keestha

People getting offers to be introduced to a prospective mate are very normal in Thailand.

It happened to me when I was single. It was a friend of a sister of a lady that had worked for me. The girl had a bachelors degree, and had a reasonably well paid job, 9000 Baht per month. She was 26 years my junior. I went out with her once, and than a second time after she had called me to ask why she didn't hear anything from me. She was nice enough, but really not my type, and I was glad she didn't call again.

Oh well, in my native country, the Netherlands, no 26 year old lady would be so interested in a 50+ years old, badly shaved and chain smoking small business owner. Guess why.

A lady who used to work for me, was introduced by her mother to a prospective Thai mate 4 times. Some of these guys were fairly prosperous for Thai standards. She declined every time, and finally ended up going to Europe with a customer of mine, where she is still stuck in a not so good marriage now.

If you are looking for a lady, and let it be known to some Thai people, preferably women, you will get proposals pretty soon, and usually the ladies in question will be respectable enough.

There are so many people, often retired, moving to Thailand, and the first thing they want to do is buy a house.

I always advised them rather to rent, because:

1) Buying prices are relatively high in Thailand, whilst renting prices are relatively low. In Europe it is the better decision financially to buy&take a mortgage, but in Thailand it is better to rent. You are better off financially if you invest the money, reaping the highest interest you can get risk free, and pay the rent off that.

2) In Thailand, it is very easy to buy a house (not talking about legal complications now), but it might prove very difficult to sell it. So many people got stuck with houses in places like Pattaya, which they rent out for very little money now, having left Pattaya a long time ago. Gosh, they're even lucky if they found somebody to rent the place.

3) Places change. Maybe you like Phuket/Pattaya/Hua Hin very much as it is now, but in 5 years time it will have changed a lot, and maybe you'll want to move out, and you will be stuck with a house you cannot sell.

Almost none of the freshly arrived retired Thailand residents took my advice. At home they have always owned a house, and they are totally fixed on the idea of owning property. No way to talk it out of their thick heads, somehow they think they are still in Germany or Sweden.

Sure, this happens. Here in Khao Lak there also is a clinic which is a robbers den, any tourist walking in with a very small problem (like Bangkok belly), will get a complete "check up", and won't walk out without having paid a 2300+ Baht bill.

For the tourists it doesn't matter so much, they will get the money back from the insurance at home, but still, being a hotel owner, I prefer to drive my guests to another clinic 4 kilometers away.

I don't think it is illegal to ask a question, but in some cases it might be illegal to answer it.

Am afraid privacy is not always so well protected in Thailand. After a foreigner living in my area had passed away, his sister called me to enquire about an account he had at a Thai bank. I just went to the local branch office of this bank, where they know me, and they told me instantly how much money this guy had at another branch of this bank.

Don't think you could try to pull this trick in Switzerland or in the US.

mo chit (is that the southern bus station?)

No, it is not. Moh Chit is the busstation for busses to the North and the Northeast. It is not mentioned on that website.

Though the bus that leaves from the airport to Nongkhai might stop in Nakhon Ratchasima (Khorat), I think it is the best he just takes a taxi to Moh Chit, from where there are plenty of busses to Khorat.

There are a lot of details lacking in this story, so understandibly previous posters are worried if you really became the owner of the bungalow at all.

Land in Thailand which is used, always has a land paper, there are different types of land papers. Did you ever see the land paper of the land the bungalow is standing on? Legally a house can be owned by somebody who doesn't own the land, and this will be written on the land paper.

For starters, before involving a lawyer, you could go to the land office (kom tee din), to enquire about the status of the land and the bungalow.

On the Bangkok Post website it says:

"Government on Tuesday announced extension of Songkran holiday for two more days through Friday, government spokesman Panithan Wattanayagorn said in nationalised television broadcast.

Mr Panithan said state enterprises, financial institutions and private firms can decide whether to apply the holiday."

Would the electricity company and the TOT (telephone company) classify as state enterprises?

It would mess up my planning a little bit if thursday or friday I couldn't carry out dealings with the aforementioned institutions. Oh well, you have to take it as it comes, I guess.

16 and 17 April is now confirmed as Public Holiday.

Does this apply for all of Thailand, or only for the Bangkok area?

beatingtheblues is an online program for people suffering from a depression, they get individual help. To participate in the program, you need a referal from a doctor or a psychologist.

Or could she be treated by a psychologist (or whatever) who is based in the west, using skype+webcam? Maybe the best would be a psychologist with an Asian background, who would understand life here better than say a UK based psychologist who has never been further from home than the Canary Islands.

Wishing you strength,

Kees.

Many Dutch, Belgium people in BYD LOFTS and their Jean-Pierre restaurant, always a nice bunch.

Gerd

Well, that's what they call an insider tip, one of the reasons I drop by in the Phuket forum most days. I must have passed by the BYD LOFTS countless times, but never noticed its existence, leave alone knowing that it seems to be a Dutch speaking enclave.

Will drop by, just to speak Dutch. It is my native language, but I use it so rarely that whilst speaking it, I have to concentrate not to mix it up with German, which I have to speak far more often, whilst doing my work.

OP, if you can bring a bottle of jenever, I might be willing to meet you there.

We are witnessing history. I keep on refreshing this thread, hoping for eyewitness reports that give the most recent information, very possible more recent or even more accurate that what is on television.

It would be helpful if people could refrain from casual chit chat.

3. What is "profilerating"? Do you mean proselytizing?

You are right, I used the wrong word.

And I appreciate your post, reading it helped me to put this thing into perspective. Thank you.

Theft from luggage happens in ever airport in the world not just Thailand.

Seconded. A few years ago I read a newspaper article about Frankfurt airport being notorious for thefts, and a few weeks later I became a victim myself.

Always been wondering about farangs who convert to Buddhism. My impression is that Thai people tend to chuckle a bit about it, the thruth seeking farang wandering about in orange. An exception would be westerners who made it very high up in the clerical hierarchy, became abbott of a temple for instance. Mostly I believe they are Americans, and a few Germans.

Buddism is not a profilerating religion like Christianity or Islam, though it does accept converts, unlike for instance Jewism.

During my 18 years in Thailand, it hardly ever happened that anybody suggested that I should become a Buddhist.

Your thoughts on this?

Go and talk to Pim and Els, a Dutch couple who have been running a Dutch bar/restaurant in Patong for a very long time. Their place is called "The Old Dutch" (or something very close), and it is at one of the sois running inland from Beach Road, south of Soi Bangla.

Would surprise me if there would be anything like a Dutch/Flemish association in Phuket, but if there is anything of the kind, they should know.

It is easy to sit on your high horse and talk about losers, but as a previous poster pointed out, mental illness can strike at any time.

When it is about helping people, life offers tough choices sometimes.

Kovalam, Kerala/India, 1991

Having a tea at a beachside cafe in the beach resort Kovalam, I spotted a very ragged and dirty looking westerner. Of course he choose me of all people, to walk up to and start a conversation with. He was English. Appeared he had been in Asia for one and a half year already, it was meant to be just a long backpacking holiday after having graduated from law school. Soon it became clear the guy was in a very confused mental state, he told me he was hearing voices. When I suggested him to go home, he told me his mother, with whom he still had telephone contact occasionally, wanted him to go home..

Later the local people told me no hotel/guesthouse accepted this guy anymore, among other things he had been walking along the beach naked.

I considered contacting the guys mother, try to gain her trust and have her wire money, and then taking him to the airport to fly to New Delhi, and putting him on a London bound flight there. It would be the only possible way to help him.

Being afraid of endangering myself though, I decided against it. Till the present day it still weighs on my conscience a little bit.

The UK should repatriate its citizens and then withhold their passports until they have repaid the cost of repatriation.

From my hippy days (seventies) I remember they used to do this. They were flown back first class, as a punishment, and got back their passport after having paid the cost of repatriation.

Dutch embassies used to give just enough money to make it to the Dutch embassy in the next country, plus a letter to go across the border, passport already being retained. At the embassy in the next country the process would be repeated, till they made it back home.

I think both The UK and the Netherlands have stopped giving this type of help, there are just too many people getting into trouble, and nowadays the notion is stronger that those in trouble have themselves to blame.

But even back in the seventies, French embassies categorically refused to give any type of help, ordering people to get out of the embassy without even looking at them. Down and out French citizens who claimed to have lost their passport, were told: You have sold it, just buy it back.

I think it does occasionally happen that people from first world countries get stuck pennyless in a third world country, really not being able to get hold of the money for the plane ticket back home, where the social security system would take care of them right away.

Some countries still help their luckless citizens to go home, Germany does, but the Netherlands and France don't, about the UK I don't know.

Case story: a Dutch guy ended up broke and ill in Goa, India. Somehow he made his way to New Delhi, where the Dutch embassy refused help. He went back to Goa, where a few months later he succumbed to his disease. His western "friends" there brought him to a hospital then, claiming he was alive, being afraid of problems with the Indian authorities.

If I would be 100% sure that somebody had no other way of going home, I would be willing to chip in to raise the money for a cheap plane ticket.

No problem - when you get your new passport go to your local immi office and they will transfer your permitted to stay stamp.

Can this also be done only at the local immigration office, and not in Bangkok after having received the new passport at your Embassy?

I am aware of the fact that most embassies will also send the new passport to your home address if you wish so.

All of a sudden, all the posts in the Phuket forum are in fat letters, and everything is underlined (April 8, midday Thai time).

Assume this is just a technical glitch, not a measure taken by LivinginKata to force the people to pay closer attention to the highly important stuff they are reading. All the other subforums show the normal layout.

A lot of people on your bus will be Isaan people heading home for Songkran, who also have to go to Mochit. Just talk to them, most likely they will take the minivan.

Back in 1993, I was walking in your shoes. I came to Thailand with the idea of starting a business, and during the first few months, I stroke up a lot of conversations with farangs who had businesses in the beach resorts.

The advice these guys were giving was worth almost zilch. Most of these blokes probably didn't have a company or a work permit anyway, the business simply being on the wifes/girlfriends name. In most likelyhood for the vast majority of them, the Thai adventure is gray history already.

Maybe I should have talked to a lawyer, but the idea just didn't enter my thick head. The wealth of information that now can be accessed through the internet, wasn't there yet in those days.

After a few months though, I started thinking: What the fork am I doing, starting a business in a country where I don't speak a word of the language. I will need an interpreter to buy a hammer and nails. So I decided to work as an English teacher for a while first, whilst learning Thai.

So I did, and at the end of 1994 I started my first business, a guesthouse/restaurant/bar in Hua Hin. Only whilst doing this, I learned everything I had to know about legal rules and so on. Not the best way of learning it I admit, it is better to know everything before you start. When I rented the guesthouse for example, I didn't know that the owner of the building was in no way obliged to extend my lease when it would run out in 6 years time.

So when I started my second business, a small resort in Khao Lak that I have been running for 9 years now, I was better prepared.

Please take time for your learning curve.

From this forum, you cannot expect much useful advice if you don't give some additional information, like:

1 What type of business do you have in mind?

2 Will you have to depend on the business financially, or do you get money from home every month and is it more like something to keep you busy?

3 Do you have a Thai wife or girlfriend you have been together with for a long time? In case you cannot speak Thai, I think this would be almost a necessity.

Finally a last word of caution: be careful dealing with farang business owners who might offer you a partnership. Like me, you seem to speak German as a second language, so you might know the German saying: " Huete dich fuer Sturm und Wind, und fuer Deutsche die im Ausland sind" (Beware of storm and wind, and for Germans residing abroad).

Wishing you all the best

Kees.

Traces of drugs, hm. How big should a trace be to make you suspect? The vast majority of banknotes circulating in the US has minuscule traces of cocaine.

My guess - you have been hijacked -

Download from http://www.freedrweb.com/ a program called CUREIT and run it. It's free.

I trust it can also be found in the TV software download section

Thank you very much, Webfact. I downloaded and ran the program, and it detected and deleted two trojans (or two parts of one), called comreplc.dll and hwpvsbsj.sys Hope everything is fine and dandy now.

Check out a store called Penang, right opposite Supercheap. They have all bed articles except for those to be found in Soi Bangla.