laobali

How old are you? You might want to sort out your pensions contributions and see what benefits you might be entitled to at retirement age if you decided to re-establish UK residence.

You wont get anywhere unless you are registered with a GP, for which you need ID and a utility bill for your address.

ER etc will only give you "Emergency" help, the first question you will get is "who's your GP" ?

If you havnt been back for awhile, you are in for a shock, I go every year and still get shocked at the rapid changes but mostly by the dam_n cost of anything !

£108 for a bus ticket !

2 sandwiches and 2 bottles of water £10

Fish & chips £6.50

1 Bottle of water 500ml £1.20 ( 45 baht for 12 bottles in Thailand)

Drink the tap water its free !!

No its not - most places its metred, other places pay a flat rate fee. Not free at all - in fact, a few years back Thames sued a guy for collecting rain water in big vats and filtering it for his own use - they said it was their water!

But you CAN drink it.

Anyone any ideas on working online from Thailand?

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I am working online, I get money from google adsense around 40$ per month for 2 website,if i could have 10 website ,probably i can have 100$+ perper month du you belive me?

So you make $40 per month with 2 websites, but only $10 per month average if you had 10? Why is that and why aren't you building more sites anyway? $40 or 1300 baht doesn't go very far...

We have something in common here. I tried teaching, didn't enjoy the methods used to try to engage students who were clearly not interested in learning English (or much else). Switched to online marketing and within a few months was earning enough each month to be able to give up teaching forever. No possibility of getting a Work Permit though.

However, this was back in 2005 when this business was in its infancy and it wasn't so difficult to find a niche. Times have changed, though. For the past few years I have made peanuts by comparison. Luckily I can survive on my retirement pension.

The only advice I can give you is to be wary of any schemes for making quick or easy money online. Most if not all are total scams, or the money you make wouldn't even cover the cost of your connection. Always research carefully and use Google and a product or website name with 'scam' or 'problem' Included.

But you can always get lucky and I wish you the best of it.

what did he do with so much cash ?

He lost it!

[if you're already in Thailand I'd advise you to go to Bangkok.]

I think he left out 'not' but is too shy to admit it. Stupid advice regardless.

So it wasn't a typo. It would have been "Smarter" to have stated his reason at the time: that he hates tourists around him. How self-centred is that?

robert amsterdam is an absolute asshol_e!

Do you disagree vehemently about what he wrote or just hate him because he's Thaksin's lawyer?

_{I always carry my Farang Parking Kit (FPK) consisting of white spray paint and a stencil:}

_FARANG

_PARKING

_ONLY

Might work if it was in Thai!

Just go to Isaan for a few weeks. Plenty of food, nice people and no lunatics.

And where do you think Isaan gets its stock from?

Advising people to come and deplete your stock is very civil, but not too clever..........

Plenty of cheap, good better beer across the river in Lao!

Littering is a symptom of poverty. You will find the same thing in every other poor country in the world.

Caring about the environment is something you do when you no longer have to worry about where your next meal is coming from. That is just economic reality.

Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan got cleaner when they got richer.

1. And they are all relatively small. But how many foreigners living in Thailand would want to move there for that reason alone?

2. ... the [Thai] Government could send a delegation to Australia to learn about the "Clean up Australia Campaign" which was introduced some years ago with great success.

Get real. As if they would even consider learning anything from another country!!

3. Today's littering is a symptom of the amount of products and consumables bought wrapped in foil, foam, plastic, glass and cardboard which cannot be disposed of easily, especially in third world countries. Even a UK home - with its regular collection services of refuse and recyclables in different coloured bins - battles with the rubbish buildup every week. It gets worse rather than better, the only solution being the householder paying more to Councils. And they complain like hell about that!

He'll be claiming he fathered Lin Hui's offspring next Sent from my Nexus 4 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

I don´t think so, he can´t even father a turd.

I think he's fathered several.

"what to do?"

Shop for clothes and eat real fish and chips.

Visit the charity shops for shirts. 'Real' fish and chips are overpriced and not as good as I remember.

While I appreciate that as individuals we all have unique traits and thoughts on events, and that importantly we don't all share the same sense of humor, I really struggle to see the fun in a tenuous and sarcastic comment regarding an attempted suicide! Whether this was a cry for help, or a genuine attempt to end his misery, I am sure he is a deeply troubled person.

This is an excellent forum for reasonable comment and debate, I fear that it will be cheapened with some of the banal and immature comments. If you can hold of on some of your self ingratiating comments, and give some serious thought to the plight some of these people are experiencing you might think twice before posting this rubbish...

You haven't been here very long, have you?

It's official... He's Finnished

Jesus, show some compassion.

Jesus would have wept.

He could be an Alzheimer's sufferer or maybe just a 75 year old dummkopf to be wandering around Pattaya at 4 a.m. - with or without a large amount of cash on him.

Flawed article. ... so flawed, It's nothing more than a waste of server space.

The views expressed in the article would appear to clash with your own, why not put forward your counter arguments?

Better still, come up with a solution. ROFlawL.

I don't want to eat chicken feet.

offal

bugs

chicken feet

Adding chicken gristle/sinue

I was hungry and asked what the small crumbed bits were.

Chicken was the reply. Munched on ... ... all gristle/sinue

So, I had another ... repeat experience.

Nothing is wasted at the Farm.

They crumb up the chicken gristle/sinue

so adding ...

gristle/sinue

Have to disagree there. Crumbed, fried chicken tendons (en gai tort) are one of my favourite Thai/Lao restaurant dishes.

Also, if I'm out in the sticks, fried grasshoppers go very well with beer. Need to be a bit careful with the spiky legs though.

And I love to see the local reaction to a farang eating them with relish!

Thailand on the brink

Just like my fridge.

Don't you mean flidge?

Farang not know thainess....

And many Thai not understand Thai and 'Thainess'

[if you're already in Thailand I'd advise you to go to Bangkok.]

I think he left out 'not' but is too shy to admit it. Stupid advice regardless.

I have two observations. One was a long while ago back in the UK when at a horse racing track with a friend in a union job, and I was looking for a bin to put my empty plastic 'glass' of beer, and he said "throw it on the floor. If you don't you're doing someone out of a job".

Another is the "broken windows" project, which in a nutshell is about if the people have an investment in the area then they take care of it, if they don't, then it's not their problem. I saw it in the property business in UK a couple of decades back when the council houses were offered for sale. Suddenly people took their neighborhood seriously. I haven't been back there in quite a few years, so can't comment on their current predicament.

I live in a rental in Thailand, but I still feel dismay when people throw rubbish away opposite their residence when the bins on either side of the street are no more than 30 seconds walk. I keep dreaming of cleaning up the street and fixing the potholes at my own expense, but then back off, thinking that there's still more that I don't understand about the mentality of my neighbours. They are cordial and good with me, and don't want to undermine that, or find out what the real truth of what they really think of 'that farang' in their street (I'm the only one in the street now, used to be about 50/50, but people die and things move on...).

It would be interesting if you did keep the area in front of your house and the neighbors clean. I wonder if they might join in. If you ever do try it let us know.

Don't know about the pot holes but the garbage might work out and then maybe fix the odd pot hole. would take time and patience. Defiantly be interesting.

Good mantra.

Definitely don't be boring!

It's obvious you're a writer. The amount you have written about this would fill a book.

Most Thai girls are driven by a desire to help and support their parents, this help includes marrying for money. But just because they do marry for money doesn't mean to say the relationship they enter into isn't a strong and loving one that will endure. The cynics will be along shortly to tell us that the issues of love and money shouldn't be mixed, regrettably it is so here in Thailand and it's part of the culture in many families so you may as well accept that.

So really all that leaves is the question of your feelings and how much, as you are finding out the amount is negotiable and you can't really fault them for starting with a high number, what you finish with is another story however. The option of course is to say it's all nonsense, in which case your relationship is likely over and you will have to walk away, the choice is yours. From experience the engagement party is not common and the exchange of rings sounds like a cross between old Thai and modern farang cultures, bless them! It sounds to me like you had an engagement party and not a wedding, you would almost certainly know if it was the latter.

Yes she is driven by the desire to support her parents. At our second talk about dowry it was just me and her mom. She said that she didn't think I was stable enough to take care of her and I walked away... maybe should have kept going. The next day her dad called and wanted to have breakfast like we did every day before. He said they liked me and the dowry was up to me. I see her mom always on facebk with over 3000 friends so I know she is concerned about gossip.

I think the engagement was what it was because I am a good guy and only here for a short time and they do not want to loose me (or my ATM) . I did feel pressured into it, but that is the past now. She wanted me to have a ring since I will soon leave for 7-8 month to travel and work. She always tells me I better not take it off. I think that they are sincere, but this practice is still shady! It was announced as an engagement, with no monk. The string tying thing at her grandparents is what threw me for a loop. I thought that was for marry??

The tying of string is a blessing for good luck, that's all.

Of course it is. It's just a welcoming or farewell party. They do it in Isaan and Laos every time someone arrives from or leaves on a long journey - for good luck.

My money comes from an ATM.

I suspect with your knowledge of electricity you are actually a Thai woman

You wont need the electric outlet converter. The outlets accept the USA configured two prong plug.

Check the plugs on all your devices. They will likely say 110 and 220. There's no longer a need to buy converters.

Really? Some of them might have a 110/220 voltage selector switch near the mains input; small power adapters may be variable voltage. Many US appliances are likely to be 110-115V only. They will blow up if used in 220 volt outlets.