iainiain101

Your first songkran will be a blast, if you are under 30, but after the first one, you will want to escape to somewhere with a little less sanook.

I have to disagree with the above. I had my first Chiang Mai Songkran three years ago aged 40 and loved it.

If you have not tried it, I would recommend hiring a Tuk Tuk with the roof removed and a large bin of ice water in the back. Ths is a great journey round the moat, and appart from the soaking, it is the only time that I have really seen Chiang Mai above the 1st floor of buildings, as I am above 150cm in height and am usually just looking at the inside of a Tuk Tuk roof!

Looking forward to it.

Iain

I am starting to build up quite a value in house contents in Chiang Mai and would like to get some insurance against theft, fire, and flooding if possible.

Anyone have any experience or suggestions of companies and cost?

Thanks

Iain

Good as collecting yourself. Some in the frige for the morning. Vindaloo before golf.

The missus loved the Aloo Gobi!

just arrived, now for the tasting!

I think we are missing a trick here. The value of a good cuury house is also in the delivery service. I apperntly have been drinkin to much of late and am currently watching the League Cup final at home. Dont really care for either team, but good excuse for a curry delivery....

The missus has agreed as long as she gets an Aloo Gobi and vegi curry, so giving the Le Spice a go! Ordered 5 minutes ago.....

Iain

I was a bit confsed..devout monger so I looked it up..

mon·ger (mnggr, mng-)

n.

1. A dealer in a specific commodity. Often used in combination: an ironmonger.

2. A person promoting something undesirable or discreditable. Often used in combination: a scandalmonger; a warmonger.

tr.v. mon·gered, mon·ger·ing, mon·gers

To peddle.

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I assume it is neither of the above, and you are using the English slang of someone being a 'Monger', as in bad looking, a bit of a Mongrel. Thailand is probably not your best bet if you are into ugly women!!!

Iain

Well I was eating out last night and on my 4th large Heineken before anyone even mentioned a booze ban! I wont reveal the venue, as will be going back tonight!

The missus and I have spent the last 3 weeks looking at over 25 houses around CM through both agents, friends and ones we found ourselves.

We wanted 3 bedrooms, one bathroom to have a tub, a western style kitchen and not too far out of town (say 2-5 km). Not all easy to find in the same house!

Firstly all adverts refer to room numbers and not size. We saw 3 bedroom houses from 7k to 25k Baht per month, and these would vary in size from 90 sq m to 335 sq m. There is vast differences in the inteiors as well. some would need a months work to make habitable. No aircon and outside kitchen cooking areas are common.

The properties varied so greatly that the rent expectancies seemed almost justifiable.

I started to work on the basis of what they where asking for to sell the proerty, or what they claimed to have paid for the land and building it for new ones.

I found that 0.4% of the asking price / cost seemed to be a good indication of monthly rent. ie. a 3 bed house down the Lampun Road that cost 2m Baht for the land and build would cost around 8k baht per month. a 3 bed house near Chiang Mai Land for sale at 6M Baht was being quoted at 25k Baht per month ( or 0.416%) I choose these examples as they were both direct with the owners and in excellent / new condition.

This rule semed to work quite well until the property value increased and an owners return would decrease. We saw one, unfortunately well out of our range, 4 bedrooms, about 300 m frm the city walls (outside) and 12m Baht to buy or 35k per month to rent. (0.291%)

I agree to be very wary of agents. They can help in finding properties if you dont have the time, but will invariably be trying to 'shaft' you. Try to meet the owners if you can.

We unfortunately were in a hurry....met the owner 20 minutes too late and confirmed my general distrust of Antipodeans!

Iain

Tried the Muslim one last Apil whilst 'wetting my babies head'. Recall it being excellent, though was rather the worse for wear to be sure. Have tried to confirm my judgement, but it has allways been closed when I have gone back. I think the answer is to get a 4pm start on the beer, then pitch up there around 10 ish.

Not allowed so many afternoon sessions having a familly now!

Iain

I notice from the Le Spice menu that they offer free home delivery on orders of over 250 Baht. Has anyone used this as a way of getting a lift home with a curry and saving on a tuk-tuk?

I tried the Curry Pot in Central, but was disapointed. I like my chicken off the bone, and felt the curry was purely there to disguise the poor quality of the meat!

Back in CM for 3 weeks now and discovered Le Spice. Excellent food, half the cost of the one I used to use above McDonalds. Happy to deliver take aways to what ever bar you are in!

Just finished a chicken vindaloo with bombay potato for breakfast that i had from there! Thats made up for the poor valentines size set meal of last night!

The father can leave Thailand with his daughter using a UK passport without the mother or her permission.

He will however be stopped at immigration as his daughters passport will not have a Thai date of entry stamp in it. He is then required to show the Thai birth certificate and will be allowed to leave with his daughter. (allow an extra 20 minutes or so while all the correct stamps are found)

Iain

Consumers feeling the helium squeeze

The gas that floats balloons also powers industrial and scientific projects. And it's disappearing fast.

By Bob Secter | Tribune staff reporter

November 5, 2007

Helium is the talk of the party balloon industry these days, and it is not a discussion being carried out in high-pitched giggles.

The second most plentiful element in the universe is suddenly in short supply on this planet, and that means soaring prices for a lot of things, balloons included.

"Some customers have told me they're just not going to sell balloons anymore because they can't get helium," said Chicago party wholesaler Lee Kaufman. "Everybody's scrambling."

As raw materials crises go, the helium shortage clearly takes a back seat to the global oil crunch. But the repercussions go well beyond the cost of decorating for birthdays or bar mitzvahs, while also shining a light on an obscure federal helium program that has proved critical to feeding the world's growing appetite.

To most of us, helium is just a novelty gas that floats blimps, bobs huge latex whales over car dealers and when inhaled makes your voice sound like Daffy Duck's. (That, by the way, is a really bad idea that could lead to a collapsed lung, experts say.)

But demand for the gas has taken off in industry and scientific research in recent years, and the helium squeeze is being felt everywhere from university physics labs to plants in India, China, Taiwan and Korea that make today's hottest consumer products. Japanese helium suppliers recently warned customers in the electronics industry to prepare for supply cuts of up to 30 percent.

Helium is less dense than air, which explains why it makes balloons rise and voices squeak. Sound waves travel faster through it.

It is also noncombustible and can be liquefied to temperatures approaching absolute zero, properties that render it ideal for cooling metals that produce superconductivity or in processes that throw off a lot of heat. It is used to make flat-panel TVs, semiconductors, optical fibers and medical MRIs, and it toughens industrial welds. NASA uses a full train-car load to pressurize a liquid fuel rocket.

Though it plans to get out of the business, the U.S. government is the world's No. 1 source, sucking helium out of a Texas reservoir it began filling after World War I when dirigibles were thought to be the coming thing in transportation and warfare.

That stockpile will be empty in a decade, and new overseas sources have been slow to develop. "We're pedaling as fast as we can here, but we just can't produce enough," said Leslie Theiss, manager of the Federal Helium Reserve near Amarillo. "One-third of the world's helium comes from our little place here. That's kind of frightening."

In today's increasingly interdependent global marketplace, the balloon business finds itself at the bottom of the helium supply chain. What began as spot shortages last year have grown chronic this year, said Kaufman, president of the International Balloon Association, a party industry trade group.

Kaufman is also co-owner of M.K. Brody Co., a party wholesaler on West Randolph Street, which often goes through 100 cylinders of helium in a week. The firm's distributor recently put it on a weekly allotment of just 33 cylinders.

A standard tank with enough helium to fill 400 average-size balloons cost $40 five years ago but $88 today, Kaufman said. And he's been told to expect another 50 percent price hike before Christmas.

Cindi Cronin, who runs a Northwest Side party decor business, said it's become kind of a scavenger hunt lately to find helium. To stretch her supplies and save money, Cronin has started diluting the helium in balloon decorations with 40 percent air. "They still float, but not as long," she explained.

Helium is abundant but unreachable in space, a byproduct of the nuclear fusion of stars. On earth, however, it may be the Rodney Dangerfield of elements, not getting the respect it deserves and serving as fodder for a myriad of lame science jokes:

"Have you heard the one about the chemist who was reading a book about helium and just couldn't put it down?"

It is locked largely in natural-gas deposits and typically found only at trace levels too expensive to strip out and refine.

By a quirk of geology, however, some natural-gas fields in this country are blessed with robust helium concentrations. And that has made the U.S. to helium production what Saudi Arabia is to oil.

Some of the richest sources are in the Texas Panhandle, and that is where the federal government began stockpiling the gas in 1925, long before the rest of the world took much notice of helium.

The Texas reservoir is in a geologic structure called the Bush Dome, which is not named for those Texas Bushes. The dome lies beneath the site of a ranch once owned by William Henry Bush, a 19th Century Chicago haberdasher whose father-in-law in DeKalb held the patent on a new fencing product called barbed wire. Bush was dispatched to the rangeland around Amarillo to test its effectiveness.

In the 1990s, Congress decided the government should get out of the helium business. Federal law requires the stockpile to be completely sold off in about 10 years, though it might be depleted by then anyway.

While exploration for new sources continues in several parts of the world, for the most part private industry has been slow to pick up the slack. New production facilities in the Middle East have been plagued with problems and not produced hoped-for yields.

"Demand is increasing overseas and people are starting to get nervous," said Maura Garvey, director of market research for Cryogas International, a Massachusetts-based trade journal that closely follows helium markets. She predicts helium supplies will remain tight through at least 2010 and possibly well beyond.

After that the picture is unclear. There is no practical way to create new helium, and back in Amarillo, Theiss fears the day of reckoning for world supplies may be coming faster than for oil or other nonrenewable commodities.

And that could take the air out of many birthday parties.

"To our knowledge, nothing has been discovered to date that has the reserves we have here," she said.

"Exports have increased 50 percent in the last five years. If you've got a finite amount and a lot more suddenly starts going overseas, do the math. It's not going to be good when we're done here."

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You may be entitled to receive NHS treatment, but you will be required to pay for it if you are on a visitors visa.

Iain

I have just heard on the BBC that the UK Visitor Visa is to be reduced from 6 to 3 months maximum as part of the new immigration rules.

Any idea when this would come into force?

Iain

I used this flight in March. I was trying to book with Hong Kong Express online from the UK, but couldnt. Their UK agent suggested I fly Thai via Bangkok!

I eventually managed to book the flight via Opodo.com

It was a very good service. But only had 4 passengers, so not sure it is still running!

Iain

I hope this is a quick 'question' that I can get confirmation on...

My Thai gf and I have a 6 month old baby and I am named on the Thai birth certificate as the father. We are all currently in the UK, but plan on spending a few months in Thailand next year. I am under 50 and a UK citizen.

I am assuming I can apply for the Non Imm O Visa as the babies father whilst in the UK and then this will allow me up to 3 months stay in Thailand? Is that the maximum stay or could I extend by leaving and returning to Thailand?

Will I have a problem if I travel on a single (one way) ticket?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Iain

Thats the one, the Taj.

I agree, you do need to ask them to really spice up the food.

I find it one of the most annoying things about Thailand, the general belief that westeners do not like hot food!

I thoght you had to be aged 50+ for the 'no imm visa type o'.

Am I wrong on this?

Thanks

Iain

My personal favourite curry house in Chiang Mai is the one above Macdonalds in the night market. I have been going there for about 2 1/2 years now when I am in CM, but cant remember the name now!

Only issue I have is that they usually close before midnight.

I have got into the habit of ordering a take away and having it delivered to the Red Lion!

I have allways enjoyed the Spag Bog at the Red Lion. Simple but good.

Iain

On the visitor visa, apply as a familly visit, mention the two children are travelling, but do not need a visa. The form does not cater for this, but I was told to mention our child, and we got the missus a visa.

I assume you will be acting as your wifes sponsor, and mention of the children should help with the application.

Iain

Now that the missus is over, can we get Thai TV via internet or satelite in the UK?

Bit off topic, sorry

Iain

I have been through a similar process recently. A couple of things to remember:

Both parents have to be present for the Thai passport to be issued to the baby.

If the baby leaves Thailand on a British passport, then you must have the Thai Birth Certificate with you. (allow extra time at immigration)

For a British passport the photograph of the baby must be signed by a UK national of 'good charachter' (accountant, policeman etc.) to verify the true likeness, who has know you for a few years. - not the easiest thing to achieve!

We waited three months to fly, with me coming back to the UK and then returning to collect them. 3 months seems to be the general advice for no harm coming to young children flying.

Iain