BlackArtemis

The plastic bottle often has a lot of influence on taste. The cheaper the plastic the worse it tastes

I hear Boston is Wicked awesome!

Anyways, I get mixed up with all the shorting and playful words the English use Ie Bangers and Patters. I used to think it was stupid until I just accepted the fact that we are a huge mash up of diversity and that's more fun than the same boring thing.

I have my wife talking some Philly slang and general American slang. She now says "I am going to hit up the ATM" haha

As GreaseMonkey stated, Phitsanaluk is wonderful. My wife and I have family there and we love to visit. A hotel room that wold cost 900b in CM costs 300b in Phitsanaluk. There is a bit of a night life, great food, but they do complain about not having as much as CM. However I was told that the local mall never subtitles any movies they only Dub them, so if you like going to the movies, but a big screen and stay home!

Can anyone add any input about Krabi town? I'm talking no beach view etc. For the islands it was cheap when we visited and much nicer than Phuket and other islands.

I went there once as a joke with a friend since we heard all sorts of rumors about it. God it was filthy and nasty. I quickly understood that all the nasty bottom of the barrel girls and disgusting atmosphere was the reason for the cheaper drinks.

THe funniest thing was the 2 pick up trucks full of girls bussed in around 2-3am it was like the last stop express...

Scott: it's fine I am not offended by his post and he is free to make his own thoughts known.

BookemDano: Sorry, I was making 40 and my wife was making 40 for a total of 80k

We want kids, though we are unsure if we are physically capable of having our own. But if not we WILL adopt.

80k/month is a fantastic salary to live on in Chiang Mai if you don't care about International school tuition, personal savings, and retirement.

First off, we made that money by teaching at a Gov't school 25k for me and 12k for my wife, the rest was tutoring. During the last 6 months we stayed in Thailand my wife switched to tutoring full time.

Making 80k is nice, but it's not so much fun working all day and then tutoring from 4 to 6 and having to wait til almost 7 sometimes for parents to pick up students THEN you can go out and eat, but you still ahve your regular workload to check etc. Plus 4-5hrs on Saturday and my wife taught on Sunday as well.

That is not how I want to spend the rest of my days in Thailand.

I am 28 and my wife is 31, we want to be back in Thailand for good in about 6-7 years. This means we will not have all the retirement benefits many expats currently enjoy, no SS, 401k, etc. What we retire on will be what we earn. I want to put away 20-35k Baht a month. That's about 7.2m Baht in 20 years, that seems like a huge amount but it's really not.

Now a decent mortgage is going to be around 20K and car note around 10k, if I were to pay for my future children's enrollment (not working at an international school) it would come out to an avg of 12-15 per month per child.

So right now I am up to around 75k/month and I have yet to even add utilities, cellphones, internet, Health insurance, life insurance, hel_l house and car insurance, FOOD, daily expenses, money for spending, money for vacation, money to spend on the kids etc etc.

As for the comment about my wife, she made 40k for working her ass off, but I can guarantee you that if she went back to Thailand with an MSED and tried to get a job at a private kindergarten, the application will say "native speakers only" and she won't get the 30k or so a month, but they will have no problem hiring a blond haired blue eyed fresh out of uni girl with an unrelated degree and no experience with children, because Thailand hates on their own.

And yes, I was blessed to grow up in an affluent family and I want to provide the same style of living for my own children. I may inherit money or maybe with today's insane medical costs and my father's conditions it might be spent way before that. Either way I was taught to push on and do for yourself cause no one in the world is going to do it for you. SO I have planned out a roadmap to a life I want as if I have nothing to my name.

I would also like to state that I am not looking down on people who are living on 30k. People can be happy no matter what they make, I simply want to make life easier for my family and I, not roll around in a 3 series or BMW and have them parked in a huge McMansion in Land and House... I just want a life where my children won't have to worry about having to go without, will have an education on par with their western counterparts, maybe even have college paid for, all the meanwhile I don't want to be in debt or worried sick about how I am going to pay for those things.

And if I can't make the $ needed by teaching, I will tailor my further education so that I do.

I'm sorry if you feel that I am griping, but I have only stated what I think is needed to keep up a certain lifestyle. I would be curious to see what others pay if they have a mortgage, car notes, have to plan on retirement SOLELY on what they make in Thailand, international school tuition, and the daily/monthly finances of a family of 3-4. Because when I was making 23k/month as a single guy in a 1 room apartment, I was no where near it, at 80k Baht I was a lot closer, but not quite there.

Thai's learn their alphabet in K1 and K2, ages 4 and 5 respectively. You could always send him to a local school for this and not worry too much since you mainly want socialization. Then when he gets older send him of to a proper school. The school year is May-March the semester break is October.

Never had a Thai act like this to me. Often times I end up in long conversations with them and I have made some friends out of it. The only problem comes about that some of the girls are jealous of my wife since her husband can speak Thai (yet completely disregard her level of English) and we are doing much better than the average Au Pair worker.

Yes I do, but I don't see it as a viable future unless you can get a job at an international school or do a hel_l of a lot of side tutoring.

I did the latter for a good portion of my time and I was making 80K/month with my salary and my wife (she was making about 40k) This was 1) not enough for us 2) took up all of our free time.

We are both getting a second degree, I will return to Thailand in the future with a BSED Biology and my wife a MSED Early Childhood Education. THe sad part is that she still will make less than a alcoholic backpacker looking to stay a year since Thai's hate their own it seems...

Many international schools offer 80kish + free or discounted tution for children. IF this does not work out, I have planned an MS in environmental sciences and will use contacts to find a job that way. We will be able to work in the US for a few years as teachers and save up enough to pay for a large chunk of a mortgage.

All in all, my ramble means to say that if you put in the blood sweat and tears, TEFL can be a career in Thailand, but always have a second option.

Aden, They share the same parking lot with Warm Up and that's approx. Nimm. Soi 17.

Wonderful people.

One thing with learning conversational Thai outside of a classroom in the North, I found that when I talked to non Northerners, I would use Northern language but I didn't know it was. The problem I found learning in a class setting was that my Thai was overly formal. I learned the vast majority of my Thai from Thai friends, granted I can curse and talk about sports a lot better than politics.

Try to find a decent sized class that doesn't have a huge amount of time you must sign up for, no use in signing up and then finding out the first week you don't like the teacher and/or style of learning.

Good Luck Eek!

I will be using them to fly from JFK to BKK in July. I am rather upset with EVA, their service has gone to crap IMHO. I have a lot of miles racked up with them too, but their mid class couldn't even power my 15" laptop, the food quality dropped down, and they no longer gave out hot towels and other free stuff. I was saddened when Thaiair stopped their BKK to JFK direct flight, their economy class was far superior to many mid grade seats in other airlines.

Back to china airlines, my one professor has begun to use them and brings over 30 students each year instead of EVA and he is happy by the change as they can skip Bangkok now.

Most larger centipedes are capable of killing up to 20kg/40lbs. They can kill larger humans if they are allergic to the venom.

If I don't know you, why would I acknowledge you?

Now this bars typical politeness such as:

Opening/holding doors

Saying excuse me

you have a nice ride I'd like to comment on

Someone has a map out in an area I know well

If I was alone with a farang in a taxi of any sort I would strike up a conversation.

and any other social situations hwere one should be polite.

But if I'm passing you in a mall, restaurant, or market, no I won't acknowledge you. It has nothing to do with your skin color either.

Electric cars are for the most part a blind alley.

The electricity has to be generated and this of course requires the burning of fuel - and in some cases the burning of really serious pollutants like coal.

So an exercise in cleaning up the planet it is really a sweeping under the carpet exercise.

Actually, if you set up enough solar and wind turbines on your own property you could charge the battery this way.

However, by doing this you are doing it for environmental reasons, as cost would have gone out the window compared to a conservative combustion engine.

I would also like to state that she would have liked to have her degree but she would have gone on for a second MS here in the states anyways. Again, good luck to all. Take my story as you will, I gain nothing if you believe me or not.

I can tell you in about 6 months TahiRich as my wife will have WES evaluate all her master's level courses from Payap's International TEFOL degree. THey fuc_ked her and many people over and she ended up not being able to defend her thesis despite pulling a 3.4+ overall... We doubt many of them will really help her our with her new course of study, early childhood education, but we hope that some credits might count for something...

But in reality, the university said that it can't just accept the courses as is because the varying world standards and WES must evaluate them for the new University.

BlackArtemis, I'm not sure what happened exactly with your wife's education. I have seen you say more than once how you believe she was treated unfairly at Payap. In this post, you refer to many others being treated unfairly.

There are procedures for getting a degree. If your wife and others did not follow the procedures for getting a degree, then they won't get the degree. Having an excellent GPA is no reason to give a degree is the student does not finish the course.

However, I don't know all the details and you didn't include them all in your posts. If you want to post them here, please do. If you would like to discuss this at Payap, we can do that too. Since you bring this topic up every time something is mentioned about Payap I feel like I would like to find out what happened as well. All we and ThaiVisa posters know is a story from your point of view.

Feel free to PM me to set a time to meet at Payap if you wish to do so.

Oh, no we pretty much shrugged off that school. It had a lot to do with administrators and advisers who were clueless that lead to many of my wife's classmates, but Thai and Foreigners, to leave. As far as talking to someone about it? How about the the fact that we talked to the president, who by the way could not read my wife's letter in English where she described her problems, and this guy is head of both Thai and International programs. When my wife needed signatures she needed to have teachers in the Thai program, whom she never had class with nor advised with, sign off her releases. We had multiple people, advisers, her professors, her family (two of them work at Payap), and even the president's wife talk to him about letting her defend her thesis. The choice was his and he said no.

Basically it went like this.

My wife studied for 2 years and completed her coursework for her degree. Then she was assigned an adviser (her and others) who did nothing to help, forgot deadlines, and even forgot to sign off of a grant for my wife which would have helped great deal since Payap's library is so out of date. So after 2.5 years of nothing accomplished other than some partially written thesis' the adviser was moved due to complaints, and a high rate of students just quitting the school because they felt it was no longer worth the trouble. My wife took a year off and then was told if she came back she would have a new adviser. He was fantastic, he bent over backwards for my wife and in less than a year she had her thesis done and ready to defend. We were planning a wedding and told them we she would defend it the following semester, there was no problem. So she is getting ready to defend it and has a miscarriage, she can't defend it and is told she no longer has the option to. The kicker is that at a private school there is no length of time a student must complete the degree, it is up to the admin. So we got a "that's too bad that you had a miscarriage, spent days in a hospital, to make you feel better I am going to tell you that you can't have your degree, good day and don't forget Jesus loves you!

So we fought with the school for a few more months and then determined it was a worthless endeavor. Now my wife will be getting her MS. ED here, for a respectable school, not one known as the "Oh I didn't make it into CMU, but Daddy can afford this one" The ironic thing is that my wife thought that it would look better if she took her MS. TOEFL in an international program instead of CMU...

So depending on the numbers she will begin in Jan, as the MS. ED Early Childhood Education doesn't have a start up this coming August.

Now, my wife and I have our issues with Payap, while I might take great joy in their dwindling numbers, I don't wish this chaos on anyone who chooses to go there. I want everyone to achieve their own goals, and again I pray it is a much better experience than my wife's. You are correct, all you have is my word, and I am just someone on the internet. But it's just like some people who have had problems with X brand of car, they won't recommend it even if others had a good experience.

Honest question, I know even this is a shoddy route to go, but could someone link me the terms (in English would be best, but Thai is ok too) by which a Thai citizen living abroad can bring back their vehicle if they have had it in their name for X amount of years.

Thanks.

What could be a fun project is turning a classic beetle into an electric car to run around town. A decent shape bug goes for 100K, the hard part would be obtaining the parts for the conversion though...

I can tell you in about 6 months TahiRich as my wife will have WES evaluate all her master's level courses from Payap's International TEFOL degree. THey fuc_ked her and many people over and she ended up not being able to defend her thesis despite pulling a 3.4+ overall... We doubt many of them will really help her our with her new course of study, early childhood education, but we hope that some credits might count for something...

But in reality, the university said that it can't just accept the courses as is because the varying world standards and WES must evaluate them for the new University.

Don't forget, the US has universities that are free if you come from a family below a certain income. You go there for 5 years and work while studying and during the summers for them, but no tuition, not sure about books. Two of such schools have agriculutral studies, so many of the jobs involve agriculture, but hel_l, free is free.

All I got.

Will an MBA from Chula open any doors for a non-Thai speaker? I know someone doing it, but I'm not sure why.

It really depends, does he want to do business and live in Thailand? How about SE Asia, or work with business partners from the area.

I have looked at Mahidol's Industrial Ecology, and I could have sworn I saw one school had a tropical ecology program. Both would be able to be brought elsewhere, but I plan on living in Thailand, networking is a big help in finding a job. There are many industry, business, science, etc jobs out there for non-Thais.

Ironic since the people wanted the same when the yellows TOOK OVER AN AIRPORT....

Don't get me wrong, both sides have their heads up their asses, but it's their country, not mine.

I made due without my computer in Thailand while I studied there for 4 months. Honestly, it was a great experience. I checked my mail bi-daily via internet cafe, but I didn't have games etc to play.

That's the one thing I don't like about Hyundai, every sonota and most other models heavily borrow from others. They used to have identical tails to Accords, one year they copied the front of the XJ8 and color scheme as well.

Now they are coping from BMW, Mercedes, and even the accord coupe.