snorkster

I'm curious about this 3-year wait list thing for expat couples. We'll see what the DSDW says when we go in there. However, my wife likes to visit a certain Thai orphanage on buddhist holidays and at other times, we bring by some small gifts and candy for the children. They sure do seem to have lots of kids there. I wonder if the process couldnt be accelerated a bit, why a 3-year wait period when there are so many children that need adoption now?

The orphanage told us that most of the kids actually do have parents, but there are some problems at home that cause them to need to live in the orphanage for a while. Only a minority of them are considered finally abandoned, or have unknown or deceased parents. So that may explain why there are so many children in the orphanages, but a long wait period for adopting a child.

At any rate, the person we spoke with last time said she wasn't the best person at that orphanage to talk to about adoption, recommended someone else. But I guess the top-down approach may be better, DSDW. We can mention to them that my wife is fairly well known to a certain orphanage, and maybe they would prefer to look there first. But if the legal route would wind up being through DSDW in any event, we'll drop by there and talk to them, see what they say.

I think we'll go in to the DSDW office and discuss our situation with them.

We live in thailand. Hopefully with one thai parent involved, the wait won't be as long as 3 years, but even if so, it's better to get on the list sooner rather than later.

I'm curious to hear from anyone who's gone through the process and adopted a thai child, how the process was for them and any advice they might have to offer. That's really my main idea posting this thread, to hear from people who've done it, if they have any insight or advice to offer.

Why don't you contact an orphanage and get first hand info?

Yes, this is something we have already done and is one step we have engaged in to get some information.

Posting here is another.

I started out with a forums search for the term "Adoption" but the top results are all irrelevant hits.

Will start a new thread in that other forum. Thanks.

Also if anyone has done this in Thailand, are there any particular agencies to recommend?

My thai wife and I have two boys. We want a girl, and we're both 39, she feel she's old and doesnt want to go through pregnancy again. It was difficult for her to get pregnant last time anyway, took us a long time with fertility assistance to finally manage it.

So anyway now we're thinking of adopting a child. It specifically should be a girl, because we want a daughter. We already have 2 boys.

Does anyone have experience with this? We are a little on the older side, which is a minus for the adoption agencies, but on the other hand my income is very good and my wife also has a good professional position with a quite good salary, for a thai person, so I guess those are pluses.

We dont necessarily want a baby, an older child up to 4 or maybe even 5 would be ok. I guess even older than that theoretically would be OK but it would be a lot more difficult to establish the parent/child atmosphere with a child who's already older than that and not used to us.

I was thinking it may be better to try to adopt a chinese girl. The reason for this is, in China, people sadly, routinely discard perfectly normal, healthy girls because they simply don't want them. In Thailand I would guess more often children are discarded because of actual problems/issues with them. I guess I feel like a Chinese baby would be more likely to be healthy without major problems. However, it looks like there's a 5-year wait period for a Chinese girl nowadays. The Chinese government seems to feel it's a stain on their national pride to have so many babies and children needing adoption by foreigners and have clamped down on allowing children to be adopted, preferring to save their national face while letting the orphanages fill up. We want an Asian child.

Does anyone have experience with this? Have any advice to share? Thanks -

Clearly the situation described happens frequently and is not very far fetched to be honest. The US PROTECT act is also very real.

The PROTECT act in the US applies to sex with persons under 16 years of age if not prostitution, and persons under 18 years of age, if it's prostitution. This law is obscene, its only purpose is to try to establish US jurisdiction over persons' actions overseas. Governments like to grab more power whenever they can.

It's peanuts compared to killing people with armed Predator drones in urban areas outside of war zones. They can do that even with their own citizens. The PROTECT act at least includes a legal procedure. If you see those drones over Pattaya it may be time to worry.

I agree with you about drones. However, I'm unclear what the relation between drones and my comments about the PROTECT act are. My comments were related mainly to jurisdiction issues. I don't understand what you are trying to say, basically.

But yes, the drones thing is very bad.

This thread has remarkable legs for what was clearly a troll post

Yeah, I'm 50/50 on this one, real post versus troll. But might as well give advice in case it's real.

So much for 'The Land of the Free'' Even when they are overseas big Govt is ruling their lives... Wouldn't want to be an American in Amsterdam ...

Not to keep this off-topic, but I believe that under-age sex is one of the few things for which the US government can prosecute an American for things done outside of US jurisdiction. Smoking pot in Amsterdam by an American is not a crime and cannot be prosecuted. (although the military has prosecuted soldiers for "possession" when they came back to Army bases with THC in their system, hence the "possession.")

Actually a bill was recently introduced into congress which would make it a crime to "conspire" within the United States to travel abroad to engage in behavior which would be a violation of the controlled substances act, if the behavior occurred within the US. So making plans in the US with your friends to go smoke pot in Amsterdam would be prosecutable under this act:

http://www.huffingto...s_n_998993.html

The PROTECT act is the first salvo in the US federal government's neverending quest to find more ways to increase its jurisdiction in various areas. They want to get the courts to sign off on a general unrestricted federal US power to govern behavior of US persons around the globe, whether or not the behavior has anything to do with the US, using "pedophiles" as the bogeyman of choice, once the courts sign off on that, the sky's the limit as to what they will try to regulate.

The constitutionality of the PROTECT act has never been tested at the supreme court level. It's been tested at the district court level and upheld there. The authority to prosecute US persons abroad for commercial sex is claimed to be derived from the constitutional authority of the US to govern "commerce with foreign nations". Whether or not the clause regarding non-commercial sex abroad would be upheld in court is unclear.

But anyway basically, as the US government seeks to break new ground in what it can regulate, it's of course going first to target the most evil bogeyman conceivable, the pedophile predator. Once the courts sign off on a general police power of the US federal government overseas based on test cases involving the most evil bogeyman conceivable, they're not going to be bound to just pursuing bogeymen. The right wingers can and WILL have a field day doing things like prohibiting smoking pot overseas. They're already working on it!!!

The PROTECT act in the US applies to sex with persons under 16 years of age if not prostitution, and persons under 18 years of age, if it's prostitution. This law is obscene, its only purpose is to try to establish US jurisdiction over persons' actions overseas. Governments like to grab more power whenever they can. At any rate, it's never been enforced or tested in court for anything other than commercial sex.

Thai age of consent for non-prostitution is 15.

So what's going on appears to be legal on all counts. However, frankly, it's also stupid. She's a prostitute, if she works in a bar, even if her relationship with you doesnt seem to be that way. She's bad news. There are plenty of fish in the sea, find another girl who's older (and who is not a prostitite), and you will be much happier. Give her some money and kick her out of your apartment.

For those amounts of money, there's no way they're going to remotely do anything like trying to track you down in Thailand. However as others have mentioned, things will get really hairy if you go back to the UK and need any kind of credit. Best to negotiate a settlement. If they know you're living overseas (where it's hard to chase you) and you want to come to a settlement, they'll prefer to get paid something rather than nothing and you can get the debt erased fair and square.

VPNs are very useful. I use a paid one at strongvpn.com. You can get IP addresses in almost any country, US, UK, etc.

I use it for online shopping as my credit cards are issued in the US. It's amost guaranteed to have problems with an online credit card processing firm when your IP is thailand and credit card billing address is US.

So I always set up the VPN before buying something with a credit card online.

It also works for viewing videos, etc.

I dont know about the free ones, never tried any. You could search just for a web proxy as a full vpn wouldnt be needed for just web browsing.

Supermicro should be able to hook you up with what you are looking for...

However, any particular reason you need multi-socket? Very few things scale past the 8 threads offered by the 2600K and I can't think of any other faster chip out there.

The software package Im using can access up to 24 cores, does complex mathematical calculations. I really could use more than 8 cores.

Also hyperthreading does nothing for me. All cores are cranking out at full power all the time, there's no downtime for hyperthreading. I just need as many physical cores as possible. So the chip you refer to would be 4 threads for me.

Thanks for the tip.

Hi, I'm looking to get a dual-CPU computer. Two CPUs, each multi-core. I am having a hard time finding a place that can do it. I've asked a few places if they can do it, but they've said they can't.

Does anyone know of a place that can build or sell me a pre-built dual CPU machine? Maybe a place at Pantip?

Thanks

Honestly I would tell him NO just to make the guys life hell! Make him go through a ton of hassle especially if you have nothing to hide. Make a scene call the monkey out!

I would like to agree with this. However, the important piece of information which is missing is, is it legal for them to search without cause.

If the law says they can do it, there's no point in doing anything other than complying in a friendly fashion.

If the law says they can't, then I'd politely decline, smiling and saying no.

The Constitution says there must be cause, but your definition of cause and the officer's might not match. It could be that you merely look suspicious.

By declining an invitation to be searched, you have just provided even more "cause": it looks like you have something to hide.

Trust me, you don't want to get into an argument with a Thai cop on the street about Constitutional rights. If you can't cope with that, you need to find another country.

Do you have a citation for the constitutional restrictions on police search powers? I'd be curious to look at it.

I'm certainly capable of "coping" as you say, if it is warranted, however, before I conclude that it is warranted, I'm curious to know what real-life data people have. I am open to the possibility that it isn't worth it to decline a search. Thailand is known to be a pretty corrupt country. However, declining a search doesnt necessarily mean getting into an argument. One can decline a search politely, without being argumentative. That's a matter of social graces.

Has anyone had experience with declining a search from the police? If one were to ask them what the cause for the search was and request that they call their superior or the tourist police to review the cause, what would happen?

Again, I'm perfectly open to the answer being that this would be a bad idea, but I want to base this on some more data from people who have actually had experience doing it.

As far as declining a search in the USA is concerned, I did it once in New York, and it was no problem. Yes, they really do say ok have a nice day, then. They don't take it personally and get into a pissing contest with you, necessarily. It depends on attitude, I would assume. If you give them the finger and say no, you'll probably have problems. If you smile and ask whether or not compliance is mandatory, they may well say that it is not, and then you say you would prefer not to be searched.

I have also declined searches in Japan, twice. There are certain neighborhoods in Tokyo where they harass foreigners, under the theory that foreigners probably have drugs because they're foreigners, in that neighborhood, at 2 am. This has happened to me three times in Tokyo. The first time the cops in Japan did this to me, I complied with the search request as I have nothing against cops trying to do their jobs and I thought, what the heck, if they felt they had some reason to suspect me, I didn't mind them checking me out. However, when it became clear that this was a pattern of behavior on the part of the police, and after searching on the web and finding out it was a common experience for foreigners out late at night in certain areas, I decided not to go along with it any more. The next two times they randomly stopped me and asked me if they could search me for drugs or weapons, I simply said no.

It wound up being a hassle as they tried to pressure me into it for a while, and they were cheeky about things because I was discussing the law with them, and they were simply avoiding my questions about whether or not compliance was mandatory, but I just politely stood my ground and repeated that I was declining the search. Eventually said ok I can go.

It would have saved me time to comply with the search request, but I didn't wish to do so, I'm glad I declined the search, and I would do it again in the future.

So, I'd be interested in actual data about what occurs when one politely and non-argumentatively declines a search request. My gut instinct is that it would be a bad idea, but I don't have data on this. Has anyone actually done it, in a polite and congenial, non-argumentative fashion?

Honestly I would tell him NO just to make the guys life hell! Make him go through a ton of hassle especially if you have nothing to hide. Make a scene call the monkey out!

I would like to agree with this. However, the important piece of information which is missing is, is it legal for them to search without cause.

If the law says they can do it, there's no point in doing anything other than complying in a friendly fashion.

If the law says they can't, then I'd politely decline, smiling and saying no.

This is interesting. This hasn't ever happened to me.

Does anyone know what the law is? I.e., are they allowed to search you for no reason? You could refuse a search like this in the US. Do they have the authority to compel you to allow a spot-check search of your person for no reason?

If the answer is that they are not allowed to compel the search, I'll flatly refuse it if it ever happens to me. I don't do anything illegal and I won't have anything illegal on my person or in my urine, etc. However, I simply don't wish to comply with this nonsense.

If they are legally allowed to do it, then I guess I'd just have to comply.

But will be helpful to know beforehand what the law is. If the law is that they can't do it, I will tell them that and politely decline with a smile.

Go for the 60 day extension from Immigrations for 1900 baht.

From Police order 777/2551

2.24 In the case of an alien visiting a Thai spouse or child:

Permission will be granted for a period of not more than 60 days at a time.

(1) Proof of relationship.

(2) In the case of a spouse, their marital relationship shall be de jure (legitimate) and de facto.

Again that's really useful information for me for the future, and I am appreciative of this thread for having told me about this.

However frankly, I am really itching to get the heck out of here and have a vacation somewhere else in SE Asia, so this is a perfect excuse and I actually would prefer to do a visa run. A 60 day tourist visa would be plenty, then after that I am going back to the US for a while, so there really would be no advantage to getting an extension at this time. I need a vacation and Singapore is looking very nice.

Does anyone know how long it takes to get a tourist visa issued in Singapore?

Again thanks for the info on extensions, in the future I am sure it will be useful to me.

I'm definitely going to investigate the extension thing. However I'm planning to going back to the US soon for a while anyway, so going on a visa run for a tourist visa and getting a non-imm O back in the US later wouldnt be a bad option either. Also frankly I wouldnt mind an excuse to get away for a week on vacation.

Any idea how long it takes to get a tourist visa from the Thai singapore embassy?

I see. I could also just apply for a tourist visa for now and do a new non-imm O later. Has anyone actually tried for a non-imm O there and been refused?

I hadn't heard about the extension thing for having a child, I thought it was just for marriage. I could look into that further. However, I would assume preparation and documentation are needed and actually I need to leave soon, I doubt I would have time.

I'm in the mood for a vacation anyway, I want to get away for a while, so I don't mind making a visa run. So a tourist visa could work just fine if a non-imm O is not possible.

Does anyone know about Hong Kong also, for the tourist visa at least, getting a tourist visa in Hong Kong, if not a non-imm O? Could be a chance to take my child to hong kong disneyland as well as get a tourist visa for the time being.

Howdy.... my 1-year non-imm O is running out soon. Would like to get a new one without having to travel too far.

I see some past threads about going to Singapore and getting a tourist visa issued there. Is it also OK to get a 1-year non-imm O based on having a Thai child there? Any idea how many days I should schedule the trip for if I can go there for that purpose? I'm wondering if they'll complain that Im not a resident of Singapore so I shouldnt be using their embassy for that kind of application.

Singapore seems like a nice place to visit, I've never been there. If there's some reason it's not advisable, how about Japan or Hong kong?

Genghis Khan was a brutal mass-murderer. One of the worst mass-murderes in history.

He developed the science of war and took it to a new level of scientifically planned brutality where no one had gone previously.

His armies would surround cities and demand they yield, pay tribute, etc. If they refused, they'd viciously slaughter all but a few people, and send those folks on to the surrounding cities to let them know what happens when they refuse to yield. His armies committed heinous acts of mass-murder and violence that enabled him to conquer most of the known world at his time during his lifetime.

Armies in Europe still stuck to primitive customs that assumed war was about more than just scientifically planning how to inflict as much pain, torture, and murder as possible in any given set of circumstances. Armies would do inefficient things like line up across from each other in a field on a predetermined time/date, men on horseback would ride around announcing themselves with flags, the leaders would announce charges, and then they'd pretty much slaughter each other as much as possible. Genghis Khan helped everyone the world around understand that we have to be much more scientific in how we slaughter, torture, and murder each other. He pretty much could be looked upon as a figure of supreme evil, like Hitler.

However, it's easy enough to look up mongolian restaurants with "Genghis khan" referenced in their names. In fact in Japanese, a term for a smorgasbord meat dinner is much derived from his name, "JINGISUKAN".

Anyway, the Thai people weren't part of the European war. Dressing up as Nazis means about as much to them as the pictures or figures of Genghis khan on horseback in full military uniform that can be found in mongolian restaurant mean to the patrons of those restaurants.

Only hire a Thai, you are breaking the law hiring an illegal.

Uhm...... aren't you making a knee-jerk assumption there? Not all non-Thais working in Thailand are "illegal".

We worked with an agency to find a nanny for our child, there were options for non-Thais that of course involved proper work papers.