keestha

2002. Since my mother passed away, there is not much of a reason anymore to go there. I left my home country 19 years ago, and contacts with friends and relatives have faded away pretty much. But every once in a while it happens somebody I still know from back home decides on spending a few days in the hotel I am running, and then I greatly enjoy talking about days gone by. Sometimes I miss hardly being able to talk about things in the past with people who were there.

Consider Khao Lak, it is at the Andaman coast 60 KM north of the bridge which connects Phuket to the mainland. Lots of nice upmarket hotels (and cheaper digs as well), stunning beaches, snorkeling at the Similan and Surin islands, hilly forested inland area with lots of waterfalls.

What happened in this hotel is a mixup which is not at all unusual. Many of upmarket hoterls in tourist spots charge a "joiner fee" when a guest takes a bar hostess back to the room. If the hotel is not well organized, the guy manning the reception at night doesn't know somebody checked in with his Asian wife/girlfriend, and he will demand a joiner fee when the couple comes back to the hotel.

It happened to me once at a hotel in Phuket. I was slightly amused, but no doubt in many cases the farang and his Asian wife/girlfriend will feel grossly insulted.

Stupid, all they have to do is to make a small marker in the guestbook indicating the guy checked in together with an Asian lady.

My only concern is if my kids want to stay in Thailand will they be discriminated against because they are very falang looking. They are both Canadian citizens also so they have a choice of where to settle.

I share your concern. Sure the usually cute young Thai/Farang children are not discriminated against in Thailand, but what when they have grown up? Does anybody with adult "look kreung" have a comment on this? Or maybe somebody who is "look kreung" himself/herself?

Obviously the OP wants to go from Bkk to Phuket in just one day, which is a very long drive. Going via Surat (yes, you don't go into the city) is much quicker than via Ranong, both Chumporn-Ranong and Ranong-Takua Pa are mostly winding uphill/downhill 2 lane roads, and especially on the leg Chumporn-Ranong you might get stuck a long time behind a large slowly moving vehicle.

Yup, the Op cannot get a further extension.

Just want to confirm: Assume the OP got a 30 days extension on a 60 day tourist visa, would it really be impossible for him to get the maximum 7 days extension when showing the flight ticket?

Sure in this subforum as well as elsewhere on TV a lot of whining is done by the "expats".

Of course there are things to complain about in Phuket, as I noticed for instance after having parked my car in a place taxi drivers considered to be theirs. The guy who ordered me to move straight away certainly wasn't smiling.

But I can't escape the feeling many of those whiners are simply ill adapted people who didn't make much of an an effort to learn the language and try to fit in generally, adopting a different code of behaviour and changing the expectations you have of other people. Settling abroad you have to learn to go with the flow, and it takes time to learn how. Even for instance Dutch people who settle just across the border in Germany because housing is cheaper there often have a hard time initially.

Oh well, in a forum for Thai people who settled in the US probably also a lot of whining would be done.

Many not well known websites which offer the option to book hotels channel their bookings through R24.org

Well, after having spent 18 years in Thailand, and having employed hundreds of Thai people in the course of the years, I really do not have the impression Thai people are less honest than westerners.

Reading the profiles of the dating site ladies, often I got the impression they didn't write the profiles themselves - like on one site all of them saying they are looking for a "caucasian" man.

Thanks for all the great, well meant feedback. I fully agree that an infant should spend at the most very limited time behind a computer screen or a television. I have witnessed situations where it got out of hand completely, like a 7/8 years old kid playing an online computer game every day for hours at an end.

EVERY hotel will attract both positive and negative feedback at Tripadvisor. You need to be able to read in between the lines a bit. A person who is used to stay in upmarket places, might negatively review a downmarket place, forgetting that you get what you pay for.

I know that my hotel offers a constant level of service and cleanliness, but nevertheless reviews at various websites vary from raving about it to extremely negative.

Anybody can write what he wants. An agorofobic lady gave my hotel a zero for cleanliness, because there was a spider in the room. The staff (myself) got just a rating of 3 on a scale running to 5, though I got up at 3 AM without complaining to hunt down and kill the spider for her.

Look into Laem Son national park just north of Kaper in Ranong province. There are places to stay just outside the national park.

A sad read. It made me decide from now on only to use the horn to warn people, and never anymore to express my irritation about the road behaviour of others. It is a lost battle anyway, trying to re-educate people by honking at them.

Back in 2001 I was very grossly cheated at a petrol station. After having parked, I noticed a very heavy petrol smell around the pickup. Off I went to a car repair shop, where they told me the tank had been filled up with a mixture of diesel and lamp oil. They advised me to top up with diesel little bits at a time, so I kept getting 100 Baht refills till the smell had disappeared.

Interesting, I'll certainly look into this the next time I go to Tesco Lotus. Nakachalet are you sure it was Tesco and not Homepro, where I would rather expect a gadget like this?

Mister Man I don't think that is what you are looking for, but there are also portable box like fans that you have to fill up with icecubes to make them fuction as an airconditioner. Might be exactly the right thing if you just need aircon for a little while to be able to fall asleep.

If you are not American, forget it. In case you are American, you might be able to use provisions as laid down in the Amity Treaty.

In my bungalow resort there are quite a few people coming with children less then 2 years old, and yes also less then 1 year old. Personally I wouldn't have the courage to do this. When our daughter was very young, we travelled with her, but with our own car, and never more then 2 days, going to the family in law, spending one night in a hotel in conveniently halfway located Hua Hin. Moving by public transport from place to place for weeks at an end is quite a different thing I would think.

I would like to see someone qualified in the medical field posting in this thread.

Yesterday logging into Yahoo I was deported to Australia for reasons unknown to me, but today it didn't happen.

Sorry Wellington I don't want to hijack your thread, but can a licence of this type ( the new English language licence) also be used in Malaysia, if it is only for a short period?

A vast majority of Thai workers, via their SS payments, have access to a pretty robust social security system. From this you get unemployement benefits, child benefits, hospital care etc etc. Of course, it is without the bells and whisltes you get it in the west, but it works. A solid performer.

What percentage of the last salary are these unemployment benefits, and do you need to have worked a certain minimum period of time to get it?

An employee told me that also if you become unemployed after having had a job for a short period, you can receive one third of your last wages through the SS system, but under the condition that you keep yourself available for the labour market. This means that if they can offer you a job you cannot refuse, also it it means relocating from Surat Thani to Chiang Mai.

I am not sure if she was right though, this might be a proposal someone made, that she picked up watching television or reading a magazine.

Quoting the OP: "come over to Thailand, take a Thai course and then a TEFL and then get a job teaching English to switch over to a Work Visa."

Might be less easy than you think. They are not much interested in hiring people as English teachers who are not native speakers. I notice that your written English is perfect, but still they would rather hire a 19 year old British or American kid than hiring you. The only jobs you could maybe get would be very lowly paid, and it might be not so easy to get a work permit.

Why don't you browse around a bit in the teachers forum, or maybe ask a question there?

Well, at more and more pages, now also the main page at the business forum, and the main page of this technical support forum.

I have the same problem, I am using IE 7. Yesterday it was only the Phuket forum, but just now I noticed the visa&work permit forum has the same glitch. Possibly only users using Internet Explorer have this problem. The glitch occurs on pages showing individual threads.

January 18 I was issued a 1 year extension, and the charge was 3000 plus 100 Baht.

Oh well, sometimes it takes time before new regulations trickle through to offices upcountry.