tom yum goong

If she enters and exists on her Thai passport, both the US and Thai passports will look like your daughter left, flew around in circles and then landed again as there won't be any entry stamps in either passport after exiting under that passport. In either case the Immigration officer will probably want to see the other passport, and once explained I am not aware of it ever being an issue with either country.

In many years of travelling in and out of Thailand, not once has the immigration officer at Don Muang asked to see my other passport, or even if i had one, despite never having any entry and exit stamps from another country.

Maybe i look like someone who likes to fly around in circles

Interested to know how much was paid for this, I know it happens as it has been offered to us for when my son is old enough, long way away yet and I thought I heard mention of sums of 50k baht ?? Is this correct do you know and do you get a written receipt and guarantee of full refund if you by chance get drafted after payment even ??

I believe it was 15,000 baht. My mother spent quite some time finding the right person to talk to. And no i don't think she ever got a receipt.

I have heard there you can also get fake draft exemption certificates, so you don't even have to go to the draft. However, reputable Thai companies generally check up on this and won't hire you if have a fake one.

I have dual nationality, Thai and British. I have always left and entered Thailand using my Thai passport, and entered the UK/Europe with my British. No problems so far.

When I was younger I had a lifelong visa stamped in my Thai passport. However, when I had to get a new passport, my parents never bothered to get me a new visa. I think they figured it was easier for me to use 2 passports.

Mission Hospital is not great for anything more than minor illnesses. Vatchira is a good government hospital and has the best equipment on the island, but they're permanently swamped with patients.

If I've got anything serious I would go to Phuket International Hospital, its pretty decent and is cheaper than Bangkok Phuket Hospital.

Hope you get well soon.

i have dual nationality and the national service thing was something that was always at the back of my mind growing up. I couldn't do the Lor Dor training in high school as I went to boarding school in the UK. They allow you postpone while you are still in full-time education and I managed to postpone it til last year (I was 24).

i went for the draft in the knowledge that my mother had paid some money to make sure i wouldn't get drafted but it was still worrying. Worked out fine in the end though as they already had enough volunteers. This was in Bangkok, but i hear outside of Bangkok the situation is a lot different and there is a good chance of having to do the "lucky dip".

However, by the time your kid(s) grow up they may have abolished national service anyway. They've been talking about it for ages so you never know.

The cheap cable I get in Phuket has Supersports from South Africa and Astro (not sure where its from, Philipines?) which are apparently both showing the World Cup, hopefully with English commentary - occassionally they screw up and we get French commentary for EPL matches.

Jamie Carragher is expected to be deployed as a holding midfielder in front of the defence.

Carragher as holding mid?

Has he ever played this position for his club? Whats wrong with Carrick

If this is true Eriksson has definitely lost it.

Is it the last shop on the left side(coming down the escalator turn right)?

aye, thats the one.

they also own the larger shop closer to the escalator on the same side, its called Digital ... something, can't remember the name.

Bought all three of my pc's from them and always had good service. Last year, when lightning fried one of my PSUs, they still replaced it under waranty.

I'll second Bus Computers in Big C, i buy all my stuff from there.

Can't comment on their English skills though.

Just to add about the boot space:

I bought a Jazz a few months ago, and have been really impressed with it. At the time i didn't even think too much about boot space. I don't have any kids or pets to cart around. The "magic" seats were just a bonus that i never thought i'd use much.

However, there have been a few occassions now where the Jazz has come in really handy. Recently i bought a 2nd-hand office desk from a friend. Its a big L-shaped desk that detaches into 2 parts. The jazz swallowed it up no problems, with its combination of totally flat folding seats and high ceiling.

I can't think of any other car that could have done this, even a much larger car, except something like a pickup truck. If economy and practicality are high on your list of priorities, i unreservedly recommend the Jazz - plus the Yaris looks like a frog thats been shunted up its rear end ;-)

there are a few driving around Phuket Town. I think they are Kelisas with a 1 litre engine. Would be dirt cheap to drive around town.

No idea how much one costs though.

so if all the bad guys ride motorbikes, how are the cops going to catch them?

MelP, glad to hear you got everything rebuilt and ready to open so quickly.

Jammin' is my favourite hangout in Town and was sad to hear of the fire.

It would be interesting to know if there is an increase in violent crimes against western foreigners, but i fail to see how you can gather any kind of accurate statistics on this?

If you can't all you would be left with is a load of hearsay and conjecture, which is not too different to what you have now.

For what its worth, I think there is probably an increase but this is probably proportional with the increase in number of western foreigners visiting and living in Thailand, as well as any increase in violent crime in Thailand in general.

pardon my ignorance but surely its quite hard to die while snorkelling? The article doesn't give any details.

I can recommend O.P. Thai Massage down the soi beside "Good Seafood" on Rat-U-Thit. Great oil massages.

The Metropole Hotel in Phuket Town also has excellent massages, and very reasonably priced too.

Whats a food massage? sounds messy.

I mean, fancy clubs and stuff...I'm just getting tired of going to touristic clubs and see only buggers and hookers

"buggers and hookers" - Bangkok in a nutshell

I dont know many Thai ppl who will go to Vachira unless they need something major and can't afford a private hospital.

Its not that they are bad per se, its just that they are overworked and understaffed. So u tend to get shunted in and out as quick as possible.

For simple things Mission Hospital is ok, and Siriroj (Phuket International Hospital) is good and not too expensive.

I used this site and its print publication a lot while i was in Beijing.

Thats BJ

Not strictly all of China but good nonetheless.

I guess it very much depends where you are located on the island.

I live in Phuket Town and have been using TOT's ADSL (1 meg) for about 18 months and am very happy. I think i've lost the connection probably about 6 times during the entire time, and on each occassion apart from once, it was fixed within a day.

I regularly download at 100KB/s (800Kb/s), no problems, although this is mostly in the evenings and at night. I rarely use it during the daytime so i can't really comment on that.

KSC are supposed to be very good, and are certainly expensive. However, we use a couple of their ADSL lines in the office in addition to our leased lines and some days they can be quite slow.

You might want to look into CSLoxinfo, also quite expensive.

toad in the hole

we've got the 19th off, Senate elections

If you have 1 million baht to spend, then buy a new Fortuner.

Some ok advice given in this thread and also some very bad advice.

If you're lucky, following it won't do anything at all, most likely it will permanently harm your website's rankings in the major search engines.

Before you consider hiring someone or trying to do it yourself, head over to Webmaster World dot com and browse through the "New to web development" forum, the Marketing World forum, and the Google world forum.

This will give you a starting point to understanding whats involved.

I don't know about northern plates but there are many cars here in the south with BKK plates, simply because many people buy their cars in Bangkok where its cheaper.