sfbandung

Piece of cake. If it's first time to meet the family it will be a bit strange for a little while but that's all. Bring booze, the universal ice breaker and wai the oldies.

Has been said but yes, better to be upcountry than in BKK/Pattaya/Phuket/Chiang Mai during Songkran. Will be quite happily camped at our place in Ban Dung not far form where you'll be.

Also been said but yep, grab a room at a pub. At least one with AC, True Vision and serving half decent farang food for when your stomach needs a break.

It's all about attitude, if you want it to be good it will.

sf

Not everyone drinks...bring some of those sweetr things for the kids and book into a pub.

Visit and leave the family as you wish. You will be welcome and may spend more time with the family than you think you will. It is allways good to have the hotel though to sleep in,

Good call.

And sometimes they like the drinks sweet! I took a bottle of of single malt I figured I'd share with the old man. All he wanted to drink was the missus' Malibu and Midori.

Not sure if money is an object but my brother checked out of here literally on Monday. Raved about the place and 6 weeks later is a new man:

http://alcoholrehab.com/

But you have to want to stop. Really want it.

Piece of cake. If it's first time to meet the family it will be a bit strange for a little while but that's all. Bring booze, the universal ice breaker and wai the oldies.

Has been said but yes, better to be upcountry than in BKK/Pattaya/Phuket/Chiang Mai during Songkran. Will be quite happily camped at our place in Ban Dung not far form where you'll be.

Also been said but yep, grab a room at a pub. At least one with AC, True Vision and serving half decent farang food for when your stomach needs a break.

It's all about attitude, if you want it to be good it will.

sf

Have regrets. What's done is done and I'm always the better for the experience.

Anything Toyota for sure! Do not do Isuzu. Ford is okay as well. Nissan... never did like them. So go with Toyota!

Why not Isuzu? Currently own a Mu 7, fantastic car. Drove it form Udon to Chiang Mai and back in January. In PNG I have driven loads of Hiluxs and the D Max is a far superior vehicle.

Found the Toyota dealers arrogant and misleading, the deal was changing all the time.

And to the OP. Buy new. You don't save much buying used here and it isn't worth the risk.

Drove Udon Thani to Chiang Mai and back a couple of weeks ago at the height of the drama. Nothing except fantastic roads and crap Thai drivers.

Stop at the AOT booth and get one of their limos. Or hop on the Airport Rail and forgo the roads altogether.

Otherwise, suck it up, do it legal, and take your turn with the rest of us unwashed masses.

I've never waited more than 10 minutes for a taxi at Swampy, but that may just be luck. On my one trip into DM, the taxi line took over half an hour.

Me too. Never had to wait more than a few minutes even when there are loads of people, the queues move very quickly.

But reading this at least I know now what those bloody big turnstiles at departures have been installed for!

I've used Vipre for three years now after a nasty virus got past AVG (the paid version). No dramas and uses hardly any resources.

Ever caught the Shinkansen in Japan? If it is anything like the cost of that then no one will catch it.

My wife reads it sometimes but always says the same thing, "Too many people on Thai Visa don't like Thailand. It's silly, they can always go back home. Why do they stay and complain, complain, complain."

Like others I think I am most surprised that you don't already have a rice cooker! We have at least one in all of our residences.

if your kids have dual citizenship and you can prove that you are the legal father, then you dont break any law, just use the passports for your kids from your home country. Nobody (even court) can not forbid travel (for example english citizen) to england. If the family name in passports are the same, there will be no problem, I got from court a clear statement, because my ex-wife ask court to forbid me to take my kids to germany, what court clear refuse, a citizen can all the time travel to his country. And in 12 years after divorce I never ever any problem at check in or passport control, even never any questions. But for sure if you want to solve this, you have to take a lawyer after arrival and go to court in your home country and try to get custody or better to get a arengment with the mother of the kids

I don't know about England but you cannot get an Australian Passport issued for a minor without the express permission of both parents. In PNG I have a mixed race daughter who was entitled to citizenship by descent which I got very easily. The passport was a different matter altogether. Her mother had to attend the High Commission, they took her away and asked her loads of questions about whether I was paying her to sign the form and did she understand that it meant I could take our daughter to Australia and she would not be able to get her back to PNG.

Let;s all post our opinions about a broad and possibly incorrect generalisation. We can then argue about it and insult each other too. Yay !

That's pretty well how these topics develop here!

Re the OT. Missus reckons it's about having had kids before. When I first went to the village i asked her how her parents would be with us sleeping together. She said she has already had a child (Yep, to a Thai guy when she was young who is no longer around). If she hadn't and was "fresh" (so to speak) it would have been different.

None of this would be necessary if the elites in Bangkok weren't such bad losers and poor sports. Elections have consequences. The anti-government protesters need to respect the votes of the winning majority.

A very simple look at things indeed

Imagine you and 2 other guys had a vote on whether to steal your money and/or kill you, they voted for and you against. Would you then consider yourself a "poor sport" if you did not agree to that?

The government is literally trying to kill the country financially, backed by a majority who know nothing whatsoever about economics, and do not care either. Fortunately a minority does understand economics and other related issues, and are currently trying to stop it. You call them poor sports, but I bet people in Greece (the birthplace of democracy) wish someone had done something similar in Greece over the past 30-40 years.

Simple but real monkey. That's how democracy works. You don't want people you consider stupid to be allowed to vote, but that's how it is. The majority wins.

This bloke is spot on. Everyone's vote should be respected. Even the dumb rice farmers from the north. That is how democracy works. It is an unfortunate truth. At least Abhisit is smart enough not to actually verbalise his opposition to democracy as a principle. Unlike Suthep, who really believes that the sycophants he meets on the streets of Bangkok are actually representative of the majority of the population. Suthep and the Dems proposed plutocracy should get the condemnation it deserves.

Please don't refer to Northern people as "dumb rice farmers" My father in law is a rice farmer.He is also an incredible carpenter, mason and craftsman. He is actively involved in charity, and like the rest of the family, doesn't drink, smoke or swear. He has worked HARD all his life...and never had anything handed to him. He has four intelligent children, two of which hold degrees and have good jobs, one owns a successful business and a fourth who worked three jobs to help put her siblings through university (my wife).

Please give the respect that my family and the hard working people of Isaan deserve.

Sorry I am out of likes but very well said sir. There is a heck of a lot of generalization and stereotyping going on of late, much of it very ignorant and unfair.

Wow. I replied to Pompuiman. I was being sarcastic and speaking in defence of Isaan people. Who Suthep believes should not have the right to vote.

This bloke is spot on. Everyone's vote should be respected. Even the dumb rice farmers from the north. That is how democracy works. It is an unfortunate truth. At least Abhisit is smart enough not to actually verbalise his opposition to democracy as a principle. Unlike Suthep, who really believes that the sycophants he meets on the streets of Bangkok are actually representative of the majority of the population. Suthep and the Dems proposed plutocracy should get the condemnation it deserves.

Please don't refer to Northern people as "dumb rice farmers" My father in law is a rice farmer.He is also an incredible carpenter, mason and craftsman. He is actively involved in charity, and like the rest of the family, doesn't drink, smoke or swear. He has worked HARD all his life...and never had anything handed to him. He has four intelligent children, two of which hold degrees and have good jobs, one owns a successful business and a fourth who worked three jobs to help put her siblings through university (my wife).

Please give the respect that my family and the hard working people of Isaan deserve.

Mate I was being sarcastic. Look at my nom de plum. Ban Dung is an hour's drive from Udon in the the heart of Isaan country. I am sitting in my house next to my father in law's rice farm (it's growing tobacco at this time of year though) as we speak and he is every bit the man you describe. So are my wife's brothers and her sisters. I am speaking in their defence.

Cheers, Steve

This bloke is spot on. Everyone's vote should be respected. Even the dumb rice farmers from the north. That is how democracy works. It is an unfortunate truth.

At least Abhisit is smart enough not to actually verbalise his opposition to democracy as a principle. Unlike Suthep, who really believes that the sycophants he meets on the streets of Bangkok are actually representative of the majority of the population.

Suthep and the Dems proposed plutocracy should get the condemnation it deserves.

I'm just not going for this.

Why?

Mate if you are genuine then I apologise but this is so typical of a story of a bloke being led along. You're going away now for how many months? Why not take her with you? I met my missus here then went back to work and a couple of month's later had a visa for her and she came to stay with me where she has been ever since. We've built a house here and got married and all the stuff (the string is every time we go, a big party and I have a hundred of them for the flight out) but she stays with me. I just don't get the idea of having a relationship where you stay living in separate countries for sometimes years. A proper couple live together.

I'm just not going for this.

Paedophilia exists. Kids get cancer and die horribly. There are serial killers and tyrants who murder millions, funnily enough often in "God's" name.

Therefore there cannot be an "omnipotent, omnipresent, benevolent" God.

Man is mortal, we will all die one way or another.

All of the other things you mention are mans evil, they may claim in gods name but it is not gods doing.

We have free will, we cannot blame god for the choices we make. So your point about he cannot exist is wrong and frankly you can never say for sure

Then he is not God. God is (by all religion's definition) "all knowing, all powerful and loves us"

If he allows the actions of an evil man then he either didn't know, didn't care, or was powerless to stop it. Please don't come back with the "evil is actually good" argument and that he did it for our own good. That's absurd. People of faith love to have their cake and eat it, over and over.

Sorry to disagree, sfbandung. Good cannot exist without evil. This argument leads nowhere. Science and reason can't be used to disprove nor prove the existence of gods. But I'll take a 0.999999999 certainty for this life.

Orosee you missed the critical "omnipotent, omnipresent and benevolent" criteria. If He exists and is all these things then good must exist without evil. If He is not all these things then He is not a God proposed by any of the mainstream religions.

Fun argument. The hilarious thing about religion is it gets its credibility from being incredible.

Paedophilia exists. Kids get cancer and die horribly. There are serial killers and tyrants who murder millions, funnily enough often in "God's" name.

Therefore there cannot be an "omnipotent, omnipresent, benevolent" God.

I'm not sure about the laws in the US but even being a around a "proposal" like this if you are Australian, regardless of your physical location, would be very dangerous legally. Apart from the whole concept being loathsome of course.

Best advice above is to run. If you value the ongoing friendship of this clearly amoral individual, then the advice to say, "Absolutely not. Never raise this with me again." is in order.

Really the UDD/Red Shirts should just keep quiet, if they do come out, it will inevitably play into the oppositions hands as no doubt there will be clashes, deaths and inevitably it will lead to a Coup.

At the moment, they unbelievably in the eyes of many around the world sort of have the moral high ground. Without people knowing all the history, on the face of it, it seems that their democratically elected Government is trying to be overthrown by some loony talking about People's Councils.

What "on the face of it"? That is precisely what is happening.

You cannot propose the ousting of an "illegitimate" democratically elected government and replacing it with something far, far worse.