KhunDon

Norah Jones. 2002. Always the chosen driving music for wife and I, when driving from Pathum Thani to The Farm at Nakhon Sawan, for some R&R. With the family. 😊

Nora Jones, come away with me, on the CD player. Can’t seem to load on YouTube! ☹️

Apparently Woody, they are even on their phones when they are on the job. Lots of miss spelt texts I understand! 🤣

I bought my wife a new Honda Civic Executive auto in green, straight out of the showroom, for her to learn to drive in UK back in 99 I think it was. Pic is off same model but ours was green. Lovely little car, 1.6 Ltr petrol auto. Idea was to leave it in UK garaged, so she had a car to use on trips back here. Took her out once to teach her to drive in UK. Damn, that one lesson almost ended in divorce, she drove like she drove in Thailand! Like a friggin maniac! Set her up with a proper driving instructor, I wasn’t bothered if she killed him. 🤣 She didn’t and passed first time. 👍

I always wondered what the wing on the roof was for, in that last pic. Equivalent of go faster stripes I suppose. 😊

I had an Audi TT 225 Bhp when they first came out, paid £26k for it. Imported it from Belgium and saved £7K against the UK Audi price of £33K. Drove it for 4 months, put 20,000 miles on it, and still sold it for £24K to an Audi enthusiast. 👍 That Audi of yours is Naf. 🤣

Providing no idiot hits you, those Accords will go twice around the clock if looked after. 🤗 Two years ago, I was driving a brand new Benz and hit a elderly couple ( or rather they hit me, but it was my fault) who were driving a 9 year old Nissan Almera. It was there pride and joy and was in pristine condition, but both cars were written off. They got £700 scrap value and I had a new, identical Benz in 3 days. Didn’t even lose my no claims bonus, as that was protected. Police didn’t charge me, as no injuries. I felt sorry for the old chap, but the police ruled it an accident, so that was that.

The Espace was the car that started the large family people carrier genre, all those years ago. 👍

If it’s simple ones like arrows pointing me to all the important bits, then I’m fine with that, anything else, especially on darkish skin looks awful IMHO. ☹️

Nice one, 👍

DodgeThis, looks like a trail bike, is it? I’m too old for that now. Used to ride a Lambretta 175 when I was young, but got fed up of either falling off or getting knocked off. Stopped having any form of transportation for years, until took my car test, aged 32. Prior to that, my company gave me a driver to get me around. When I passed my test, I never looked back and would drive all over UK. I drove a Rover when I was in Brisbane in early 1999.

I know, I saw the lump last Sunday. 🤗

When we moved to Thailand, my wife bought a new Isuzu Adventure master. It was a 3 Litre auto diesel, true 7 seater. All leather, full seven seater, with the spare wheel hung on the back door. A bit agricultural, due to the rear leaf springs, but wasn’t a bad drive. Diesel back then was around Baht 11 per litre. Damn, I could fill it with 75 Ltr for around £10. Filling my petrol car now costs £70. 😟 Inlaws still have it up at the farm, as it’s only done about 30,000 kilometres in all those years. I wanted a motorcycle in Thailand and looked at a couple, but seeing just how Thais drove, I decided I was safer on 4 wheels. 😊

I had 2 Ford XR3i’s in my youth. Better known as The Ford Clitoris, as every C..T had one. Wrote the second one off about 1 week after driving out the showroom. Never had a Ford after that.

We used to call vans like that, usually Ford Transits, “passion wagons”. Stick a mattress in the back and off to Cornwall to pick up the surfer girls. 🤗

Used to have the Citreon grand C4 Piccaso 7 seater (bottom pic) diesel, Auto. A good drive, especially if you need to carry 7. Good MPG and apart from a alternator belt going caput at 21k nothing ever went wrong with it. Changed it last March for a Peugeot 5008 7 seater, (Top pic but not my exact car) but chose petrol this time, wish I had stuck with diesel as we are only getting about 40 mpg now. This one is a true auto, rather than the electric shift in the Citreon and is as smooth as silk. Drives beautifully, even 7 up. The wife drives it the most. I bought myself a Citreon C4 at the same time and is my “pub car”.

Just a thread to find out what forum members are driving now. It can be any vehicle or motorcycle and is not limited just to Thailand. Please include vehicles you drive in your home country as well. Give us as much or as little detail as you like, is it a good drive or a lemon. MPG, AUTO, AWD etc Would you buy another one from the same manufacturer? Where did you buy it and if your happy to tell us, how much you paid. In fact, any information you think that would be useful to forum members. Pictures if you have them. Jokes and banter also help to keep it light.

Ah, pick and mix. Woolworths had a similar system with their sweets. 🤪

I’ve had Type 2 for 19 plus years and used to be on Metformin, it played havoc with my guts but I stuck with it until 2 years ago, when I told Doc I wanted off of it. He pushed me to keep using it, but I stuck with my decision, so he (reluctantly) put me on two different drugs. Gliclazide 3x80mg and Sitagliptin 1x100mg. Stopped the gut problems, I had a lot more energy and my blood test dropped a bit. I’ve considered the Low Carb diet and followed the programs on TV, maybe I try it soon. Got my yearly review next Wednesday at the Docs, I’ll wait and see what my 3 month bloods are, then talk to the diabetic nurse. The NHS don’t seem to be pushing Low Carb diets, not sure why. A couple of recent TV programs where doctors seem to be in favour of it now. No problems with my feet, some mild Retinopathy in one eye, but, according to the Eye Consultant, not bad enough to require laser surgery yet and they monitor my eyes every 6 months with the drops and camera scans. I wear glasses for reading, but the lense prescription is a very low one and that hasn’t changed for 10+ years. I would recommend everyone to get the test for Diabetes done, as the sooner you know you have it, the sooner you treat it and that will help you stop having serious problems in later life. 👍

SSL Secret sign language? 🤪

A friend of mine said “ his mother made him a homosexual” I said “if I get her the wool, could she make me one”. 🤗

Colonel Kurtz. Yes, the high season brings in not just the 40K you mentioned, but also tens of thousands each week from Asian countries, not to mention the Bankonians who come for Friday-Monday and who have houses/condos in HH. We regularly used the HH to Don Muang flight that took off around 7pm and landed around 7.40pm. We could be at the inlaws house by 8.15 and spend the evening with them in Pathum Thani, then return on the morning flight. But the airport was always considered to be too close to the palace, so there was only two flight per day, then it died a death. Not sure, but extending the airport may allow larger planes from Asian countries to fly direct to HH, rather that land at Swampy and avoid the 3+hour drive. There was a time when we could drive from our house on Naebkehardt Road by the palace, to Khao Tao in around 5 mins, I wouldn’t even attempt it now, especially on, or near the weekend! Watched the news on the Ferry over the years, but never used it, good idea as long as the sea state is calm. I have heard, that if you have booked and they start the journey but then turn back because of rough seas, then you don’t get a refund, don’t know if it’s true or not.

If I had to choose Krapow, I would choose the years 1999, to around 2005/6 as that’s when it got really busy. Stupid really, I know, because we had a business there, but we never were out to make a fortune and we ran it like a club. We didn’t advertise it, we didn’t even have a sign up, we figured if you could find us, you were welcome to come in. We had time to do what we wanted, we even closed the place one day a week and paid our staff to have the time off, no business did that back then. In late 2001, we were in Pathum Thani at the inlaws and someone rang to say our business was in The Bangkok Post, I didn’t believe it, so got a copy and there was a full page spread on the place, pictures and all. It turned out that the editor of the Post had heard of us and visited the place, eaten some of the wife’s cheesecake, liked it and the setting, so sent for a photographer and wrote the article without our knowledge. The day after the article, the phone was ringing off the hook with people asking where we were. That was the end of our quiet life, as the Bangkok HiSo crowd started coming and we got so busy 7 days a week, we didn’t have time to ourselves. Not exactly what we had planned for an easy life. So after a few hectic years, we had another house built, so we gave the business to the wife’s family and spent our time traveling. Back then, the pace of life was a lot slower, most visitors were from Europe, US, Australia, now it’s more Chinese, Korean and Thai, with the rest made up of farangs. Of course, things never stand still and the building and traffic problems are the same with any growing city and that’s to be expected. It’s just not what suites the wife and I. In fact, on her visit to Thailand in July and August, they only went to Hua Hin for one day to visit the family and the rest of the time was spent in the North. I’m not saying Hua Hin was better back then, people must make up their own minds on that. I just preferred it back then. 👌

The City of Hua Hin that I moved too in 1999 bears no resemblance to the Hua Hin of 2018. Thousands of new houses, shopping malls, hotels and guest houses and of course, much more traffic, which the roads can’t handle, despite having a bypass. I remember the party and balloons, when Tesco opened a small shop in a petrol station on the main road through the city. Very few European restaurants then. A couple of Italian ones a couple of French ones and two or three Swiss ones, that was it. My wife supplied a few of them with sweet tarts and pies, at between 1000 -1200 a time, good business back then. Did have a Mc Donald’s though, but getting a good, English breakfast or steak, was almost impossible! One Englishman had a place called Buffalo Bills, which did steaks and a couple of English run pubs did English breakfasts, now almost every street pub sells them, along with Sunday roast dinners. If you wanted to find European foods in the shops, you were out of luck, unless you went to the restaurants above or the large hotel restaurants. There was a 3 story “supermarket” on main st, which sold mainly makeup, toiletries, girls clothes and not much else, I remember spotting a box of those individually wrapped small packs of butter in a freezer once, I bought the lot! The place was actually very small, with toilets that a rat wouldn’t go in. My wife made all the cakes for our coffee shop, but we had to go to BKK once a week to buy flour, chocolate, cake butter (which was white?) and Marscoponi cheese, for cheese cakes. Now, you can get almost anything there now., there is even a cheese factory owned by a couple of Dutch guys. The areas with bars was mostly centred around the Bintabaht area and you could walk it all in around an hour. The council seem to want to move the bars out to other Soi’s now and gentrify that area. So whole streets on the outskirts consists of small bars that are mostly owned by farangs. They tend to open for a few months, then it goes back on the market again, although there are a few good bars that last the test of time. Luckly, when I took money out to Thailand, the £ was worth 76 Baht, land was cheap and you could build a 3 bed, two bath bungalow, for under 2 million Baht. The inlaws bought a few properties there back then, when they were cheap. A new, four story shop house could be had for 2.75 million Baht in 2003, not sure what they go for now. Now, land prices and building costs have gone through the roof and there are hundreds of second hand condos and houses on the market at stupidly high prices, which never seem to sell. Yet they still keep building them. Having said all that, I’m glad of my time there and would do it all again in a heartbeat. 🤗 Sorry, just the ramblings of an old man with time on his hands, I’ll get me coat.