NotEinstein

OK, you have your opinion of Murray, but did you read the fact-based piece? We do not live in a black and white world....... Loyalties? Perhaps you meant understanding of the relevant facts......

At that time people were having to extend etc. at CMI from all over northern Thailand. Just before the Promenada period other Imm branches were opened, e.g. Lamphun, Chiang Rai, so the volume dropped significantly. When 'Big Joke' was in charge of Imm. there was also a huge improvement of service. The IOs were complaining of having to work extra hours for free.....

The 'service area' is not much bigger than in the old building. They obviously needed the extra floors for more staff - nothing to do with responding to volume. Compared to the pre-promenada days, which involved queuing up from 5 to stand a chance of being allocated a 'family extension' slot for that day, then being told 'need updated KR2' and having to do the same again the next day, it's like the difference between night and day.

I had 27 years paid (until 2002 - not worked since) and they told me I needed to top up 3 years, which I did (chose 2006-2008). I activated my claim last month so I will be receiving the 'full state pension' in 3 months.

A couple of years back we had a reasonably sized bees nest in a mango tree that looked a lot like yours. The wife got a guy from the next village to remove them. He covered up, smoked them and then dropped the majority into a bag. There was a clump left, but they left by themselves about an hour later. He did it for the honeycomb - we got some too. The tessabahn may remove them. We had their snake wrangler remove a not so deadly a few years back.

Macron is surely aware that France, along with the rest of the EU, is headed for the toilet, so he is going to need troops for national security, not against external actors, but the inevitable internal uprising.

The Chiang Mai casino hotel has been under construction for more than 5 years. They have not been in a rush to complete as they have been waiting for the politicians to get 'the paperwork' done. It is an open secret around here (on the river, just south of the outer ring road). My wife's first job 35 years ago was receptionist in the CM casino. She has many tales.

Hi Mike, contact details sent via PM - hope it works out for you.

OK, my wife's niece's husband's step-father lives in mae-rim and does such things, I will get his number this evening.

You don't say where you are. In our village there are a few guys that do small jobs such as these. If your wife only speaks with house builders rather than the village odd-job guy, you have their answer.

I have been using MyTello for the last few years - they set up a local (Bangkok) number for you to call for each contact you wish to speak with. No need to use a 'smartphone'. Obviously not free, but very cheap.

I phoned them and discussed what I needed to do, which is how I came by this info. The guy said he could put a note on my file, but I decided to inform them officially by post detailing the payment made and allocation requirements. He said it would take about 6 months for them to process the payment.

The call gets routed through the internet starting locally......

If you cannot use Skype and want to use a call from any phone, set up an account with app.mytello.com/en and setup a connection to the number(s) you require. They will allocate a Bangkok number for you to dial from any phone number you register for a usage charge of 0.4 baht per minute, so a small additional cost to a call to Bangkok.

Yes, that's why I call them over skype +44800xxxxxx did it last August