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Statistics |
| Unique Visitors: 0 |
| Total Unique Visitors: 843545 |
| Visitors Out: 621 |
| Total Visitors Out: 6244 |
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| Welcome to the OK Karaoke |
| 2010-09-20 06:27:35 |
Welcome to the OK Karaoke. I am sure anyone who has visited Thailand or actually lives here will know that the Thais love loud music and I mean ear bursting loud. Whether its in the go-go bars of Pattaya, a night club in Bangkok or even a concert in the local temple grounds, there is no happy medium, its either deafening or off!Karaoke clubs/bars are also popular, where loud music is combined with Thai crooners belting out their version of popular songs, often in their version of English as well.Now when I first moved here I was very much aware of the noise issue in Thailand so I made sure there wasn't a bar within two miles of my home. Since there is no real planning regulation in Thailand this is of course no guarantee that a bar won't suddenly appear in your next door neighbours ...
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| Brown Girl in the Sun |
| 2010-09-20 06:26:45 |
Last year I wrote a post, White Skin, Whiter Skin-A Thai Obsession. In the article I took an outsiders perspective on what seemed to me a Thai obsession with having a white skin.Here's an extract from what I wrote:"Now I can't even attempt to provide an answer as to why Thai culture values a white face higher than a dark one although one possible answer is that dark skin equals an outdoor labouring background and low social standing while a white skin or a whiter skin suggests a higher status. You only have to look at the skin tones of Thai TV stars to see that there might be some credence in this argument."Here's part of a comment from one of my readers:".......I taught at a local high school for a year and I saw it with my own eyes as to the different treatment given, between lig...
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| June in Thailand |
| 2010-09-20 06:25:51 |
June in Thailand has been very dry with only a small amount of rain being recorded on two days. Daytime temperatures have however been slightly cooler as the SW Monsoon tries to kick in. A general lack of rain throughout the country has once again been the topic of much discussion and drought conditions apply in the majority of provinces including where I live in Prachup Khiri Khan.June is also the month when I need to renew my retirement extension to my O visa and this was duly completed on the 9th June. With the GBP continuing to be weak against the Baht I was worried that I wouldn't hit the income target for this procedure at Immigration, but thankfully this proved untrue and as I pen this post I note that it(GBP) is attracting about the same value as at the start of last month despite...
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| Real Time Stats Blogger in Draft Dashboard |
| 2010-09-20 06:25:11 |
A quick heads up for all you Blogger users. Google has just introduced real time stats for your blog that you can access from your Blogger in Draft dashboard. If you fire up Blogger in Draft(link at bottom of normal dashboard) you will find an extra tab under each of your sites.Click on the stats tab and you will find a whole host of data about your blog that you would normally only find on Google Analytics. one thing I like is the way it displays page views of individual posts, so you can see what's popular at any given time.OK its not as comprehensive as GA, but in all honesty its pretty good and the great thing is that its in real time which is not the case in GA. For the average blogger its a quick way of checking how things are going with a post especially if it gets a Digg or is re-...
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| May in Thailand |
| 2010-05-31 22:48:19 |
May in Thailand is certainly going to be a month I will remember for a long time. Street battles in Bangkok leading to the end of the occupation of the central shopping area by the red shirts will certainly see to that. However the month has also been memorable for more positive reasons too.The drought has finally broken and we have actually had rain on four days this month, the wind is starting to settle from the SW so the monsoon is on the way, not that that means too much rain here in Prachuap Khiri Khan. It has however led to a drop in daytime temperatures which hit over 40C at the start of the month.Sadly that was also the time that we took a road trip to Samut Sakhon for the ordination of a Buddhist monk, as one of Duens cousins joined the order for a short period. We also visited...
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| Cost of Living Thailand May 2010 |
| 2010-05-27 03:07:06 |
In my last cost of living review for Thailand in February 2010 I concentrated on financial matters with references to the Thai political situation and the forthcoming British General Election. In conclusion I even forecast that the Baht would strengthen against the GBP and that we could well see 45 Baht to the GBP.Well the political situation really kicked off here as you know and of course we now have a coalition government in the UK. Sadly my prediction about the Baht/Pound exchange rate came true when we hit 45 Baht earlier this month although it has recovered a little as I write this post.All this has left me looking closely at finances and ways to get the best Baht rate for my pensions. Following some advice from one of my commenter's I have started to explore buying forward Thai Bah...
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| Template Change |
| 2010-05-26 01:26:14 |
I have been a bit quiet on the blogging front just lately for a couple of reasons. Firstly after the civil unrest here, the constant updates to news and the doom and gloom being spread by all and sundry I don't really feel like blogging about Thailand. Call it a reflective period.However I have also been busy playing around with the blog and the new template designer from Blogger in Draft. Add to this integrating a new comments system in to MTF as well.I can't say its all been plain sailing but if you are reading this post then I guess you can see the sum total of about 2 days work. Things are still not quite right, colours, fonts etc but the framework is there, now I just need to learn about CSS style sheets!!I have tested the new template in the IE 8, FireFox and Chrome browsers and fin...
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| Test Post-Disqus Comment system |
| 2010-05-23 00:50:52 |
This is a test post to try and check if Disqus comment system is working on My Thai Friend. Please Ignore. Or if you are feeling in the mood you could of course leave a comment! I shall be writing a full post about the system later.If you enjoyed this post why not subscribe to my RSS feedIf you are not reading this post in a feed reader then this site has illegally scraped the content. Please contact the content owner and help make the web a plagarism free place.My Thai Friend
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| Quiz Time Again! |
| 2010-05-22 01:17:54 |
With all the doom and gloom of the last few weeks I think its time to brighten things up. So here are some colourful photographs to form the questions for a new Thailand Quiz. Try and answer the following:1. What are these objects, where would you find them and what are their purpose?2. What is in the plastic bowls, where would you find them and what purpose do the CONTENTS serve?3. What is the name of this Thai Orchid, its named after a creature?4. Who is this figure from Thai history? What empire did he command?If you are struggling with numbers one and three you could find the answers on two of my other blogs.If you enjoyed this post why not subscribe to my RSS feedIf you are not reading this post in a feed reader then this site has illegally scraped the content. Please contact the content owner and help make the web a plagarism free place.My Thai Friend
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| Thailand Crisis-Responsible Use of Social Media |
| 2010-05-20 21:07:42 |
I thought it might be a good idea this morning to take a look at the responsible use of social media during times of crisis and particularly the current Thailand crisis. Therefore this article is based on some of my experiences here in Thailand during the last couple of months of the red occupation of downtown Bangkok.Since I live some distance from Bangkok during this period I have relied on various social media to fill the gap between mainstream news programmes on the TV and what was happening live on the ground. I have particularly used the following media, Twitter, You Tube and a local expat forum. Generally speaking these media outlets have served their purpose and helped me become better informed.However I find it quite alarming, particularly during the last few days, that the social...
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