mfd101

I am about to turn 67. My partner is about to turn 27. We've been together 4 years and happily married for 3. He was poor and comes from a very poor, mostly illiterate Isaan family. I am, by Thai standards, "rich".

Hope that's OK with everyone.

In fact people as young as 15 can marry if the parents agree but the matter may need to be ratified by a court so it is clearly understood that both sides agree. Permission in such cases might be given when a pregnancy is involved.

I would've though a lengthy jail sentence would be given if a pregnancy was involved in a 15 year old's marriage...

The legal age of consent is 15.

The authorities in Thailand are mostly lenient towards the fathers of too young mothers if he marries the girl and takes care of her and the kid. In any case, that's a much better alternative for the child than having no money and a father in prison.

It's important to understand also that less than 50 years ago, it was very common for girls in rural Thailand to marry and get children around the age of 15, and the husband was very often much older than her, like between 25 and 40. There were many advantages to solutions like that, not least the fact that he was more mature and had the financial means to take care of his wife. Don't expect Thailand to suddenly follow our western norms in all areas. It's a sovereign country after all.

The moralizers should also keep - or gain - an historical perspective in all this. Until the early 1900s the age of consent (whether to sex or to marriage) in almost all 'Western' countries was in the range 10-12. None were over 13.

You could do a border hop or an out and back by air just before October 12 to get a new 12 month entry and then get a re-entry permit for your trip in November.

Yes, that's pretty-well what I'm thinking. I live in south Surin so only a hop step & a jump across the Cambodian border by car, then reentry permit before trip back to Oz & NZ in early Nov.

Cheers

Your plan is sound. Take US$ for the Cambodian visa to save a bit of money.

Yes, I've been to Siem Reap a couple of times in the last 4 years (both times by air from BKK) so I know the drill. My partner says Let's do 2 or 3 nights in Singapore. Sigh! depends on the funds ... We will have just moved (July, I hope) into our new house currently abuilding in Prasat so it may be Cambodia as the cheapest option!

You could do a border hop or an out and back by air just before October 12 to get a new 12 month entry and then get a re-entry permit for your trip in November.

Yes, that's pretty-well what I'm thinking. I live in south Surin so only a hop step & a jump across the Cambodian border by car, then reentry permit before trip back to Oz & NZ in early Nov.

Cheers

OK, thanks to both. So I need to change my travel plans which is easily doable at this early stage.

I'm on a Non-Immigrant O-A multiple-entry visa, issued in Canberra on 13 October 2015. The visa in my p/p says: Enter before 12 October 2016.

I entered Thailand with my Thai partner on 22 November 2015, as displayed on the TM6 departure card. The stamp in my p/p, dated 22Nov15, says: "Admitted until 20 Nov 2016".

I have been assuming the 'end date' is 20 Nov this year and that, by doing some foreign travel in the couple of weeks before then, but returning to Thailand before 20 Nov, I would (1) not need any reentry permit because it's a multiple entry visa, and (2) would automatically receive a 12-month extension of stay without having to do the retirement conversion till Nov 2017.

Is that correct?

Thanks for clarification.

When my partner (male) and I got married in a village ceremony in 2013, his Mum wanted 200,000฿. I said: Well I'm already building you a house costing me 1.5M. What do you want, house or dowry?

There was much cackling of laughter at this and we settled on 100,000. All fine.

I'm surprised she had the nerve to ask. I'm surprised you were foolish enough to shell out anything on top of US $50K, or even that you copped that.

I guess different people have different views on what's important in life, and on how to maintain a marriage, and on how to live in a foreign culture ...

I guess different people want to be ripped off by mercenary in laws.

I've lived in several Asian countries, Indonesia, Cambodia, Japan, and respect their culture, but I don't have to adopt it, e.g., in Japan I refused to bow to anyone, and asked that they not bow to me. I felt uncomfortable having people bowing. It's just not my culture. Even the Japanese realize it's an anachronistic practice, and it happens less often in modern Japan.

In Indonesia, and Thailand, I'm happy not to point as westerners do with a forefinger, summon somebody with my hand pointing upwards, or point my feet toward anyone, because they feel it's offensive. I can't subscribe to the dowry/sin sod thing because whilst there is nothing offensive about it to them, it is offensive TO ME!!! They don't seem to respect my culture????

If a westerner has to continually shell out to maintain his marriage, he's nuts, and the wife/family is using him as an ATM.

Go ahead suckers, pay a fortune for a (perhaps former, if you're lucky) bar girl. It's not my way.

Interesting how many correspondents on this site do such a wonderful impression of being mean, miserable and malevolent old men, boasting of their cynicism and selfishness. I suppose it's just part of the usual cocktail circuit routine and in real life they're really kind, gentle and generous husbands and fathers.

When my partner (male) and I got married in a village ceremony in 2013, his Mum wanted 200,000฿. I said: Well I'm already building you a house costing me 1.5M. What do you want, house or dowry?

There was much cackling of laughter at this and we settled on 100,000. All fine.

I'm surprised she had the nerve to ask. I'm surprised you were foolish enough to shell out anything on top of US $50K, or even that you copped that.

I guess different people have different views on what's important in life, and on how to maintain a marriage, and on how to live in a foreign culture ...

I reckon that "maintaining a marriage" requires an equal contribution from both parties. Presumably your partner, being male, has made a significant contribution to your parents' lifestyle?

So if I give my partner toast with marmalade for breakfast today, he has to give me toast with marmalade tomorrow?

When my partner (male) and I got married in a village ceremony in 2013, his Mum wanted 200,000฿. I said: Well I'm already building you a house costing me 1.5M. What do you want, house or dowry?

There was much cackling of laughter at this and we settled on 100,000. All fine.

I'm surprised she had the nerve to ask. I'm surprised you were foolish enough to shell out anything on top of US $50K, or even that you copped that.

I guess different people have different views on what's important in life, and on how to maintain a marriage, and on how to live in a foreign culture ...

When my partner (male) and I got married in a village ceremony in 2013, his Mum wanted 200,000฿. I said: Well I'm already building you a house costing me 1.5M. What do you want, house or dowry?

There was much cackling of laughter at this and we settled on 100,000. All fine.

Here in southern Surin yesterday, after about 2 hours of strong winds & thunder & lightening starting about 1800, we finally got torrential rain for around 45 minutes then nice steady rain for another couple of hours. Lovely.

I used King & Wilson in Canberra to pack & store my household goods last November. Not cheap but excellent service & good people to deal with. Still in storage in Canberra. Am building a house in Prasat Surin so will know soon how it all goes when I give them the go-ahead to despatch. From memory, about 21 cu.m.

Vasu is what I use (Sukhumvit Rd). Better rate than any bank. Haven't ever used SuperRich but I assume they would be comparable.

A wonderful writer.

Needless to say, the Swedes wouldn't dream of giving the Nobel for Literature to him or any other major US writer (Bellow, Roth, Cormac McCarthy ... ). The provincialism of Little Europe.

I've experienced this in a house on the edge of a small village. Sometimes the aircon trips the CB and other times it doesn't.

The electrician said there was nothing he could do about it. He said it was power drop due to the house location.

I had a similar problem when we decided (belatedly) to install a/c in our 2-year-old house down the end of a dirt road at the end of the world. We had to pay for extra or heavier electricity cables for the last 20 or so metres with nice new concrete power poles to enhance the scenery. Can't remember the technical details nor the cost but it didn't break the bank & works fine (1 large unit, one smallish).

Lucky Sod.....check her out in Tokyo Hunter

Why LUCKY, she is probably going to fleece him of everything he has.

Then move on to the next SUCKER.

For SURE not a LOVE marriage.

And how is that different from bourgeois marriage of 50 or 100 years ago? or indeed of many 'Western' marriages today?

Cynical and exploitative attitudes towards others tend to be reciprocated. So too do decency, honesty & trustworthiness.

Debating the meaning of 'Third World' is pointless as the meanings of words are arbitrary and they evolve over time.

In any case, people discuss the matter as though it were 'All or Nothing'. The reality of course is that most countries of any size - yes, even the wunnerful USofA - have 1st, 2nd and 3rd-world characteristics in different parts both geographically and socially (laterally & vertically). The former Soviet Union was a classic case, as is China ... if you travel west in China, the further you go, the further back in time you go. When I was there in 2010 I saw in Xinjiang province men riding on white donkeys (a kind of Biblical scene) and women hoeing the fields by hand. But then, in the middle of nowhere, there would be a 20- or 25-storey accommodation building.

My limited experience of Putin's Russia suggests that '3rd World' would be a pretty good description of most places outside of Moscow & Petersburg. In Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) I have seen the 'best' accommodation block in town - a horrid old brick building constructed by German POWs in the late 1940s! Try staying in a good hotel in Petersburg & you'll find it was built or remodeled by Germans over the last 20 years. But the maintenance is in Russian hands, which is very like maintenance in Thailand ... a piece of string & a sledgehammer.

Well drilling, desalination, tanker truck hire near any uncontrolled fresh water source. and owning an uncontrolled fresh water source if you can find one Whatever you do you are not going to be popular with anyone. Perhaps we have a troll post here???

Not everyone is (as yet) short of water, or indeed unpopular. As I have mentioned in a previous post on water shortage, my family happens to live beside a hardly-at-all controlled fresh water lake which has fallen about 1" in the last 4 or 5 months. Fish ponds & ducks are doing very nicely.

Somehow I don't think planting tomatoes and zucchini will be a great substitute for rice in the Thai diet.

Of course, it's too hard to admit that their water management systems aren't even on a par with 5th century Europe.

Of course it is equally hard for some people to accept and understand that the current government has inherited decades of inefficient water management from many previous governments, who over those decades did very little to improve the system.

The current government is damned by many for not fixing 20 or 30 years of problems in a couple of years, compounded of course by the prolonged El Nino drought which I am sure people want to blame them for also.

Whilst it is good for some people to blame the current government for all the ills and woes in much the same way that other posters blame Thaksin for all the corruption for the past 15 years or so.

Until ALL the Thai people are treated the same and work together for the benefit of ALL the Thai people, little will be achieved in the way of progress.

You can slag off the PM all you like but he is right in saying that many Thai farmers need to change their ways. Doing things the old way doesn't seem to work any more.

For example Vietnam produces far more rice than Thailand per rai so IMO Thailand should send farmers to Vietnam to see how they can produce more for less.

Changing crops for those which use less water is a good idea BUT simply saying so does not make it so.

The questions to ask are, what to change to, what is the market like, can farmers make a profit with a new crop, what help can the government give apart from money? Should farmers build and run their own co-operatives? If so who can manage it openly and honestly.

Instead of making sarcastic remarks, why not think it through and come up with your own ideas what where and how things can be changed.

A great deal depends on particular circumstances for individual farmers or families.

My partner's family had only ever done subsistence farming until recently, growing only a small amount of rice for family consumption, with some fruits & vegies similarly, a small sugar crop for market, and surviving - like so many in the village - on subsidies from occasional jobs & offspring in BKK, then, from 2012, from falang boyfriend namely me. As El Nino started to threaten Australia early last year with promise for worse to come for SEAsia, I suggested to them that they needed to think thru their alternatives, noting that they live beside a large artificial lake which stole half the farm when the dam was built some 20 or more years ago. What can you do with plenty of water? Well, you can produce two things in constant local demand with no reducing prices such as with rice or sugar or rubber: namely, ducks & fish.

The younger ones were receptive to this way of thinking, and their old dad was too. 18 months later, and with continuing but reducing subsidies from me, we can't keep up with the demand for our fat juicy ducks (Army arrives 2 or 3 times a week to buy 2 or 5 or more, neighbours every day too). And we put in a large fishpond reclaimed from the lake [expensive earthworks] to supplement the small ponds they already have: several thousand fish are now nearing marketable size.

The lesson from this is that people are not against learning new tricks, even people with low or zero levels of education. They just need a practical way forward and that is simply not available to most poor farmers everywhere in Thailand: first they need the concepts, then they need some investment monies and practical resources (and not just water), then growing self-confidence and willingness to try new things will flow. Which is where government & collective efforts can make all the difference. But it requires leadership & persistence. At the local level, that means village headpersons assisted & advised by proactive government agencies ... I don't think this has to be a pipe dream. It can be done, and there are probably better and more generally appiicable examples than mine already out there. The government's job is one of leadership but to expect governments to do everything is silly - it's not desirable even if they had the capacity. It's local leadership, courage and concepts that's required more than centralized command & control.

For general information as may be useful:

I entered Thailand in November last year on a 12-month ME non-immigrant O-A visa [planning retirement extension this next November]. Last Monday I went to the Kap Choeng Immigration office here in Surin for my 1st-ever 90-day reporting exercise. Having spent most of my adult life as a bureaucrat I had all the requisite papers ready: p/p & copies of 3 pages, T28 filled out, T6 stamped departure card, 4 photos and, in case of need, copy of an AIS bill with my name & address on it. I had pestered my Thai partner over some time to get me registered on the family house book or a T28 or a T18 form or whatever [we're living at the family farm while our new house is being constructed], but to no avail. Still, I wasn't worried because I had filled out the full farm address on the entry form at Suwannapum last November and, apart from a couple of short hotel stays in BKK since then, hadn't changed address. I had also offered thru my partner's policeman BIL to go to the local cop shop to register my presence but they weren't interested either.

We arrived at 0825, 5 minutes before opening. Office already open, waited 2 minutes for 1 person ahead of me (Cambodian, I think) to be barked at & dismissed. Then my turn. Immi Police Capt not interested in anything except my p/p. Entered details on computer & handed p/p back. I asked him if he wanted to keep my beautifully organized papers which he had barely glanced at. He said no, but then - thru my partner - directed us to next door to get my address properly registered.

Next door took a few minutes to get organized and then more minutes to stare at his computer. Only question was to ask for my email address. End result: No sweat but my partner must accompany each time for 90-days reporting to attest that I'm actually living where I say I am (or can be done on computer if you don't have a Mac, which I do, and he gave us a pwd for that purpose). All seemed fine to me. Out of there in less than 30 minutes. I propose to keep bringing the requisite papers on each 90-days just in case, even if never actually used - better safe than sorry and no big deal to organize from now on. Once we move to our new house in mid-year, we assume that I will be registered on the new house book.

Having read on TV the assorted threats & horrors involved in these matters over many months, this was a considerable relief. Feeling I can relax about it all from now on.

I'm in southern Surin province (Phanom Dong Rak area) and there are certainly plenty of earwigs around at the moment, including in the house (family farm, modern Western-style house). Not quite plague proportions (that would be the small ants that get into everything in the kitchen if it's not in the fridge) but quite noticeable - and I've never noticed them before, say 6 months ago.