Oswulf

For Sukhumwit 22 I'd add: Khing Klao and Ruan Dern. Both do better than average Thai food in a pleasant environment. They're on the left hand side about 100 m inside the soi.

Vino Viva further into the soi on the right and does great Italian pizzas.

I have this problem, too. The usual approach around here seems to be to buy a can of insecticide - the type with a long tube to direct the poison into holes - and use that liberally. If that fails, get a man in to douse the entire property in foul-smelling stuff that will make you feel sick.

I've managed to control the outbreak in my bathroom using the cans, but the outbreak in the kitchen, well, that's a different matter.

TRI is a "total return index" - in other words, it includes dividend income as well as capital value

SET only includes the capital value of the shares.

พอใจ Satisfied

I suspect they mean 20 seconds per passenger to process, so if there are 100 passengers ahead of you in the queue, that's a loooooong wait.

That said, whenever I've arrived at Changi airport, there has never been a queue ahead of me, and I barely slow my walking pace to pass through immigration there - far less than 20 seconds.

Personally, I can't see why the Bangkok Post bothered to publicise this (fairly trivial) program. The resultant transliteration might help ensure that all road signs to a place are spelt the same way, but the transliteration is no use whatsoever in letting you know how to pronounce the word - it completely ignores vowel length and tone.

Is the Govinda Vegetarian Italian Restaurant still around in Soi 22?

Have not been there in ages , Food was always good , but pricey.

Govinda is still going strong.

There's also Dosa King on Sukhumwit Soi 19 (near Asoke station) - good southern Indian vegetarian food.

And Tamarind Cafe/F-Stop Gallery on Sukhumwit Soi 20 - innovative Western-style vegeterian food, but the portions are a little on the small side.

From the Bangkok Post:

Immigration chief Suwat Thamrongsrisakul said international schools can check the backgrounds of foreigners applying for teaching jobs themselves by searching the Internet for the names of suspects in child sexual abuse cases provided by the US.

http://www.bangkokpost.net/News/19Aug2006_news04.php

Given that the pension is not increased for people retired in Thailand, making additional contributions is a very poor investment. The only exception I can think of is if you're just under the threshold for receiving a state pension at all. IIRC, if you have only 10 years contribution, you get no pension whatsoever. If you have to have made 11 at least years' contribution the amount you get is calculated as the number of years' contribution divided by 44 multiplied by the full state pension.

However, in the last budget it was announced that they were changing the rules to make it easier for people with patchy work records to get a larger pension. The details (AFAIK) haven't been worked out yet.

Why not just pop down to your local supermarket - Asda, Sainsbury's, Tesco, whatever, and buy 10 x 1 Kg bags? All of them stock their own brand of Jasmine rice, as well as Tilda if you want a slightly better product.

I believe you have to wait till your current Thai driver's license expires. Then go off to get it renewed....believe you only need to bring with you the blue book condo residency book, NO doctor's exam, no other tests, bring 2 pictures again and copies of passport and current visa.....and bring I believe 500 baht for the 5 year license.

It seems that different offices have different requirements for renewal. Yesterday I was told I needed:

* 2 photos

* passport photocopies (photo page, TM9, visa page, last entry stamp)

* medical certificate

* letter from local amphur office confirming address

* 550 Baht

If you still say that Jawi is meant for the Yawi language than you must explain to me how the Johorians (in the south near to Singapore) do not speak Yawi yet they still read Jawi and sounds exactly like bahasa melayu?

Explorer

Jawi used to be used much more widely in Malaysia. However, following the introduction of the Roman alphabet, Jawi became obsolete in most areas of Malaysia, except for some legal and ceremonial purposes. Jawi is much more difficult to learn and write than the Roman alphabet, so the Roman alphabet became favoured. It's a similar situation to Turkey where, under Ataturk, the Arabic script was abandonned in favour of the Roman one.

Now, the vast majority of Malaysians can not read Jawi.

The reason that people reading Jawi sound as if they are speaking Bahasa Melayu is because they are speaking Bahasa Melayu. Jawi and the Roman alphabet are simply alternative ways of representing the same language, the same sounds.

If you're seriously daunted by the prospect of learning 44 consonant names (or 42 if you ignore the obsolete characters), it might be a good strategy to concentrate on the 28 regular consonants (i.e. those used to write native Thai words, as opposed to loan words from other languages such as Sanskrit, Pali and English).

How compatible are these languages? Can people who speak Yawi speak communicate with a guy from Malaysia or is it too different?

Across the border in Kelantan they speak another dialect called Kelante. It is pretty similar to Yawi and the languages are mutually intelligible (which isn't surprising because families were divided by the arbitrary partitioning of the area by the British).

However, Kelante and Yawi are unintelligible to most Malay Malaysians. This is particularly the case for the written language, because Yawi is written with a script derived from Arabic.

The Nation article seems very confused. People in the South don't speak Malay (Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Malaysia) - they speak Yawi - and the objection is to an official status for Yawi, not Bahasa Melayu.

Yawi is a dialect of Bahasa Melayu (officially known as Bahasa Melayu Patani), and is spoken by about 3 million people. It is written using the jawi script - not the roman alphabet which is used for Bahasa Melayu - rendering it unintelligible to almost everyone.

No joy with the System Restore.

I'm beginning to think it must be a hardware problem.

Any other thoughts, anyone?

So, if I learn the thai letter associated with the english letter... then why do I need to learn the name?

Unfortunately, Thai has many different letters associated with the same sound, so there's no 1:1 correspondence Thai:English letters.

Knowing the names of the letters is essential if you're going to be able to spell out a word in Thai. If you can't pronounce a word perfectly and your listener doesn't understand, it's very helpful to be able to spell it out.

There aren't that many letter names to learn, and learning the names can help (a little bit) in learning the class of the letter. (For example, the first part of the letter name is pronounced with a rising tone for all high class consonants.) I think the effort is worth it, even for a beginner.

Both my mouse and printer have stopped working. It seems to be a USB problem. Everything looks OK in device manager. If I delete all the USB drivers they are reinstalled when I reboot the PC.

If I delete the printer drivers and reboot, the printer is not detected (it is a modern P'n'P printer).

The mouse doesn't have its own driver so I can't uninstall/reinstall the mouse driver. Anyway, the computer completely fails to detect it when I plug it in/unplug it.

I've run out of ideas. Any suggestions for what I can try next? Thanks.

(I'm running Windows XP SP-2, for what it's worth.)

Novotel Lotus does an "all you can eat" dim sum lunch in its Chinese restaurant. The waitresses bring a seemlingly endless supply of great dim sum until you can't eat any more.

a quick question on this kind of visa do you still need to leave THAILAND every 90 days to get re stamped or can you stayfor a whole year also do you need any other proof of income to stay

cheers

No need to leave Thailand - though you do need to report to Immigration every 90 days. (However, this can be done by post.)

No official need for any other proof of income - though they might like to see your savings pass book.

i've decided to place 3 million baht into a thai bank to qualify for the 1 year investment visa.does it work that as long as i keep a minimum of 3 million baht in the same account year after year that i can keep renewing the 1 year visa every year?also how about interest accumulation and can i take out any amount over 3 million as long as 3 million stay in the account?also if some emergency comes up and i need the money can i withdraw it anytime but also lose out on the 1 year visa right away or until the year is up?

The 3 million Baht needs to be in a fixed term deposit account. The interest, however, will be paid into your savings account with the same bank (at least, that's the situation with Krung Thai Bank).

Whilst you can withdraw money from the fixed term deposit account, you may have problems. For example, with 24 and 36 month fixed term deposit accounts from Krung Thai Bank, the T&Cs specifically state that you can't make partial withdrawals - it's all or nothing. See KTB Terms & Conditions for details.

I’m in the process of changing visa type. Immigration has told me that I need to cancel my current work permit before the request for a change can be considered. When I go to the Labour Department, will they stamp the work permit as “cancelled” and give it back to me? If not, what evidence will I have to prove to Immigration that I have actually cancelled my work permit?

Thanks.

When it comes to travellers cheques I used to prefer pound sterling but with the exchange rates right now it might be better to take dollars.

If you buy dollar travellers' cheques with sterling you pay a charge and lose out on the exchange rate. When you cash them into Baht, you lose out again. Triple whammy.

At least if you take sterling TCs you're only ripped off twice.

Also open an online high interest bank account with the likes of ING direct. Drip feed the Nationwide account via weekly online transfers, so you aren't missing out on the interest for the money you haven't used yet.

Nationwide offers a linked e-savings account with a pretty decent interest rate (4.55% last time I checked), so no need to complicate things with yet another bank account. Transfers between the e-savings and Flex accounts is instantaneous, too.

Incidentally, you don't need to go into a Nationwide branch to open an account - it can all be done through the Internet and mail.

Mission accomplished! Thanks for all your help.