Loading ...Driving & Driver’s Licenses In Thailand
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It’s official. Doug is cool.
“British driver’s licenses may be valid longer; American licenses, more professional looking; international licenses, more practical. But no other license is going to let your strut around the Kingdom as an insider like a good old fashioned Thai driver’s license. “ Doug Knell, Doug’s Republic
Some people like to collect stamps or baseball cards. I collect driver’s licenses.
I won’t get into the whys and hows of me procuring a number of different licenses. Yet in my possession, all of which have allowed me to drive a car or motorbike in Thailand, are a British license (validity: 10 years), an American license (validity: 4 years), an international driving permit (validity: 10 years), and now, a Thai driver’s license (validity: 1 year for the initial year, then 5 years thereafter).
For my first six years in Thailand, I drove predominantly with the British license. It’s a standard European Union type of license, easy to read, with a validity to straddle the decades. Thai cops and rental outlets didn’t seem to mind me driving around with a foreign license as long as it was in English.
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Seeking Startup Funding In Bangkok
By · CommentsDated 20 March 2013. Click here to see a list of complete video content on the Republic.
Dated 20 March 2013. Click here to see a list of complete video content on the Republic.
Koh Kood
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A stray begging cat, lush jungle, and a cold beer on Thailand’s easternmost island. All that’s missing is a falling coconut.
“Small Thai islands in the 1990′s, I recall from experience, had few people, intermittent electricity, and precious few things to buy. They were great places to get away from it all. Koh Kood is a 1990′s Thai island at 2030 prices.” Doug Knell, Doug’s Republic
A British friend had been recommending I visit the island of Koh Chang since 2009. After I finally made it there with my family in October 2011, he upped the ante. What was I visiting Koh Chang for when the ever more remote and untouched island of Koh Kood was but a short frolic away? He boasted that Koh Kood was the best island he’d ever been to.
Fast forward to April 2013. The Thai water festival holiday of Songkran was approaching. Wealthy Thais everywhere split for resorts or abroad. My wife doesn’t get many opportunities to travel and decided she wanted to relax on an island. We’d revisit Koh Chang. I mentioned Koh Kood to her and she agreed, without much convincing required, to split the vacation up with half the time in Koh Chang and half the time in Koh Kood.
Koh Kood is not a large island. It’s only slightly larger than 100 sq kilometers, twenty-five kilometers at its longest point and twelve kilometers at its widest. The island can seem larger than it really is due to the lack of a comprehensive paved road network and round-the-clock electricity which can leave larges swathes of the island in darkness during the evening hours. A small number of Thais and Cambodians have lived on the island for over a hundred years, but it’s only recently that the foreign segment and affluent Thais have discovered the place as an oasis and a tourist infrastructure of sorts has sprung up to cater to them.
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The Marriage Peak
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The incidence of marriage has been in steady decline for years. The goods is that there’s still someone for almost everyone.
I just read some interesting statistics that the institution of marriage peaked in the United States in 1993. Since then, the number of couples getting married each year has declined, resulting in a smaller percentage of people over 18 who’ve ever tied the knot. In 1960, 72% of American adults over 18 were then married. Today, that figure stands at 51%. The sliding numbers among the under 29 crowd are the most startling. In 1960, 59% of this demographic was married compared to 20% today.
Still, 72% of all living American adults have been married at least once. That’s not a big drop in 50 years from the 85% of American adults who’d been married at least once by 1960. That decline is only 15% and sociologists glibly explain it away as more couples cohabiting instead of officially marrying.
The surprising fact for me is that three out of four people have been married at some point in their lives, and more than four out of five if we use the 1960 statistic. I could believe these stats (or even higher ones) for a country like India, where marriages are arranged between families to form an alliance. Getting married over there can be like satisfying a familial duty. This was not the case for much of the United States in 1960. Sure, there was societal pressure to follow in the parental footsteps and propagate the next generation. My parents married right out of college and didn’t wait long to have children. Some of their friends married while still in college. But by the time the latter half of the 1960′s rolled around, I would’ve thought that many people would’ve taken matters into their own hands and done what they wanted, which would’ve included not getting married.
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The Little Orchard That Could: Seedling Farm
By · CommentsDated 17 September 2012. Click here to see a list of complete video content on the Republic.
The Original Swensen’s of San Francisco
By · CommentsDated 4 October 2012. Click here to see a list of complete video content on the Republic.
Amedei Toscano Red from Italy
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Amedei Toscano Red: Italy
I was not madly impressed, based on the prices I paid, with the first Amedei bar I ever tried, the Cru Jamaica. I was hoping that my taste buds would be shot into the stratosphere after biting into the second bar, the Toscano Red.
The Toscano Red contains the same basic ingredient list as the Cru Jamaica: cocoa mass, cane sugar, cocoa butter, and vanilla. From where these beans hail I haven’t a clue. The addition, the “red”, is dried fruit, consisting of strawberries, cherries, and raspberries. Amedei claims the fruit flavor is infused in a special process.
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Amedei Cru Jamaica from Italy
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Amedei Cru Jamaica: Italy
About a year ago, my most generous chocolate benefactor, Aussie Dave, was sending me news about a new parcel he wanted to send me. In that parcel, he wanted to include a few Amedei bars. I’d heard of Amedei through the chocolate grapevine and knew it to be a premium brand and figured it had been around for decades, perhaps a century. I was off by a large margin. The Italian chocolate operation has only been around since 1990, set up by the young brother and sister team of Cecilia and Alessio Tessieri. Amedei prides itself on having the world’s most expensive chocolate and its chocolate used as an ingredient in the world’s most expensive cupcake.
Amedei specializes in organic single origin chocolate bars. The Chuao, costing USD 0.28/gram, comes from the Chuao peninsula of Venezuela. Amedei has exclusive access to all the beans grown there, swiping the supply rights out from under French competitor Valrhona. Another famous bar, the Porcelana, also hails form Venezuela and runs an astounding USD 0.34/gram.
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Ikea Dark Chocolate from Sweden
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Ikea Dark Chocolate: Sweden
The last and only time I set foot in an Ikea, I was outfitting a tiny subletted room in Stockholm, Sweden. Sweden is where Ikea was founded in 1943. Almost a year ago to the day, Ikea opened up its first store in Bangkok, part of a wider Asian expansion that’s been going on over the last decade.
My family got a chance to visit the new store on the way back from a vacation a few days ago. We had rented a car and my wife remarked that it would be a good time to load up on some of the inexpensive household items Ikea is known to hawk. Little did I know that Ikea would also be selling European chocolates at stellar prices.
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