FunFon

http://bk.asia-city.com/city-living/article/interview-makkasan-hope-environment-green-spaces-bangkok

Probably trying to push things up a bit of a steep hill here, but have to give them points for chutzpah.

There may be different types, but I see such guns for sale all over the Khlong Thom area, so have to believe they're legal here.

Are you ordering online and importing them?

That would certainly be an extra layer of difficulty and expense, I would think completely unnecessarily so. . .

That's not what you said. What you said was:

No, her visa is based on accompanying her children (and therefore me).

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My apologies you're right, this is more accurate:

the circumstances that led to her having been granted her existing visa are such that she can only effectively use it if accompanied by me or the children.

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Not many people here are parsing my every word with such diligence JL. . .

--- What I said to myself early this morning after being up all night monitoring diplomatic proceedings in Switzerland was:

Why doesn't someone this online loquacious have a blog?

... and OOPS there it was.

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Once again I'm afraid you've lost me, but perhaps that is your intention.

Do you think you've found a blog by someone with circumstances similar to mine? If so I'd be very interested in checking it out, please post a URL - via PM if you think it might get you into trouble. . .

Yes I realize that by de facto you acknowledged a fabrication. So how many others are out there?

I have no idea what you mean by that.

She is unable to travel alone on her perfectly valid visa, while she is perfectly able to do so if accompanied by me and/or the children. This is not due to anything inherent in the visa nor any regulation, but limitations in her own personality and abilities.

In coming years she will be able to use the same visa on her own, due to her having outgrown those limitations, and having established a reliable pattern with the authorities. However by that time it is likely she will have changed her status so that she'll then be on a completely different visa.

Is that more clear? At no point has any of my statements been false, much less so intentionally, only your interpretation may be at fault.

20 pages of this sh1t. 20 pages.

There may be a troll about, but it's a professional troll.

Well thanks for doing your bit to help out then Dino.

Since the topic doesn't seem to interest you that much feel free to stop torturing yourself simply by refraining from clicking on it.

These may be more up your alley, surprised you didn't respond over there before:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/624884-are-you-part-of-the-farang-detritus-layer/?p=6316019

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/624884-are-you-part-of-the-farang-detritus-layer/?p=6318673

Sorry if I wasn't clear before, I acknowledged that there was no such type of visa officially (that's what "de jure" means), but that given our particular circumstances, that is exactly the "de-facto" situation she finds herself in.

And as always if you can figure out a way to put your money where your mouth is without threatening our safe passage, I'd be happy to provide proof. . .

OK, just to make it explicit:

I am male, born that way and no plans to change.

It's true my testosterone levels drop during intensive child-rearing years, but for some reason that doesn't seem to affect anything important - although the man-breasts are a bit embarrassing.

Very professional and very pretty.

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Just to clarify for everyone's edification an interesting plot twist, JLCrab seems to have had a flash of intuition that I'm actually a female of all things.

I can only imagine that my extreme non-PC views have convinced him I'm actually a rabid traditional feminist PC enforcer running a false-flag operation to smoke out all those nasty sexists on the board for the ECC. Everyone who "likes" me gets put on their hit list, so be warned. . .

Many of the larger shopping centres have studios - I know some of my more ambitious teeraks have used one upstairs at MBK for their "modelling portfolio", came out not too bad for a reasonable price.

You may want to invest in a cloth of the colour background(s) you're looking for, the standard ones are mighty tasteless IMO. . .

If you're looking for something more straightforward thousands of photo developing shops have passport-style setups, might be sufficient for your needs.

But then again a decent little camera's not much of an investment these days either.

They are trained and required to do this by management, and consider it good service.

But if they want to max their tips, they would do well to communicate. If you own a bar, just a few words of english would help the staff develop rapport.

Pet hate is when you sit down and next thing you know is a fan parked beside you, full on. "Like fan?" with a smile would help a lot. Same as 'more beer?'

Will chefs ever learn that f'lungs like to eat starters together, mains together, deserts together? Has anyone found where they get this right?

You are assuming much more higher levels of rational thought and motivation here than actually exist 99.9% of the time.

These people are on automatic pilot, learn everything by rote and that's the way they'll do their job until they day they drop.

Don't even bother trying to change them, you're just banging your head against a wall.

Now spare a thought for the farang bar-owners who actually try to change the way their staff do things! Now there's a farang I'll pity, but not you whingers, just relax and enjoy yourselves a bit accepting the way things are will you?

Well I for one have no idea what the OP topic even is.

I ask for the bill, give them money, they bring me change, then I leave some money in the tray or on the table depending on the kind of place how good the service was etc.

If there's ever anyone "hanging around" I can't say I've noticed, and doubt it would be specifically for the tip.

One thing I have noticed (and complied with) about Thai manners in this area you should never ask for the bill and then stick around, it's a clear signal that you are on your way out the door and they should clear everything off the table.

People who order everything that they want all at once and ask for the bill while they're still eating or even just hanging about for a post-prandial chat will certainly confuse the *@ out of the Thais, and I could see this leading to confusion.

But maybe I just don't understand the question?

Well, wasted on beers it will be. Is Drunk Flying illegal by the way?

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Only if you do it like this (investment banker of course).

I'm worked with several families home-schooling, both Thai and foreign and never heard of any official issues, and suspect if they exist in theory certainly wouldn't in practice.

As I said, you should be able to pool resources to cut down on the expense.

Qualified full-time NES teachers can be had for well under B1,000 per hour, B40K per month full-time would be a reasonable rate given the few openings in that island paradise, especially if you chipped in a decent meal now and again.

Many here will tell you about all the legal hoops you need to jump through, but note the risk is much more so on the tutor than the customer.

You'll most likely find that people come and go more often than you'd like, so make sure to take control of the curriculum design, materials selection yourself, ideally consulting with well-qualified educators familiar with your back-home nationality's requirements.

If starting from scratch and especially if looking forward to possible futures on either side of the Atlantic, I can highly recommend the IB curriculum. . .

Thanks much Rene, and I will, not actually that big a deal as some here make out.

In a restaurant where the menu is divided into Starters/appetizers, Main Courses, and Sweets it would be reasonable to expect the starter to be served first, followed by the main course and, finally, the sweet.

If there is no concept of 'courses' why would the menu be displayed in this way, and why am I never served my mango and sticky rice together with my tom yum goong?

Because the person that wrote the menu may well not have ever stepped foot in the restaurant and certainly hasn't been around hands-on training the staff to any western-recognisable standard.

Thais don't have any cultural pattern of "sweets at the end", you really haven't noticed that they don't eat pudding after a meal? and that the word for "sweets" (khanom) can be applied to things with chili, pork, seafood, lentils with or without a sweet taste, consumed anytime of day or night?

Just order one dish at a time if you insist on your back-home ways.

And try to get a clue about the local habits if you're planning on anything more than a fly-through tourist visit.

What's the annual school fee for a non Thai born kid?

It doesn't need to be an international school.

Government schools are free and worth every penny, but I believe not available at any price for non-Thais.

If your child doesn't speak any Thai and is older than say 7, they should be enrolled in a private school's English-language programme, properly labelled "EP" or "IP" - the fees will be completely up to the school, at the low end maybe THB 200-300K per year.

I believe there was a sort-of-reasonable at-least-trying-to-be-decent small startup school run by farang (that is critical to quality BTW) in the Krabi area, maybe Koh Lanta? and there was a group on Koh Samui trying to persuade them to start up a branch there, but didn't quite have enouhg numbers together?

To be honest if you have time and the inclination, you'd probably get a better result by home-schooling, perhaps find another couple of like-minded families to pool resources.

I've heard of support resources for home schooling in Thailand, but you'd find a lot more from your home country.

I don't think I understand this. I really don't. I have always liked mentally strong women who were well educated as long as they were nice people.

I'm not sure what you're saying.

My ex wife is 11 years younger than I. It worked for a long time and we're still friends. She is highly educated, has a master's degree in the health care industry and pulls down well over US$100k per year plus benefits. She's good looking still, too. Why someone would marry an uneducated gal who was nothing but a drain financially and mentally is beyond me.

The prime suspect for me in LOS if I wanted to marry but don't, would be the same. A past her "sell by date" late 30's master's degree, 40k pm government job that would probably give my senior person government health insurance and some stability. She'd probably already have a house and car.

THEN if all I had (or was willing to admit I had) was 40k pm, we'd have 80k. I wouldn't be signing for a house or a car for her, just chipping in my 1/2 of the bills.

There are plenty of really good looking gals in LOS in that situation who would marry an older man simply because most Thais won't. If they will, she has a hard time finding someone who's a match for education, income, etc.

This presupposes you keep yourself in good shape and are sober and clean and have a little class.

Why scrape the bottom of the barrel?

Not sure who you're addressing here, but if it's me I can assure you we're not even looking in the same barrels.

You use "really good looking gals" in the same breath as "past her "sell by date late 30's", which in my turn I can't conceive of.

You would call my target profile looking for a pet with benefits, I would call yours just as much headache as a farang woman (shudder).

Just different priorities, that's all, to each his own, live and let live is really my bottom line. . .

Any decent butcher or supermarket in France carries horse meat, very clearly labelled and no problem for anyone rational.

There are a few schools that claim to be "international", but AFAIK no school I'd be willing to send a child of mine to after say 7 or 8 years old.

There are some decent international boarding schools, but total cost is not much below a million baht per year.

A high price to pay to live in paradise IMO either way.

Duties are much lower on counterfeit goods.

Some are even selling the genuine article, but are able to avoid the duties.

Would anyone like to speculate as to why the number of "likes" for this particular comment would consistently be disappearing over time? By my count should be a few dozen by now, but on a daily basis as new members add theirs the old ones just drop off.

Does the system have an automatic cap for # of likes?

I assume if the mods didn't like it they'd just delete it, but of course we're not allowed to discuss that anyway. . .

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat) Burma isn't on the list of countries where they eat dog meat, so they probably didn't end up in a cur curry or puppy pasta.

Perhaps one of the "benefits" of having been colonised by a more "civilised" culture.

OOPS Rule 19 but I found it.

No problem up to you, I was just trying to have a reasonable and sincere discussion with you, no malice or sarcasm intended, sorry if you've taken anything I've written as such.

Best of luck to you JLCrab. . .