Thailand (despite the title, it's not too bad with academic-speak, and is written for an audience completely unfamiliar with the language/country) and talks about just that sort of thing. It's the most interesting thing I've ever read about Thailand, and really wish I'd had read it before I studied there. I think most Thais would say "duh" about most of it, but it's also something they'd very seldom, if ever, bring up in conversation with an outsider. (Actually, I recommend it to anyone who's going to be traveling in Thailand and has an interest in the local culture... it'll put you miles ahead of all the other backpackers who just regurgitate whatever little bite-sized snippets the Lonely Planet tosses in as filler). This graph got a chuckle out of me, and I posted it on FB a couple of years ago with the caption "DEAL WITH IT".  If you want a sample chapter, I probably have the section on Kuy that I digitized for RingoR a while back. I can't remember if I ever sent you a zip file of all my thesis research documents (I'm not sending my actual thesis, it's an embarrassing piece of poo poo), but if I haven't, PM me your email and I'll try and dig them up.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2012 04:31
|
|
|
Modus Operandi posted:What exactly does the high and low vitality on that chart indicate? I wonder if the relative status of english has dropped considering the cretins speaking the "Queen's English" that are ever present in Thai society now. I think Thais speaking good english is considered "hi-so" but that's about it. IIRC, vitality basically means how useful it is in day-to-day life, and its future outlook. So while English is up there in status with Standard Thai, it's not quite as useful (further down the "vitality" continuum) to most people. Languages like Lao are more applicable in the average person's life, but seen as less high status. At the other end, Sanskrit is roughly equivalent to Latin; posh as hell, but not very useful unless you've got a need to recognize unfamiliar (usually scholarly) words. Nowadays English is taking over for Sanskrit as a source of neologisms in Thai, and even English grammatical constructs are starting to enter Thai as hi-so types flaunt their education and it trickles down to the average person through mass media, etc. I found this last bit frustrating when I was learning Thai in Thailand:  Phu Thai's a minority dialect in an area that already has a minority dialect (Iisaan/Laos). Urak Lawoi' are the sea gypsies, who are basically having their language eradicated by the central government's educational policies (the same can be said of all the other dialects/languages to varying extents, however).
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2012 06:33
|
|
|
Modus Operandi posted:I've seen and heard this before when i'm forced to watch Thai soaps on TV. The hi-so model-actors will throw in some english words like "OH MY GOD" at inappropriate moments or random english into their long sappy monologues. What I'm talking about is when the sentence is 100% normal Thai words, but arranged like you would an English sentence, not a Thai one. Not like someone tossing "red car" in English into the middle of a Thai sentence (which happens plenty, but is easy to spot), but rather someone using the English construction of "sii daeng rot" instead of the correct "rot sii daeng". (This is just an example, I've never actually heard someone do it with something that simple... it was usually from my professors, in academic writing, or in classier newspapers/magazines). It's a lot more subtle than what you're talking about, and as a native English speaker it creates a blind spot where you think you're picking up real Thai to use, but it's actually making you sound like more of a noob. quote:Thais will also sometimes correct your pronunciations of an english word because they have adopted it into their vocabulary and pronounce it with a Thai pronunciation. Personally I love the Thai pronunciations of English words and miss being able to use them without sounding like a total moron. ham-buh-GUH  quote:I think class is still tied into everything though. I've seen Thais actually look down at darker skinned Thais who speak English well because it's automatically assumed that they picked it up working as a prostitute. Tell me about it. I was going for dinner with one of my professors in Sukumvit after I dropped out of my course, and she had me follow 5 minutes behind her because she didn't want people to think she was a hooker. This is a graduate of and instructor at Thailand's equivalent of Harvard who carries herself and dresses the part (but is sorta brown, so classists gonna class).
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2012 07:50
|
|
|
ReindeerF posted:That line in Hangover II about "Bangkok has him now." was poorly written and stupidly played out and the scene didn't work, but they actually did nail the reality. This loving place just sucks people in. YOU'LL BE BACK RINGO. Hey, I escaped. Injuryprone posted:People try to scam you. Just don't be a mark. Vietnam was great to me, although it was mostly rural/northern Vietnam. I'm still Facebook friends with the government official (card-carrying VCP member, natch) I befriended randomly on a dirt road one night when I was looking for a place to stay. She told me to just crash at the government guesthouse, and invited me over to her and her co-workers' room for dinner and hanging out. Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 13:25 on May 25, 2012 |
|
#
¿
May 25, 2012 13:21
|
|
|
You can pretty much do whatever in Cambodia. Thailand actually has pretty draconian laws on the books with regards to foreigners' work rights.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2012 14:00
|
|
|
Modus Operandi posted:I still see a lot of tourists everywhere. I doubt you'll have problems meeting people at whatever random guest house/cafe you go to. That's really never been an issue in SEA even in monsoon season. I really didn't like Laos during monsoon when i've traveled there because I hate riding motorbikes in the rain/mud. Plus there's a lot of mosquitoes everywhere..much more than usual. The best time for Laos is early Feb. Scooter or motor(dirt)bike? My Minsk made short work of even the gnarliest Lao roads, like the "highway" from Pakse to Attapeu. Early Feb for Laos is great though, although t it gets pretty nippy up north in the mountains. eviljelly posted:ugh why even bother going anymore
|
|
#
¿
May 31, 2012 14:15
|
|
|
Cheesemaster200 posted:Have you been to Angkor? Would you say that would have been a better or worse experience if it wasn't consumed by busloads of vacationers? My desire is less about seeing the "real" Myanmar or some poo poo, but rather seeing it without a backdrop of 1500 rambling Australians. When I was at Bagan last year during the rainy season I literally had the place to myself. It was awesome. I probably won't get that chance again. You pretty much have Angkor to yourself when all the tours bus it back in to Siam Reap for breakfast/lunch/dinner. Was pretty surprised at that.
|
|
#
¿
May 31, 2012 22:44
|
|
|
Finch! posted:Only by airlines, never by immigration. Mine was pretty no-fuss, no-muss back home as well. Although there was some weird cock-up with the validity and I wound up paying over US$200 in overstay fees while I waited for my idiot university to write a two paragraph form letter so I could extend/fix it.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 7, 2012 10:28
|
|
|
I think I may be back in SEA for a few months towards the end of next year. I'm planning to finish up my contract in Japan then (if not then, the year afterwards), and have basically 6 months to kill before grad school starts. It'll probably boil down to 3-4 months in SEA between doing a last hurrah trip here, going home for a bit, and being responsible enough to establish a beachhead before the term starts. I'm really tempted to do my dream trip of buying a Minsk in Hanoi and riding it southwest until it either blows up or I run out of islands in Indonesia (or I get hit by a bus or something). Oracle posted:Thankfully SE Asian hospitals are amazingly cheap; the most expensive trip was 120US for an after hours emergency room visit and included IVs, medication and a trio of Thai nurses cooing over my oldest (lukkreung still wildly popular for those still on the fence about having kids. He couldn't walk down the loving street without people stopping us for pictures, no joke. Especially at the resort in Koh Chang, there was some high school trip there or something. Thai high school girls LOVED him. Grandpa started joking about charging them money for photos. I about had to drug the kid to get him on the plane back home, he wants to go back and live summers with agong and amah). FWIW I had a pretty negative experience at BKK International Hospital when I had dengue; ~$2300 for a week of what amounted to IV drips, terrible food, and a doctor who did his damndest to avoid answering any questions. They made a show of calling my insurance provider back in the States to see if I was in-network, said I wasn't, and to pay them on the spot and get reimbursed later. Turned out they were wrong and Blue Cross/Blue Shield fought me tooth and nail over the reimbursement, took months of arm-twisting to get my money (this happened when I was a junior in college, so I was hardly rolling in it). So yeah, gently caress Bangkok International. I've mentioned this once or twice before, but it bears repeating: if you want to cross your t's and dot your i's before you go, call up your health insurance provider and find out what, if any, medical centers in the countries you're going to be visiting are in-network.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2012 10:21
|
|
|
ReindeerF posted:I'd be shocked if you couldn't get by with just walking past and mumbling whatever the minimal thing is you need to mumble, like "khon diao" or something at a ticket booth. At least one Asian friend of mine who isn't Thai can walk into the Thai line, heh. Yeah, my Japanese classmates told me they could get away with that, and you look more Thai than they do. Probably better to let the missus do the talking if it doesn't look too suspicious though, your Canadian accent is kind of a giveaway  I didn't do a ton of traveling during my study program (was busy), but as a whitey-white, I was almost always able to get the Thai price by showing my Thai university ID (literally an ID-sized piece of paper with some Thai writing on it, no photo) and asking politely if there was a student price. There wasn't, but it gave them an excuse to give me the Thai price for asking so nicely and in Thai. The one time it didn't work was the Death Railway train. I did try to get my younger sister (also still a student at the time) a similar discount when we went to the Grand Palace and the ticket guy literally sang "ONLY FOR YOUUUUUUUUU" and she had to pay the tourist price. lol internet. posted:MR RHOMBUS MINGSK MAN. BKK in 2013 April\May. I gotta teach then, jerkface! Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Jun 20, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2012 08:02
|
|
|
Senso posted:I've been learning Vietnamese for more than a year and let me tell you, all audio books or package solutions like Pimsleur or Rosetta are bullshit in regards to pronunciation or common usage (ex. using Tôi all the time when locals pretty much never use it). Yeah, I've found the Pimsleur courses to be incredibly stiff, textbook language. You can probably be understood, but understanding actual people... not so much. "Sabaii dii mai kha?" "sabaii dii khrap, laew khun lae khrap? Noooope. I actually found what seemed to be a pretty good Vietnamese textbook at a bookstore in Hanoi that I bought the first volume of. I found it on Amazon, although it looks like it may be out of print or something. You could also try the "Vietnamese for Beginners" book from the same series as the other "[Southeast Asian Language] for Beginners" series, the Thai ones are pretty good, at least. ReindeerF posted:Confirm! It's been forever since someone mistook me for a halfling
|
|
#
¿
Jun 21, 2012 06:54
|
|
|
Studebaker Hawk posted:I totally disagree re: Vietnam. In my travels through India and SEA, it was the only place I heard people badmouth. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I spent 6 months in India so have a fairly high tolerance for the merchant bullshit, or more likely due to the fact that we had our own motorbike and didn't depend on the tourist infrastructure. We dealt with very few touts and most of them moved on with a simple "no" or eyeroll. Your experience in Vietnam mirrored my own (although I didn't do the whole country, I'd like to someday!), glad to hear you had a great trip! Vietnamese people are pretty awesome and while I know at least some of the banter the last couple of pages is tongue-in-cheek, I'd hate for this thread to turn into the  version of ThaiVisa.Senso posted:What's the model/year and how much? I'm looking to buy a motorbike for my wife and I also need a new one, though I'd prefer to buy a used but still good bike. Assuming it's a Minsk, maybe not an ideal around-towner (clutch/manual transmission, relatively nasty 2-stroke exhaust), but great if you want to take trips out of the city into areas with crappy roads on the weekends. The foreign lawyer I bought mine from used it for that and said he really enjoyed it.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2012 07:23
|
|
|
Studebaker Hawk posted:Older Suzuki GN 1255cc, clutch/manual though it is a 4-stroke. We had only ridden automatic/semi-automatic scooters before; truth be told, I never learned to drive a manual car. We taught ourselves to drive in the insanity that is Hanoi traffic which is one of the ballsiest/stupid things I have done since I stopped doing heroin. Oh, nice! How much did it set you back, if you don't mind me asking? I've been thinking I want to try a longer one-way trip (just wait for the bike to give out and ditch it in whatever country), but I'm concerned a Minsk might not make it far enough to be interesting given the availability of parts outside of Vietnam/Laos
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2012 10:13
|
|
|
ReindeerF posted:In Laos I kept seeing these people who were clearly Lao-French, speaking French and Laos alternately and it hadn't hit me until then how odd it is that I had never seen this before. French is still the second official language in Laos, my temporary import form for the Minsk was Lao/French only. I actually had better luck reading the Lao I'd still say French doesn't come in very handy in any of the former Indochina countries. Every blue moon you can really make an old person's day, that's probably about it. Also, studying Thai as a native English speaker opens basically zero professional opportunities, I wouldn't bother. Grand Fromage posted:Anyone know the etymology of farang? I have to wonder if it comes from farangi and was left by the Muslims moving east. Yeah, it's because we rolled in there and started making off with all the bars of gold-pressed latinum.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2012 08:04
|
|
|
ReindeerF posted:I'd debate this a bit, but I agree that it's useless in most cases in Bangkok and that it's only useful if you plan to make your money from the Thai market somehow. For me it's just something I need to do because, you know, it's pretty silly when you can't read the notice from the post office telling you where to pick up your package, heh. poo poo like that. Dude we learned the alphabet in three weeks, get on that poo poo. Grand Fromage posted:At least they don't argue. I had a seemingly endless argument about the word arubaitu from a Korean insisting it was an English loanword. It's a German loanword, arbeit, by way of Japanese. Guy would not let it go. I'm like, I speak English and German, I loving know where arbeit comes from. Why are you even asking me if you're not going to listen? It just means "work" in German, right? I told my German friend that it meant part-time work in Japanese and he laughed and said that's what a full-time job in Germany must look like to a Japanese person lol internet. posted:Any suggestions for a nice aqua quiet beach in Thailand to bring old people? (Like 60+) ?? Full Moon Party.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2012 01:00
|
|
|
I rolled around northern Vietnam and Laos with an American flag sticker on my forehead (well, on the front of my helmet) and never got any trouble. Rapsey posted:This reminds me. A friend of a friend was in Vietnam with his girlfriend. The girlfriend saw a place where they sold dogs for consumption. She wanted to save one and picked the cutest and payed for him. The merchant took the dog out of the cage, swiftly chopped his head off, put it in a bag and gave it to her. She was quite upset. Oh my. I had dog pho (wasn't really trying to, it was just all the restaurant had and I was too lazy to turn around and go back into town to find another place), the meat was pretty stringy and flavorless.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2012 03:55
|
|
|
Ringo R posted:Also, saw a farang chugging down an M150 at Grand Plaza (opposite The Mall Ngam). Was it Modus? 'Twas the ghost of Rhombus, cramming for one of his exams.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2012 13:55
|
|
|
Macunaima posted:Eastern Nusa Tenggara is paradise, Flores particularly. Are pretty much all the ferries in rural Indonesia capable of accommodating a small (~125cc) motorbike? Would be awesome if I could get down that far, whenever I get the chance to do my big SEA tour.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2012 22:40
|
|
|
ReindeerF posted:You can diagnose Dengue within the first week. Take some paracetamol and give it a day or so. If it gets worse, hit a hospital (everyone goes to hospitals here for everything, local clinics if you're in a considerably poorer area, but they're spotty). They got mine as soon as they did the bloodwork, I spent a week laid up at Bangkok International with an IV drip and terrible food. In hindsight I would have been OK toughing it out at a guesthouse or hotel, but I was feeling pretty gnarly and thought I had health insurance (I did, but they tried to fight me on the claim for a gently caress-up on the hospital's part). Also, dengue hat trick! Impressive.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 30, 2012 09:28
|
|
|
All you guys wondering about round trip tickets, my old standby of "pull up an itinerary, print it out, say it's your e-ticket" should probably still work just fine. Obviously I don't take any responsibility if it doesn't, but there's usually not a ton of oversight. eviljelly posted:Understatement of the century Outside the big cities they're pretty quiet. You have to watch out for wandering livestock but that's basically everywhere in SEA.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2012 04:48
|
|
|
Sheep-Goats posted:For the record I almost never stay on KSR when blowing though any more but I usually stop by to visit the lady that runs the internet cafe I used to use all the time and to see what's up. I stay either near MBK or along Sukhumvit somewhere. But KSR is find for those new to the area. Yeah, there was a place I liked (A-One Inn or something like that) a short walk from Siam Square for 700/night a few years ago that became my go-to crash spot. Although if I went back now I'd probably just stay with my German friend in Huay Khwang. KSR is pretty awesome for people-watching, something I'm pretty much always up for. I used to like to take visiting people on a walk from Hualamphong Station in Chinatown along the river to KSR, you can stop and check out a market near the bridge, the 24-hour flower market, Thammasart, and a few other odds and ends along the way (while popping into convenience stores to grab booze as you go). Like Sheep-Goats said, there are also a lot of Thais who go to Khao San, many of whom are looking to mingle (or at least people watch) with foreigners. Surprisingly, there are (or at least were 4 years ago the last time I was there) places up and down the main drag that are almost exclusively patronized by Thais. I don't think I've ever gone to Hippy Bar and not been adopted by a table of random Thai people, and Brick Bar was local live acts playing to a packed crowd of 20-something Thais. At either place, I would be surprised to see more than 2-3 foreigners, if that. I kinda let this thread drop off my radar since so much of information is really dated. I was thinking of going back over my winter break, but German buddy is back visiting family so not terribly keen. Maybe sometime next year...
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2012 06:02
|
|
|
Poi Pet is pretty drat seedy, but I also had a moto-taxi guy in cahoots with a moneychanger try and run a grift on me at Koh Kong (which adds a lovely 5am wakeup to the equation if you're taking the boat) with a bogus exchange rate. When I went back with my sister the next year and we were too late to take the boat, the only way I managed to break the share-taxi mafia's extortionist bullshit was by finding an honest dude who spoke Thai. Come to think of it I don't think I've ever had a nice or even neutral experience crossing into Cambodia. Nice enough place once you're in though. zmcnulty posted:-The Nest at LeFenix Hotel. I think this place should win an award for "Most Chill Bar Ever," they had live music, beds, and sand on the ground. Of course I opted for the bed and took my shoes off. I ordered a bucket of Mojito, it was 800ml or something. But I think they shorted me on rum, I felt nothing. Is that the rooftop place? If so, I remember really liking it, although they didn't have sand at the time.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2012 12:56
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 06:44 |
|
|
ReindeerF posted:NO HAB. Sorry, it finit alrea-DEE.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 3, 2013 14:19
|
|