cheshiremusicman

Greetings all,

I'm not a farmer by far, but greatly enjoy reading the posts here.

Out of curiosity, has anyone got experience with neem trees in Thailand? The Thai name is "sadao".

It's a tree from India with drought resistance and insecticide properties:

* The leaves can be ground and mixed with water to spray as a bio-pesticide.

* The seeds can be pressed to extract oil that may be used in cosmetics.

* The cake residue from oil extraction can be used as fertilizer, again with pesticide properties.

Young shoots can also be used for cooking. The taste is bitter, but reportedly good for health.

In a previous life I have seen some in the sahel region south of Sahara, and wonder how easy or difficult they are to grow in Thailand.

Pete

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neem_tree

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neem_Cake

The day people starting growing extra heads and other deformities after 20 years of having these radio waves belting through their brain cells will be an interesting one indeed...

Yes I reckon that the jury is still out on this issue. But it stands to reason that the 'longer brain tissue is exposed to RF' the more chance there is of damage in the longterm. Who knows what the longterm cumulative effects of mobiles will have, particularly on youngsters who have grown-up clutching one to their ear from a very tender age?

Suppose that the only good thing is that, the more of them there are, the more repeater stations we see and thus mobiles will work on lower output powers. Don't know if manufacturers are actively working on this scenario as yet, and it might be that when research comes up with positive proof that they can be dangerous in the longterm maybe they will take this line of approach in new models.

Just what the heck did we all do before mobiles???

I wonder how much time teens in the USA, Europe and Australia spend on cell phones?

Hi tc101,

Probably as much-or longer; to answer your question!

My wife and I, are shortly moving to live in Hua-Hin and we couldn't help but notice, that whilst we have been 'shopping' the assistants (nearly all teenagers) seem to remain in a huddle and when not talking to themselves are on their mobiles. Can't beleive that employers in Europe would allow them to even use there private mobiles whilst in the store, nevermind spending hours on them.

Ah well!!! relax I'm going to be living in Thailand- and boy are we glad.

The reason for the title of this post in case anyone was mildly interested is, when we arrived at BKK, we were waiting at the carousel for our luggage, I was concerned that the cats were going to be put on the carousel (It has a ruthless drop at one point) so I asked a lady to find the whereabouts of my cats, she went off and after some time she returned running towards me shouting "We have found your cats, sir........ and they alive!!! " What a Bonus! Welcome to LOS

I'm delighted to hear that your two cats arrived safe and sound in LOS.

I am in the process of arranging for my own two cats to be flown out to BKK with myself and my wife early in the new year.

Please can you tell me if you managed to obtain the 'Import permit' before you arrived in Thailand or did you fill this in at BKK airport when you arrived, I have tried to find info on this but it seems to be very confusing. From what I can glean the permit is only obtainable when you arrive, but I would like to get this confirmed.

When you checked your cats in for the flight did you have to check them in at the 'cargo' area or did they get checked in along with your cases etc? Again I have heard conflicting stories with regard to this. We will be travelling from Manchester Intnl airport via Abu Dhabi and have obtained IATA approved flight containers for the two cats. What advice did you receive about feeding and watering the cats prior to the flight? We have bought 'Drip' water feeders - the ones with the vertical container and tube at the bottom, don't really know what to do about food, some advice says feed them 6 hours prior to travelling and not during the flight - any advice would be most appreciated.

Did your cats seem to be affected by the 'heat' when they arrived - coming from the UK as they did?

I neglected to mention it, but I didn't pay any "tea money" - not a single baht.

Hi 'backflip'

What was your secret re the "no tea money", did you have a work permit or something that gave you exemption? Or do you know someone that I don't ( and that wouldn't be hard)!

Hi, I used Allied Pickfords when I moved some household goods to Sisaket from England.They did a door to door service,very efficient and reasonable price. You will certainly have to pay customs Tea money, my 13 boxes cost me 12000 baht tea money.

Hi , Thanks for that info re AlliedPickfords. I was not aware that they existed outside of the UK until I saw one of there vans in HH.

Did you have to turn up in person at the Customs house or did the agent sort it all for you and just deliver all your 13 boxes to you new address in Sisaket?

Forgive my ignorance but whereabouts in LOS is this located

Thanks 'Cobber', I've been told the same by a freind in HH.

We will probably be shipping a 20 foot container and if we have to pay 50,000 Baht then so be it - doesn't seem as though there is much choice, as we have virtually decided what we are bringing out with us.

All I can say is, they must have a varacious appetite for 'TEA' !

Any suggestions as to who to use as our AGENT in BKK. We are thinking of using AlliedPickfords to do the shipping and don't know who they use as an agent, or suppose that they probably have there own. We don't know if some of them have a more 'solid/understanding' relationship with the Customs officials than others.

Personally I do not think it is worth having expensive furniture here. What with the heat and humidity, termites, wasps making holes for eggs , gecko poo and other local problems. I buy cheap, but maybe that sums me up. Don`t trust local removers with your cut glass.

Any way enjoy your retirement in L.O.S

Thanks for the comments 'Lite Beer'. When I say 'expensive' I am not talking about antique furniture, just 'good quality veneered funiture' with a bit of weight in it. It didn't cost a fortune when we bought it all that number of years ago, but it still looks 'classy' and suprisingly, not really dated. We just thought it would look nice in our new house against the tiled floor and complement the furniture that we have decided to buy in Thailand.

The only really nice, 'solid looking' furniture, that appealed to us, was in one very nice shop in BKK, but when we enquired about the prices we made a very hastey retreat to the exit door. I think that we were the only people she had seen all day and now I know why!

Anybody know of a good carpenter (and I mean Carpenter, not chippy!) in the Hua-Hin area or nearby?

Re application for 'Retirement visa', some personal info from my own experience in Hua-Hin in the last month.

My wife and I recently applied for our retirement visas at the Immigration Office in HH, having obtained our 'police records' in the UK cost £10 (7,000Baht each),and had them both 'Notarised' at cost of some £100 (70,000Baht). The 'Notarised' documents were then required to be 'Legalised' at the Thai Embassy in Hull at a cost of £25 each (17,000Baht). We obtained our 'Multiple Entry Visas' at the same time at £100 each (£90+£10 for applying 'in person' at Hull) and off we went to Thailand clutching all our papers!

Arrived at the Immigration Dept in HH, who were extremely helpful and told us to come back the next day with our documents and a single copy of every page of our passports.

We had deposited 1.8m Bathts by Telex transfer into our bank account (opened January 2006), the previous day or two - late, because of a problem with the Siam Bank not transfering the money into our joint account because, I (like many foreigners) have a 'middle name', which they took for my surname and therefore could not find the correct account - even though they had all the other details correctly- so another lesson learnt; do not use your middle name on any documents unless strictly necessary, otherwise it will cause confusion in Thailand.

We duly had all the passport pages copied and presented ourselves at the Immigration Dept the next day.

The officer looked at our page copies of our passports and told us they were not necessary and then proceeded to go away and copy the one and only page he was interested in - the page with the picture on and gave us all our copies back. He inspected our passbook, along with the letter from the bank we had obtained the previous day, confirming that the amount in the passbook was correct ( which if I remember correctly cost us the princely sum of 200 Baht). He then came to the very costly 'Police records' and gave us this funny quizical look-"What are these for he asked? I don't need them!" - Well, if you could have seen our faces ! What a waste of time, effort and money.

He looked carefully at the 'Bank deposit' and all the other bits and pieces, that we had filled in and was just about to give us the 'Retirement Visa's' when - Sorry, you cannot have the RV's, because you have not been in the Kingdom 60 days- after which we can apply-Unfortunately we were only going to be in the Kingdom for a max of 28 days.

So folks, here we are back in the UK, just sorting out our belongings to be shipped to Thailand and our new house/retirement in HH.

I can only say that the Immigration Dept at HH were extremely courteous and helpful and I don't beleive that you would have any problems dealing with them from our own experience,as long as you have all the necessary documents. I'll do another post when we have applied again after the 60 days.

P.S. Again, as mentioned in previous posts, and I make no apology for reiterating this as we were confused about this. WHEN you have your Retirement Visa you MUST obtain a RE-ENTRY VISA single or multiple (2,000 or 9,000 Baht I think) otherwise, when you leave the country the RV becomes invalid and you will have to go through the procedure ALL OVER AGAIN.

Sorry the post is so long and probably only repeats what thousand of others have already posted before, but I just thought that I would give our own story from start to finish in one post and hope that it will be helpfull to others.

Sell all you stuff and buy again here. I did.

Thanks to 'backflip' re the 3 cubic metre import and importance of having each box marked correctly- which I can thoroughly understand customs annoyance at if not marked. Also thanks for the comment re the greater than 6 months old, which was my point.

Ref 'pqs's remarks re the washing machine,TV. etc. we do agree with you about these items as they are easily obtained in LOS at sensible prices, but 'good quality furniture' I've yet to see, other than at astronomical prices for the our equivalent - hence our desire to import same.

Ok 'lite beer' we will be buying a lot of stuff in BKK and HH re 3 piece suites (lots) and all our white goods (already purchased) but some items like 'cut glass', 'display cabinets', etc we have not seen the like of in the shops and wish to bring with us.

Sorry for the previous 'Post' it was my first attempt at a 'posting' and only managed to send the 'quote' and not my own message, so sorry for the waste of space.

My wife and I are in the process of moving to Hua-Hin and wish to bring some of our furniture from the UK. We will both be applying for our 'retirement visa' after 60 days ( we presently both have the 'Multiple entry visa' and I thought that this would constitute a yearly visa and thus allow us to import our 'household goods' free of import duty and tax. From what I have read on the 'Forum' this would appear to be wrong (please feel free to correct me) - so where does this leave us with regard to import duty?? We would like to import some furniture that we have had for some 20 years - old though it is, we still like it and having spent a month looking around HH and BKK I can't say that we were overly impressed with the quality that we saw as replacements.

So here is the question that we would like answering if possible from all you experienced people in Thailand - How do the Customs people value 'imported goods'? We have some of the original invoices for our 20 year old furniture (sad though that might seem - but I am a bit of a squirrel, much to my wife's annoyance) so do they take into account its age, the furniture being virtually valueless in the UK, probably worth about £250 if we were lucky in a sale or do they value it on what you would have to pay in LOS for the equivalent?

Any help will be most appreciated.