wiscoman

Wow this article is getting bashed left and right here. Way to prove the author right

I really do not understand how Egypt and Saudi Arabia can be 2nd and 3rd, especially saudi arabia what were the parameters of the poll? A friend of mine taught in an international in Saudi Arabia for 5 years, mostly for the great pay, and lived in a compound. Aside from north korea, he said it was quite possibly the worst country in the world to reside, as you feel like a prisoner with very little freedoms; you cannot even have a sip of beer there without getting lashed.

So here is the update on what happened with the Visa process, I originally posted this on visajourney.com under Thai Consulate review.

My wife went alone to the interview as I returned to the U.S. 2 months ago, so everything I know is from what she told me. She was the 2nd interview of the day, and it began at 10:10 and finished at 10:30. The interviewer went through some of the normal questions: How did you two meet? When do you plan to go to the U.S.? etc. Then came a bit of confusion as the interviewer started to ask why my wife's name was slightly different from her birth certificate to her national I.D. There is one small difference between the two and it was a Thai government mistake, which we thought we had rectified because we had a translated explanation from the Thai government. The lady said my wife needed to have an AR-14? I think. Well the lady ended up just working past this and continued on with the interview, and said my wife will be approved. My wife came back a few days later and picked up her visa. My wife said the lady was not very friendly and other than the questions about the AR-14 barely bothered to even look up from the paperwork at my wife. My wife said having good English probably helped her out a lot. Other than the really long wait time between submitting packet 3 and the interview overall it was less of a hassle and difficult than it first appeared to be when we started the process.

The sport shown in the OP picture is Football ............not soccer

It is to 300 million people, don't be so sensitive calling it soccer, you know what it is so move on.

Sex tourism can be banished when Thai police are first educated on what Prostitution really means! A newspaper article once carried an article that the police invaded a pub for prostitution... I guess it was very hard finding one in Pattaya. it is mind boggling as to how they differentiated or filtered their search. Hmmmm Very hard ching ching!!!! <div><br></div>

Obviously a pub who forgot to pay their bribe money.

But there needs to be a crackdown foreigners seeking underage women, and women being forced into prostitution.

All prostitutes are beeing "forced" into it, one way or another, even tho they put on a fake smile pretend to be happy.

Forced by beeing extremely poor, or forced by their parents and grandparents because they want money.

Do you seriously think that these girls goes happily into prostutution because they want to?

No not all prostitutes are forced into it. Many do it because they earn a lot of cash in a short amount of time, and the ones who make the decision for themselves and are safe about it are fine. It is referred to as the oldest profession. As for the fake smile, well you get a fake smile in almost every business/sales establishment you enter. You think a Mcdonald's worker making crap pay is really happy to serve you your greasy big mac?

i think the majority of the tourism in Thailand is not in the sexpat/sextourist genre. I've travled around Thailand a lot for the past two years and mostly I see normal tourism of familys, couples, and backpackers. The sex industry is just confined to spots of bangkok, pattaya, parts of phuket, and small red light districts in other places. But there needs to be a crackdown foreigners seeking underage women, and women being forced into prostitution.

"The mosquito screen on the security door was broken open." I don't know if I would call that a security door if it had a mosquito screen

IF this turns out to be true this will be a massive worldwide story. 169 bodies?! gotten rid of by the government in a cover-up of its brutal tactics. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

Why so many times it is these huge groups/gangs of students?

Your misinformation is comical

Of course the problem will stop, because Cambodia will no longer be launching attacks against Thailand.

I don't know if it shows up on your screens, but right underneath the article is a large ad with a massive muscular dude for a "revolutionary new muscle builder". That is a bit classless for this article.

Thats good no more senseless fighting and dying over a few rai of land.

exercise and read

I had my last one 29 days ago. The cravings definitely went down, but still a couple times a day I find myself really wanting one. The key is you got to quit drinking alcohol at the same time and then ease into alcohol. If I had quit and shortly after had a few drinks no way would I had been able to resist have a smoke.

Again Thailand proves that their unique taliban style of Buddhism will not tolerate anything but the party line.

Exactly like Taliban 2.0

No it is still not even close to being like the Taliban. Nobody is publicly chopping off people's hands, stoning people to death, or banning music. Thailand is about as far away from Taliban culture as you can possibly get, and Buddhism in Thailand is a pretty tame religion when compared to almost every other major world religion.

I did send in all my 1040s for the last 3 years and if they give me a hard time about the W2 I will go the tax transcript route. After thinking about it though they probably will not give me a hard time about this because many of the DCF (Direct Consular Filings) probably do not have W2s, because most people that do DCFs are living and working abroad.

Well we are waiting on an interview date now and then we my wife has her interview we will find out if its okay. Just in case if they ask her for an RFE (Request For More Evidence) on the financial stuff I had my mother fill out a co-sponser form and send it to Thailand.

I keep real valuables and cash in the safe. If I leave some pocket change on the table and it disappears, I would probably wouldn't think twice about it other than perhaps to assume that housekeeping thought it was a tip. I certainly wouldn't approach hotel management with it and take the chance of getting some poor hotel housekeeper fired. Even if it was a misunderstanding, she would probably be fired anyway as management would consider her an aggravation and expendable

In my hotel, the chambermaids have been told NOT to touch anything in the room, period.

So how would they clean anything??

Kunash, you are kidding right? You actually went and reported 100 baht in coins missing from the high end hotel you are staying at? First off I would tip the cleaning person at a low-middle level hotel room at least that much. Second off its 3 U.S. dollars man! You want to run someone under the bus for that? IF they thought it was not just simply a tip and they actually did it as an act of stealing, well they needed it a lot more than you did, especially staying at a high end hotel.

Finally got it after 36 days in transit. Word of advise always use ems.

I have not been to a country yet including my own (usa) were the gov't workers were not the laziest of the lot.

I have been fishing around visajourney.com for awhile and cannot find an answer to this question so I will try here. I recently married a Thai citizen and we have been working through the CR-1 Visa process. I am lucky in that I have worked in Thailand for the last 2 years so I can do the direct consular filing which takes A LOT less time. After just one month we have already made it to the submission of Packet 3 which among other things also is includes my Affidavit of Support (i-134 and i-864). I am worried about one thing in particular, in the instructions it says you must submit W-2s. I did not submit any because I have been working in international schools for the last four years (two years here in thailand). I did submit an excel sheet from the ast. financial dir. of my monthly base pay from my job here in thailand. I did also submit my 1040s for the last 3 years.

Anyone been through a similar situation?

"The minimum wage level should be re-considered" It should definitely go up and 300 baht should be the minimum. The workers of Thailand get paid far to little. They are more educated and efficient then say Chinese or Cambodian workers, the cost of living especially food is going up in Thailand and around the world, and industry will not be fleeing Thailand, 300 baht minimum wage is still very low and they get in return a decent quality worker.

What comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Its all relative, double the minimum wage, suddenly the cost of living goes up by a comparable amount. Today's 25B noodles will cost 50B tomorrow.

Same nett spending power.

Except the general costs are added on to exports which then shrink MORE,

and as oil rises, the net cost of living rises even further.

So even though the unemployment is about as low as it could possibly go and Thailand attracts loads of immigrant workers from Cambodia, Laos, and Burma to work keep the wages down a country cannot raise the wages to a decent livable level? I know you cannot raise the wage to German or American levels because of the inflation and destroying the exports but you can do better than $7 a day, and an increase to $9 is not much to ask.

Chuwit is great for Thailand. They desperately need someone to shake things up in the government. I just hopes his hate of corruption keeps him going through tedious investigations and he will shine a bright light on all the back room deals and skimming of the taxpayers money. And who knows? If Chuwit works real hard and really starts to bring down corruption maybe in 8-10 years Thailand will have PM Chuwit. Oh and for all those who bring up his massage parlor past, you know he admits he did wrong and now he is trying to atone for those wrongs along with an intense hatred for the corrupt people he had dealt with in his massage parlor days. Just because someone has a checkard past does not mean they cannot turn things around and be good in the future.

I really hope this was the last throws of the PAD and they stay away. Thailand will be a much better and prosperous without them around.

"The minimum wage level should be re-considered" It should definitely go up and 300 baht should be the minimum. The workers of Thailand get paid far to little. They are more educated and efficient then say Chinese or Cambodian workers, the cost of living especially food is going up in Thailand and around the world, and industry will not be fleeing Thailand, 300 baht minimum wage is still very low and they get in return a decent quality worker.