4amExpat - (A Bangkok Blog)

What's up with the BNE tag? CNN & ABC don't know.

2009-07-06T10:13:00.007+07:00

Here's a story ripe for the breaking... the mystery BNE tags that have shown up in Bangkok, New York, Tokyo, Madrid, San Fransisco and Prague. Who's behind it and what does it mean? Don't ask CNN or ABC.. they have no clue.

So what is this BNE tag? Here's some more photos. And more..

$25k Reward for his capture in San Fransisco. Even Not The Nation is getting into the jest:

BANGKOK – Canadian expatriate Jamie Redwood filed a police report yesterday after finding his entire one-room studio apartment plastered with BNE stickers.

For now, it seems no one has an answer to what's behind this global tagging moment that seems to date back to 2006.

Urban Exploration - Imperial World Lat Prao (Big C)

2009-06-18T10:12:00.005+07:00

Having seen the defunct water park on top of the Big C Lat Prao many times on my way by, I was always curious about what was up there. Well last Sunday I got the chance.

First, a bit of background. The mall used to be called Imperial World Lat Prao, but as Big C is now it's biggest tenant, it's now called Big C Lat Prao. The mall has not fared so well, while it does have many shops, you can tell the mall management is not raking in the money. Many empty store fronts, and run down shops. It does have a cinema, bowling alley, climbing wall and ice rink and seems to be a good place to drop the kids off for the day. It is also a mini headquarters for Taksin's Red Shirt movement. Want to buy a framed panoramic photo of the Red Shirt gathering at Ramkamhenag Stadium, this is the place.

After trying a few stair wells, there was an opening thru the generator room and boom in all it's glory.. the defunct water park. Anyway have a look at the now rotting away amusement park and think Scooby Doo thoughts.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Also of interest on the Big C roof top, is this microwave dish, pointed directly at the Shinawatra Building you can see in the distance. A good way to dial into your head office.

Stem Cell donation: Private vs Public

2009-06-10T21:58:00.002+07:00

If you are having a baby anytime soon, you'll be presented with the choice of extracting blood from the ambilican cord at the time of birth. Most likely though, you'll only be presented with the option of private cord blood banking as this is where the money is made. Private cord banking companies will, well, bank your blood as a bank would. They deep freeze it in the case your baby may need the stem cells in the future to cure possible blood diseases they may encounter in early adulthood such a leukemia and red blood cell disease thalassaemia, or for other less-proven treatments for cerebral palsy and diabetic ulcers. While this sounds like a great idea, you'll pay for this privelage - as much as 130,000 baht for the first 21 years of storage. If this sum of money comes eaisly for your child's well being, then by all means this solution may be for you. But as real world cures using stem cells are still a ways off, you might have to consider if 130k might not be better spent on quality health insurance, a learning vacation or a pony.

Your other option is public cord banking. The theory here is simlar to donating blood. Everyone donates for the good of the people in need. If there were enough types of stem cells publicly banked, when a need arose, you would likely be able to find a close enough match to your own cell type. The other possibility is that if you do need to make use of your child's exact stem cells, there is the possibility that if still available, you could locate them in the public bank.

"The bigger the stem cell bank and registry the better. The great majority of bone marrow transplants use blood stem cells from a sibling, for which there is a 25-per-cent chance of a match. The chance of finding a match from a non-relative are about 1 in 50,000" more...

There is a public cord blood bank in Thailand run by the Thai Red Cross. You will need to call and let them know you will be donating. Then on the day of the birth you must alert them and they can come to your hospital as your baby is being born. A needle is injected into the ambilical cord once the baby is out and there the blood is drawn and whisked away to the storage facility.

Contact: Red Cross HLA Lab
+662 263 9600 ext 1310 or 1312

I Love Tuk La Dee

2009-05-27T09:01:00.002+07:00

Cheap Thai and Western food, prepared with flair right before your eyes. Best vanilla milkshakes in town and gives you that old school diner feel. Located inside select Food Land grocery stores. Oh.. and if their menu bores you... you can go into the grocery store, pick out a fresh t-bone and they'll prepare it for you. Tuk La Dee = Cheap but good. Indeed.

Political marketing? Central's red shirt message

2009-05-08T20:03:00.004+07:00

2Bangkok finds this:

This Central billboard has some rather odd, and certainly unintended, Red Shirt references. The picture contains a red flag, defiant-looking youth, one wearing a red cap, and a burning city in the background.
It reads: Armed equipped readily before the tournament for the best golf tournament of the year - See more than 80 brands of golf sport equipment with 70% discount - Receive maximum 19% discount from the Central 1st card

Fitness Centers 3rd, behind property and auto firms for complaints

2009-04-22T00:01:00.003+07:00

Looks like the high pressure sales tactics finally attracted enough attention:

CPB secretary-general Niroth Chadhroenprakob said that finalising fitness centre contracts this year was its priority. During the first 10 months of last year, 297 complaints were filed about fitness club services not meeting commitments by sales representatives.

"Fitness centres rank third in complaints received last year. From November 2008 to March 2009, over 100 complaints were received with similar problems at eight centres,'' he said.
In the last fiscal year ending Sept 30, 626 complaints were filed against property firms. In second place were automobile and motorcycle firms, which faced 485 complaints related to unfair hire-purchase contracts.

More...

Blog hosting offer:139 Baht / year

2009-04-21T23:27:00.003+07:00

As I have some extra hosting space, and hosting bills were due, thought I would throw this out there to my loyal readers. It's not exactly going to make me rich, but it seems like many people want to have a blog, and this is the perfect package to host your own Wordpress, Drupal or Blogger.

139 Baht per year gets you:

250 Mb of space
10,000 MB of bandwith
4 Add-On Domains
4 Parked Domains
Unlimited Sub Domains
Unlimited POP3 Accounts
4 MySQL Databases
Unlimited FTP Accounts
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PHP 5, Perl, Ruby On Rails, Python
SSH, SSI
Cron
FrontPage
Curl, GD, Image Magick
Streaming Audio/Video
Free PHP/Perl Module Installation
Site Builder*, Chillisoft ASP*
Web Mail, E-mail Alias, Auto Responders, Mailing Lists, Catch Alls,Spam Assassin
Mail Forwards
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phpMyAdmin
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Custom Error Pages, Redirect URL
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AWstats (Real Time Updates), Webalizer, Raw Log Manager, Referrer Logs,Error Logs
And all the other good stuff you'd expect from shared linux hosting from a top 10 web host

Sign up here. Also if you join this month, 20% discount using the code: '20per' Payment with PayPal. Or post a reply and I'll give you my Thai bank account.

Funny Korean political cartoon

2009-04-18T10:41:00.002+07:00

More...
Is this the way Korea sees the problems here?

Sondhi and car photos after the hit attempt

2009-04-17T20:05:00.003+07:00

Batman sighting at the Red Shirt protests

2009-04-16T10:43:00.001+07:00

More...

Tony Cheng of Al Jazera thinks he works for Fox News

2009-04-14T08:22:00.002+07:00

Come on. Being a tad over-dramatic don't you think Tony? See his alarmist article here.

"The people of Bangkok wake to a city scarred with the wounds of war."

"These huge uncontrollable missiles smashed everything in their path from trees to an electricity pylon, which snapped and sent sparks on to the battle raging below."

"But the scars that now cross the face of Bangkok will take years to heal."

"Mayhem erupts"

If you read this article you'd think Tony was covering Iraq or Afghanistan. Not the same day most of the city was celebrating the Thai new year and I was out having a family dinner. What Tony fails to mention is that most of Bangkok went about their business and ignored this scuffle. Hardly a day of mayhem.

Siamese Cojoined Crocodiles

2009-04-07T10:49:00.000+07:00

Slashdot coverage of ProtectTheKing.net

2009-04-07T10:20:00.003+07:00

ProtectTheKing.net makes Slashdot:

"In a move that would make the old eastern German Stasi green with envy, the Thai government has modernized a system that allows citizens to snitch on fellow citizens. 'Internet users are being urged to show their loyalty to the king by contributing to a new website called protecttheking.net, which has been set up by a parliamentary committee. On the site's front page it is described as a means for Thai people to show their loyalty to the king by protecting him from what it calls misunderstandings about him. It calls on all citizens to inform on anyone suspected of insulting or criticising the monarchy.' An large unknown population of political prisoners are currently being held for 3 to 15 years in Thai prisons for being interpreted as insulting the monarchy."

Suggestion: Build a Park

2009-04-06T19:06:00.003+07:00

Does Bangkok need another mall? The big empty lot next to Gaysorn Plaza would be perfect for a park.

SF World Cinema Fail

2009-04-06T18:47:00.002+07:00

SF World Cinema Fail captured by Thanh-BKK. One thing to have a virus scan, another to be infected by a worm.

DTAC Pushmail :How To

2009-04-03T22:28:00.005+07:00

Want Blackberry like functionality on your average phone? Check out DTAC's PushMail at dtac.co.th/pushmail or smart-sync.com. First month is free, then it's 30 baht per month.

Pretty easy .. here's how I did it for my Nokia 6300.

Get to wap.dtac.co.th on your phone's browser. (didn't work on opera mini)
Find the pushmail sign up.
Tell it which webmail (gmail, hotmail, yahoo) or pop3 act you will use.
Create pushmail username and password and enter your webmail username and pass.
Click register.

Yes, that did say give your email and password to them. As I am clearly not giving them my main email password, I created another Gmail account just for this purpose. Then I created a rule in my main Gmail account to forward messages based on a rule, that I want pushed to my mobile, to my specialy created email account.

You will be alerted of any emails via a Service Message. Kinda like an SMS, but goes in your service message inbox. The service message contains the subject of the mail you are receiving as well as the link to open the email in your phone's browser. If you open it, you'll but subject to the GPRS charges. The software scans your inbox every 15 minutes - so not quite as immediate as an sms.

Arab Nana vs. Nana Plaza

2009-03-14T13:16:00.007+07:00

I wonder how it would be go grow up with the last name "Patpong" or "Nana". Guess if you're loaded .. who cares. Or ask Lek Nana.

Nana is actually split into two, and the South Nana of beers and bargirls is a world away from North Nana and its "Soi Arab," with Middle Eastern restaurants and shops that make up a sort of separate country within Bangkok.
Much of the land on which North Nana and "Soi Arab" now rests belonged to one family: the Nana family, a prominent business clan with Middle Eastern roots.

More...

BBC story on escape from Bangkok prision 13 years ago

2009-03-01T09:36:00.004+07:00

Nice read about a prison escape from a Bangkok prison in 1996 by David McMillan:

I started at midnight with hacksaw blades that had been sent over in a care parcel, carefully hidden, so I took those out and began working on the bars.
In fact only one bar was cut, and only partially at that. So my Swedish friend, he was built like a Viking, he had to stretch the thing out, as I squeezed through, oiled up, wearing nothing but my underwear and a pair of trainers.
I just got outside, and then I used a plank to get out and across the yard. It was a bookcase, in fact everything in the room had been built to assist the escape. Furniture turned into step ladders and shower curtains disassembled into long bits of rope. Read more..

Monkey Girl - another great Pattaya Daily News find

2009-01-30T20:13:00.000+07:00

If you ever forget you are in Thailand, a quick dose of the Pattaya Daily News should jerk you right back to the Thailand you know and love. Thais who believe in Karma, claim that Nong Pin is the result of bad karma:

Mrs. Mayuree explained that her father used to hunt animals when he was young and had killed many monkeys, langurs and gibbons and it is believed that Karma has made Nong Pin the way she is. The child’s grandparents are still alive and love Nong Pin very much, but they feel guilty and have sworn not to take any lives again.

Poor Nong Pin, the poster child of bad karma.

The full story has more great photos.

3G iPhone in Thailand for 24,500 baht (668 USD) from True

2009-01-18T08:46:00.004+07:00

Great news. The best multimedia phone out there right now, is now officially for sale in Thailand. If you want to buy it outright, not using the True network, it's 24,500 baht for 8GB and 28,500 for 16GB. There is no 3G yet in Thailand, but there are plenty of True WiFi hotspots around the Bangkok that should help to make up for the slower speeds of GPRS/Edge.

Here is the price chart:

Guy steals cop statue on a dare

2009-01-09T00:28:00.002+07:00

The photo is priceless and I think should prove punishment enough:

Thaweewut, who saluted the effigy as a gesture of apology, told police that after drinking with friends until midnight Tuesday, he made a delivery of parts to Mor Chit Bus Terminal.
On the way back, he spotted the effigy, stole it to meet a challenge made by friends, and placed it outside the garage as proof of his feat.
Thaweewut is facing the charge of stealing at night-time which carries a punishment of up to five years in jail or a Bt2,000-Bt10,000 fine. More...

Santika nightclub fire video

2009-01-01T14:25:00.002+07:00

Warning, some people in really rough shape in this video.

More from people's camera phones and AP and others...

New Bangkok Post website

2008-12-25T16:06:00.002+07:00

Well, the long, behind the times Bangkok Post website finally has a new design. Good job guys. And also, thanks for this long winded introduction to RSS. It's about time you got RSS.. was that 2 or 3 years behind the Nation? Also finally good forum software, but classifieds and jobs are still seriously lacking.

Thailand's black list leaked

2008-12-24T00:06:00.003+07:00

There is a recently released black list of sites being blocked in Thailand. From Wikileaks:

A total of 860 YouTube videos have been blocked, far in excess of the blocking conducted by The Official Censor of the Military Coup; a further 200 pages mirroring those videos are also blocked. Curiously, Hillary Clinton's campaign videos, and 24 Charlie Chaplin videos are also on the censorship lists.
Although we have not yet found the opportunity to examine each website censored, an eclectic mix of censorship has been revealed resulting in overblocking of many benign webpages.

Police check point gold mine

2008-12-23T17:52:00.004+07:00

So what happens when you get stopped at one the the police check points, and you don't have the right bribe to offer or the right 'friend' to call? Police checkpoints are out in force in December. Why? This basic formula. For every drunk driver the police nab, they will get fined starting at 5,000 baht. Of that 5,000 baht, 2,500 goes to the police station making the stop. 250 Baht goes to the Federal government and 2,250 goes to the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA). So don't be surprised if they don't accept your bribe of 2,000 baht. They are going to to get minimum 2,500 out of you by following this simple procedure:

Stop you, take your license or ID
Make you take a breathalyzer - over 50 is a fail.
Escort you to the police station where you will be asked your details.
Escort you to a room with metal bars.
Ignore you until someone posts bond of 20k on your behalf. (unless you got it in your pocket)
Someone pays your 20k bail, and it is logged in triplicate, forms are filled, time passes.
You are fingerprinted.
You are released and allowed to drive back home.
You return two days later to fill forms, wait in lines.
You are sent to the court house. Forms filled, wait in lines.
Seating before a judge with all other guilty parties.
Payment of 5,000 baht and admittance of guilt.
Receipt issued.
Two days later go to the police station.
Pick up check for 20k bond. Leave your license behind for 6 months.
Cash check.
Go back in 6 months to retrieve license.

All in all, a pretty darn reason to bribe a policeman whenever you can.