Ariya

Hi all

My Thai boy-friend of 15 months wants to spend some time with me in Australia. For me to visit him in Thailand is a simple matter of phoning my travel agent, getting on a plane and spending up to a month with him.

I have looked through the ThaiVisa Visas and Migration to Other Countries sub-forum and the closest I can find is this one: 3 Month Tourist Visa To Australia, information required in which the poster wants to bring his Thai girlfriend to Australia for a holiday.

Reading through the replies I found it a daunting prospect. How hard is it for a Thai guy to obtain a 3 month Tourist Visa?

I also note that there are two forms one is number 48 (Tourism or other recreational activities, visa application), the other is number 48R (Tourism or other recreational activities, visa application).

Which is the correct form for him to fill out?

A bit of background: I met him when he was working in a Bar. He has since left the Bar. We have just finished building a house in his parents' village in Issan. He is 21 years of age and has a Thai passport, but has never used it.

Does anybody have any experience bringing their Thai boyfriend to Australia?

This would just be a holiday for him. I am over 50 and hope to obtain a retirement visa to Thailand late next year.

Peter

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If your friend is young, Asian and able bodied it is always difficult to obtain a visa as it is presumed by the Immigration people that he will probably overstay his visa and look for illegal work.

There is a solution! All over Australia there are Immigration Lawyers who specialise in such cases and are nearly always successful in getting people visas. If you look in any telephone directory you will find loads of them. There are also gay lawyers who specialise in long-term visas and you can find their advertisements in the Aussie gay newspapers.

Let me know if I can help you more.

endure

Thank you

Ijustwannateach

Thanks for your suggestion, but I am proud of my Thai+Chinese blood. So I do not think I will take it off. If someone will love me, he must love me at what I am. It's a better idea that I give all useful information to let him make his right decision.

Delphy

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Hi Delphy,

I have been following this discussion with great interest. Being South Asian I have noticed that farangs, and we call them that in India and Pakistan because the word is of Urdu origen, generally go for the more uneducated type, sometimes because they are more readily available but also because they are reluctant to face guys who are on the same intellectual level, or higher, than themselves.

Once, a farang approached me because he had heard me speaking English simply to ask me to help him find "rough" boys who didn't know a word of English. He was willing to pay even though educated boys, who were much better looking, would cost him nothing. In fact, some of them would have taken him to dinner or to the cinema.

I think it is harder to find rough guys in Farangistan and this makes the Asian rough guy so desirable. Or do they get pleasure in being able to control someone who is on the lower rungs of the social ladder?

Anyway,

What do Buddhists think of previous lifes?

Can karmas from past lives affect this one?

How about 2 lives ago?

Is it possible that I were a giraffe in a previous life?

Oops, sorry wrong forum, can a mod move it please.

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I'm not an expert on all-things Buddhist, but I've read quite a few books about it.

My understanding is that Buddhists believe in previous lives and re-incarnation.

What you do in this life will affect you in the next life. If you do a lot of "evil" (build up too much bad Karma) in this life, your progression to enlightenment will be set back. If you do exceptionally good in this life, you may achieve enlightenment in the next.

I read in one of the books, that there are 5,000 stages of re-incarnation (for example, starting off as a dust-mite on the back of a cockroach). Assuming you didn't acquire a lot of bad karma as a dust-mite, your next incarnation would be to a higher life form (maybe the cockroach ?). You continue progressing until you achieve human form.

I think your karma "slate" is wiped clean with each new incarnation (regardless if you have regressed or progressed). Therefore, evil (or good) that you did 2 lifetimes ago would have no effect on your current incarnation.

I have not seen a definitive chart anywhere, that shows what life forms would be eligible for re-incarnation as a human. You may very well have been a giraffe in your previous existence (a good giraffe !).

Personally, I think I was a randy monkey in my last incarnation , but the next one will see me about as low as I can go down the scale !

Like many religions, there are lots of "generalities", but few specific details. That was fine for the populace 2-3000 years ago, but doesn't go over well with most of today's better educated, more inquisitive population. That is why you hear those cliche' catch phrases all the time ("You must have Faith. God moves in mysterious ways. Ours is not to know the mind of God. and so on, and on and on), every time religion gets cornered on questions it can't answer.

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Rebirth does not come in stages, rather as a result of one's karma. Karma is never "wiped clean"and its fruit can be experienced in future lives.

Pandit was speaking of meditation retreats a few posts back, ThaiPauly, would something like that help you test your back out? Maybe a week in a retreat, or maybe daily visits to a retreat, would help.

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Yes Thaibebop, that is where my current form of thinking is going, but not until I can go out without wearing a Corset. I will be researching everything posted and may find what I am looking for right here.

Thanks for the post

TP

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Hi,

I had a back operation in Pakistan a few years ago. I had been totally paralysed for 6 months, just lying in a dreary Karachi hospital gazing at the ceiling. My doctor, who was Pakistan's number 1 neuro surgeon advised an operation with local anaesthetic because movement of the back caused by others during unconsciousness would not aid a rapid recovery. On the 3rd day I was walking. Not much really, just around the bed. The doctor, who died weeks after the operation, warned me NOT to do the usual exercises prescribed by physiotherapists and I happily took this advice. No pain, but the lotus position is no longer possible as I am missing a lower disc. You should be perfectly normal in about a year and ordination should be possible then

I have experienced two major earthquakes in Pakistan. Minutes before each quake there was a chorus of barking dogs all over the town. Then silence before the quake struck. On other occasions all the dogs barked but humans could not detect the quakes and only knew when they were told by scientists that there were earthquakes, which had a low reading on the Richter scale.

Did any famous Buddhist masters of any sect have a short life? It seems like all the masters I've read about - including the Buddha himself - lived to a ripe old age despite the short life expectancy in previous centuries and the dangers of living in forests.

We all know that meditatation is good for mental health, relieving stress, etc. I wonder if it's a factor in the ancient masters having long lives? Or perhaps statistically there have been a lot more Mahayana masters, who tended to stay in remote temples away from disease-carrying crowds.

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Old age is no guarantee of respectability.

Oscar Wilde.

How many of the Indonesians who were affected were from Aceh, and isn't Aceh a Christian area? If a lot of Muslim Indonesians were killed as well, then my idea is wrong. I do not know. Most Saudi charity is in the form of building mosques and sending korans. Or, if something rational is done, like handing out food, then it is done after prayer from the mosques. Mosques provide some form of education for the poor muslim men of the world.

I lived there for 8 1/2 years. Kuwaitis are even worse. There is a reason that the Palestinians took the side ofthe Iraqis whent he invaded Kuwait.

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[/qThe Saudis and Kuwaitis were told during Friday prayers that the tsunami was a 'punishment from God because of the evil lives of the people who live in those areas'

I see the Saudi's splashed out $10 million,what is it with these muslims,most of the victims are muslim.Once again they stand by while the west pulls out all the stops

Kuwait $10million &lt;deleted&gt; Even Portugal beat that amount.

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The Saudis gave $50 million to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Why do people look at the universe and say that everything is so orderly, and everything has its place, therefore there must be a god?

Since when do sentinent beings create order in nature? Isn't it always the opposite? 

cv

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Everything so orderly and beautiful, like sunsets and the perfume of flowers all proof of the loving God.That's just what the Jehovah Witnesses said when they called the other day . When I asked them about earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves, bushfires,drought, floods etc they said they'd come back for an answer. Still waiting.