fxm88

...it is customary at year-end to offer gifts of some kind to people in positions like those of the staff who work here.

Don't forget that the Thai year ends in April.

The ILO classes unemployed people as those of working age who do not have paid employment or who are self-employed even though they actively seek work.

So then they're not including those who've given up looking for work, so-called "discouraged workers". I wonder how many of those there are in Thailand. And also the "underemployed" (although such a thing is hard to imagine given Thailand's 12-hour workdays.)

Be sure to check out this List of 538 causes of Diarrhea. (And be careful self-medicating: depending on what you've got, a too high dosage of antibiotic could result in the massive, sudden release of endotoxins from dying bacteria.)

Be careful. During the few months I spent living out in the provinces I noticed that many people took pride in serving rice "from this year" (meaning the most recent harvest, I assume). So you could have some difficulty finding buyers for your "old" rice.

You may wish to research the Agricultural Futures Exchange of Thailand (AFET). Or, if you are familiar with some farmers, you could see if they'll sell you some of next season's harvest for cash now -- if you can think of a way to guarantee the quality of what will get delivered to you.

Here's a literal translation: "Fits your face."

I liked this phrase so much better when I (mistakenly) thought it translated as "fix your water".

One nice thing about Cambodia is that the police or other government agents usually don't come around hassling anyone. In many ways, it is a true libertarian's paradise.

By the way the Thai fund TTF is breaking out to the upside. It seems to me this may be the start of a very positive year for Thailand. I have feeling the USD may see sub 30! Though I pray not.

How much currency hedging does TTF engage in? (Their prospectus only states that they "may enter into foreign currency exchange contracts".)

One could start with a simple blood-type match, which could rule yourself out as the father. All you need to know is the blood types of you, the cihld and the child's mother.

See http://teenadvice.about.com/od/teenfathers...nfathersFAQ.htm for details and a chart.

"Thailand's newly appointed Information and Communications Technology Minister has slammed open source software as useless and full of bugs: "With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated... As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away? Thailand can do good source code without open source." This marks a sharp u-turn in policy from that of the previous government."

Source: http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/11/16/0323202.shtml

You should buy some on 3rd Road, just north of Pattaya Klang. The area is primed to take off like a rocket -- get in now before the rush!

Did they release statistics as to how accurate their forecasts have been in the past?

Thailand Initiates Efforts to Be Asia’s Leading Wakeboarding Sport Destination

Thailand is set to show off again its ability to hold another world-class sport competition with the hosting of the final leg of the 3rd Asian Wakeboard Pro Tour from November 25-26, 2006, expecting the largest gathering of wakeboarders from across the region and beyond.

With the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) in full support of making the Kingdom a popular destination for wakeboarding competitions, holidays and trainings, the Asian Wakeboard Association has decided to celebrate its third year of success by holding the final stop of the tour at TE Wake & Ski, Prathum Thani, Thailand. The first two stops were held in Japan and Singapore, and the group has scheduled the event to be held annually every fall.

[continued here]

Hey! Does anyone know a shop that sells RC Tuk-tuks? (The one thing I'd actually buy doesn't seem to exist.) Thanks!

I recently saw a classified ad in the Bangkok Post looking for "Mystery Shoppers". Beware.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006...y_shoppers.html

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/mysteryalrt.htm

http://www.snopes.com/fraud/employment/shopper.asp

http://phoenix.about.com/od/scam1/a/mysteryshop.htm

Can one find kosher salt on Khao San road?

http://www.orchiddesigns.net/ArticlesTrave...s_Khao_San.html

My understanding is that the sub-surface temperature reflects the average surface temperature. If the average yearly surface temperature is hot, it won't be any cooler than that underground (and could even be warmer).

See also http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=747431

See also: Business cluster.

A) I CAN NOT apply in Thailand thru the Embassy (I saw where someone did a I-130 successfully here, but Ijust get grief from the embassy). I am mailing the papers to my mom today to send to Texas for me.

The I-130 is not submitted to the Embassy, but to the USCIS (their Bangkok office is in the Sindhorn office building, tower 2). Did the Embassy staff not tell you this?

Recently my Thai wife got a CR-1 (immigrant/spouse) visa to the the United States. We hired a visa consultant to help us, however it's a pretty simple process and I think you could do it without the aid of a professional. In fact, I would probably recommend against hiring a consultant (unless you really had some kind of special circumstance and even then I'm not sure if they'd be of any real help.)

My goal in hiring a consultant was to avoid mistakes and minimize aggravation. A couple years ago we I had a really unpleasant time trying to get a tourist visa for her, and I was not looking forward to dealing with the Embassy again.

The company we hired has offices in one of the office buildings near the embassy. About 40 people on staff and they seemed pretty busy. They also have an "office" here in Pattaya (really just a storefront that arranges the van to shuttle prospects and clients to the Bangkok office). They advertise a "no visa, no pay" guarantee, of course. A quick search of the Internet didn't turn up anything. So we hired them. We hired them to help us: get married, petition the USCIS, and apply for the visa. All that for only 60,000 baht.

The first thing they did was take us to get married. (My wife and I have been together for about 2.5 years and together we have a 1 year old baby, but we never bothered to get married. I'd even done the affidavit back when I applied for our kid's U.S. citizenship, but we never used it and now it was too old and we needed a new one.) Anyways, the staff spelled my name (in Thai) differently than the way it's spelled on our kid's birth certificate. We'd already supplied them with the birth certificate so they could easily have gotten it right. I don't know if this was a big problem or no problem at all but a few days later we were back to Bangkok, back in the government office, re-signing new papers. (At that time I didn't know that she could have kept her maiden name. Which would have been my preference. Had she not changed her name could we have skipped the trip to the passport office to get it changed in her passport? And the trip to her hometown to get it changed in her Tabien Baan? My wife assures me that "Miss" would still have had to have been changed to "Missus". In any case, I wasn't asked about it.)

The next step was submitting my I-130 petition to the USCIS in Bangkok. Although we'd arrived in the morning, the staff wanted us to submit the petition at 2pm. We suggested going earlier, but they insisted on 2pm, so we submitted the petition at 2pm. A few minutes before 3pm (did I mention this office closes at 3pm?) the petition was returned to us with with some minor mistakes highlighted. The mistakes were easily fixed but there was no time to fix them and also go to the embassy to pay the fee (you have to get the invoice before you can pay the fee) and come back with the receipt. So we spent an unplanned night in Bangkok (the shuttle bus already gone back to Pattaya earlier in the day) and resubmitted it the next day.

At this point I was starting to get disappointed in this comapny. I started doing more Internet research on them and found some potentially disturbing things. First, this company operates under 2 or 3 different names -- one is the lawyers office, another is their travel agency -- Not a big deal I guess, but everyone's business card has a different name on it, the shuttle van has a different name on it, etc. They have a number of websites and Internet domain names, too. (By the way, email to any of the "official" addresses went unanswered; if you wanted to make sure someone got an email you had to send it directly to that staff member's hotmail or AOL address.)

The most disturbing thing I found was that they also appeared to be running a sex-tourism business. To quote the website I found: "Our single-man tour program is exclusively organized for single men to join in and have a self-indulgent throughout the whole 10 days trip of paradise on earth participated with a lot of charming Thai ladies, who will fresh up your dull and boring lives. The tour averages 2 Thai ladies for every man attending and giving him a chance to meet a lady of his type and to keep on their intimate relationship after the tour program finishes." I never would have hired this company had I known about this and I cannot understand why they would jeopardize their legitimate business by even giving the appearance of being associated with this kind of business. (I looked up the domain registrations and it's in their "main" name like they didn't even try to hide it, and the webservers even have the same IP address.)

Another irritant was being hit up for money whenever their shuttle van took us to Bangkok. For example, the Embassy scheduled an interview for a Monday morning. Since we'd need to leave Pattaya extra early the company suggested that we pay 500 baht for "oil". (After going back and forth with them over the next 3 days they finally agreed to just let us pay the motorway tolls and it didn't seem to make any difference to them that our second 30,000 baht payment hinged on us making it to this interview.)

So in the end it saved us neither time nor trouble: for sure we would have made mistakes, but they made mistakes that we arguably would not have made; and dealing with this company was probably as much hassle as dealing with the embassy. I would recommend doing it yourself (and treat yourself to taxis back and forth to Bangkok.) Although, if you're not physically present in Thailand I'm not sure what your alternatives are.

I haven't mentioned the name of this company. Maybe I should have but my guess is that most of these companies are about the same (if you PM me I can supply you with this detail). If you do hire a consultant be real, real careful about who you choose (try Googling for their phone number: web domains are cheap and e-mail addresses are basically free but phonelines can still cost real money) and even then you should probably still expect trouble. In any case, I wish you good luck!

There are only two rows of 25 metal chairs in this whole massive area, unless you sit at a bar or eaterie.

Is one allowed to sit on the floor? Or is it like Hualamphong where the police periodically come around and make people stand up?

I don't get it. What's Thailand got to do with hamburgers?

(Instead of making the biggest, maybe they could try making regular ones that don't taste like #%@&?)

The reason why he is in trouble is because what he did contravened Section 34 of the Thai Constitution law which states:

Hmmm... I don't see anything about "family rights, dignity, reputation or his right to privacy shall be protected" in the Constitution.

From http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2006/10/02...es_30015101.php

Article 34. For the purpose of maintaining public order and national security, there shall be the Council for National Security consisting of members as stipulated by the 24th announcement of the Council for Democratic Reform dated September 29 B.E. 2549.

The Chairman of the Council for National Security appoints no more than 15 members of the Council for National Security.

...

Are you talking about the big truck engines? If you are in Bangkok you may find many places working on these engines in the Sam Yan neighborhood (in the area between the National Stadium and Rama IV Road, not far from the Sam Yan metro station). According to a report at http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/31/where...lands_hybr.html

"It's not well known that those boats originate from a change in the British government's motor vehicle Construction and Use Regulations in the late 1960s. What with the new motorway construction programme well under way, the (largely old) truck fleet had begun to get in the way. So the then Ministry of Transport introduced a minimum power-to-weight ratio. This meant that a ton of trucks with Gardner LX 105hp (mostly) or Perkins P4 engines suddenly became obsolete..."

Or are you talking about the small engines? In which case something like these Yanmar horizontal water-cooled diesels may be what you're looking for.

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