Toy Boy

This month's cognac from the BottlesBKK.

This was the cartoon in today's Times. I must admit that I agree with the sentiment!

Another Thai craft beer, this one is supposed to be a Bohemian-style lager. I suppose by that they mean something like Budweiser Budvar that's readily available in the UK. I've drunk a few bottles, but it's never been high on my list of beers to buy. This Thai version makes a reasonable attempt at replicating the taste, at least from what I can remember of it, and if you're a fan of the genre it might even be quite good. I've tried it, and found it OK, but I won't be boing back for more.

If you're a Bill Nighy fan like me, then this one from 2005 is worth a look.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0487907/

On 4/11/2024 at 6:46 PM, Glasseye said:

So, who are the cheapest... ? Scots, Israllies, Yanks, Brits, Canuks, Aussies (or whatever the fcuk they are called), Ruskies !! ???

What about the Dutch? Don't forget them, they may put it all down to their devout Calvinism, but in reality they're tighter than a duck's pooper! lol.

It was a monster storm here in South Pattaya, with fork lightning and torrential rain. I'd gone for a drive to do some shopping in Friendship and had to sit in the car waiting for it to ease off, but it didn't, so after 15 minutes I just grabbed the brolly and made a dash for the shop as they only give you an hour of free parking. It was almost deserted inside, all the people who'd been there when it started had done their shopping and were waiting outside for it to ease off, and hardly anyone was arriving in that downpour. After the day of rain on Tuesday, that will have flushed the Pattaya drains out nicely.

Then and now...

Saw this on FB, no idea if it's true or not, but it sounds like a good idea, lol!

This morning's heavy rain won't have done a lot to refill the reservoirs, but at least it will have reduced demand for a few days. Even Pattaya City isn't daft enough to send water tanker trucks out spraying the roads in this! Well, I hope not. <doubtful>

Being a lazy old fart, I must admit that I like the minions filling the car up for me in Thailand, giving the windscreen a wash and even checking the tyres if I ask nicely. They know there's always a 20 Baht note at the end of it for them.

I'm thinking of going to Bangkok with the GF, just for a few days away from Pattaya. It's many years since I stayed overnight there, but back in the day my usual hotel was the Grace Hotel, just off Suk near Nana. Very popular with the Arabs back then, but it was a great location and they never bothered me. It's near the Nana skytrain station so convenient for travel, but looking at the website the prices have gone way up since I last stayed there 20-odd years ago. Has anybody been there recently, is it still OK?

There's supposed to be a chance of us getting some rain from tomorrow for the rest of the week. Fingers crossed!

One of those charming old traditions, I guess... lol

23 hours ago, Pumpuynarak said:

Thanks for your post TB. Trouble is i don't use my phone for anything other than calls/sms. I do have access using Chrome browser so i'm not entirely f*****

Tell me how did you contact them, i'm having great difficulty ?

After the clusterf*ck experience trying to use their website when it would only let me transfer money to my own Wise account, and not to my account in Thailand, they had the cheek to send me an e-mail immediately afterwards asking me to rate my experience and send them any additional comments I might have. I'd have rated them at zero, but one was the lowest score you could give, so I made up for it in the comments. I don't suppose that anyone actually reads this stuff, though, at best they'll have some sort of an AI parsing the results, and my insults probably went well over the top of its training.

My impression this last year is that Wise is growing far too fast for its own good, I for one would never hand them thousands of pounds as, by the time you actually want it, they'll have changed the website or app so that you can't do it the way you did the last time, or you have to jump through 5 additional hoops. They're OK for sending a grand here and a grand there, but if I need to bring in a lot more I'll use my Barclays UK account as international transfers are free. I might not get as good a rate as with Wise or XE, but with no fee to pay on, say £10K or £20K, it'll probably all work out roughly the same.

3 hours ago, Pumpuynarak said:

As the topic title says i've been trying to log in to my Wise account this morning with NO success, is anybody else experiencing problems ? I logged in yesterday without any problems.

Could any BM have a go at logging in so i can establish if its just my account. Thanks

I had exactly the same thing on my PC a few days ago. You enter your password and click on the bar but nothing happens. After 20 attempts I gave up and just used the app on my phone. I've noticed recently that they've been changing the layout of stuff on the website, which is confusing to say the least. A month or so back, after the website simply refused to let me send money anywhere but to myself, I sent them a very strongly worded e-mail with various references to onanist chimpanzees and programmers with an excessive Oedipus complex. I kind of thought they might have banned me for that, but no, the app worked fine.

It's probably their 16-year old website manager taking 30 minutes off playing Call of Duty to muck up some code that was working perfectly well before. Or else they're just following the likes of SCB and trying to abandon the website so they only have to maintain the app. Remind me how many hundreds of millions they made in profit last year, they must really feel the need to save on expenses. lol