fisherd3

I think she is talking 3 - 400 guests.........

I am not sure about the venue yet, but think it is going to be at home........

I also think she is wanting to do all the traditional cerimonies...... evening, doors, wash feet, string etc etc

I had Thai buddhist ceremony in country near Phitsanulok, started 7am or so with monks etc, after that mid morning procession of some sort with usual familiar music, (needs all sorts of props, have to a pay the local expert to organise it amongst other things it seemed), then all morning something going on with people cooking under a tin roof in the garden endless food, all this went on til about 2pm when me and my farang guests managed to retreat to our hotel for the afternoon but the general Thai thing was going on.

Evening bit was held on field in front of local school for 300+ people (including local police etc) whisky on every table, Chinese food (apparently condidered up market) a huge stage with sound system, light show plenty of dancers and a few singers and MC, and a truck loaded with another huge but fairly offensive sound system. Went on til quite late cost including hiring two posh dresss for her and a suit for me 80,000bht.

You have to have some gold in the ceremony my lady went down Carrefour and spent 3000bht on a heap of fake gold and we used that (yOu can hire it for 500bht!!), waste of money but got to play the game and she was not out to try and spend big money on the real thing, although I think we bought her 1baht.

Overall I was over the moon with the value, I can't see really how considering what we got for that money how you could possibly need to spend more.

Thanks Guys great stuff.

Only yesterday my old lady went into adealer to look at a Suzuki Vitara we had seen on one2car, looked fantastic for 1999, but the guy she took with her to help told her it had been in a big accident been resprayed and had even had the engine changed! So if its old and looks too pretty think twice.

Oil for 'diesels only' has a higher detergent content than that for petrol engines, I am tempted to use it instead of the proper stuff in my ageing Suzuki, I am sure the high end tuff would do no harm and it comes in 6litre packs instead of the 4 litre packs gas engine oil comes in. However I have read that you really should use the right oil in the right engine.

Ok I have done a search came up with nothing.

So petrol engined car much faster much quieter than diesel, generally it would seem more refined, so is there any other reason than fuel consumption that anyone would buy a diesel? and on average what percentage difference would you get between the 2.7 gas and 3.0 turbo diesel trying to drive around at optimum fuel consumption speeds.

I think I must be missing something here, please explain the attraction of diesels in the Vigo.

Cheers

Farang thought process will not affect or interpret or anything else Thai logic, if you can be bothered to write you don 't understand, take your money out if you can!!

Even if everyone is upfront, if something happens that makes the environment unacceptable (Noie noise noise) youre stuck for a year. Personally I wouldn'y do it, people only discount poor quality.

[email protected], great place plenty of different rooms at different prices, nothing expensive ask for 10% discount for 4 nights plus, right on beach staggering distance from Green Mangoe but can hear music at night, great farang breakfast for 99thb across main road at 'the deck' stayed there twice would not stay anywhere else, and a bit back pack as old Samui!!

Even in Britain you can fit those specialist shaver sockets that are often switchable 115/230v. this would be an elegant solution.

As suggested above I would definitley favour Samui over Phuket, Phuket is more refined but has quite a bit of $U.S. pricing, ++ on bills and even on boards outside!, and getting about on Tuks Tuks is a problem because they rip off farang especially at night, this means you cannot really stay a way out of town without getting a problem. You could of course stay in a resort all the time.

Samui is getting developed but I think it is hard to kill the spirit and the addition of some classy restaurants along the main drag in Chaweng is a plus giving more choice.

Chaweng Beach is big and at sunset with its beach bars happy hours and tables to lay on with Thai style bolsters I think takes a lot to beat, even if sometimes the music is a bit too loud. I also like Green Mangoe disco in the green Mangoe complex full of about 30 other disco/bars etc pandamonium at times I must admit, however once you are in Green Mangoe after a few warm up vodka and red bulls(!)the rest is history.

I stay in Chaweng gardens which is on the beach in the centre of town, and for 1500 bht a night you can get a nice room with TV, fridge air con either a hut or in a concrete structure, said to be more expensive (as Phuket) than most of the rest of Thailand but can't say I noticed and never felt like I was being ripped off there, unlike Phuket.

There are plenty of quieter/more expensive places on Samui but I have only stayed as above, a google search will expose these.

Koh Samet is a national park therefore you have to pay 200 bht to get in (Thais pay 20bht) it is also highly commercialised and my aussie friend paid 50% more to stay in a concrete dungeon like bungalow than he had paid the week before for a river view room in the Montien Bangkok. Not to mention the 300 bht ferry fare when I believe it should have been around 30bht had he not been novice farang.I will never go there.

The nature of Phi Phi has I believe changed as the big boys have muscled in on the small businesses that prevailed before the problems, no doubt beautiful but nice to have the vibes as well!

Hi all.

I'm planning to apply for my g/f visit visa to the UK at the end of this month.

However, she has just given up her job and obviously in the embassy's eyes she has no "reason to return".

We do plan to buy a house together and to that end I have deposited about 2.1 million baht in her Bangkok bank account a year back.

She has a bank book for this account.

The embassy might assume that she could get this money out of the Bangkok bank's branch in London. I'm unsure on this.

Are there any accounts which any of you know of which can only be withdrawn in the LOS? Therefore giving her a reason to return?

Many thanks,

AjarnJohn

I don't think having any amount of money in the bank has any merit with The U.K. Embassy it is at least as likely that their reasoning will go along the lines of 'farang with money puts cash in Thai ladies bank account must be a drug tafficker, human slave trafficker, etc = black refusal stamp in passport and big onward problems .

I suggest that A) you apply for a visa that has an appeal process attached to it, and You appraise your Member of Parliament of your application in case you catch an E.C.O. on an off day and he ruins your life plan.!!

The big problem with having mortgages in a different currency to the security (i.e.house) is exchange rate, you could get into some serious trouble if they started moving significantly, this is the reason Brits have historically been disuaded from taking out U.S. $ mortgages where the interest rate has usually been much lower than the U.K..

If you are seriouse about obtaining a UK visitors visa and have the tenacity to deal with the UK immigration laws to take into account their loading against success the first point is to apply for a visa that takes its conclusion beyond the whim of the ECO, which a visitors visa does not (no substantive appeal).

The second step is to involve your Member of Parliament from Day1, so he the travesties that go on are made known to the lawmakers, as changing the law is the only remedy.

Check www.d2re.com Bangkok & Jomtien Offices. Tell truth.

Go to www.crucial.com for most answers on memory.

The answer from the UK Suzuki owners club web site, is heat to loosen off the decal they recommend hair dryer, and WD40 to remove the gunge underneath.

My U.K. credit card was not accepted by Nok Air when I was travelling, same card accepted by Air Asia five minutes later, and noone answered the phone when I called the number at Nok Air advised.

So Nok Air would appear to be a problem.

It is supposed to be possible to pay for tickets at 7/11 stores but in the light of the foregoing how reliable this is remains to be tested.

Check Fedex and UPS etc on the web they all compare favourably to EMS rip off and are not Thai!.

Dear Cdnvic , you are right in your anaysis concerning the illegal use of creative works/intellectual property in a simplistic sense as the likes of microsoft would have you analyse it.

However the U.S. and it's companies/lobbies religous groups/tobacco companies/farmers/pharmaceutical companies are very good at expecting legal purity from those who use one aspect of it's industry or another to maximise their profits whilst behaving in a wholly illogical and contradictory way if the pure approach to morality/legality does not maximise profits.

E.g. The U.S. goes out to South America and others espousing free trade because it will maximise U.S. profits.

Now I a U.K. citizen the U.K. whom I should imagine is wholly entagled in a free trade agreement with the mighty U.S., and I want to download from a legal U.S. web site for money an MP3 tune price .99 cents, gbp0.50 , I am prohibited in doing so because my plastic is U.K. based, I am referred to the U.K web site of the same company where low and behold the same tune is GBP.89p ($1.73) , (nearly x2) and not only that the tune itself is two thirds as long as on the U.S. web site. (which makes more than x2) In fact the tune I want is withheld from the U.K. market.

So where is the morality competition and free trade and spirit of the www in this scenario, I am being penalised because I am not residing in the U.S. CDNVIC you may think this is OK but I do not. And seems to actually completely against the free trade ethic espoused by the U.S. when they want to dominate a market.

I therefore have no respect for the laws that you espouse because they are wholly contradicted in related instances only to maximise U.S. companies profits in a dishonest manner, and why should anyone else?

As I believe that it is viewed legally that companies have a greater responsibilty to society than mere individuals this compounds the big company immoral behaviour wholly condoned by government, and strangley enough makes the apparently illegal behaviour of the individual merely a logical response to the legally (i.e.big money) justified , immoral behaviour of the U.S. mega corporations even judged by their own trading principles.

Recently Bill Gates has stated that his company has gone too far with DRM the latest attempt by his company and others such as I tunes/I pod to to corner the market in recorded music for their financial benefit, (not the benefit of the artists as they might imply and Cdnvic may believe ask Nina Simone how much $ she receives from MP3 royalties)).

This will certainly cause the failure of the Microsoft MP3 player Zune recently Launched and their Windows Media Player 11 riddled with this DRM (as I read on this board is Vista) as people such as myself legally download tunes from the internet for money, and suddenly cannot play them, because of some aspect of Windows Media player that is beyond the wit of ordinary consumers as stated by Bill Gates one could say 'the boss' of the rip off artists.

Take Bill Gates actual advice forget downloads buy a CD and rip it, and as long as the big boys are ripping you, just return the sentiment!!!

The funny thing is that depite the clear fact that the generality of Thai society obviously do not like Farang people (no doubt amongst others) living permanently in their society for any other reason than money if that, that farangs still aspire to live here, if I was a wealthy under 50 having a problem I would make a point of avoiding the place.

Which is possibly the effect of all the recent anti farang legal murmerings, this may be a good thing for some of us over 50s, keep Thai society impoverished and third world cheap (as may be the intention of the Chinese ruling class) so we can still afford to hang on in there.

TiT up to them!

www.ipipi.com

the teabags have arrived! tastes great, even Mrs Robski agrees that it's a blindin' cuppa. (well she said mmm.. aroy)

now I wonder where I can get some Rich Tea biscuits.........

I bought a pack of 440 Tetley tea bags (one cup) from a shop below View Talay 1A it has a sign out for 350bht.

So do all these guys think that when they deplane from their 260 seat 787 that just landed after a couple of 600 seater A380s think they are going to get some sort of special treatment because they arrived on a 787?

No of course not, they will join the queue behind the 1200 Airbus users who probably paid a lot less to be in the queue, which really unless they can dispute this contention makes their point utterly irrelevant.

thought i sen a thread on this topic not to long ago but the search produced nothing, looking for a dentist to re-line my current dentures here in pattaya, thought some one mentioned a dentist across from marine disco, went there this afternoon, nothing that i could find, thanks in advance

jasper

Seems that nobody has problem with their dentures. You could ask lady dentist at Pattaya International Hospital. Everybody seems to love her. Apparently, she sings while she works.

Her name is Dr Aree and front desk phone no is :038428374 the ladies in her appt bit do not speak too good English I have found so persevere.

Does anyone have an idea of how much house prices, land prices are rising? Don't really need to buy now if I don't have to, doubt I'd get a true answer from an estate agent. Thanks for the reply to my earlier querie, I'll buy the land in the wifes name.

Considering the Thai government has in recent months underlined the clear edict that Farang cannot legally own land (or incite Thais to assist him in effectively doing so), the concept of dramatic western style increase in land prices is beyond me. In fact it would seem to me to indicate a less robust land/house market if the many farangs who bought into this market in recent years finally get the message.

What can be clearer?

But then I am not a Real Estate agent.