cooked

thanks, I will be getting a 60 day visa as I have in the past. Getting my stuff together for a marriages as well as a load of other formalities will be pretty stressful if I aim on doing it inside of 30 days. Maybe I'll get a ticket to Vientiane.

You're a cheapskate and yet you're marrying a Thai woman? Something doesn't add up.

it was a joke, see?

I will be transforming my tourist visa into a visa with marriage extension, so I managed to find an affordable one way ticket to Bangkok. I need proof of continuation of journey, so what's the rockbottomest fare I can buy? Cheap skate I know.

http://airasiaannus.blogspot.com/

is a website for people that hate Air Asia. Join the club, compare the prices.

In the sense of Farang meaning Caucasian, then farang is just the same as us commenting that someone is "asian".

So, if we we (as farangs) said someone is farang, its the same as an asian person commenting that someone is asian.

er..if that makes any sense..

think my sentencing might require some deciphering there ...much the same as the deciphering of the Farang to-be or not to-be debate..

It's not quite as clear cut as that. I agree that it means caucasian, but it has derogatory undertones.

You could argue that the undertones that we perceive are through our own upbringing i.e. not to discriminate on basis of race, but the Thais I have discussed this with acknowledge that it is impolite at best.

If it had derogatory undertones I would be smacking my wife on a daily basis. What do you want the Thais to call us then? I have no problems with being called a Farang, a Rosbif or whatever, because I have a sense of humour. You can use virtually any racial epithet in an insulting manner, come to that Christian names as well.

Sorry. I forgot, we don't say Christian names any more, that is discriminating.

help, I'm being attacked by feelings of racism again.

Not arguing against the above, but it seems so easy to just pick up by watching, as so many Thai restaurants and food stalls cook food right in front of you. That's how I learned it anyway. And then for specific things that are just a little bit harder there is Youtube, also from Thai language cooking shows.

When I make something new that I never did before than I Google a bunch of recipes, watch a couple Youtube vids and then average it out and come up with something sensible given what products are easily available. This always works, especially if know what the end result should taste like.

I love street food, never had any problems eating it. I found out recently that many or most buy their cooking oil from third class restaurants that have thrown it out, who maybe bought it from a first class restaurant initially. Cooking shouldn't just be about making yummy stuff, health and environment issues should be discussed also. As I say, I never had any problems with street food, but the basic concepts of food hygiene don't seem to be very well known on Sukhumvit. I notice however that some vendors seem to be avoided by the Thais.

Google: yes. Maybe they just tell you to cook rice 20 minutes. I have a rice here that needs 45 minutes, my wife recognises immediately which rice she will like, she avoids rice that comes from a twice yearly cropping for instance -- this is all stuff that you can indeed find on internet but not on the cooking website itself generally.

I myself am not someone that whinges about not being able to find the Farang junk I got used to as a child so I make it myself, usually works.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/globalhealth/jan-june12/thailand_05-17.html

and

http://www.mechaifoundation.org/school.asp

I came upon this this morning and am especially interested as the branch mentioned as 'being near Buriram' is just down the road from us. The villagers here as well as the inhabitants of the town where it is to be found (Lamplaimatt) have never heard of it. My wife had to visit twice before she found it.

Any body heard of this school? Any comments? It seems to be run a bit like a Montessori school. Come on, guys, give me some feedback, my previous posting about home schooling met with an ear splitting silence.

I do NOT want our kid going to a Thai village school and I don't have the money nor the desire to send her to Bangkok in a ridiculously expensive private school.

My only criticism so far is that the classes seem to be very large

This is a good question, my wife cooks competently enough but after a month or so it becomes a bit monotonous. She doesn't use coconut milk for instance although we have plenty. She loves to learn so I am on the same path as the OP, planning to do any Farang cuisine myself so we can learn from each other.

these kind of threads always finish up talking about food - I just bake my own bread, sausage rolls, crisps, pork pies, home made black pudding is easy to make and much better....There's not much that you can't make yourself as far as food is concerned. You can even grow your ingredients if you have a garden (including pigs).

hell's bells, guys why don't you brew your own like me instead of whinging? Illegal of course, so I'm joking.

I insist on ignoring any farang who says 'falang'.

The minute I hear someone say that, I dismiss them as a lightweight. Same for grown (white) men who emulate bar speak and talk about themselves as 'pumpoi'and their favourite activity as 'boom boom'.

God help us.

I agree with this statement, I suggest though, to skip the farang/falang word totally.

Why just not say foreigner, or their name?

ok , Farnag sounds better to me anyway.

Foreigner includes the Chinese, Malayans, Burmese, Laotians.... Farang means foreigners of European or North American origin. You prefer to say that?

relative poverty

It seems to me that the exchange rates also depend on the financial policies of the country involved.

Switzerland has been artificially keeping the Euro at 0.83 for weeks or months now, in order to keep exports on an even keel. (When we were getting 1 Euro for a Frank I, along with many other people living near the borders, went to France to do my shopping). This indirectly also affects the Thai Baht rate, which after jumping to 41 last August has been hovering around 33/34 for a long time now.

Switzerland does have the reserves to do this of course, but they will be back tracking some day I should imagine, something to look forward to in a selfish way for me.

Anything that reduces the alcohol content of my beer must be kept away I tell you., keep it away.

Why not invent an ice bucket? Revolutionary, I know.

As far as the taste goes, a couple of slugs of whiskey to help it go down always helps I find.

ha ha. Going through customs in Amsterdam my friend told me I looked like a typical drug smuggler, he was dressed 'correctly' at least by his standards. Who got stopped and strip searched do you think? You never know, sometimes they stop every 10th person, sometimes they apply racial profiling (racist profiling...). No check, everybody checked, all part of the fun of being a smuggler.

My two sons, intelligent but not overly so, speak and write, in order of preference: Swiss German (yes some people can still write it), French, English and High German. One can also use Italian and Spanish as a spoken language. I can recall times at table when we had three languages going, the English people present sitting there with their mouths open. In certain workers 'pubs' in Switzerland you can see street sweepers and construction workers using their own mother tongue and being answered to in another.

Don't worry about it, let the kids alone. The worst that I have seen has been families that moved to another language region, worried that their kids wouldn't get on in school and started speaking the new language at home.

Never, never take a kid's mother tongue away from him or her! These kids have problems communicating in my experience, and seem to have other social problems. It's not called the mother tongue for nothing, taking this away is like depriving them of their mother.

By the way I knew an 11 year old that had 9 languages, but she isn't typical.

sorry.

1. I brew my own beer and I like it

2. You can buy a liter of good beer in Switzerland (supermarket) for 30 Baht

This seems to be a never ending story. Try: http://www.coolthaihouse.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=1114#p8644

I have sown grass seeds at daily temperatures of above 30 C but in doing so you must keep the soil visibly moist constantly. depending on the mixture you might have difficulties getting it to germinate at temperatures over 35 C (dormancy).

Why do you want seeds may I ask? The preparation for seeding or laying turf is about the same, and you can get turf for 40 Baht / M2.

My wife speaks rather good English, self taught, and loves to learn, she is very quick. I have realised recently that this may well be because she only got two years schooling! We got lost one day and I realised that she couldn't read maps (like most women, sorry girls!). I showed her in my usual charmingly impatient way and the next day she got us home, reading the map, how's about that?

She worked in her rice fields all her life and is 49.

There is an amazing potential in the Thais which is, I suspect, being suppressed for 'the usual reasons'. Mad people are mad because they don't know that they are mad, ignorant people are ignorant because....

Most of the problems in Thailand with which we find ourselves confronted seem to stem from the same (subject deleted) source, it's about money and power.

I have been told that you can't find these, and tractor attachments are equally difficult to find. I have dug hundreds of holes with a tool that cost me about 3000 Baht 30 years ago, as per attachment. I refer you also to the link http://www.coolthaihouse.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3288

I thought that there was a 7 day rule? Only after that you are liable to be deported?