See Thailand – Hotels, Travel, Tourism Info

News reports would have you believe that Bangkok, Thailand, is besieged by protestors and that it is not a very safe place to be right now.

Bosh!

For the incoming tourist let me assure you that the International Airport is open and will remain open – it is ringed by government soldiers who have been instructed to wave & smile at all farangs.

Personal friends of mine, who live and work in Bangkok, are in daily communication with me; they tell me that while the protestors have managed to cause some minor chaos and bloodshed, they are mostly considered a traffic nuisance, blocking access to bridges and major freeways from time to time.

It’s true that the nation’s famous Water Festival has been canceled in Bangkok this week, but if you look around the rest of the country you will find the inhabitants are just as giddy and carefree as always as they splash water on one another (and on you!) They are not concerned about the ruckus in Bangkok, so why should you be? Still wondering if you should come to Bangkok? Here’s a few statistics that might help:

· There are more murders in New York City in one week than there are in Bangkok in one year.

· In 2009 alone, the City of Chicago recorded 219 cold-related deaths; people slipping on the ice and cracking their skull open or shoveling snow and dying of a heart attack or vehicles running off icy roads, killing the driver and passengers. Weather-related deaths in Bangkok in 2009? None.

· An outbreak of salmonella poisoning during the spring of 2009 left 29 people dead in California. The last case of salmonella poisoning recorded in Bangkok was in 2003.

· The World Health Organization ranks the air quality of Bangkok as better than that of: Los Angeles, California; London, England; Marseilles, France; Beijing, China; Manila, Philippines; and Jakarta, Indonesia.

· This one is especially grisly: The Assistant Fire Chief of East Saint Louis, Illinois, reports that 49 children under the age of 10 died in arson-related fires in that city during 2009. In Bangkok for the same period, there were 11 confirmed child deaths from arson.

Do you see where I’m going with this? You are actually safer in Bangkok than you are in New York City or Chicago or California (and especially East Saint Louis, Illinois!) So if don’t mind traveling to the Big Apple or the Windy City, why should you mind a jaunt to the Big Mango? The people are still friendly, the food is still fantastic, and the hotels are offering discounts like never before!

Top Car Picks for the Summer:

With summer just around the corner, I thought I would share my top picks for summer cars.

Even though buying these cars is a little unrealistic for me right now, to rent some cars for a day or two is definitely on my to do list.

There are so many cars to choose from, however I think the best picks for the summer are; The Toyota Venza, The Aston Martin, and the Bently Continental GT.

The Toyota Venza:

The Toyota Venza has to be my number one pick for a car I would like to drive this summer. I mean, it’s stylish and practical. It has that sporty look, but it also has enough cargo space for me to put all my beer coolers and picnic baskets in to head off to the beach.

The Toyota Venza price is a little steep for me to buy right now, being between $26,000 and $29,000 however to rent one of the spectacular cars only costs about $200 for the day, so that is definitely doable.

The Aston Martin:

Get back behind the wheel of the Aston Martin this summer, and you will feel like a secret agent. These cars are perfect for going around and trying to pick up chicks, or head down and just make your neighbors envious of you.

The Aston Martin price is one of the things that stops many people from buying it. This car costs more than my house, coming in at around $197,000!  Although it is impossible to rent an Aston Martin for the day, I have a friend who works for the dealership, so I’ll be driving one around for at least two weeks this summer! Jealous yet??

The Bently Continental GT:

The cream of the crop, the Bently Continental GT is my TOP pick for cars I need to drive this summer. Behind the wheel of one of these babies, you will feel as if you are the super important managing agent for some obscure pop star!

The Bently Continental GT price is way out my price range, coming in at between $185,000 and $200,000 many of us can’t expect to ride one of these in our lifetimes.. I’m currently in negotiations to try and weasel a free test ride out of a dealership in town, but I’m having them not believe me when I say I can afford one… So, wish me luck! I really want to be able to take a Bently Continental GT out for a spin!

There are also many pictures of these fantastic cars all over the internet, even if I can’t drive them I can still look at them. So I’m going to go look some more.

If you would like to see come great luxury car pics, I would suggest starting with sites like flickr. They always have the best pics.

My sister’s birthday is coming up and I can’t decide what to get her. She loves fashion but unknown to many of her friends she love gadgets. She has been collecting gadgets for as long as I can remember. So I wanted something that was cute but also was cool. I found a site that sells Seiko Kinetic Watches that blew me away. I don’t know why I hadn’t heard of them before now but it was a perfect fit for my sister. They have tons of watches to choose from at great prices and the customer service was excellent! If you are ever looking for something that is a great gift I would recommend looking into watches. They aren’t just for retired people!

The allure of Thailand has always been its tropical sensuousness; the hot, spicy food that makes a man break out into a sweat; the ocean beaches caressed by warm, pliant waves; the beautiful women who seem so demure yet hint at deep, smoldering passions. A man from the icy streets of Edinburgh, Scotland, or Bismarck, North Dakota, petrified with chilblains and demoralized with oatmeal porridge, could do a lot worse than hie himself off to Koh Samet, Thailand!

Unlike the late Victorian era, when a man could become a languid beachcomber in the tropics, with no visible means of support, the modern tropical nations, such as Thailand, demand that visitors and foreign residents have a legitimate reason, backed up with legitimate certification, for being on their beaches and slurping on their mangoes. Still the easiest way to get into Thailand legitimately, teaching English offers any native speaker an opportunity to pay their way around the country. Teacher training providers, such as TEFL International, have advertised heavily for the last several years, emphasizing that you needn’t be a musty academic in order to become TESOL certified in Thailand. Anyone from a truck mechanic to a bank clerk, as long as they can buckle down and study hard for several weeks, can be taught the rudiments of classroom management and the other concomitants to facing a mob of Thai children or group of Thai adults and teaching them to say “Hello, how are you? I am fine. What is your name? My name is Tim.”

The work of teaching English as a second language to the Thais, once you’ve got the hang of it, is no harder than sorting mail or putting up sheetrock. Teaching jobs in Thailand normally leave you with plenty of time, and enough money, to travel during the weekend and holidays and experience the full range of torrid delights.

It’s the kind of job that some people will find so inspiring that they will stick with it the rest of their working lives. Others will simply use it as a means to an end; teaching for nine months here, and then traveling on to teach six months some place else, as they follow their willow-the-wisp over the next mountain range and ocean horizon.

To sum it up, people who become teachers in Thailand are romantics and refugees from frostbite and ennui. Just think, a four week course can turn a former 7-11 clerk into a school teacher in Thailand! That’s the kind of tropical story even Rudyard Kipling would find hard to believe!

ESL TEACHERS WHO GO ON TO BIGGER & BETTER THINGS IN AND OUT OF THAILAND.
A third option for the TESOL-certified teacher in Thailand does exist. Occasionally an ESL teacher will impress the parents of a student to such an extent that they will offer their child’s ESL teacher a position with their company; in other words, a stepping stone into the high-flying corporate culture of Thailand, where the salaries and benefits begin to keep pace with Western executive jobs. Most ESL teachers aren’t looking for that, I know; they revel in the laid-back atmosphere that Thailand is justly famous for; they are out of the Rat Race once and for all. But if you still hanker after the fleshpots of corporate culture, just bear in mind

(If you’d like to get TESOL certified and spend a month on the beach in Thailand, take a look at www.tefllife.com)

Hello friends… Here is something from my own life that I wish to share with you. All of us earn money to get proper food, shelter and clothes to wear but these are just basic needs for a person. There is something beyond all this that you will always want to buy and have it with you like for example stuff toys , decorative antique pieces to make your living room more colorful and nice to see, some funky jewelery or some perfumes that are really worth buying. I love shopping and hence one day I decided to go around the city and buy whatever I need. I like to be myself and buy everything that looks good on me like funky bangles, huge ear rings, and a ball gown to wear for a mask party, etc. I noticed few coupons from woodland and some Go Card coupons lying on roadside and though I was little shy to take them, without thinking anything I just took them and I got myself a beautiful pair of slippers with the Woodland coupons that I had. Though the coupons are not mine, it was somebody else’s carelessness to have left it on the roadside and it is my luck that I got it.