Baerboxer

Several year ago I knew a therapist in the UK. He had a regular group of several lady customers who he "serviced". This guy was an ex physical training instructor, mid 30's, well educated. He was making a lot of tax free extra money from these ladies. They were mainly lawyers, accountants, teachers and running small businesses; some married, some single. Ages were between 30 and 55.

To reply to this post from a womens perspective is simple...

1. Fact: Women dont go to other countries looking to find the love of their life, fall in love, and say "she" loves me....women are not delusional;

2. Fact: Most men come to Thailand with one thing on their mind, they know they can have sex for a third of the price they pay at home;

3. Fact: pretty much all men that hang in any of the well known Soi's , Cowboy, Soi 4, pat-pong, pattaya, Patong, ect...

are revolting leeches who prey on these women who in other circumstances wouldnt be sitting next to you on a barstool....

The moral to this is : Women seeking men are usually single & lonely,

Men seeking women/men are usually married cheating sexual predators, living a double life....

And where did you get all these facts from? Confusing the word "fact" with the expression "in my opinion" is how 'urban myths" originate.

Good for the girls..There Not Stealing the Money or extorting cash..Weak men Give it to them Free...

So telling lies in an attempt to persuade someone to give you money is ok?

Again apologies for using the wrong term "extorting"!

The funniest thing is people are actually defending these girls. We all know it's a game for them etc etc. but to put poverty in to the question is absurd!

Farlangs are the problem with Thailand, we gift, sympathy etc for what!

Let's be serious the average wage in Thailand is 12,000 baht a month. The average price of food is 30bht. A room 2000 bht.

Without us they'd be fine.

Go look in Cambodia or the Philippines the women are completely different. No games played. They are a lot poorer there.

You are joking? The Philippines is notorious for "sympathy" scams and many websites carry warnings to that affect. Western Union posts warnings due to the number of complaints from American's sending money to Pinay's and then finding they don't exist or suddenly disappear. Normally starts with - no money for food, can't pay rent, parents / sibblings / offspring ill and no money for hospitals, accident / illness and no money for medicine etc etc. All caerfully planted into conversations whilst trying to build a relationship. A friend in the Philppines nearly fell for all this crap, but luckily got someone to check. The young lady was actually living in a very nice house with boyfriend and children, and apparently had several "friends" in Europe and the States sending regular donations to aleviate her poverty! I saw similar things in India, China and yes, the UK too. Not unique to Thailand at all.

That your husband couldn't pass merely shows that he had not studied

And logically that he is a little bit dumb. Becaus how can a professional English man, with good social standing fail an exam about life in UK BUT a poor Asian villager who may or may not have lived very long in the UK be expcted to pass.

Yes, yes I know its the law....but I think its a little bit silly.

As with any exam, preperation is required. If he didn't study beforehand it's unlikely he'd pass. This test is not an easy giveaway. But, the ESOL with citizenship route is an alternative that a poor Asian villager might find more acceptable.

My wife "coached" several other Thai ladies, all of whom had been in the UK longer than her, and failed there first attempts. Reason - they were too lazy to study hard or had not bothered to develop their English.

Totally agree that ESOL is the better way forward. It takes longer, may cost more but it improves all sorts of other skills. My wife did a course and some very basic aspects of UK life (doctors visits, getting library books etc) were covered.

But if you wife had B1 English then it would be boring as watching the pain drying. Imagine if you spoke Thai but had to go to the class about ordering in a restaurant, going to the doctor.....so boring. But yes, I agree, for a Thai with a low level of English ESOL classes are better option and they will learn alot and improve confidence of speaking etc.

The Life in the UK test is a bit of a waste of time and I doubt many people have gained better English skills from it. I learnt a lot of facts about the UK that I did not know before, a few of them moderately interesting! It is not there to improve your English but test the level of your language skills.

Very true but life in UK study is not meant to help raise the English level, its not that kind of exam. And it is cetainly not to test Engloish level, not at all. My husband failed also but he's a Jordy so that has somethng to say about it :-)

The test has been carefully designed. It requires a certain level of English to understand the content material and to be able to answer the questions. The questions are worded to check the ability to understand Englsih as well as answer the specific question. So passing the test does show the respondent has a certain level of English; or very luck with their choice of answers! ESOL courses with citizenship have been established to cater for the needs of the people who do not have a sufficient level of English to begin with.

Well I was born and raised in the UK, consider myself reasonably educated, and just done an on-line test. Scored 50%!

And how much studying for it did you do beforehand?

I've said it before, and will say it again; in my opinion what is scandalous isn't that immigrants have to learn this stuff, but that British schoolchildren don't!

Yes they do. In state schools children study citizenship classes.

It would be very interesting to check a sample of British people - children and adults on this test. My wife passed first time several years ago. She already had very good English skills, a bachelor degree and several years teaching under her belt. She still put in many hours of study prior to the test. I tried some of the questions on a cross section of friends - 14 year olds up to 60. Hmmm, judging by the results 7by7 has a good point. Many just could not anwser basic questions about their countries history and constitution. The double negative questions, which do test English comprehension confounded many. This shows that the test is of a good standard and requires a level of English in order to study and prepare for it. 50% of the group who took the test with my wife passed. The test centre manager told me this was "about normal pass rate" at that time.

Anyone who is applying for ILR needs to demonstrate their knowledge of life and language in the UK (KOL) unless they fall under one of the exceptions. See Knowledge of language and life in the UK.

The LitUK test is actually very easy, if one's English is good enough to understand the study materials and the test itself.

Learning all possible questions and their answers by rote is not the way to do it; would you do the same for a GCSE or other exam?

If one's English is not good enough to understand the study materials and the test then there is an alternative; an ESOL with citizenship course.

For more details, see Demonstrating your knowledge of language and life in the UK.

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My English was bagofshite when I took the test, I was B1 level and of course passed but my English was not good. Yes, I could understand and keep up with conversations on some subjects but not very well and certainly not good enough to have a proper commicative life and marriage in the UK. I was ashamed in front of the Europeans. Thing is, when a Thai speak English at B1, everyone thinks they are great because of the poor standard of English in my country. In reality, B1 is very poor.

Also, I learnt all the materials by rote. Why? Because that's how Thais tend to learn at school even nowadays and also, its a good way to learn the materials. I approached it just as I did my maths exam, best to learn all by heart and tick the boxes than produce language. Afterall, most questions in the life in uk test are of no use for normal life in the UK. OK, many not most but certainly alot.

The Life in UK test doesn't help improve the language, its just to lern content (and not much use) so best to just pass and then learn English. As soon as I had passed, I applied for ILE and then when I arrived nearly two years ago, I started learning English and now I'd say its perhaps B2/C1. I don't know how anyone can live in a country which is not their native land and not learn the language. And the language of some Thais I meet is terrible, not even A2. How can they live with an English speaker only?

"My English was bagofshite when I took the test". In that case you did very well to pass the test. You might want to check the English content of your various postings here for mistakes. This is meant positively as you seem very keen to achieve a high standard of English.

mario2008/Colabam thanks for your urgent advice anyway is not that It was a stolen or false or whatever but it just that Thai immigration usual intimidate foreigner in times of passport. but remember I obtain this passport by myself from my friend in south African before coming to here ,but then in my country there's no Thai embassy that was the reason .

Anyway intimes of contacting a lawyer it's very imperative for me and also the trust to avoid more problem they may create, cause some might like to ask big money if I didn't cooperate they can start threating by telling you this is a very big case.

But my wife is contacting their police friend in what to do on it, even my immigration officer told me to be careful whom to talk with to avoid more hearsay . Pls more advice need sleepless tonight

Sani

I'm sorry to hear about your predicament. One question. Were you legally entitled to a South African passport and was this obtained legitimately in your own name and identity?

What an entertainer! Stunning too.

Thai mafia, Russian mafia, Danish bikers.......who's next?

West Ham's ICF

What, running away from Millwall!

We put down settlement. But don't they look at how long you been living together to see what visa will be given. ILE and then you take your test in the uk if you been living together for over 4 years?? am i correct?

The problem is, until she's passed the life in the UK test, she isn't eligible for ILE/ILR. (unless you can show she previously had ILR status - i.e. got ILR prior to the Life in the UK test being implemented).

So if she hasn't passed the test (i.e. on a previous visit to the UK on a tourist visa for instance), you'll get a standard settlement visa and then have to sit the test and apply for ILR (with associated costs) in the UK.

If she had already passed the test, and included the pass in the application, then I believe you're correct and she'd have been given ILE on the basis of the length of your marriage.

One consolation. The ILE stamp is the worst designed visa on the planet as the date by which you must make your first entry is labelled an expiry date so there is a lot of fun with check-in staff once that date has passed if you get someone that hasn't seen one before.

If the date you must make your first entry by has passed, and you have not made your first entry by that date, then the right to make a first entry granted under the visa has expired. Seems simple enough! Good old plain English.

I can imagine the fun at check-in!!

We adopted a one year young girl in Januari.

I try to speak English most of the time now, dropping Thai.

She will begin to speak any time soon, thus I am curious listening to her.

Once she understands what I am saying and speak English well enough I will start learning her French (at age 4 or 5?)

I hope she will be multilingual by the age of 15: Thai, English, French, German, Dutch.

You have a good plan sir, I salute you! My daughter (5) is English and Thai bi-lingual. She is already asking me to start teaching her German and French. We are also encoraging her and her bother to learn Putonghua Chinese. I know the Dutch and Swiss start to teach foreign languages early in schools and the difference really shows.

I speak Thai and English to my boyfriend. I can't speak fluent Thai but I attempt to as much as I can and learn more every day. He speaks very good English after travelling to England more than once so it's not that I have to speak Thai. I just want to.

I feel kind of sexy when I'm talking Thai... I think it's the sounds/tones and the way your mouth has to move!

It does seem like farang women make more of an effort to learn Thai than farang men. Being able to speak the local language would open up new frontiers like you wouldn't believe, particularly in relationships. I speak Thai exclusively to the GF as she doesn't speak much English. Pretty much every Thai girl I've dated the past few years were the same.

When you say girl, do you mean lady?

I don't know any female Thais below the age of 30 who can't speak half-decent English

As I understand it, English is part of the school curriculum and has been for some time

Oh my gosh is that not correct. I have taught thousands of children in Thai government schools, thousands mind you. And almost none of them can direct a person to the location of a toilet. Thousands, honest. My first lesson of the new term was always teaching the children how to tell a Farang where the toilet was. Simple question really, "Where is the toilet?" So if you run into a child in Thailand who knows where the toilet is; yup one of my students. No one got out of my class without being able to tell a Farang where the toilet was. Even the retarded children. I taught em all. Not much else but the term was not that long. Term two was usually, "Where is da bus?" "Over dare."

Was this really down to the children................ or the quality of the teacher! Only joking (honset).

Seriously, I have noticed a big big variance in children's English. I know children who attend very expensive international schools and would all fail your "where's the toilet" test. I also know children who attend a local Wat school and love to speak English every time they see me.

To the OP - my wife and kids are all fluent in English and Thai and switch between them. They laugh at my attempts to master the tones of Thai although taxi drivers really seem to appreciate a few words spoken in Thai to them.

Australian Universities are extremely good, and the quality of their graduates is very high. Australia always ranked very highly in comparison to the US, and much of the time was considered better - certainly several orders of magnitude safer than the US as well. I am surprised at these results, and a little skeptical.

I agree with your surprise at the results. Hard to judge as we don't know the validity of the criteria or if they're comparing "apples for apples". I know 2 Thais who were awarded Masters degrees from Austrailian Universities, and one Chinese. Their English is very poor and they would have struggled to get a similar degree in the US or UK so I'm not so sure about the Aussie standards. But, no doubt everyone has a story.

Isan woman drink to forget what they had to do when they were young for money to bail their families out of poverty. What would be a good poll is how many Isan women worked in the sex industry to help their poor families.

Great idea and a poll in Bangkok for how many hi so Thai Chinese ladies married well to help their families get richer than they were before the marriage.

Or we just do a poll as to how many Thai women think it is easier to fall in love with a rich guy than a poor guy?

Or why limit it to Thai women. Do a world wide poll.

Or we could just let the ladies do whatever it is they want to do without applying our male Western standards to

Asia.

Or we could take lessons getting off high horses without hurting ourselves.

Spot on Kerryk!

The Thai teachers at my school all use Thai language when teaching English. Most can't speak English, and the rest are too lazy to use English.

That is sad. Any chance you can change to a different school? My daughter started back today, in a bi-lingual P1 class. One of the rules they have been given is that they can only speak English in the classroom, apart from the Thai subject lessons. Most of the Thai teachers can understand English and quite a few are able to converse. The non-Thai teachers only speak English with the students, even though most are keen to learn some social Thai.

I was always amused to ask them to say. 'laundry' to which the response was usually, 'raundly'. Then, if you ask the same person to say, 'raundly', they will often return, 'laundry'. 'Love it.

Try asking a Thai to say............as snug as a bug in a rug.

Sorry, I just could not put into English, how my wife said it.

And how many of us can pronounce Thai pefectly? I once attended a meeting in the UK with several Germans who all tried very hard to present in English. Some of the native English took great pleasure at laughing and giggling every time a pronunciation error was made. After the first break I anounced the second part of the meeting would use the German language only. Complete dumb expressions on the Brits.

The point - encouragement works great in language teaching. Ridicule doesn't, especially as most expats struggle with even the basics of Thai.

Some people just seem to have a problem with those tender organs - kidneys, liver, sweetbreads (brains) Prairie Oysters

(testicles).

I once ordered a meal of liver and bacon in a restaurant in Prince Rupert in Canada - if the waitress had been able she would have brought the plate out balanced on the end of a long stick. She wanted nothing to do with it. Fortunately the chef didn't have the same problem.

Maybe it helps to be older and have experienced these foods as a youngster when money was short and the cheapest meats we're welcome on our table.

Sweetbreads are not brains. Both delicious though. Pairie Oysters are bison testicles which sadly not had opportunity to try yet. Why waste any edible part of an animal? The tripe in Thailand is fantastic and prepared in many different recipes.

They should've broken down the stats by ages in 10y increments. From what I've seen drinking is mostly the younger women in karaoke "cafes", older ladies rarely drinking any.

kerryk, was that formula related to a Gaussian distribution ? I remember seeing that in a former life. Not that I'm a big believer in any social stats, as they tend to vary by locality and as such have little use for one individual residing within a large research area (Isaan is a big place), not counting usage as a hammer on internet forums, for NGO's and government, sure they need the stuff to show they're actually doing something.

Good point Doc. A statistics professor once told me that you should use statistics like a drunk uses a lampost - for support not illumination. Seems to fit here.

His name is Michael Christian Dietrich.

Dietrich - an interesting surname for anyone who knows Nazi history. Maybe he his a descendant of Sepp Dietrich.

He's somewhat of a confused Nazi to have an Asian girlfriend. He must have been off the day they did "white supremacy" at school.

The pic of him yesterday was a guy with hair. Is this an attempt at an image change or is this guy a genuine skinhead?

Spot on! It would be illegal to wear a swastika in Germany (or Austria). And it would be really interesting for him to turn up at a neo-nazi rally with his Asian girlfriend. He probably sees it as a "fashion accessory" rather than a political statement. Sad.

One of the most idiotic Country's on the Earth, Thailand is blessed with abundance of fertile soil and water but sadly the donkeys in Charge have no idea.

Next the farmers will be charging 3 times the price for fruit and veg because of water shortage...Limes are already going for 9 baht each that should be 1 baht..Laughable

Massive amounts of water are disgustingly wasted right at the hight of the Dry season ...The Country deserves all that it gets

Planning is obviously not in the Thai Dictionary

I keep reading all these negative comments and wondering why these people have chosen to come to Thailand.

I can't recall to seen an advertisement of how perfect this country is before deciding to settle in Thailand 18 years ago (at least it wasn't provided from my travel agent during that time).

My advise to you guys is, pack your stuff and go right back where you came from or simply accept the differences in culture.

These people are usually the ones who were not really successful in their own home countries, they usually have a bruised ego, and choose to come to Thailand, where they could get a feel of importance, feeding the bruised ego.

A lot of these people feel lonely, and have difficulties interact with other people, they are usually social misfits, and the only way these people can easily bond with eachother, is by bashing thailand, thai people and the thai culture.

Believe it or not, many foreigners have made it their main hobby, to come here on thaivisa, to bash thai culture, in order to numb the sense of failure they experienced in their home country, and feed their bruised ego. At least some thais look up to them (or at least so they think)

Interesting statement. Can you share the breadth and depth of your extensive research and the analytical models employed in what must have been a carefully planned and implemented research project into the expat community of Thailand?

ps - meant to ask where you got your degree in psychology and PhD in social science from. Always looking for good academic references.

One of the most idiotic Country's on the Earth, Thailand is blessed with abundance of fertile soil and water but sadly the donkeys in Charge have no idea.

Next the farmers will be charging 3 times the price for fruit and veg because of water shortage...Limes are already going for 9 baht each that should be 1 baht..Laughable

Massive amounts of water are disgustingly wasted right at the hight of the Dry season ...The Country deserves all that it gets

Planning is obviously not in the Thai Dictionary

I keep reading all these negative comments and wondering why these people have chosen to come to Thailand.

I can't recall to seen an advertisement of how perfect this country is before deciding to settle in Thailand 18 years ago (at least it wasn't provided from my travel agent during that time).

My advise to you guys is, pack your stuff and go right back where you came from or simply accept the differences in culture.

These people are usually the ones who were not really successful in their own home countries, they usually have a bruised ego, and choose to come to Thailand, where they could get a feel of importance, feeding the bruised ego.

A lot of these people feel lonely, and have difficulties interact with other people, they are usually social misfits, and the only way these people can easily bond with eachother, is by bashing thailand, thai people and the thai culture.

Believe it or not, many foreigners have made it their main hobby, to come here on thaivisa, to bash thai culture, in order to numb the sense of failure they experienced in their home country, and feed their bruised ego. At least some thais look up to them (or at least so they think)

Interesting statement. Can you share the breadth and depth of your extensive research and the analytical models employed in what must have been a carefully planned and implemented research project into the expat community of Thailand?

One of the most idiotic Country's on the Earth, Thailand is blessed with abundance of fertile soil and water but sadly the donkeys in Charge have no idea.

Next the farmers will be charging 3 times the price for fruit and veg because of water shortage...Limes are already going for 9 baht each that should be 1 baht..Laughable

Massive amounts of water are disgustingly wasted right at the hight of the Dry season ...The Country deserves all that it gets

Planning is obviously not in the Thai Dictionary

I keep reading all these negative comments and wondering why these people have chosen to come to Thailand.

I can't recall to seen an advertisement of how perfect this country is before deciding to settle in Thailand 18 years ago (at least it wasn't provided from my travel agent during that time).

My advise to you guys is, pack your stuff and go right back where you came from or simply accept the differences in culture.

Being aware of and respecting cultural differences is one thing. Trying to help make things better is something everyone should be able to do. This is different to the "bashers' brigade" and equally different to the "ostrich brigade" - i.e. let's bury my head up my ar$e and say nothing!