Tango7

Follow up post to one above:

For anyone wanting a backup solution, use a NAS...USB drives are not reliable and the hard drive is prone to failure...as they all are.

A 2 bay NAS, with a RAID 1 (mirrored) configuration, will set you back around 13,000 Baht depending on the size of drives used. It might sound expensive but it's nothing if you have data you can't afford to lose.

I have clients who have told me they've ended up paying 150,000 Baht ++ for professional data recovery services (top level stuff admittedly, but they still paid it), so 13,000 Baht is peanuts in the scheme of things.

I have had clients who are professional photographers and lost an entire day's wedding photographs after placing them on a USB external drive. I've had a headmistress who lost her school's pupil's records (all of them)... a wedding videotographer who lost a client's wedding video.. countless individuals who lost photos of their kids going back since they were born....and so on and so on...all had used an external USB drive as a backup / storage medium.

So, if you need that data, avoid USB drives and go for a NAS that sits connected to your Router via Ethernet. No need to connect / disconnect all the time and if one drive fails, replace it and you are back with complete data protection...

Just a head's up after reading a comment about USB backups.

If you want kaspersky Internet security, I can buy for you in UK and send you the License key from UK.

As an IT professional, I use Kaspersky for businesses and people looking for personal laptop protection. I personally think Kaspersky is the best out there but Bitdefender is getting extremely good reviews these days.

Forget McAfee and Norton...anything free is OK only and I see many, many PCs come through my office doors after having been infected with the free AVG option.

Basically, I put three things on my PC. Kaspersky Internet Security Suite (now 2014)...Malwarebytes and Ccleaner. With these items on my PC, I think I'm as safe as I can be without using a business level UTM / Firewall.

I can provide single or multiple licenses and multi-device licenses for PC, MAC and Android and for those who will start shouting that MACs don't need protection....they do.

If you want to go Kaspersky or any other software that is heavily over-priced in Thailand, just let me know and I can arrange to get you the licenses you want and payment can be made to a Thai bank account or PayPal... Just PM me..

Had a similar issue a while ago.

Booked through an agent I used a number of times before, got sent the flight details. All looked correct until I tried checking in.

The agent hadn't paid for the flight even though they had taken our money.

I don't think they were deliberately trying to rip me off, they were trying to juggle the cash they had and book what they could and ours wasn't possible.

We were massively p'eed off as you can imagine and had to pay for new tickets there and then.

At this point, having the high ranking police officer as a family friend kind of helped get our money back but it took 18 months of slow, small payments to recover it all.

I was extremely miffed at the time but what they'd done is use our money to pay for other tickets thinking they had plenty of time to get more money and pay for ours. There was no direct intent to defraud us. It was just terrible management that went wrong.

When I was booking my ticket to Thailand for the Xmas period a few months ago, there were no seats left on all the flights I was looking at but now there are loads of seats available. Even changing flight dates was pretty much closed off but now, you can pretty much pick and choose what flight you want to take.

Tourists are probably not only concerned but sick and tired of something going on politically and possibly causing issues for them whilst in Bangkok.

If the opposition won't even accept new elections and is aiming at a complete removal of anything smelling of a Shinawatra, then it's set to lose a lot of tourism to the likes of Vietnam and even Cambodia.

judging by the huge number of Thai people we come across in Gloucetershire and most are unmarried...settlement visas must only be refused for those who are absolute no hopers.

Almost evryone gets a visa... the UK might say it's tightening up but there is no evidence of this. UK just waves people in. The visa application process seems to be a money making process...not a filtering process.

if UK immigration is one of toughest in the world, how come 250,000 a year are allow in...legally. forget the illegal ones.

also, uk immigration is manned by immigrants... just go to Heathrow terminal 3

One point to remember is that if she intends to apply for British citizenship when qualified there is a limit to the amount of time spent outside the UK. Namely during the three years prior to the application for citizenship she must have spent no more than 270 days in total out of the UK with a maximum of 90 days in the final year.

Thanks for the offer, but it's already in my collection.

All good information and noted with thanks.

How about Choose Your Masques.. Sonic Attack or Roadhawks ? all mint, gate fold for Roadhawks ? If you are missing any, let me know. I have the lot ( I think )

ILR is Indefinite Leave to Remain, and is the stage after the 2 year settlement visa.

One is, of course, allowed holidays out of the UK during the two years; the only proviso being that when one does apply for ILR the applicant will need to demonstrate that they are normally resident in the UK; difficult to do is one spends more time out of the UK than in!

A few weeks away each year will definitely not be a problem.

She does not need to notify anyone.

Settlement visas are multi entry, so that will allow her back into the UK.

Many thanks 7 by 7

Yes, my wife is on the 2 year settlement visa and will only spend a short while out of the UK.

By the way, I have Church of Hawkwind .... LP... mint condition if you are interested :-)

Hi All

My wife is on her 2 year ILR settlement visa and has been in the UK since June 16th of last year.

In February, she plans to return to Thailand for a 4 - 5 week visit with our new baby girl for the purposes of introducing her to her family etc..

Are there any limitations to this considering her settlement visa ? Can she travel, does she need to notify anyone ? Does she need some kind of re-entry permit ?

Any guidance will be very much appreciated.

Best wishes to all.

Tango7

thanks for the replies, i get the gist of what is being said.

one other question, does excessive use of slang like this indicate uneducated/lowclass folks or is more so people trying to sound "cool" ? or perhaps a bit of both ?

Wife suggests it's by people not able to speak Thai properly..maybe people from Myanmar etc? She wasn't clear about what she meant but said she'd never seen it and it's unlikely to be people trying to be cool, so probably "uneducated"... hard to say or label people without knowing them.

Regards

Hi all.

The wife went to the VAC yesterday. She said there was loads of people getting refused for visas. I think the government is making it harder to pass for a visa. I think its going to get worse as well. I was watching the news last night (News in UK) and they were saying the government is making it harder to get citizenship. If they are making that harder then i think visas are going to get harder too.

Congrates to everyone who has won this week. good luck to you all.

Two days to the wifes interview. I have everything crossed.

One thing that was in the news recently (I'm back in UK) was that the government has decided to allow 450,000 illegal immigrants receive free medical care. made me seethe considering my wife had a miscarriage last December whilst we were on holiday over here and were charged 650 pounds in medical charges.

So, illegal immigrants get free cover but my wife has to pay... just great !

We're over here for good and will stick it out but boy, things have changed.... Polish everywhere, service in shops totally rubbish, TV worse than UBC ( yee gads !! )...getting a BT phone line took 3 weeks and everytime I call a company, I get diverted to India... this happend on three straight calls..one to BT, one to AOL and one to Belkin...

So, if you've been in Thailand for a while, you're gonna love coming home...

Maybe you could ask to share some space with someone who is also shipping their goods abroad.

I have just had all my stuff shipped to UK with Crown and they did an excellent job. They were very thorough about packing and my things arrived 6 weeks later.

I had a single 21' container but there was enough space for other goods and would have been happy to have someone ride in on my shipment for a small fee.

Extra luggage is charged per kilo... something like 1,300 Baht per extra kilo depending on the airline and so 2 cases full is going to be 50k ++ making shipping much cheaper.

My only issue is that they fumigated my shipment and everything has an odd smell which is slowly going.

chinese sausage is what's she's after. We can find most other things...

Thanks both

I have been back in the UK for about 6 weeks now and my wife, who is on a settlement visa, is starting to get bored of the food that's available to her. We have a good Oriental food shop in town and can get a number of sauces, vegetables, rice and noodles but she craves other things.

Is it possible to send things like Chinese sausages by post ? She has read on Pantip.com that other people have managed to get friends and relatives to send stuff but I was wondering whether anyone else here has any suggestions.

We're in Gloucestershire ( Cheltenham ) so if anyone knows of a really good place other than Wing Yip, please let me know.

Many thanks in advance.

Tango7

Hi,

just new to this forum. I have been in Thailand since March with my spouse and our 1 year old son. We met in the UK while my spouse was doing her masters degree around 5 years ago. After her studies and working for a University in Thailand for a couple years, she received a 2 years visiting visa, and we travelled always together back and forward from UK to Thailand. Our son was actually born in Thailand and now has dual citizenship , Thai and UK.

We travelled back to Thailand in March 09 to apply for her settlement visa. We applied on 19th March, and on the 19th June we got the reply that it was refused ! There was NO interview or ANY request for further documents, however the reason the ECO put down was that we hadn't adequately shown accommodation and maintenance. I have my own restaurant for the last 7 years, so they had my accounts, and also the lease for our house is in both our names, and also the council tax is in both our names. We have been basically living in the UK for the last 2 years together as she had that 2 years visitors visa.

My point is that if the ECO had some issues he might have requested further documents or an interview? Now for the first time in over 2 years I have had to return alone and leave my fiance and son in Chiang Mai ! Surely rather than split a family up the ECO should have simply made a phone call to us in Chiang Mai. I was on the phone to them alot while we all waited there for 3 months on this terrible decision!

tomorrow I have an appointment with my MP and also have left a message on the ECM's voicemail. Have sent them further emails with more bank statements showing my ability to support my family, and also practically every member of my family has written an email to them supporting all my evidence. I really feel this is so much a case of being unfairly treated. The ECO had lots of info on us, my house papers, work papers, accounts, 1 month bank statements, my divorce papers translated all originals and certified... my sons birth certificate , photo's, emails over the last 5 years, my spouses history as a lecturer, her good previous visa history, she even had a government passport ( being a government official in a University ) . For the sake of 1, yes 1, more document that would keep my family together this ECO decided not to ask for it ! I know for a fact that it is more common for them to ask for further information after someone has submitted their application, than not to. Why not ask for this 1 document to clear this case up??

To top it all off I personally have a sponsors license issued by the Home Office in the UK. This is a license a business needs to apply for work permits. you have to prove yourself as a decent sponsor for any staff you might want to employ. So the Home Office was Ok with it why is this ECO not?

Any thoughts??? advice anyone might have would be really appreciated... thanks

Never heard of a two year visitor visa. Sounds like an odd one to give. After all, a settlement visa is only two years.

What a bunch of dim-witted censorious moralists!! You actually seem to think that the mere carrying of drugs is evil, and that taking them is terrible, and that this poor woman deserves this sentence. You obviously think that prohibition is sensible and right.

The "war on drugs" is an idiocy that has created most of the criminality in the world today and cost society untold billions and untold misery. Drugs should be decriminalised and state-controlled, with support and care for addicts. That policy would be an immense improvement on the current state of affairs worldwide (except in a few enlightened European countries), costing the whole lot of us far far less in taxes and suffering.

People who support the current drastic penalisation of drug-takers and drug-traders are simply out to lunch.

Could you not have said the same thing in a less demeaning manor ? "dim-witted censorious moralists"...... please !

If they quoted you for 7 CBM and you now have a full container, of course it will cost more. Am I missing something here? The freight isn't the only charge. Delivering 7 CBM in the UK is cheaper than delivering a full container.

Samran is right. There is currently a peak season surcharge on all containers going to Europe. Call any freight forwarder in Bangkok at the moment and they will confirm.

I think we're missing the point.

I ordered a 20 foot container which accommodates about 30 Cubic Meters.

I have enough goods to fill about 24 Cubic Meters of which 7 Cubic Meters was to be packed by the freight company. This was an estimation of what we thought they'd need to pack. The rest I would do by myself.

I packed a bunch of stuff and allowed them to pack the rest ( it was all going into the cotainer but it was just a matter of who put a box around the items ...me..or them ) After everything was finished, the next day I was told that they had packed more than 7 Cubic Meters and wanted 1,000 dollars for the trouble.

My point is that everything was going into the container anyway. This was a given. The only difference being they put more things into their own boxes than originally thought. This used slightly more packing materials and slightly more time but nothing past 4.30 pm.

I do not mind paying extra for packing materials but to be told it's an extra 1,000 dollars for a few more items and maybe and hour or two's extra work seems extortionate as it has nothing to do with space or what is handled. it is all PURELY packing.

So, to make this easy, let's say, they wrapped up a cupboard, a coffee table a bookshelf and a buffet cupboard and then chraged 1,000 dollars for doing so. If I had told them not to wrap them up, they would still have gone onto the container, still be sent to the UK and still have been delivered to my door, but just without a box around them.

Would you be happy to pay 1,000 dollars for that ?

Go and see a doctor.

I had a series of bites similar to what you describe, extremely itchy and spreading outwards. Turned out not to be bites but a fungal infection.

Interesting point, but these appeared during the night as if I had been bitten. Also, my wife was bitten so it seems more likely to be a bite than a fungal infection.

I'm trying to find images on the web to see if mine look the same.

Things seem to point to sand flies but I have bites all over and they appeared during the night from within my room.

I have put antiseptic cream on them all and band aided them up so as not to scratch them or have them rub against clothing etc.

They are nasty buggers !!

to the OP:

It may very well be a legit charge. Shipping costs per tonne fluctuate ALOT. With the economy improving, shipping rates have shot through the roof. You may be a 'vicitim' of these increased costs.

No, this is all down to the extra items packed by them. Nothing to do with space or shipping costs as I had already agreed on a 20 foot container and the price is by Cubic Meter not weight.

The only thing they have done different to the original agreement is pack, in their boxes, more than the 7 Cubic Meters that they estimated needed packing.

As mentioned before, a lot of the stuff they packed was already packed by myself in the original boxes.... things like a computer, monitor, hi-fi speakers, multi-function printer / scanner and a 40" LCD tv.

However, because the original boxes didn't say "so and so company" on the side, they just added one of their boxes to the outside of the original boxes and claimed it was packed by themselves... for an extra 1,000 dollars !!

nope. door to door.

some on my foot, some on my calf, some on my shin, elbows, ear etc. ( privates survived thank God ).

I think I got bitten by bed bugs a few years back and not the same type. Also, wife got bitten too but not as serverly.

I have dowsed the buggers in cream from pharmacy, added antiseptic cream and whacked a band-aid on the lot as I found the one on my shin was leaking through my jeans and a dark patch appeared where it had seeped into the jeans.

I waded in the water but swam in the pool only.

I knelt on the sand but only momentarily.

The bites seem to have come during the night but nothing I could identify.

As with another poster here, mossie bites annoy me but they go away after a day. There leave large welts and lots of fluid accummulates near the surface.

The only thing I saw was an ant like insect, but it wasn't an ant.

We have enough goods to fill the 20 foot container and many items, such as furniture, washing machines, LCD TVs etc needed to be professionally packed.

We packed everythign we could such as glasses, kitchenware, bedding, hi-fi, computers and so on.

The 7 Cbm agreement was based on their estimation at the time of agreeing on their services.

My real issue is with the fact of their extra costs considering no further space is being purchased, no further labour was needed and the entire job was completed in 6 hours from start to finish.

I was paying 3,000 dollars anyway and now, just for a few more items packed into boxes, they want a further 1,000 dollars.

If I had needed further space or more labourers and time was needed, I'd see the whole point, but as nothing more was needed with the exception of some materials, I fail to see how the 1,000 dollars can be justified.

I am about to move back to the UK and have employed a well known shipping company to move my stuff.

I have opted for a 20 foot container rather than the exact volume allowing me additional space if I need it and at no further cost.

My wife and I decided to pack a number of boxes ourselves and leave the company to do the rest of the difficult and larger stuff.

The company states it charges for the Cubic Meterage that it packs and so it estimated about 7 Cbm and a fee was agreed upon.

They came, packed and then we got a phone call stating they had packed much more than we agreed upon and they wanted an extra 1,000 dollars.

I'm not familiar with the packing process or associated costs but I'm floored by the extra amount.

We are being told that even though we had packed items ourselves in their original boxes and with original padding etc, they had put one of their boxes around them and thus packed them.

I feel we packed more than 3 Cbm and have no way of find out. All I know is that we packed 10 of their small boxes, 10 of their medium boxes and 3 of their large boxes ( I assume these are standard sizes )

Does this packing policy seem normal and what experiences have any of you had ?