SteveB2

Someone should buy this 'for a song', fill it with el-cheapo hydrogen... and use it for a yet to be announced civilian purpose.

You see, contrary to popular opinion, pure hydrogen filled air ships are quite difficult to set on fire...

This is since hydrogen without oxygen doesn't burn or explode - you'll need more than 3.5 Oxygen in the mix for it to become flammable.

Divers have even breathed Hydrogen/Helium/Oxygen mixes without explosion issues.

Density of Helium and Hydrogen gases is similar - so the hydrogen gas substituion(for helium) should make little difference to the airship bouyancy. 

No doubt the 300m hight limitations they discovered were due to additional equipment added - remove it. 

Running costs are excessive, since it would be expected to lose 15 cubic meters of helium/day - this will cost about USD500/day or USD182,500/year = THB6,000,000/year

... and that ignores the initial filling costs

Lack of engineering expertise in this country leads to massive losses in ongoing civilian and military projects - stuff lies rotting unused and un repaired all over the LOS.

I wonder where they're keeping the remains - I may have to treat myself 

On 9/6/2017 at 8:49 PM, SteveB2 said:

 

Gosh - now there is something I didn't know. Thank you ubonjoe for that lovely snippet.

 

So if I understand your statement correctly, someone who holds PR could apply for a work permit to carry out casual/voluntary work paying a peppercorn(or even zero) income. Then providing this work was not that in the normal excluded professions list, it would be OK, right?

and while we're on PR Work Permit subject, (and being reasonable), one would expect the minimum salary for the Changwat to apply (somewhere around THB9,000 Baht)

Would the rules for 4 Thai employees for a PR holding foreigner work permit also apply too (I can find nothing in the PR regulations that say anything about this at all)

Thank you for your help 

The Bangkok 'OFFICE OF FOREIGN WORKERS ADMINISTRATION' does not list a maximum age limit http://wp.doe.go.th/wp/index.php/en/home-en

But, looking into this more closely considering that there is normally no smoke without fire... 

Check out the following extract:- Ref: https://www.internationalschoolsreview.com/nonmembers/age-article.htm - some schools definitely have their own internal rules preventing the employment of older teachers.   

5 hours ago, ubonjoe said:

There is no minimum salary requirement for work permits.

If on PR there will be no minimum salary requirement since it is only required for an extension of stay based upon working for a company.

Gosh - now there is something I didn't know. Thank you ubonjoe for that lovely snippet.

So if I understand your statement correctly, someone who holds PR could apply for a work permit to carry out casual/voluntary work paying a peppercorn(or even zero) income. Then providing this work was not that in the normal excluded professions list, it would be OK, right?

6 hours ago, 7by7 said:

When my wife and step daughter first came to the UK, Thai immigration wanted to see that my wife had the consent of her ex to take her daughter out of Thailand. She didn't, but she did have sole custody and the documents to prove this; which satisfied immigration.

 

She wasn't asked when leaving Thailand after visits back; maybe because immigration had kept a record which came up when my step daughter's passport was scanned? 

 

Yes  -  it's often the way. A mate needed to bring his daughter back to the UK a few years ago without his wife's permission (she left for pastures new a few years earlier and left him holding the baby). Thankfully he had both Thai and UK passports. His 70 years old+ daughters Grandma came over from the UK to take her from Thailand to the UK. No checks at Suvanabhumi or challenges at London Heathrow Job Done. 

Yep - no need to guess anymore where all the Brit tourists to Thailand went after the UK home office announced the near 50% drop in UK Thailand heading tourism during the last 5 years...

14 hours ago, Donutz said:

I would say incorrect. ANY parent traveling with minors must have the paperwork in order. A woman too can be asked to show she isn't abducting her children or if they are infact her children. Just as a family of mum and dad plus kids can be asked to show that they are a family in order to rule out child abduction. 

 

It may be a headache and maybe men are confronted with this more often than women but all you need to ask yourself is 'when we cross the (any!) border the officer may wish to rule out child abduction, how do I/we go about showing that everything is in order?

 

That in custody cases men are generally at a disadvantage is a completely different subject which does not concerns the OPs questions/concerns.

I think this is a fair enough clarification - especially when you consider the FBI's most wanted list https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/parental-kidnappings  ... but I'll go one step further, and extend the ruling to ANYONE who travels with small children should have the proper documentation.

In the UK, my grandmother wanted to take my daughter over to Disneyland in Paris - we went to a local solicitor to ensure she had all travel authorisation and permission letters in order before she set off. In this instance, she was not asked to show them at London Heathrow.

So the moral of the story has to be, if you want to kidnap kids, use a grandmother   

14 hours ago, brewsterbudgen said:

Presumably the mother travelling alone with the child doesn't need the father's consent?

Correct - in most western countries, it is a sad reflection of the unfairness in the legal systems that by precedence, the mother has default custody. Lady Justice always gets to peep from under her blindfold where family law is concerned.

The default custody issue stems from social services (who when called upon, provide western courts with expert witness testimony to help decide custody issues)... consider all men to be potential child abusers and woefully unable to take care of children.

Thus if the children's mother is unable to take care of the kids herself for whatever reason, then the state  could shamefully be chosen as the next best custody option by default.

I know this because I have been there before. Watch Pierce Brosnan’s sensitive portrayal of a father on the receiving end of this prejudice in the 2002 film 'Evelyn' for a better idea of what guys may sometimes be up against when travelling as a lone father with their children in the west. Best to have all the paperwork in place lads. 

3 hours ago, ubonjoe said:

Of course she can travel to the UK with a one way ticket since she is a citizen of the UK. She could stay there for the rest of her life if she wanted to.

You will likely be asked for proof here mother has given her consent to leave the country.

3 hours ago, BillyBobzTeeth said:

Thanks UbonJoe, 

 

I thought the same but had to ask to be on the safe side, ya just never know these days lol.

 

Will get that letter of consent sorted before we go, cheers mate!

 

 

 

 

I did the Thailand to UK run with an 8 year old daughter a couple of years ago - It is not well known that there is a formal system in place to prevent misunderstandings at the airport on departing Thailand and on arriving in the UK.

Thailand end - the mothers permission to travel letter has to be prepared and approved at the local ampheur office then all of you (father, mother, child) travel to the foreign ministry in Bangkok where the mothers formal permission to travel letter is officiated and entered onto the immigration computer - this is valid for the next 30 days, and means no requirement to telephone the mother at the airport or any other extraneous administration requests.

The permission to travel letter should also be officially translated to English and notarised at the British Embassy.

At the airport on your day of departure at BKK SVM, you and the child will be taken to one side, where the Thai permission to travel letter will be checked against the Thai immigration department computer entry. If all is OK, then off you both go.

UK End.  I initially assumed that since both my daughter and myself were British Passport holders, then we should both be allowed back into the UK whatsoever. Wrong. 

At passport control, we were both taken to one side and questioned at length as to where was the mother and why I hadn't brought her with us to the UK. All explanations as to the difficulties of obtaining visas, costs of the air ticket, etc were met with derision, exclamations of "Rubbish it's easy to bring your wife to the UK" etc, etc. Things were not looking good...

It was at this time that I reached for the British Embassy letter 'official translation of the mothers permission to travel letter' - then suddenly, all was fine. "Why didn't you just show us this permission letter earlier" was the new shouted reply, "it would have saved us a lot of time"

So there you have it.

From the many replies here, it's plain that many folks just walk through immigration both ends with their kids no problems. 

In the end, it's up to you if you go through the proper procedures or not - having the propper paperwork was certainly the silver bullet that stopped any problems during my journey to the UK. 

I guess I just have that kind of face that immigration officers consider suspicious... 

Understand that 'The Customs' for crossing land borders are different than for arriving by air - and that the land border crossing formalities can vary from country to country.

The straight forward solutions for this child are (As per Ubon Joe's clarification above) :-

1. Leave Thailand within the original validity date of the entry visa in the British passport, then re-enter on the Thai Passport.
   1. On return to LOS, Let the Imm. Off. know that the child is a dual-citizen and have both passports available for his inspection should he wish.
2. Apply for an extension to the child's original entry visa - then leave and re-enter on the childs Thai passport. Again.on return to LOS, let the imm.Off know that the child is a dual citizen , and have have both passports available for his her inspection should he wish.

Land borders - faux pass possible.

I run multiple passports. They're all in the same name, nothing dodgy going on. A few years ago, I wanted to do a visa run to use up a brand new 1 year Thai multi-entry 'B' in one of my other passports. So down to Sadao I went to try swopping the passports while I transited no-mans land ( exit visa out of Thailand on one passport, enter Malaysia on another passport then re enter Thailand on the second passport) Simple right?

Yer right - that didn't work very well. Malaysian Immigration were most miffed off when they inspected the new 'swopped' passport that did not have a Thai exit stamp in it. They insisted on me using up the passport that had the Thai exit visa stamp. Apparently, that is their rules. You're not allowed into Malaysia across a land border with Thailand using a passport that doesn't have a valid Thai exit stamp in it.

Well, that really made my day. I couldn't now re-enter Thailand with my brand new 1 year visa - a critical requirement of this border run - so I headed off to Singapore to try my luck at  the Singapore land border.

Again, many eyebrows were raised on the Singapore side at the Singapore/Malaysia land border crossing, I eventually got taken aside to a holding/interview room. After hours and hours of interrogation as to why I had multiple passports, they eventually agreed to stamp me into Singapore on my second passport that had the unused Thai visa in it. Thank fck for that The return trip to Thailand overland from Singapore then proceeded normally... all on the second passport.

Moral of the story - passports often get scrutinised far more at a land border than they do at an international airport and there are more rules to abide by and not all land borders have the same customs rules that apply to passports. 

On 8/14/2017 at 0:21 AM, jpinx said:

At the minimum - You will need the legal paperwork to prove where the money came from.  Presumably it is now in a Thai bank in your named account, so that should not be a big problem, and then you ask that bank what they will need to transfer it to your US account.  Of course the US might want to tax it as well.  Did you check on US tax regulations regarding inheriting abroad?

Precisely...

This is well above  the $10,000 mandatory FINCEN reporting level for world wide anti-money laundering prevention  measures - So 'Proof of source' definitely needed.

Lets hope your USD50M is not un-sourced cash, else you're going to need a professional to wash it - have you ever thought of opening a go-go bar? 

More info here https://www.fincen.gov/ 

3 minutes ago, AhFarangJa said:

If it walks, swims, flies, or farts, the Chinese will eat it........

Upcountry near Nakorn Nowhere 20 years ago, an old Farang told me

"you'll soon learn that in Thailand..."

• Eat everything that fly’s - but don't eat an airplane.
• Eat everything with legs - but don't eat a chair.
• If you can neither eat it or sell it - why bother with it!
• If you want to understand why something happens here in Thailand - follow the money

There was so much truth in his words, I considered latter having them turned into a tattoo!

Down in South Thailand, I tried a local village specialty of fresh Cobra blood mixed with Lao Khao. The preparation was a sight to behold... The locals fished a very pissed of cobra out of a sack, then proceeded to tie it to a tree, stretch it, then beat the crap out of it with a stick... finally, it was slit open and the blood drained into a cup(there's not much) prior to making the yaa-dong.

Apparently, the pre-death torture of the serpent was believed to add a certain 'je ne sais quoi' to the brew. 

Either way, it was definitely a fiery drink 

Oh no... not this old chestnut again! 

On 8/2/2017 at 7:17 AM, beeper said:

Has anyone else who applied end of 2015 heard any update? Thanks for sharing

I applied for my own PR with an estimated 75 other successful applicants during the end 2015 - The PR was finally issued in 'Rocket Speed' earlier this year 2017 along with many others who were successful at that time.

It appeared to me that the CW PR team, process everyone altogether as a single group during each step of the process, throughout 2016 and early 2017.

Plainly you were not in the group to be processed at that time even though (I assume) your application was accepted?

It is not unusual at all for a typical application to take 5 years. There will be a reason why yours is taking a long time. PM me for a chat.  

15 hours ago, KhunBENQ said:

And it's fighting windmills as in so many countries.

And don't forget that we are close to the biggest drug producers.

A steady flow from the Golden Triangle.

Even brute force like in Indonesia and Thaksin Thailand could not stop it.

This country is flooded with drugs.

It's true enough...

Depending on your party crowd, the meaning of "Pattaya has a drugs problem" is often understood to mean that there is a shortage of supply this week, or the 'nose candy' has been danced on to the point of obliteration by the black gang at the Grace Hotel... 

Judging by the decrepit state of the pole molesters in Walking Street, if the OP's statement is to be believed, then half the staff are non-performers  

The photo shows a young child who looks at her father with the questioning innocence that only those of this tender age possess. 

Never in her short life could she imagine for a moment that one of the few people in the world she knows and trusts is about to do the unthinkable.

How utterly harrowing - this brought me to tears.

As to her father - what of him? The distress of this the babies murder together with the way he publicised it haunts me so much, that only violence towards him eats at my soul.

17 hours ago, ChiangMaiLightning2143 said:

Why Doctorate would score less than a Masters?
Nonsense.

Typo of course. Sorry. 

Here's the corrected table below:-

Educational Qualifications
High School only                      3 Points
Higher vocational diploma     5 Points
Bachelor’s degree                    8 Points
Master’s Degree                      10 Points
Doctorate                                 15 Points

13 hours ago, abab said:

 

 

I would have expected that being able to show few millions $ was enough. I am not going to work just to get any residency !

 

 

 

 

Yes Sir,  Should you have a few millions kicking around, then a 20 year 'Thailand Elite' Residency Document with multi-entry visa and concierge service is yours for the taking 

http://www.thailandelite.com/glimpse.php

In this instance (with legal implications and follow up likely), there really is only one place to go - The Police Forensics hospital in Bangkok.

This is likely the best facility in Thailand any DNA testing results produced here will be accepted unquestionably as true by any court - I've been through this procedure myself.

Here's what you need to do:-

You, the mother and the child all go together to the Police Foresics hospital, 2nd floor 'DNA testing center' 

Of course take with you your passport , the mothers ID card, babies birth certificate, mums tabien baan, originals & photocopies of everything, etc.

You will then all be photographed, finger printed and DNA tested by buccal swab method by a police doctor and a formal police DNA certificate acceptable in a Thai court will be produced.

Timescale for production of the certificate after testing is around 2 weeks. Costs are around 12,000 Baht.  You can chose to either collect the certificate in person or have it sent to you by EMS courier for a small extra charge.

If the women gives you excuses about not being able to go there for whatever reason - STOP PAYING HER ANY MORE MONEY. 

More info on DNA testing in Thailand http://www.forensic.sc.mahidol.ac.th/proceeding/49_Samart.pdf

Below is a photo from the facility showing a poster about usage of DNA testing in forensic medicine..  

"Jesus-H-Christ. What do we have here..." 

On 3/27/2017 at 5:06 PM, skyaslimit said:

Let your police station call the immigration officer who dealt with your PR book, they will guide them where to obtain red book if they don't have one in their stock.

 

On 3/27/2017 at 1:30 PM, thedemon said:

 

I had a similar experience with my police station even though it is quite a big station. They flat out denied that any such document had ever been issued there.

 

After a lot of persistence a very junior (but commissioned) officer was found that was aware of the procedure. He asked if I could leave the documents with him for a couple of days because he had never done it before.

 

Stbkk is right. It must be done at the station covering your area.

 

 

OK - got it.

As per advice received from Jomtien IMMO...

For the Pattaya/Jomtien Area, if you don't have any luck at the local police station that covers your area, go to Room 304 on the 3rd floor at the main Banglamung Police station on Sukhumvit road (About 1km North of the Nakluah traffic lights). They have a department dedicated to alien registration administration. They issue the red books directly from this office. 

Note: You need to have an official translation of your own birth certificate clearly showing the names of your mother and father. These should have already been entered on your yellow tabien baan used for the PR application - however, if like me you were originally in an 'up country' tabien baan, the grass chewing registrar up in those parts might not of entered them 

FYO - this month (March 2017) must be seeing a lot of PR's being issued by CW BKK. The registrar at our local police station said that he had seen 3 recently issued Farang PR books presented to him for processing just this week.

The recent surge in PR issuance has to be good news for all us long stayers. The last decade has not been kind to PR applicants, with issuance delays sometimes lasting several years being common place.

A high level contact from Bangers now informs me that IMMO is now recommending that PR applicants apply directly for Thai citizenship - the complexicity is similar and the costs are greatly reduced.

I'd never considered myself good enough or to have sufficient high level Thai friends to recommend me for such a loft perch... perhaps the times, they are a changing?  

1 hour ago, stbkk said:

From what I remember when I got mine, you have to go to the police station responsible for the area where you live, not just any old cop shop. Not sure if that's any help at all, especially if they don't know anything about it.  

Yes - spot on 

I went to the main police station in the area where I live (as mentioned at the top of the CW 'notice to issue an alien red book' letter) and they didn't have a 'Scooby-Do'...

Never mind, the local Tetsabaan Office seams happy putting my name in the dark blue tabien baan book, plus issuing the pink Thai ID card - so once that all that is out the way, I'll go and pay Jomtien Immo a visit and see if they can help recommend a local police station who can process the request.

Plainly, not many Thai officials see Farang with PR - for many, it's the first time and they have no idea how to handle the admin - I don't think that anyone who actually gets issued with PR will get annoyed with this - since by this stage,  any PR holder will surely know that in Thailand absolutely  nothing improves in Thai bureacracy when we get annoyed - the opposite is almost certainly true. Just keep plugging at it slowly, bit by bit, often being passed from one official to another until you find the mandarin who knows what to do, then it will gradually be sorted at the end