BlackArtemis

I met my wife at my school. She was the Kindergarten English teacher.

We have actually moved to the US, about a year ago.

However I am now going for a second BS, this time in Biology Education and Earth and Space Sciences, she will be getting her MA Early Childhood.

Our plan is to return to Thailand and live there permanently, however this won't happen for a few years as I want to stay here and take care of my ailing father.

What we did, and how we lived.

My wife and I rented, this was because we KNEW that we would be moving to the US at one point, had we not planned on it, we would have bought.

Combined salaries (Government schools) and tutoring (we tutored about 50 kids and 8 adults a week) we made between 80-90k Baht a month. For living in Chiang mai, this was fantastic.

We would be able to afford a trip home about every 1-2 years

We owned a 2000 Honda civic and two mopeds

Our rent was about 12,000B/month the car note was 8,000 month

Because we tutored so much, we pretty much ate out every meal.

We lived a lifestyle that I would not live if I were to live there forever. We didn't save beyond vacations etc. We were not trying to create a retirement fund nor did we have children.

Honestly I would need closer to 200k baht/month to live the same way I do in the US.

When I return I plan on having children before then and I want them in an international school. This either involves a large salary or to work at one of these schools and receive a discount.

I want to put away money every month. I will not receive the retirement plans from an international school that I would receive in America. My social security would be shot too. Though it seems like they are both shot here as well....

There are health care plans and life insurance offered to Farang, so that is ok.

In summary of a rambling post. I would have to see myself working at an international school, and my wife work at a higher salaried teaching job as well, or me getting my MS and working for an international company to recieve the income that would make me very comfortable in Thailand for the rest of my years.

My level of comfort, wants, and needs do not reflect everyone elses.

My wife, Thai national, had a lot of issues with payap.

She completed her course work in 2 years with a 3.4+ GPA and then had trouble with advisors.

One advisor jerked her around for almost 3 years while she was trying to write her thesis. This woman also lost her grant request, not once but twice. My wife had a chance at a $10,000 USD grant for her research, but "Oops" the prof "forgot" to submit it.

Daunted she took 1.5 years off before returning and was given an advisor, a wonderful guy from England. He worked with her and she completed her thesis. She was going to defend it, however she had a misscarriage and decided to defend it the following fall.

She was denied, she had to go around the whole school and gather over 6 signatures, ones from administrators not even connected to the international side of the University. Everyone said yes, but the president.

Funny thing is that there are so few people graduating from the international master's departments it would have only made the university looked better number wise.

Her mother and sister both work at the University and even the president's wife talked to him about this matter.

All in all I told her to drop it, and don't fret. Now we are int he US and she is preparing to get her MA here instead. Just to see, we asked about transfer credits. The school said we could use a third party service to evaluate her classes, but highly doubted it because in the eyes of an American University a degree from Thailand is not held in high regard.

Had we stayed in CM or Thailand, she would have transferred into CMU. But now she has a chance to get a better degree. She is only upset at the wasted time and money.

Take this as you will, but I know this is not a one time case. If you never plan on using a degree outside of Thailand, perhaps moving to BKK for a few years might be worth it. Or maybe you will have a lot more luck than my wife did at Payap. I know a few farang who studied there and made it out relatively unscathed.

Does anyone know where I can buy Seretide Inhalers in Chiang Mai?

My local doctor claims that he'd have to order them from Bangkok at more than 1000 baht a pop - seems pricey to me.

Cheers for any help!

I haven't bought Seretide, but I was able to get ventalin at corner pharmacists for around 300B a pop. They seem to have limited medicines in CM, I was unable to get albuterol.

In a few hours I will go take my Chem 2 final, concluding a fun packed summer of physics and chem, knocking out more on the road to my BS ED Biology and Earth and space science minor. All this because i found a passion for teaching in my 2.5 years of teaching Chiang Mai.

Are you getting your BS ED in CM?

No, I moved back stateside in October. But the plan is to eventually get back to CM. But this will take awhile, the wife wants a masters and then I will get one, but we will come back regularly to see family and friends.

In a few hours I will go take my Chem 2 final, concluding a fun packed summer of physics and chem, knocking out more on the road to my BS ED Biology and Earth and space science minor. All this because i found a passion for teaching in my 2.5 years of teaching Chiang Mai.

Santhithum has a very negative conotation with many Thai's. Many of the Thai's i know talk about the area as the junkie 5-B whore area.

People on this forum have been saying for a long time that it is cleaning up, but I wouldn't choose to live there myself.

Firstly, I hope for a speedy recovery and i am glad things went well.

I spent over a week there with Dengue fever, I wholly agree with the care. The rooms were nicer than some hotels I have been in. The staff were prompt, helpful and went out of their way. As stated, the food does suck, but since I had no interest in eating for 5 out of those days I made due, plus the wife brought me food from The Lemon Tree on the final few days haha.

The only complaint I had was outpatient care, they love to over medicate w/ expensive meds. When i returned saying i didn't need all of these meds, with the Dr's agreement on that, I was able to return 4000B worth of unopened meds. That is something unheard of here in the US.

Perhaps America's health care reform should just be round tickets to Thailand...

PM sent

BTW khun Sa did all the wedding invites, the RSVP etc etc, I believe her fee was 25k baht, but she worked with us for like 5+ months!

Lanna garb can be fun, we did traditional western since my wife is Christian. I thought I was going to be learning about Buddhist culture when we first started dating haha.

If anyone needs suggestions for a minister to over see a Christian wedding, Ajarn Bill at payap is great and full bilingual.

Femi's suggested location sounds nice, you will find resorts are often nicer for the same price or cheaper than hotels...

http://s1001.photobucket.com/albums/af132/besaatfarang/

Some shots of the flowers, location, food, and even the dress.

The pool area was so large it made 200 people look like 50.

So I guess the "real" stands for "real slow".

I think we had something around 200 guests, pics will be forth coming, uploading them now.

Furthermore, they will invite you to sample any of their food on the menu. We were able to pick foods that we tasted.

Chiang mai Lotus? The one behind Central refused to do this, we later went to a wedding there, not only did they spell the people's names wrong, but the food was AWFUL. I think they were actually more expensive than Kao Mai Lanna too.

I got married in Chiang Mai back in 2007.

Khun Saa at Iris Florist (across from warm up) did all out floral arrangements and was our wedding planner.

She had her dress cut and I had mine cut at the wedding shop before the canal road and HK intersection, before dunkin donuts I believe. This is on the way to CMU.

We had our wedding at Gao Mai Lanna, it is an old tobacco curing plantation converted into a beautiful resort in San Patong. The place is beautiful and the food is EXCELLENT.

Over all I think paid about $4000 USD. Considering something similar would have cost me over $40,000 in th us, I was rather happy.

I can post pics if you want.

Like most work out programs, they will work great if you follow it regularly and follow a diet routine.

Try it, if you like it keep at it.

BTW, I agree, avoid doing these on carpet!

If you leave it makes it nicer for the rest of us.

do thais have to pay too?

i don't think fabrique is all that anyway. most of the time i went there the music sucked and it's just people sitting around tables getting drunk. i suppose if you are a guy in your early 20s it is a good place to meet pretty thai chicks.

edit: they do have a great outdoors area

Thais don't pay. As I said, the doorman , after a bit of polite interrogation, eventually spoke the truth .. 'Mai aow Farang - we don't want foreigners'. Sure, turn up with a group of thai friends and it's no problem , but two farang guys have to pay 300 baht each. A way of deterring most and keeping the backpackers out.

I wonder about this too.

If two groups of farang showed up the same night at different times. One group dressed backpackerish and the other with style (read money) I wonder if the treatment would be the same.

It seems that clubs try to pull this BS when you come either alone or with other farang and not Thai. I personally have never had these problems, but I always went with Thai's.

Only been to Mandalay once, but I have heard many complaints.

Honestly, I stuck to Warm Up unless someplace like Monkey, Fashion, or discovery had a band playing who I liked.

Also in my experience, it seems that farang don't like the pub/bar experience catered towards thai. If you go to a place like warm up, all the farang hang out in the lounge area (techno) and prefer bigger "dance clubs/ discotheques"

The only advice I have is that if you are getting a negative vibe, leave and cut your losses.

I sold Mio while working at an electronics store awhile back..... Look at the reviews first.

On a plus side, their menu is well laid out and the Knight Rider edition was a fabulos step in the right direction. If they continue on that platform they will do much better.

Not to derail, but are they going to release "The Hangover" over there? I was wondering about this after seeing it. If they do, the Thai subs are going to be no where close to what they are really saying.

How about the mens toilets at the rear of the Las Vegas Bar?

Oh No! George Micheals died too?

Plastic surgeons / playground..........plenty of options.

Really? I thought Rushed to the hospital lead to the obvious choice of Children's hospital jokes.

On a side note, to make it 3 Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon also died in the past few days.

Wat Suan Dok is a Buddhist University for Monks. When I did my study abroad program I spent time there helping the Monks with their English, mostly conversational.

Ajarn, is that an older email? The Nuvi 205 has been out for a long time and can be had in the US for under $99

One would assume you could load maps of Thailand onto models that allow you to load maps, thus it might be cheaper to pick em up elsewere and just load maps on em here.

Pretty much all of the larger Thai bars (warm up etc) you get a receipt for every order that you sign off for, at the end of the night they give you a stapled clump for you to review before paying.

agreed... it's this sort of blatant greed and disrespect which has put me off thailand. just happens too often there.

Really?? I have never been shown any disrespect such as that.

I am a firm believer that it is your own behaviour and respect which dictates how people will treat you.

When looking at it like that, it is not hard to see why some people seem to have all these problems.

While I generally agree with you, there are nasty people out there who treat you poorly despite how you act.