griffer

I have also suffered long-term with back pain..it was seriously affecting the quality of my life.

I ended up having surgery in Bumrungrad Bangkok.

That was a year ago and still it is a complete success..

this link should take you to my post of last year:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11353&hl=

although surgery is not a suitable option in many cases, if you are 'fortunate' enough to have it done, and it is a success, it is b***** wonderful!!

to the guy who misses fish 'n' chips....there is a bar (Offshore ?? i think) near soi cowboy in bkk that is owned by a brit and does cod and chips, mushy peas, steak and kidney pie etc..not dear .

I couldn't get my rent back from first landlady..this time by slightly delaying payment of rent, then getting front desk to put next months date on the bill, further confusing them by offering to pay 2 months to clear up a 3 month period while i would be away,etc etc......upshot is that the landlord holds no deposit....don't think he knows this and the front desk certainly doesn't.....works for me

I once obtained a visa from the London Thai Embassy in the same day ....but only in exceptional circumstances .

It was back in the days when they used to post your passports back to you and they had a bundle stolen at the Post Office---mine was one of them. I was travelling to South Africa that week and onto Thailand...I had to arrange an interview at passport office in Cardiff(?) to get new passport in one day and then a visa from LOS embassy next day.

Although they took my passport in the morning and promised the completed visa in the afternoon, after lecturing me about me(!!) losing my passport...when I returned in the afternoon at agreed 4pm the visa section door was locked..so I had to go upstairs and knock on the Embassy door. Managed to talk my way in, and very grand it is too, and eventually got my passport back.

Tricky thing to do I think.

I've raced at a track on outskirts of bkk..the one behind seacon square, I think(I'll confirm this with the guy I went with)..

we just turned up..hired the karts and gear and went out...its a big outside track and fast...runoff areas of grass and then some ditches(!!!) to make sure you stop.

er,,,didn't see any medical back up....thailand style...go round within your limits...(also I think any holiday insurance is invalidated because you are racing..??)

can't remember cost accurately..but it wasn't dear.. and after about 20 minutes we were beat.

several pro- racers there...they weren't sent out while we were there...more for their own sake than ours, I am sure.

Its quite a big step up from the lawn-mowered engine karts in europe.

(also been round a track in samui..they had a selection of 3 karts..lawn-mower, twin lawn-mower, and 2 stroke pro-kart...if you want to take the pro kart the boss wants to see a couple of laps in the twin kart first)

I live in apartment block that overlooks the Ambassador hotel between soi 11 and 13 on Sukhumvit.

A few years ago the front section bordering Sukhumvit burnt down. We received a phone call from someone on reception in another hotel to tell us there was a fire somewhere near us. They had called because my girlfriend also worked on reception on this hotel and they were worried about her, and hopefuly me..

It was only a small fire to start with at the front of the building. It was about 2 am.

The fire services arrived, unreeled hoses, aimed the hoses at the building and then waited. No water seemed to come out for ages. They eventually got that organised ...by now the building was well ablaze.

The fire started to beat them and they retreated back towards the main Ambassador hotel. I remember seeing some poor fireman in a 'cherry-picker' swung out over the fire like a kebab. He was trying to fight the fire but they had put him too close. After some dancing up and down in the basket they eventually turned one of the main hoses onto him, but he stayed there fighting the fire.

Then all their spotlights failed. Obviously it was still fairly well illuminated thanks to the fact that 50% of the front building was now completely alight.

I phoned some fiends of mine who were staying in the Miami hotel at the end of soi 13. I was surprised when someone sleepily answered the phone, and I suggested they opened the curtains. They were the width of the soi away from the building which was fully alight. No-one in their hotel had raised them or pushed the fire alarm, dispite the fact that the firecrews were on the roof of their hotel fighting the fire with the water from their swimming pool.

The front building of the Ambassador was burnt to the ground. Thankfully there was a 'fire-break' between that and the main Ambassador, otherwise I fear it could have been an almighty disaster.

Coincidentally we have an american ex-firechief (I know!!!..but I believe him) who lives in our building. He was saying that once you get over I think floor 10 they have no ladders to reach..let alone enough space round the buildings to set up the equipment. He was saying that he periodically goes down through the fire exits on our building and comes back and blasts reception if he finds them locked. I also went down the outside stairs once just to see how it works. I got stopped at the pool floor because the gate was locked..but it was easy enough to climb round it as long as you had a head for heights.

Ever tried the fire doors in your building????

I've come at the problem from the other end..

I run a 30 day access account at my bank...so all I have to do is log-on periodically (say once a week) and check 'future transactions'..and if there is anything unauthorized I can cancel it and contact the bank.

I can make immediate transfers from the account but I have to contact the bank directly to do this..and obviously there is a loss of interest.

HSBC bank btw.

Have i overlooked anything?

just to clarify what 'fester' said about do NOT go to immigration to sort it out..

well I did..i had only run out of visa on the friday and i was in on the monday...and as fester mentioned, I had an onward airticket with me..

but there was no drama..paid the few hundred baht and left..

i went to Suan Plu in bkk btw.

so i think you can go there if you are prepared..but i guess it could be different with an almighty overstay.

well donbury..

I hope you take this in the spirit that it is intended..

many guys come to thailand and fall in love with the place and the girls.Its that sort of place--i've done it also. Now perhaps you are an experienced traveller and have seen other places and understand the complications that can arise. But I would be concerned if april 2004 was your first trip to thailand.

there are a few warning signs in your post...firstly you have spent around 70 days with your girlfriend, and now you would like to take her to the USA prospectively to marry her.

secondly, you have already transfered 150,000 baht into her account..

thirdly, she has no college education, no job, never been married and a 4 year old child who lives with her grandmother.

so what has she been doing to support herself?

now probably some posters will follow up and tear at me for being cynical..perhaps more sceptical...and i probably am. I just felt someone ought to say something as to the potential downside of this type of relationship.

donbury..i hope you have found the girl of your dreams and that after some period of time, and i feel sure it will take that to convince an embassy to give her a visa to the US, that everything works out great for you.

I am sure it has been a success for many people, but you need to be aware that situations can be more complicated than they first seem.

chok di...

I'm certain you are talking about a PC DVD player..and I can't help with that..

but..

if you spend about 4000 baht on a stand alone DVD player, they can definately be changed..

I bought a Samsung from one of the big stores in BKK and went back when it wouldn't play the DVDs I'd brought from UK(the salesman said it would despite the regional sticker on the box)..

what I didn't realise was that I had to open the in-tray and key in a special code the salesman gave me and it plays ANY dvd...tidy eh?

""Bangkok's elevated train network operates at only a quarter of its capacity five years after opening, said Anderson of Bangkok Mass Transit. The system will carry 370,000 passengers this year, up from 150,000 in its first year of operation, he estimated"

now this seems bizarre.....a quarter of its capacity??????

anytime I've been on it there seemed to be plenty of passengers..and at rush hour its near full..

hope someone is keeping accurate figures on all those cash paying customers...ahem.......

er,,,if one of the web overlords would like to move this to the correct section..visas,residency, etc...please feel free..

and apologies for my incompetence....

well,, that pleasantly surprises me..so, as long as the funds were in the bkk branch of HSBC, you believe it can be used as surety for the retirement visa..

i felt certain someone was going to say it had to go into a thai national bank..

let's see what some of the 'gurus' come up with...see if they concur...

note the interest rates there..at best 1.1%..and you'd have to slide across 3m baht to get "Premier account"....at present i get 3.75%(tax free of course) in Jersey..

but if this does work..would have thought it was a favourable option for all those who bemoan the thai banks...

Has anyone had any experience of using HSBC in Thailand?

I currently run a HSBC UK and offshore account, with no problems.

Would I be correct in assuming that money held in that account in Thailand would NOT be creditable towards a retirement visa?

Also....I'm just wondering if transfering some money into the Thai HSBC account would be an efficient way of hedging against the Thai currency strenghtening?(yep, i know this is only a forum..but you never know who may be reading...)..(George Soros please reply.... )

are you in bangkok??

an MRI at Bumrungrad is only just over 10,000 baht...surely a sound investment?

only takes 45 mins and the results should certainly help with diagnosis.

well...I'm not sure about your assumption that Thai hospitals don't really worry about skin cancer..

I was in Bumrungrad for back surgery, which I won't bore you with, as evryone else has already been bored with it on another thread...

however, when i went back for a check-up, the orthopaedic surgeon remarked on some moles on my back...you can imagine how pleased I was about this, having just had surgery and a week in hospital. Anyway, I am promptly escorted off to 'Dermitology'.. see the specialist....she doesn't like them either.

"so what do we do next?" was my innocent question..

"well one option is that I could laser them off now" was the surprising reply...

45 minutes later I am laying on an operating table..with the doctor, a smiling thai nurse, and a laser pointed at my back..

they actually inject under each mole with anesthetic, then take a biopsy, then burn it out.

they took about 10 off me..

come back 3 days later for results...and..dysplatic melanocytic nevus, junctional type.........skin cancer.

surprised again...for this is the first time i've had any type of cancer,,,and its not a pleasant first..i asked what we have to do now?

the good news was that the doctor had suspected this mole looked bad and had taken a large area out with the laser..so nothing else had to be done..

i have to go back for a six month check-up.

the total cost of this surgery and medicine was 5989 baht.

the doctor i saw, who also did the op, was Dr.Supanee Sugkraroek.

now interestingly, i had no symptoms...no itching, bleeding, change of shape(well thats hard to be accurate about with moles on my back..but nothing i had noticed in a mirror)(not that i spend an awful lot of time admiring my back in a mirror!)..so if it had not been picked up i would probably not have noticed until considerably later...and how far this may have spread by then is anyone's guess.

so i guess there is a lesson there somewhere..

chokdee..

Slipped disc surgery for Mubarak..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3822571.stm

crikey..you never know who might be reading this forum....

Just as an aside...Bumrungrad probably makes more sense when you realise that the CEO is an american (Curtis Schroeder)..

a friend of mine who is a freelance journalist, interviewed him a year or so back. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for those of us who use the place, he couldn't find anyone interested enough to publish the piece back in USA. The idea was to compare standard of treatment and pricing. Apparently dental treatment was already very popular with 'medical tourists', to coin a phrase.

One can see by the way that Bumrungrad caters for foreign visitors--translators available for instance---we must already contribute a large percentage of the revenue.

yep--its definitely the best plan to go get them some food ....

but..

there is a guy who pushes himself along sukhumvit (mainly between soi 3 and asok)..he lays flat on his stomach and pushes a begging bowl in front of him... from what I can remember, i think he has a leg missing.

I know its sad...but the look of horror from holidaying families who are browsing in the shops, and then the kids are confronted with having to step around this guy..

is it really the image that Thailand wants..or does the "image" of Thailand compare with this guy surviving?

I don't know..I haven't the answer..I know when I see the guy it is distressing.

there was another guy with a similar disability who set himself up as a shoe-repairer in the soi near the building where I live...I really admired him...he spoke no english but we got along in that nodding laughing farang sort of way..if i wanted any repairs I got them done there.. and any shoes that i'd finished with I used to give to him and he'd polish them up and sell them to the guards in the next building..and then they would laugh and point at their shoes when i walked past..all good stuff.

It happened to my friend's wife in the Robinsons in Siracha..

His wife is Thai. There were two Thai women, one crying and very upset. One of the Thai women said to my friends wife that the other woman had been robbed and could she help...maybe she could help them by phoning the police.They took the upset woman in the corner of a Pizzahut and sat her down....I think the other woman got some cokes..My friends wife remembers nothing else. She came round about 20 minutes later still sat in the Pizzahut. Her jewelry, phone and money had gone. She was now confused and upset.

The Pizzahut manager phoned my friend at work and he came there. They called the police. The police said it had happened several times in the same shopping centre....at this point my friend lost his cool with the police and asked what they were doing about it, if they knew it was going on.

Believe it or believe it not..the choice is yours....

But forewarned is forearmed....the land of smiles has also got some sharp teeth.

Dr.bone..

Unfortunately you have taken my good humoured approach to me being a twit…..I was only asking for a few more details to underline your claims of rate of failure and perhaps some links.

Anyway…I note the referral documents and their dates..1978,1977,1994, and 1982. So they range from 27 years ago to 10 years ago. Would you not agree that success rates in surgical operations have improved dramatically in the last 25 years?

As to the failed back surgery syndrome..

I found this link :

http://www.spine-health.com/topics/surg/fa...led_back01.html

“Failed back surgery syndrome (also called FBSS, or failed back syndrome) is a misnomer, as it is not actually a syndrome - it is a very generalized term that is often used to describe the condition of patients who have not had a successful result with back surgery or spine surgery”

“There are many reasons that a surgery may or may not work, and even with the best surgeon and for the best indications, spine surgery is no more than 95% predictive of a successful result.”

“After spine surgery, careful follow-up and rehabilitation is very important. If there is continued pain after back surgery, despite adequate time to heal and rehabilitation, then further workup may be warranted to find if there is a new lesion or a different type of problem that could contribute to the patient’s pain.

Failed back surgery syndrome is really not a syndrome, and there are no typical scenarios. Every patient is different, and a patient’s continued treatment and workup need to be individualized to his or her particular problem and situation.

By: Peter F. Ullrich, Jr., MD”

…. ”misnomer,,,not really a syndrome”…some of the operations are not successful..I would have thought that was the case with almost any surgical procedure…

as to you saying that the failure rate of these operations is 53 %..are these figures also calculated from statistics from 10—25 years ago?

I used to go to a chiropractor in the UK..nice and regular..hand over my 35 pds for 30 minutes…hopefully I will not have to do that anymore..If this surgery can be improved to the level where even chiropractors have to admit it can prove successful, it could leave a few more empty seats in the waiting room……….

Dr.adam...yep, it would be naive to believe the best doctors for evry speciality works out of Bumrungrad..

as you say, through the medical profession you have heard of many higher quality specialists working out of other hospitals. The point here is that you have heard this "through the medical profession".How does joe public find this out?...well, he can't. He can ask around,hmmm..and it still comes down to someones subjective view...

I think the ordinary punter is probably going to have to take his chance on one of the big hospitals and see how the doctors shape up. As I said, I tried to get as much info as possible before the op and cross-checked it with someone in the UK.

It seemed to stack up. But any operation has some level of risk..whether I had it in Thailand or the UK.

As for the doctors in private practises being able to charge appropriate to their skill....there is something like that happening in Bumrungrad..I haven't got details..but as I understood the set-up, the doctors charge independently of Bumrungrad, though still under their billing system, and Bumrungrad takes a percentage back out of what they charge.

dr.bone... crikey so I've got a 50% chance of getting through the first year..better get some parachuting in quick....

they are amazingly high failure rates that you quote...and within 7 years I'm back to square one? is there anywhere on the web where this is documented? seems bizarre...

i guess anyone who is back to square one by implication had the op done 8 years ago...my understanding is that these ops have improved markedly over the recent times....so I hope your figures were calculated by using statistics from the early roman empire..

another link for those interested is this

http://www.alphaklinik.com/Slipped-Disc-with-Stenosis.html

its a klinik(?) in germany specialising in this type of surgery..if you follow the links it will actually show you what happens in the op. It was another of the places I considered going. They are willing to do the op with you still conscious..crikey..."pass me the scalpel, will you please, patient"...

Having read a couple of thousand threads on visas, and at least comforted that many others are as confused as I am, I wondered if it would be possible for a couple of the "knowledgeable ones" on the board to draw some sort of flow diagram of the different visas to get into Thailand?

something like:

You want to go to Thailand

>>holiday>30 day visa on arrival(+7 days)

>Visa from Thai embassy(30days+30+14+7)

OR extended stay>Retirement visa(+50 years and 800k baht or 40k/month)

>Business visa( conditions ?)

>Study visa (conditions ?)

>Elite card(don't laugh)( 5 year extendable)(1 m baht)

>Investment visa (conditions?)

but someone with some clear understanding could do a far more comprehensive diagram.

I know most of the info is available on different parts of the forum, but I simply thought by pulling it together it may clarify the system. I guess you could add links to pages with all the details.

anyone willing?

Lopburib 3 is correct--that was the surgeon..

As I said before, he speaks excellent English...so that is a great help.

I think he told me that he had performed 4 other discectomies that week..although not all L5/S1 as mine was.

I can only speak from experience...and after years of pain, its marvellous.