GarryP

^ Yes, a playful smack on the back of the head with a baseball bat may do the world of good.

i know its a matter of taste but i just dont like the PCX its the Hunchback of Notre Dame of all bikes.

I tend to agree. I think they look great from the rear but fugly from the front. I know others who would take them to bed if the could.

For SCB, it's correct if you buy land and then build a house seperatly. Apparently you plan to buy land and use a contractor to build the house that is originaly not on the land yet. In other words, you seem not to purchase land + house from the same person. If this is correct, SCB will give only 50% loan if mixed couple. If the project is "one" land + house from same contractor, then you can get up to 80% (and not only 70% as some would say).

I was faced to the same issue a few weeks ago.

Hope this can help.

We are trying to buy a home and land in a small development by Somwang. The land and house would both be purchased directly from this developer but the house has not been started as it is to be built to our specifications.

Similar situation here in Bangkok. I am in the process of buying a town house. Before the developer would let my son sign the contract they checked with a number of banks to see if my wife and son qualified for a mortgage based on my salary as guarantor. BBL said they would provide the mortgage. However, we will not get the mortgage until the house is completed. As such, no mortgage papers have been signed, just the contract with the developer. I have already paid off the deposit so now there is nothing for me to do until the house is finished, at which time we will enter a mortgage with the bank.

Of course it is a bit of a worry that when the time comes the bank does an about face and refuses the mortgate. However, the contract I have clearly states that all the deposit will be returned if that happens. Not something I wish, but nice to know.

PS the bank said that we could get 100 percent, not that I want that.

Being the OP, I would like to state: "the walking man, F1 fanatic, Felt 35 & Chdiver" have gotten the drift of my post. A few things I would like to add:

- I lived with my wife over 1 year in Thailand before marriage.

- That she would financially support her kids and pay her share for living expenses was agreed upon before marriage. (Btw: both daughters have now their University-Degree.) The "real" Daddy (a Police-Officer) never paid a single Dime for his daughters.

- No, I never paid any "Sin-Sod". No Thai-man would consider paying sin-sod for a previously married woman. So why should a "Farang" ??

- From the beginning I wanted to make sure that I would not have to join the club of Faragns that (while crying in their pretzels) muttering something like "I made the mistake of my life and how am I gonna get out of this without losing my shirt" (if not already lost).

- As to the modest life-style we are considering in Thailand: We like it that way. We like Rural-Thai-Living. To live in a Condo in a Tourist-Hub simply does not appeal to us.

- We had a good 10 years together. That we agreed on a mutual pathway (including finances and this before marriage) was definitely a contributing factor to this little success-story.

Cheers.

PS: Don't get me wrong. I have nothing personal against Farangs, that are willing to put up half of their assets and basically their future well-beeing to marry their 3-month Bar-Aquaintance. What irritates me ist just the whining around afterwards: "How could she do this to me, since I have given her everything !!!????!!!"

Re Sin Sod....Previously married women do sometimes ask for and get Sin Sod not just from farangs but from Thais as well. It is not as clear cut as you seem to think.

If your wife is/was happy with all the arrangements you made good for you but we only have your side of the story and not hers.

The main problem i have with your original post is that you seem to be bragging about how you never contributed anything more than 50 percent financially to the relationship and that anyone that does is a fool.

Given that in most Farang/Thai reltationships there is a big difference in the net wealth and earning potential between the parties it would seem logical to most people that the one with the larger wealth would share some of that with the one they love?

That doesn't have to mean risking all your finances but it does mean taking a greater burden of the financial costs because you can afford it and you want your partner to live a better life.

I had never heard this before until a couple of weeks ago when a Thai man I know informed me that he was being hit for a small sin sod for his divorced fiancee. I was very surprised as I had always understood that once married the second time round no sin sod was required. You learn something new all the time.

Each to their own but I made a decision that I would never speak Thai to my children except in some extreme cases like if the floor is slippery I would tell them in Thai the floor is slippery so they don't slip. And after a while they know what slippery is in English so then I wouldn't do it. Their is nothing wrong with my Thai but I just want to converse with my kids in my own language. No matter how good you get you are always more comfortable in your own language and you can always express yourself better too. Also, how old are your kids ? Thai might be okay when they are young but as they get older you are going to be having serious conversations with them. Can you help them and explain to them in Thai everything about the science project they will be doing at school ? Do you know all the vocab ? The correct spellings in Thai ?It's a big commitment to do everything in Thai. Also , don't take this the wrong way but what about later on in life, if your kids can't speak English what sort of job are they going to get ? What about if they want to see where daddy comes from when they are older. It's going to make things tricky. Good luck with that. I think you're going to need it !!

My son is now 21 going on 99. I admit it was a mistake, but as I only speak Thai with my wife, when he was born it seemed the natural thing to do. Luckily, he has absolutely no interest in seeing where I am from and sees himself as Thai rather than luk kreung. Has no interest in living overseas. Wind the clock back and I would have only used English.

Off topic a little bit, but my daughter is learning English and gets told off if she speaks pidgeon english and then farangs come round and speak pidgeon English to her .

Actually no one is speaking pidgeon English to your daughter...Pidgeon is a recognised dialect of English and its most certainly not spoken in Thailand to my knowlege

Personnally I think the better term would be "baby" English and depending on how old your daughter is, it may be appropriate..

Nothing annoys me more than foreigners speaking Thai to my boys. It's so stupid. firstly their Thais is probably shit and secondly there are 65 million other people in this country who can do it a lot better than them. Don't try to impress me with your pidgeon Thai. My kids need all the English they can get living where they are surrounded by Thais.

If anyone spoke English to my son, he would probably ignore them. Even I speak Thai to my son. Only Thai is used in my household.

Different situations require different approaches.

BTW, no idea what the OP is waffling on about.

If you are a retiree then perhaps it is not worthwhile if you are made to jump through hoops for it. However, if you are married to a Thai but do not have permanent residence (PR), you will need the yellow book if you wish to apply for Thai citizenship.

Some poeple have also claimed they received a "gold" health card for universal health care when they got their yellow books. However, I believe that any such cards issued were issued in error.

I will go for mine later this year when I move into my new house. The blue book will be in my son's name as home owner. Hopefully, because I am in Bangkok it should not be a problem.

My dad, who was an amateur apiarist, never bothered collecting what he called "bee glue". He claimed that while ounce for ounce it was much more expensive than honey, it was produced in such low quantities and was so hard to collect that it was not worth his time. He only had 10 hives.

Propolis used to be sold to the pharma industry, and I assume it still is, but I have no idea what for. We just used to eat the honey and occasionally comb containing bee bread. Never had any honey that tasted better than that produced by my dad's bees. The memories. Candied honey on bread for breakfast in the morning washed down with a cuppa.

So what next?

It seems as if no matter how much time I spend listening to and trying to identify and/or mimic tones I get nowhere.

Here's one of the tone lesson files from HST: low-mid.mp3

No matter how many times I listen to this it still sounds like mid-low or high-mid. I just can't get my brain around the fact that it is actually low-mid.

Same with the exercises on this page:

Listening for the Tone of One-Syllable Words

If I shut my eyes and just listen I almost always get it wrong. If I look at the word and apply the tone rules I can usually (not always) get it right without listening at all.

I too was prepared for something terrible. I undertood everything you said in that short sound bite, but I think dvc has hit the nail on the head. You are speaking Thai as if you are speaking English. Your Krap is way too long as well.

Despite clear tonal problems, I do not really understand why Thais do not understand you. If taken in context, wrong tones should not matter much to comprehension, especially in Bangkok where many foreigners speak Thai and at a myriad of levels. Perhaps, you are in an area where that experience is missing. The typical "Ah sh*t here comes the farang, I'm never going to understand him" type thing which is not as uncommon as you might imagine. I know some nearly fluent foreigners who at times are not understood, just because they are foreign and not expected to speak Thai well or at all.

Don't give up hope though.

I am going to try taping myself soon to check out how I sound. I had never thought of doing that before. Thanks.

Half a day later and people are still posting as if it is real news!!!! Quite surprising really. Does it tell you anything?

Pizza is generic and thus is free for everyone to use. This is quite a bit different to say Wensleydale cheese or Parmigiano-Reggiano which are protected as appellations of origin. So while you can make these cheeses outside the areas indicated by their names, if you do so commercially, you cannot label them with such appellations. For the latter you would use parmesan cheese and for the former who knows.

Apparently, pizza did not even originate from Italy, the base being of middle eastern origin.

Perhaps a more suitable headline would be along the lines of "Minister of Thai Public Health up in arms about Thai kids being fed with crap disguised as pizza".

Yeah, but the Fiore is more like Fino or a Scoopy or Jelato. I meant something more suited to the taller rider, like Hayate, Elegance or PCX. Even if Fiore had been avaialble when I made my purchase, I would not even have entertained one. I look bad enough on the Hayate but would have looked an even bigger prat on a smaller sized Fiore.

I use Dr Sunil in Bangkok. In fact my son and I have an appointment tomorrow. Not the cheapest but not the most expensive either. However, the level of service I have received has always been second to none. His website lists the prices for each treatment. Just google him.

My son likes his Hayate. He thought it a bit heavy to begin with but likes the stability it offers. It is his first bike and all he had ridden previously was his friend's Fino. Would not swap for the world now.

I believe that Yamaha need to go with fuel injection. If the Elegance had been fuel injected we would have bought that over the Hayate.

Any word on the service manual? From time to time I do net searches but it still does not seem to be available in English yet.

My son went to their service center in Haumark the other day and was well impressed. He was asked to sit down and explain what the issue was and then three mechanics then proceeded to work on his bike. It was a minor problem with the front panel which was sorted at no cost.

He was told, however, that if he ever needed replacement parts for his Hayate, it would be best to visit their Ladkrabang center as all the parts are stored there. That is, if a particular part was not in stock at Huamark, they themselves would order the part from Ladkrabang. So best just go to Ladkrabang to begin with. It is not much further than Huamark from where we live.

The funny thing is that in the Suzuki website the Ladkrabang center is not mentioned on the home page and only pops up in passing in a member's post in the message board.

Finally, he was told that the good thing about Suzuki was that there were no counterfeit parts on the market. The market for Suzuki wasn't big enough to make it worthwhile.

To piss off their parent(hese)s.

The difference is that in Canada and the UK - based on the above comments - you do not need connections to get off lightly. Unlike Thailand, where without connections or lots of lolly, you will go away for a long time.

The OP's comparisons clearly do not work.

I can't believe how people are actually being taken in by this. It is satire. But really funny all the same.

FYI The Pizza Company is not part of Yum brands. That would be Pizza Hut.

Obtuse or what?

Actually sb's answer is not correct in all cases. But I can't be bothered to go into detail about the Thai social security system.

Well what the fk are you posting for?

You don't know do you.

And you are too lazy to read the whole thread. I suggest you read or have someone read the information on this website to you. I can't be bothered translating it. http://www.sso.go.th/wpr/home.jsp

Okay, so lets not compare. Who cares. Certainly not PaulD because he has bought one. Enjoy yourself and your new bike. There will always be naysayers. If it endures the climate here for only a few years or many, it does not really matter. At that price, I would be happy with 3 or 4 years without any major repairs. I am sure you will have lots of fun with it.

Thread saved to favorites for reference mid 2011 when 1 year license comes up for renewal.

Thanks. Slightly different for me, not being retired, it would appear. I suppose the work permit will be used instead of residency letter, in my case.

Just out of interest, what are the required documents. The same as when you got your one year license? PP, WP and doctor's certificate?