KayCee

3BB premium is available in Mae Rim, which is a good bit out from the city center, but that may not be true of every place.

Not to disagree with anything said about the dangers of driving here, I wanted to agree the post about that particular stretch of road being quite congested and chaotic in the evening rush.

On top of that though - if the accident happened where it looked like it did from the fresh looking white outlines I saw this morning - at the corner of Mae Jo Uni, and the three way intersection with the San Sai road - I think that there is also something that could be done with the traffic lights. That set of lights is much older looking and much less bright and visible than the ones before, even the light just before (going north) at a much more minor intersection. And because of the placement of the big green directional sign, and the lights themselves (because of being a 3-way intersection I guess), I find the light a bit harder to see, and on my very first drive up that road, saw it a bit later than I would have liked, and I'm a pretty cautious driver.

I'm not at all saying that contributed to this tragedy, but in my view it could contribute to another one, and perhaps a better set of lights there might at least raise the profile of the intersection, get more driver attention, and make another failure to stop a little less likely?

We had a container shipped, no work permit, just a retiree visa, and had no problem and paid no duties on the container from the US, so long as we could give them our original passport showing the visa, and so long as the container arrived at the proper terminal in Bangkok. We did need an inventory list, and if we were bringing too many electronics, etc., might have had an issue, but one of each (TV, DVD player, etc.) got no negative reaction. The agent was very clear that without the 1 year visa we were going to have to pay, so we had to wait to go through the bank account balance period, then get the visa, before we could process the container through, so that timing can be important.

Apparently shipments arriving to a different shipping terminal do have difficulty getting the duty free access (and indeed we paid massively for our container that arrived from our last posting in Africa, as it could only be shipped to a terminal that did not have this duty free facility available.). I would suggest using a reputable shipping company and asking their advice. We sent our passport by DHL, they handled it, no muss, no fuss, and the container was trucked up to us here without any large degree of hassle.

We didn't cry, shout, or pay anything under the table, so it seems it can be done, but perhaps one needs an agent to help? Best of luck.

It was our first Loy Kratong here in Chiang Mai, and we had a wonderful time. We were down by the Narawat Bridge, and surrounded by crowds of happy families with kids while we floated our rafts, released our lanterns, watched the parade, and just reveled in the beauty and enjoyment of people around us. While some were tossing very small fireworks, we didn't see anything unpleasant or dangerous, and the police were friendly and helpful, even scaling a tree to get a caught lantern out before it set it alight as well.

It was a memorable evening, and we look forward to many more Loy Kratong celebrations in beautiful Chiang Mai!

Dr. Nook's Vet Clinic had some adorable kittens available up on the bulletin board when I was in there earlier this week. It seems to be updated regularly, so perhaps they're still available. Her office is near Pantip Plaza, and her phone is 053-818-905. The staff are nice, perhaps you could call and they could give you the contact info off the poster if you don't want to stop by and see the pics.

I'm about 25 minutes away from McCormick, and if it were an emergency, I'd be happy to go donate, but I haven't heard back yet.

I'm A negative and would be happy to help. The only thing though is that I lived in Africa for the last four years. Never received any blood products while there, and don't have hepatitis or HIV, but some places have restrictions on people donating who have lived in Africa, so I wanted to check. I will try to call Kim.

Edited to add - called and left a message, assuming that phone number was correct!

Thanks! We'll go check it out!

I'm not a herpetologist either, though I had a son fascinated enough to become one, so I've done some reading up on critters around here. I'm far, far, far, from an expert though, but my guess would be a long-nose whip snake which are not dangerous for humans

http://www.siam-info.de/english/snakes_ahaetulla.html

That site above is a pretty good one, but there are a lot of very knowledgeable Thai Visa members too who can confirm.

Re: CMIS - we're new so I can't help you with past years' outcomes on the AP exams, but I can tell you what AP courses were on offer this year:

Calculus

Biology

Chemistry

Physics

Economics

English

Psychology

World History

US History

Studio Art

Surely they have Mathematics?

AP Calculus is the higher level math. Before you take that, you would take Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, and then Pre-Calculus - but those are not college level AP classes, only the Calculus is.

Re: CMIS - we're new so I can't help you with past years' outcomes on the AP exams, but I can tell you what AP courses were on offer this year:

Calculus

Biology

Chemistry

Physics

Economics

English

Psychology

World History

US History

Studio Art

NOTE well, the paucity of language learning: no Thai, no Mandarin or European languages! Also, most worrying is the absense of any vocational studies. No wonder so many families shy away from this institution.!

I didn't give the whole schedule, only the AP classes. Of course there are other languages, including Thai. Not vocational studies that I can see though!

Re: CMIS - we're new so I can't help you with past years' outcomes on the AP exams, but I can tell you what AP courses were on offer this year:

Calculus

Biology

Chemistry

Physics

Economics

English

Psychology

World History

US History

Studio Art

That's how I read it on the lenses (which we have) and the exam (which we had updated right before moving here). It'd be good to know if that's still the case that Ram is the only place doing those prescriptions.

But if you just need the solution for daily use and cleaning, I hope that someone here sells it if Ram is prescribing them, though I didn't see any mention of that earlier to know for sure. Fingers crossed!

Sorry to revive such an old thread, but I wondered in the intervening years whether anyone has seen contact lens solution (preferably Boston brand) for gas permeable hard lenses in Chiang Mai? We've checked quite a few pharmacies and optical places without success since we arrived. If not, we can have some sent to us from BKK, or failing that, from the US, but I thought it was worth asking to see if availability had suddenly changed.

A quick google search turns up dozens of links to the fallout from a similar "sports day" incident in Bangkok four years ago.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-488159/Thai-school-apologises-Jewish-organisation-Nazi-parade-sports-day.html

for instance. Now when the school is forced to apologize to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which I'm pretty sure would have been the result of a diplomatic brouhaha in the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education, and a teacher is dismissed over it, one would imagine that even in Chiang Mai, the incident was well covered in the press, and the teachers were probably aware of the incident.

Leaving aside whether they (the teachers and school administration) should be aware and sensitive to the historical significance of the Nazi genocide just because it happened (and I would say yes, that educators should surely be held to a higher standard than the general population), one would surely expect they would be able to guess that they probably would not benefit from a repeat of the 2007 storm of bad press.

I'm with those who would say it's appallingly bad judgment, and I wouldn't want my children studying in that sort of place.

The site is working properly for me now too

https://evisaforms.state.gov/acs/default.asp?postcode=CHN&appcode=1

but I also had a problem with it a couple of weeks ago, when I needed to go in and the appointment screen kept giving me an error message. I wrote to them at the email address MSPain provided and got a response the very next day giving me an appointment time the following day. They were very helpful and efficient.

Good luck!

Ravi, we're new, but as longtime Nepal residents we really miss some of the flavors we grew to love, particularly a good dahl, yellow, black, green, all are missed, plus so many other things.

We're settling in but will be looking forward to trying out your place for some good Indian food. We're encouraged to hear you want to make CM have at least one delicious source of Indian food and we'd be happy to throw some regular business your way if so! If not, we may have to just gorge ourselves on our next visit to Kathmandu, heh.

We're new and haven't started looking into it ourselves, but we notice many parents carpool (either in cars or songtaew or minibuses) to our kids' school. Maybe if you asked for other parents at your daughter's school who live in the same basic direction as you, you may find some arrangement already in place that may suit you?

I suppose maybe I'm an optimist, but I compare to where we've lived for the last decade, and compared to those countries in South Asia and Africa, the street animal condition is so much better here. I don't see a lot of deliberate cruelty (yet - I'm new I confess) of the extreme kind - in Nepal we had school boys hurling bricks at street puppies we were caring for in our compound and a friend lost their cat to being dipped in kerosene and set on fire - also by children. The hurling rocks at them, deliberate attempts to run them over with cars out of superstition or just plain meanness, the enormous, staggering number of malnourished, sick, maimed dogs you'd see in a half km radius was enough to break an animal lover's heart. There was one shelter type place in Nepal, woefully under-funded and not able to do much. None at all in Ethiopia. Mass poisoning of street dogs in both places almost resulted in the death of our own dog thanks to (we think) contaminated meat being dropped into our compound by a bird of prey. That was the solution there, since there was no sterilization or vaccination program.

As for pets, no decent veterinary services, despite a few (hard to find) kind vets who tried their best, but no x-rays at all available, no feline leukemia tests, no real blood work at all, unless your vet had a deal with a human lab to help them after hours, and still not very accurate. Medicines were for sheep or chickens, not for dogs and cats, leading sometimes to some complications. Vaccines with an assured cold chain not always easy to come by, leading to rabies in dogs people thought they'd had reliably vaccinated. We'll not mention the charlatans that went door to door selling vaccines at cut prices that if you were lucky was only water and not something dangerous.

The Thais I know love their animals, and feel sorry for other things they see suffering, but I have a feeling like many other things, there are issues of education and plain income involved. When you don't have the funds to take good care of your children, you have a harder time justifying spending money on an animal. I'm an animal lover and hate that those choices have to be made, but I also never have to worry where my kids' next meal or medicines are coming from. As for things like the pig trucks piled high that make me sick - one only has to drive on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay in the US to see the same for chickens. Food animal treatment is appalling in way too many places, not because people want to be cruel but because they just don't want to know, and companies want to make as much profit as they can.

Anyway, we're breathing a sigh of relief to have found a more animal friendly place. It's not perfect of course, but it seems to us that as the income levels of countries rise, people are more able to do things like demand good vet care for their pets, or support programs that help with street animals. And I guess that gives me hope that things will continue to improve here. We can try to encourage that to happen at the macro level, or just help the ones we can help one by one, but I don't think we should believe it's hopeless or not going to change.

I have A neg blood, and my husband A pos or we'd be happy to come in to help.

Ideally, the patient should have his own blood type - B neg. O neg (universal donor, as stated) will also work in a pinch but isn't seen as ideal. A person who is a positive RH type can receive negative blood (which is missing the RH factor) but a negative RH blood type (like this man) cannot receive any positive type blood. Similarly, for the A, B factors. A person who is type B cannot receive blood with type A in it - not A, not AB. But O simply means neither A nor B is present, and can be given..

Hm, doctors and medical types could have written that better, but I hope that was a little helpful. For this poor man, B- and O- are his only options.

We should perhaps have a running list of emergency blood donors by type up here perhaps, if the local blood banks frequently run short of certain types?

We're in the process of buying a new car, and having a hard time figuring out whether there is any satellite radio service available for cars here in Thailand. It'd be nice to get to listen to BBC, CNN, or soccer matches, or whatever during the hours spent in the car, but out dealership seems to say that while we can have satellite television put in the car, they've never heard of sat radio being available. Does anyone know ?

Thanks!

We tried the Mae Rim post office, but they have no boxes available, or at least didn't as of last week, just in case anyone was planning to go ask at that office.

I'm also on 3BB, not their fastest service (which is premier I think?) and no one in my house has had any problem with using facebook. Right now I'm on and no problem. If anything, the problem is keeping the teenagers off it when it's bedtime!

The one bright spot in the otherwise very sad situation, is that a newcomer to CM like me, now has seen a few people post on here in a way that tells her she would really like to meet them!

And, after where we've just been living, it's not a little wonderful to see Buddha being invoked, if only that appeals to our better nature are almost always helpful.

To judge from cheshiregent's endorsements, he's a big fan of pastries and cakes made with margarine and Crisco(white vegetable fat) and other trans fats. I'm not faulting him for that. He has plenty of company. In fact, most cakes and pastries made not just here in Thailand but around the world, are made with those ingredients instead of butter and cream. And if there is any truth in the notion of the wisdom of the crowds, cheshiregent is clearly in the right of it. Just the same we prefer to persist in error. So we will continue using sweet butter, fresh cream, real eggs, and genuine vanilla in our cakes and pastries. Lovers of trans fats, steer clear of us. Consider yourselves warned.

As for breads, what is heavy to one person may be light to another. Our breads may seem heavy to say, someone who likes bread that is 10 parts air to 1 part solid. Again, that's most of the world. But in Central and Eastern Europe our breads might even be considered a little light. Of course, we do, on occasion make a genuine German sourdough rye that's 70% rye and comes pretty close in consistency to a brick. German people tells us it reminds them of the bread their grandmas made. Maybe their grandmas also whipped them and locked them in the root cellar. But they mostly seem quite pleased when they tell us this. In fact, the majority of our most enthusiastic customers are Europeans. Or Americans from ethnic enclaves on either the East or West coast.

Maybe that's because we use unbleached flour in our white breads. Or when we call our bread whole wheat, it really is 100% whole wheat. Not just 20 or 30 percent whole wheat which is mostly what is sold here. Or that most of our breads are allowed to rise slowly overnight which develops their flavor. Or that we don't use stabilizers and "improvers". Or maybe our customers just don't appreciate the taste of empty space surrounded by cheap bleached flour, which is what most local breads consist of. Who can tell? Perhaps cheshiregent can persuade them of the error of their ways. But I wouldn't bet on it.

That was a pretty cute reply! Being a fan of natural (even if fattening!) ingredients, and having lived in countries with absolutely lousy pastries and bread being all that's on offer, this establishment is going to be one of my first stops when we arrive in CM next week.

It doesn't hurt that my daughter says your food is delicious and you're very friendly and kind.

This is just one of the many posts on this CM Forum that has my mouth watering with all the wonderful things we can't find where we've been living - curries, BBQ, good Japanese and Indian food, and now, delicious breads and pastries. I'm rather anxious to arrive!