A stroll up to the Scuba-Evolution dive shop and I book 2 dives for tomorrow. The first diving since the wonderful 'anchor dive' in Limon. Can't see it being as bad as then though!!!
Then, continuing my stroll around the Lonely Beach 'town' there are lots of places to rent scooters for 150 baht per day, this wasn't up for rent but am sure there's a story behind it...
Then onto one of the local bars for a Chang beer and some food:
Dropping everyone off on the way I'm staying at the Worapura Resort on Lonely Beach whilst I'm here:
A very nice, quiet place and not a bad view:
I'm off down to Koh Chang on Tuesday to do some diving.
A one hour flight from Suvarnabhumi to Trat:
Into the overly priced taxi, a ride to the ferry and across to Koh Chang:
Bangkok is terrible for traffic with the exception being a Sunday.
Went to Siam Paragon then to the Erawan Shrine:
After that, onto CenterWorld and a look at the underwater photo exhibition:
Back to the hotel and out for a meal to the local Korean BBQ restaurant:
Lots of sea food, a couple of beers (for me), a good night and a great way to spend a Sunday.
My 30-day visa-on-arrival is due to expire and I want to stay here a little while longer.
I look at going to the Immigration Office in Bangkok but they will only give me one weeks extension because of my visa-on-arrival. This will cost 1,900 baht.
If I go to the Cambodian border, I can get another 30-days. There is a coach that leaves at 9.30 am, provides movies on-board, lunch and is air-conditioned and is back in Bangkok by 6.30 pm. It costs 2,000 baht. No option.
It turns out the coach is the most comfortable I have been on and the process is very straightforward.
The only problem (for me anyway) is that the Thai government have changed the law: if you enter Thailand from a land border [having initially entered Thailand with a visa-on-arrival] as I have done, then you only get a 15-day visa extension instead of a 30-day one.
C'est la vie.
Went to the temple at Chachoengsao today.
Anya, On, Jane and myself were driven by their friend, Prit to this large temple about 1 hour drive East of Bangkok.
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Well, if you can read this post it is!
Had some 'hassle's with my previous hosting company and domain name and all that 'stuff'. Oh what joy!
Pleased to see that it appears to have been rectified for the time being.
I'll post the full details on here in a day or so but just pleased that it's back up and running.
I flew to Phuket and met Chris Owen at the airport.
We then drove to Chalong and Chris got me the study materials for the courses...
Quite a bit to take on-board with studying, knowledge reviews, practical demonstrations, writtene exams...you know, the normal score for these kind of courses.
Four days of 'hard' work and exams and I passed the Emergency First Response (and Secondary), Care for Children, EFR Instructors, EANx and EANX instructors.
Big thanks to Chris Owen for all his help during the week and also to Mat for the EFR course and Tim who was the victim during my EFR instructors.
Thanks to all who have informed me that my website is no longer 'visible'.
To cut a long story short...
My site and domain name have been hosted by UKHosts4U for a number of years and I have paid an annual fee for both. This year I decided to move both to another hosting company.
Because of this and the fact that they were losing my custom, it turns out that this domain transfer process was not helped along by the former hosting company.
When the new hosting company initiated the transfer it just didn't happen smoothly. Don't know why it didn't, it should have done, but it didn't.
When the site was successfully transferred to the new hosts it turns out that my domain name had expired so they just made it inactive. They never advised me of the expiry day, the actual cost or even how to pay them, just let it expire!!!
I, of course wanted to transfer the domain name to the new hosts but the old companies rules state the domain name must stay with them for 30 days - after that it can be transferred across but, guess what? Yes, I have to pay - w*****s!!!
3 things I would just like to clarify:
1) Would I use them again - NO!
2) Would I recommend them to anyone else - NO!
3) Am I happy with their services - go on, have a guess?
Apparently, I was wrong with the previous post...
It appears that Anapod has done something to the iTunes database and though I cannot now view my files through iTunes they are still there on the iPod and have NOT been wiped as I initially thought.
I am, obviously, very pleased about this and at the very least it gives me an option recovering the files (through Tansee iPod Transfer (which does work properly)).
To do this, of course, is going to cost me money as I now need an external hard drive to reload my iTunes library - thanks Anapod, thanks iTunes.
At least I haven't lost all my stuff though, as for Anapod...wouldn't touch it with a barge-pole!
As for iTunes...still hate it!
It's terrible (and that's not the four letter word I used!).
Because of my recent reinstall of the OS I downloaded the latest iTunes and installed it.
Having learnt from past 'problems' about synchronisation I opened iTunes and deselected ALL 'automatic sync' settings (or so I thought!!) BEFORE attaching a device.
I obviously missed one!
I have two ipods (lucky me :-).
The old one is 60 GB and has all my music on it. Too many tacks on the Clipper race (flying across the saloon once too often) meant the battery is knackered and can only be used in the base station.
The other, new one, is 160 GB and has around 700 movies on it: all the Friends episodes, Band of Brothers, Bilko, Dads Army, Green Wing, Fawlty Towers, Monty Python, Shameless, the list goes on....I have spent ages, ages converting these from the DVD to iPod format.
Anyway, I tried a program called Anapod the other day. It's an application that allows you to view your entire iPod in Windows Explorer without needing iTunes.
Unbeknown to me, iTunes decides it's going to sync my iPod with my laptop.
Now, my laptop has about 10 GB free space on it, nowhere near enough room for the 200+ GB of movies stored on an external HDD that is IN THE UK!!
Jane was going to borrow my iPod today so I checked it and, lo and behold, it's completely wiped - NO MUSIC, NO MOVIES, nothing!
How stupid is that? No confirmation required, no question about, "Hey hang on Mr iTunes, here's an iTunes folder with nothing in it and a device which is loaded with stuff, I know, let's synchronise the laptop to the iPod without asking the user if he really wants to lose ALL his data - let's just DO IT"
Why would I want to do that?
I can think of NO situation at all where I would completely want to wipe an iPod or iPhone WITHOUT being asked first.
You don't format a drive without an, "Come on now, Are You Really Sure You Want to Do This-type Question?" and this is, in effect, what they have done.
I purchase a copy of Windows XP Pro, Service Pack 3 and try and upgrade my existing installation.
Unfortunately, this does not work so I take the disk back and get a replacement.
This doesn't work either so, throwing caution to the wind (and my laptop is running sooooooo slow) I decide to do a clean install.
This works very well but, of course, all my installed software is no longer there.
Bangkok's a great place for getting 'new' stuff though :-)
