onebir

OK since no one has replied, I will put to you another thought / question.

Can I sit in Thailand and post my application for non imm o visa to Australia When / if passport comes back with the visa, I could cross a closer border and come back in using the visa??? Sounds feasible. Is it? Is it legal? Thoughts?

You'd go straight to jail. There wouldn't be any arrival / departure stamps to match up. Brisbane or Perth are good options.

What if you were sending off a second passport (dual nationality) to a home country consulate, and had a relative do it from inside your home country do it so the consulate didn't realise you weren't in the country at the time? When new visa arrives, hide it, leave Thailand, and use it to reenter...

Perhaps lack of arrival stamps in the passport with the new visa would blow that when you reenter? Or is there a way around that???

They probably won't be flying direct UK-BKK, but they could make quarterly UK visa runs an affordable possibility...

Airasia has plans for a long-haul budget carrier, with the KL low cost terminal as a hub:

CNN report (http://www.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/01/05/bt.airasiax.ap/)

"Online sale of tickets will begin next month for initial service to Tianjin and Hangzhou in China, and to either Manchester or London in the United Kingdom."

Malaysia's daily express report (http://www.dailyexpress.com.my/news.cfm?NewsID=46602)

"AirAsia X would stick to the business model of tight cost control and offer low fares with one way flight to United Kingdom starting from RM9.99 [=GBP1.40]. "Low fares attract volume," he said, adding that the average ticket price would be at least 50 percent cheaper than the current air ticket prices." "

"Chan said that AirAsia X has been given the right to fly to destinations that Malaysia Airlines (MAS) was not flying into." (Which appears to mean airports as opposed to cities (MAS flies KLIA-LHR, but London is a potential route mentioned above. Fernandez mentioned London Stansted as a potential terminal.)

It seems they're also still after an alliance. See second last para of

Malaysian Star report (http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/1/6/nation/16493788&sec=nation)

" On negotiations with Virgin group's Sir Richard Branson and EasyGroup's Sir Stelios Haji-loannou, Fernandes said it was still on-going, but declined to elaborate. "

(It sounds like this might be more to do with the European end of the operation though - codesharing with Easyjet in particular could make the Uk-KLIA service more accessible to people outside SE England.)

. Searching the internet for comparative costs of living revealed the following up-to-date information on cities around the world. http://www.finfacts.ie/costofliving.htm

That's a very interesting web site. There were more than a few surprises on that list.

Yes indeed. Over the last 18 months I've lived in:

Istanbul - COL index = 93.1

Kuala Lumpur - 69.3

London - 110.6

Beijing - 94.9

and

Paris - 93.1

For me, the expense ranking would be London>=Paris>>Istanbul>KL>=Beijing (>>= big difference, >= small difference)

The answer is in the notes on the Mercers site:

"Our unique international basket of goods and services is the result of extensive research of **actual expatriate spending habits**, allowing our indices to reflect a reality-based international expenditure pattern."

(http://www.mercerhr.com/summary.jhtml?idContent=1124760)

It seems the expatriates in question don't switch much to cheaper local alternatives, and live in 'international' compounds - otherwise no way is Beijing, where I paid more than $1-2 for restaurant meals & $400 a month for a central, 2 bed modern apartment - more expensive than Paris, where you struggle to get a coffee/grungy studio for those prices. On the other hand, one of the restaurants in Beijing I went to did have a rat. It would probably have discouraged most expats, but it wasn't at all aggressive and made quite a nice conversation piece.

I'd guess the London vs Paris differences mainly reflect city centre rents. There are many more apartment blocks in central areas of Paris than London, & I think this means that renting in a 'comparable' location is cheaper.

Apparently the Mercers index is designed to help companies to work out Cost of Living allowances for expats. So if you can get a gig in Beijing, and don't mind slumming it a bit, you could save a hel_l of a lot ;-)

Personally, right now since I'm still a beginner, I get more out of a Thai movie with english subtitles. Cheaper too! (A movie can be 100-160 baht for 90 minutes, an hour at AUA is what, 100-200 baht? Buying the DVD and watching it again and again is even cheaper! Choose subject that interests you. Romance, adventure, etc.) Not to say I won't get more out of it later, since listening is DEFINITELY an important component, but I definitely feel more comfortable putting in the hard hours first, THEN coasting in with Automatic Learning Growth. Because anyhow, sure, when we were 5 years old we learned to speak a few words, but to be intelligible, we DID have to go to school! I don't know too many street urchins, poor dirt farmers or aborigine tribesmen who never went to school that I'd like to emulate in speech. That being said, it's definitely the place to hang out and learn once I've got a small base to work from.

I've never been to the AUA school (or even Thailand). But I did study Mandarin with a teacher who used some similar techniques - not ALG - with a long silent period - but ways of building up understanding without constantly explaining things in English. It was a lot of fun, and I've ended up fluent in Mandarin with a reasonable accent, tones etc.

Partly because I'm really curious about ALG, I'd suggest you give it a try. You'll learn stuff from DVDs with subtitles, but unlike an ALG class your brain will never get a chance to switch over into Thai fully when you watch them.

From my (dubiously relevant, I know) experience I'd say an ALG class would be anything but coasting. Even with props, repetition etc you have to really concentrate to 'get it'. I've corresponded a bit with someone who's taken the classes there, and he also really enjoyed them (see below).

I think your comment on five year olds is a bit off the mark. Lots of people learn to speak languages perfectly well without formal schooling. Take the tribespeople you mention. Provided formal education doesn't really exist in the society where they've learnt their language, no one can say they're not speaking it properly - what they speak IS the language. In most English speaking countries (and I guess in Thailand) where education is relatively commonplace, there's a divide between formal language and street or regional dialects, so we tend to look down on these. But it's the existence of the formal language, and its association with education, social class etc that leads to this.

In the ALG programme, I imagine the teachers will be well-educated. Your exposure will be to moderately formal language, so you should pick up language like a kid in a posh family, rather than the street urchins you mention.

And if the claims of the AUA are correct, you'll avoid a major problem I had with Mandarin - pronounciation. Although I learned a lot of vocab and grammar in classes & the UK and self-study, I never quite got some sounds right, until I went to China and got one to one tuition for a few weeks. An ALG explanation of this would be that I hadn't had enough exposure to the Mandarin sound system to really hear the sounds - hence the need for coaching (which children after all don't generally need). The Thai sound system is at least as alien to an English speaker as the Mandarin one, so getting in hundreds of hours of exposure to Thai - so you can really hear and distinguish between the sounds you need to make before you make them - before speaking, and reinforcing bad habits of approximating sounds that you can't yet recognise properly, ought to reduce or prevent that.

Here's a blog who's been to AUA:

http://journeytothai.blogspot.com/

His email's there if you feel like asking him about it

Anyway, good luck!

Hi if you are wanting to come here for a year then you need to apply to the Thai consulate before you leave the UK. You want a non immigrant O multiple entry 90 day visa. The best place I have found is the Thai consulate in Hull. You can download the forms from the site and you get your visa back in 2 days. Alternatley you can go in person as we did and fill in the form give them 2 photos and £100 pounds. Ten minutes later you have a 90 day visa for 1 year which actualy gives you 15 months. You then only have to go out every 90 days.

Just to clarify this, judging from the Hull documentation it seems NO real documentation is needed to apply for one of these.

On the 'Visa application completion notes' (http://www.thaiconsul-uk.com/pdfs/Ab%20%20Visa%20Application%20Pack.pdf) page 2 it says:

Visa required: Circle TOURIST or NON-IMMIGRANT

If NON IMMIGRANT state type:

“B” for conducting business, attending business conferences or working

“ED” for partaking in education/study courses (religious, teaching English,

scuba diving, Thai boxing, attending school/university, etc) or for

working as a volunteer

“O” for visiting friends/family or for extended stay

Extra evidence, as detailed below, is required only for Non-Immigrant Visas Categories “B” and “ED”

ie not for "O"

The 'Additional pack for for Visa for Education Course / Volunteer Work' seems to confirm that no real (ie external) paperwork is needed for an "O":

(http://www.thaiconsul-uk.com/pdfs/Ad%20%20ED-Visa%20(Education%20and%20Volunteer)%20Information.pdf)

On the Application Form for “Evidence substantiating purpose of visit” write in “Sponsor Letter from Education Course Organiser attached” or “Sponsor Letter from Volunteer Organisation attached” and attach a copy of that letter to the Application Form.

****If you are not able to provide such a letter you will need to apply for a “Non-Immigrant Category “O” Visa and under “Evidence substantiating purpose of visit” on the application form write “Self-Certificate Guarantee Form attached” and attach the Self-Certification Guarantee Form duly completed.****

All the "Self-Certificate Guarantee Form" calls for is a promise that you have enough money to support yourself & if necessary repatriate yourself.

If they're actually giving these out back-to-back - and I do recall reading that some European consulates are less generous than others - the ex 30 day visa runners just need to do 1 'home country run' every 12 - 15 months. (I imagine this would be at similar cost to the 12 border runs it would replace).

Uncertainty about future consulate behaviour aside, is it really that simple for UK citizens to get long term visas for Thailand? Or am I missing something? :s

I read recently that the AUA school in Bangkok is using an approach called 'automatic language growth'.

(see link on http://www.auathai.com/home.html)

Does anyone know if the other AUA schools (eg in chiang mai) have changed over to this approach?

Does anyone know? (Gardasil is a vaccine for HPV viruses, which cause genital warts & cervical cancer, recently approved in the US.)

There's quite a few cheapish hotels in jalan petaling, chinatown. It's a short taxi ride from Jalan Ampang.

There's also a metro from Pasar Seni - KLCC/Ampang Park stops are in the same area as the Embassy (not sure how far tho).

See

http://www.malaxi.com/Map_transit.htm

and

http://directrooms.com/malaysia/hotels/kua...town-price1.htm

There's also this 2* hotel in the old rail station - the 'kuala lumpur' stop on the blue lines - which is next to pasar seni:

http://www.journeymalaysia.com/cityklheritage.htm

I completed the 40+ series of Maani and am now almost finished with the 9 lesson Mary Hass series of reading lessons. The big advantage of both series is the online (downloadable) voice files...

Could you give us the links for those? Just had a search and they weren't too obvious...

Thanks!

the strengthening of the baht ... (is) related to the movements of the dollar towards other currencies.

absolutely, as the original quote from the money dealer indicated:

"Today, the baht has appreciated in the same direction with other regional currencies including the Philippine peso, Singapore dollar, Taiwan dollar and South Korean won, which is the strongest in nine years," Ms. Pattaravadee said.

it looks not so much to be a strengthening of the baht - which would involve the baht strenghtening against other currencies - as a weakening of the dollar.

the recent movements in the federal reserve board trade weighted dollar index, from a peak of 109 around 10 oct, to the mid 107s recently, seem to confirm this.

(see http://www.federalreserve.gov/Releases/H10...y/indexb_b.txt)

see discussion in this thread too:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=87522

What a great resource, I can't believe I've never known about this site before now.

re FSI cambodian, check with them on their forum to make sure you won't be duplicating work.

thanks rikker, i see you did contact them

re the thai audio, after several failed attempts i got through to islingtion libraries catalog. they have the course, but it's an audioforum version (probably copyrighted - unless it's very old). i may be able to digitise the audio 'for my own purposes' nonetheless ;-)

but perhaps forum members in/from the US and Canada, where larger public libraries often stock FSI language courses, could have a look?

Has anyone used the ‘Teach Yourself Thai’ book?

There's quite a detailed review here:

http://thaiarc.tu.ac.th/thai/review2.html

He says

'I am left with rather mixed feelings: in brief, following this teach-your-self course has helped me to learn some Thai, but after 6 months, my knowledge is far less than what I expected – which perhaps speaks more of my limitations than those of the book.'

I have similar feelings after years of learning mandarin - so it would be useful to know if the reviewer had studied other tonal languages

quite a few more reviews if you google...

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=teach+you...-8&oe=utf-8

What a great resource, I can't believe I've never known about this site before now.

it's quite a new site.

re FSI cambodian, check with them on their forum to make sure you won't be duplicating work.

until they do get the FSI thai audio up, it seems that the first 1/3 of 'courage thai interactive'

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=88491 is actually based on the US defence language institute/ DLI's course - for stacks cheaper than this is available elsewhere ($60 vs around $230 inc audio at http://www.dunwoodypress.com/products/-/108, http://www.dunwoodypress.com/products/-/212)

see this post 62 here: http://www.thailandqa.com/forum/showthread...4765&page=7

long thread on courage thai interactive 2 here:

http://www.thailandqa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4765

there's a fair bit of info on spokenthai here:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=64414

but not much about courage thai:

http://www.couragesoftware.com/

apart from the fact the later is more expensive ($60 vs $35), and emphasizes the alphabet more, i was wondering if anyone had used both and could compare them a bit...

or indeed, any other multimedia type software...

which should be online soon, according to this thread:

http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/forum/...=78&KW=thai

the bad news is they don't have access to the (all important) audio - only the books. so if anyone does have the original* audio, perhaps you could digitise it and send it to them. gdfellows is the guy to contact...

i seem to recall that some london (westminster marylebone, islington central?) libraries have the original course, so perhaps londoners could come to the rescue. (perhaps on their next enforced visa run ;-) )

anyway, with a bit of luck, a very high quality, comprehensive (albeit slightly dated) thai course should be available for free online within a month or two...

background:

FSI = the US foreign service institute. these courses were developed to bring US embassy staff to fluency in languages during short intensive courses. they were designed for use in small classes, with a native speaker instructor, but work fairly well - better than most other language courses i've studied - for self instruction.

they can be made available for free online because training materials developed by the US government are automatically in the public domain. but until www.fsi-language-courses.com started to do this, various publishers/resellers (eg barrons/audioforum, multilingual books) sold them, at high prices (typically USD400 for a course with 12-15 tapes).

*why original?

although the courses are in the public domain, resellers have often marked their versions with a copyright symbol. under US law, this appears to be invalid unless they have made 'substantial editions' - which is not always the case. but the fsi-language-courses.com site owners (understandably) don't want to take any risks, so they'll only post files digitised from courses published by the FSI/US government printing service, which carry no copyright notice.

If you don't work through an agent, I believe your chances for success are reduced.

this a travel agent near KL (petaling jaya) with visa services:

http://www.sunway.com.my/travel/main.asp

see the services tab.

i guess the question is whether they're the *right* kind of visa services...

is the

sunbelt one year multiple entry non B visa a solution for the group in question?

(at least for 12-15 months...)

I believe the most commonly spoken local dialects of Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore are Hakka, Hokkien and Teochiu.

i think there are a lot of native cantonese speakers in KL too.

although the southern dialects mentioned above are probably the commonest mother tongues for chinese malaysian/singaporeans, many chinese malaysians speak mandarin too, picked up from media or study in chinese schools. and the singaporean government has been promoting mandarin recently.

i also understand that since 1997, mandarin has become much more widely spoken in hong kong.

on top of this, it's the most widely studied chinese dialect, so there's much more study material available. and there are only 4 tones (+ a neutral tone) - less than the other dialects i think. but maybe not much of an issue for a thai speaker ;-)

so i'd second the previous post.

see/post in the learning chinese section in www.chinese-forums.com for more info...

Virtually all passports are now machine readable. Basically that means the swipe (or scan) of the words and numbers at the bottom of the details page enables the computer to grab all the information it needs to record the movement. It will cross match with former movements via name and dob, passport or visa number.

Which raises the question of whether the database matches just name and dob, or name, dob and passport number...

Of course it's possible it does both - matching name and dob to throw up all possible matching individuals (and maybe their pictures?) but identifying the one with the matching passport number as the most likely match....

With biometrics and powerful IT they would know and the point is they would probably invite you to be their guest for awhile.

I suspect they are not interested in the legal angles and legalistic hair-splitting but are more interested in real people trying to pull fast ones and putting their physical bodies, as opposed to their 'legal' bodies, in the hoosegow.

Of course, you could always hire Thai legal eagles to help you discuss the 'legal' ramifications while you rot in the BKK Hilton. I have two passports also and there is no way I would try it. The risk is way too great and they have no obligation to be nice.

I tried a similar legal dodge many years ago when the USA was deporting me...

OK - thanks for the information, johnnyk. you have much more experience of thai immigration officials than my zero, so i have to give what you say a lot of weight.

i'd just like to mention one other example though: israeli citizens aren't allowed into malaysia, but people with dual nationality entering on their non-israeli passports have no problems. perhaps this is because they're entering in their capacity as non-israelis citizens. perhaps it's because there's no diplomatic relationship between malaysia and israel, and thus no way for the malaysian immigration officials to find out who's an israeli citizen...

With this being the case, it really doesn't matter how many passports a particular traveler uses as the authorities are tracking John Smith, born 01 January 1966, and this information does not change from passport to passport.

if they just go by name and birth date, people with common names could get in a lot of trouble without actually doing anything wrong...

it'd create massive problems for chinese tourists in particular - transliterated into the roman alphabet, there aren't that many chinese surnames, and lots of popular first names, and obviously loads of people...

Passport is paper, paper is not a person.

Biometric info is you and only you, paper notwithstanding.

obviously with biometrics they'd know the same physical person had come in twice. my question was subtler - is onebir(uk citizen) the same legal person as onebir(eire citizen) under thai immigration law. the knee-jerk answer may not the the correct legal answer. and i guess even if the immigration law does allow the loophole, the officials may not like it...

dawoofer - thanks for the helpful suggestion. if it's legal, i guess it would also be perfectly legal to switch passports the following year... which should cut down chances of getting turned down for the multi-entry tourist visa (if that ever happens)

Seems to me you are asking the wrong questions.

You would be better off asking.

1. What is Thailand's deportation process ?

2. How long will I spend in jail before being deported ?

3. What's it like in a Thai jail ?

Naka.

doesn't sound too positive... i think i'd better get professional legal advice before trying this then!

but under some legal systems one person CAN be treated as different legal persons under certain circumstances, and i thought it was worth checking... interested to hear what sunbelt asia have to say about this!