ohiodad

Reviews suggest that you are in for a rather rude experience. http://www.airlinequality.com/airline-reviews/ukraine-international-airlines/

Banphai, May 2015

Phala Beach (Sorry it took 3 tries to get this right.)

Thanks to all who replied. This info will make the trip easier.

I am traveling to Thailand in early May. I need to rent a car in Bangkok and drive to Chayaphum and then to Ban Phai (just south of Khon Kaen). Eventually I will return the car to Bangkok. Any tips for places to stop along the way? I'm driving along Routes 2 and 201 and I need to know about places to stop for toilet breaks.

The RT is definitely not the same as the Surface 3. The Surface 3 is a tablet that competes with a laptop. It basically runs any software you can put on a PC. The RT has a completely different processor and is incompatible with ordinary software. You must download apps from the Microsoft store. There are far fewer apps than you would find for Apple products.

I bought an RT last December. Recognizing its limitations, it has given me value for money. It comes with Microsoft Office and OneNote. I've been able to work on documents (Word, Excel, etc.) interchangeably with my desktop. I can also use its USB port to transfer data when WiFi is not available. I use it mostly as a news reader. It was invaluable for watching movies during my recent hospital stay.

Have you tried using a cell phone as a wifi hotspot?  Trying to get internet to a laptop.

My daughter is studying in Ban Phai for a year.  She is having trouble getting a reliable wifi connection in her house.  Are there any public places where wifi is available?

Can anyone recommend a luthier (a person who builds and repairs string instruments) near Khon Kaen?

Thank you, Seismicman. My daughter arrived in country a few days ago. I'll forward this information to her.

Thanks to all for your advice. After a week in Bangkok, I'll be settling in Ban Phai, a little south of Khon Kaen but right along the highway. My friend in the US who was raised in Khon Kaen also recommends AIS. Good to know that there is general agreement.

I will be spending a year near Khon Kaen. Can anyone make a recommendation for a cell phone carrier for an iPhone 5C (talk, text,data)?

My high school-aged daughter is about to become an exchange student, spending one year near Khon Kaen. Does anyone know of a violist in or South of Khon Kaen who might give private lessons?

Thanks for all the information. It does look like my daughter will be arriving several weeks after the school year starts. When I told her, she just rolled her eyes.

We are in the waiting phase now, so I've been doing this research to feed the excitement. It's clear that many students have been through this process and they seem to come out OK.

This is not associated with the YES program. It is AFS. We have friends here who have hosted teenagers from abroad through this program. We are sufficiently satisfied with the program to entrust them with our daughter. But some aspects of the program are wacky. For example, we may not know which city in Thailand, let alone the name of the family she will stay with until just a few days before she arrives in Thailand. It's likely that she will arrive about six weeks into the school year. Since we won't know the name of the school, we won't be able to start a dialogue with the school in advance to get help her get caught up. But apparently, AFS has been doing this for many years and the students make out OK.

Scott, thanks for the quick reply. Since I posted, I've done a little research and found a site that recruits teachers, http://www.volunteerthailand.org/thai-school-year-calendar/. It claims that the Ministry of Education announced changes in the school year. It says the first semester of 2014 will begin in early June. I wonder if this will really happen.

My daughter will be spending her junior year (11th grade) somewhere in Thailand as an exchange student. At this point, we do not know where she will be living. Does every school in Thailand use the same calendar (start and end dates) or is this like the States where every school district has its own calendar? Approximately when does the school year begin? She is scheduled to arrive around July 2 and will return the following May. We are wondering if the school year will have already begun.

Five years ago, we adopted a 10 year old girl and brought her to live with us in a multi-ethnic suburb of a large city. Her English was pretty good, but she was offered English as a Second Language assistance in most courses and translators for standardized tests. Her grades have been very good, and in high school, she is taking advanced courses. The biggest school issue we had during the first year was her adjustment to school routines and discipline. That first year (5th grade), she spent so much time in the assistant principal's office, we joked that they put her name on a chair in his office. In addition to ESL, her regular teacher had lived in Thailand for 3 years and was married to a Thai woman. Once a week, he would eat lunch with her, talking Thai and just being her friend.

We have found that the biggest gap in her education came in Social Studies. She had absolutely no exposure to US history and was behind her peers in basic knowledge about things like states of the union and geography.

A bigger issue was her unfamiliarity with American pop culture. It may have held her back socially for a few months. Today she is entering 10th grade, has plenty of friends and is doing well academically.

Here is a reference article: http://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=aqibasics.aqi

0-50 good

51-100 moderate

101-150 unhealthy for sensitive groups

151-200 unhealthy

201-300 very unhealthy

over 300 hazardous

In our case, our daughter's biological mother has spent most of her life in prison and her father is unknown. When our daughter was 10, the bio mom's parental rights were terminated. It is highly unlikely that the bio mom would be able to sue for our daughter's return. It is not something we worry about. My wife and I are members of several internet adoption forums. I cannot recall any case in the last 15 years in which an international adoption was voided because a birth parent lodged a complaint. (Sometimes these adoptions don't work out, but it is not because of the biological parents.)

Our daughter has a younger half-sister who is HIV positive. She was adopted by a different family in the US.

Our two Chinese children came to us as toddlers and they have no memories of life in China. The situation for our Thai daughter is very different. In spite of her personal difficulties, she has very strong, positive feelings about Thailand and all things Thai. As I suggested in my earlier post, the bigger issue is how you will go about making this child become a part of your family. Prior to adopting, we were required to meet with a social worker. In all of our cases, a huge part of the interview was spent on teaching us about emotional bonding between parent and child. At the time, I thought it was kind of stupid, but I now understand that just getting your new child to become part of your family is a huge undertaking and is not always automatic. Before we adopted our Thai daughter, Holt had me interview parents who took on the hard cases. Sometimes it just doesn't work out and the child becomes re-institutionalized. In others, the stress caused divorce.

That is why I suggest that you examine why you are considering adoption and think about the effects it may have on the other family members (including grandparents). The real risks involve developing a relationship beetween you and your child, not problems from the outside. Once you are comfortable with the great unknowns, it will become easier to find a program that will find the right child for you.

I can share my experience with Thai adoption. It is not exactly the same, but may help. My wife and I are both American and have adopted three children. In 1997, we adopted a boy from China at age 15 months. He is now 15. In 2003, we adopted a girl from China at age 19 months. She is now 10. In 2008, we adopted a girl from Thailand at age 10 years. She is now 14. All three adoptions went through Holt. we found the Holt staff very helpful. In each adoption, something went wrong with paperwork and the staff was able to clear things up quickly and painlessly.Writing as a farang who has never lived in Thailand, having people by my side while navigating the process was invaluable.

I was 54 when we did the Thai adoption. From my point of view, your age is not a problem. Aside from the paperwork issues, I think the biggest issue for you and your wife (and possibly your children) to work out is the kind of child you are looking for. When we first met with Holt, we were asked to complete a survey about our intended child. In addition to sex preference, you must consider whether you want a younger child (under 2 years) or a waiting child (over 2). In general, the wait time is less for an older child. In our Thai adoption case, we decided that we didn't want to deal with diapers anymore, so we looked for an older child. You must also consider if you might adopt a child with a disability. BTW, an older child is considered special needs because of the emotional trauma involved with leaving her family and starting a new life.

The paperwork issues are big at the beginning, but are quickly forgotten once you and your wife begin the real task of bringing a new chid into your family and raising her as your own. We have found the experience to be incredibly difficult and incredibly rewarding. The best way to learn about adoption is to talk to families who have done it. There is a group on Facebook called "Thailand adoption". There are over 200 members from all over the world who are raising children adopted from Thailand.

If you carefully read the article cited by another poster you will realize that it is probably not just DMSO, but DMSO (a solvent) mixed with another drug to form a "drug delivery system" :

I do wonder about this, if something like this DMSO stuff (which I've never heard of before) was mixed with some form of dissolved phenobarbital or other barbiturate and provided an adequate delivery system then perhaps it would produce similar effects. If hippies used to mix it with LSD then I'm sure it could be used with a variety of other substances.

Dimethyl sulfoxide is ONLY, as someone has already pointed out, a solvent. It is as correctly stated here, very often used as a delivery vehicle for drugs. On its own it is almost completely harmless, and especially at the sort of amounts that could be brushed onto somebody's skin in a semi-surreptitious attempt to "drug them". I know this because I have worked in the pharmaceutical industry for more than 10 years. I myself have dissolved many compounds in dimethyl sulfoxide with my own hands, and on more than one occasion spilled a load of it in very large quantities all over my fingers, with no ill effects whatsoever.

So the dimethyl sulfoxide alone story is palpable nonsense.

I would put almost no credence in the tranquiliser/animal sedative delivery story either. I have also myself quite a lot of experience in delivering these to animals, and the point is that to tranquilize an animal you have to get a lot in. The amount is dependent on body weight, and is usually calculated by body weight of animal. So if a 1kg rabbit needs 50 milligrams, ( a realistic enough dose for most animal anaesthetics) a 70 kg human would need 3.5grams for a complete knockout. Say half that is needed to feel woozy. That means you would need to dissolve nearly 2g of the sedative in a volume of dimethyl sulfoxide small enough to brush on someone's skin without the whole lot just rolling off, not much more than a few drops (say max 1/4 of a ml) or 8g of the drug per ml of DMSO. Nothing's that soluble, not even in DMSO.

So I have absolutely no belief in this either.

The idea that even if this impossibility could be achieved that it would be absorbed and render a person woozy in a few seconds is also absolutely beyond belief (even LSD itself wouldn't do this -I'm sure the cops 1960's LSD tale is an urban myth, but the point about LSD is that the doses needed are absolutely tiny, really minute, unlike sedatives, so this would have slightly more credibility)

So I personally am completely sceptical of this entire tale, without name of drug and some verifiable link to show that this has ever worked in the manner stated.

The idea that this is a deception to try and cover up what really happened and why makes much more sense to me, and I'd bet on it.

Partington is exactly correct. DMSO is a powerful solvent. It is dangerous only in that it can dissolve minute quantities of harmful materials. Then, if it is applied to skin, the harmful materials can be absorbed into the bloodstream.

For budding spy novelists, here is a useful link: http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/etorphine/etorphineh.htm

A lunar eclipse can only happen during a full moon. Must have been clouds or haze.

jonathanfrance -

I need to reiterate that there are too many people out there who want to make a fast $ off of the fears of parents. In my experience and in the experience of the three dozen families I have met who have an autistic child, there is no easy or miraculous cure. As I noted earlier, each autistic child is different. There are many combinations of behaviors that produce a diagnosis of autism. That means there are probably many different underlying causes for each child. Yet, a common thread for all these children is an inability to filter out extraneous sensory information. Our children treat background noise and forground noise with equal weight. Physical therapies designed to help a child decide what needs his attention and what can be ignored seem to help them cope with every day life. It's a long and slow process, but it does offer real improvement.

The original poster was asking what might be done for her child. I hold to my advice to avoid people who offer miracles.

We will have Integrative medicine for ADHD and ASD on November 26-30. Guest speaker : Dr Jeff Bradstreet director ICDRC and DAN tutor. Dr Bradstreet will also help for consultation after conference.

I keep coming back with negative information about this. You really have to keep a level head when people offer miracle cures.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article757537.ece

But most mainstream scientists remain skeptical of the gut-brain connection in autism. They say there's no scientific proof that the diet works. Some doctors warn that parents' desperation, paired with the mystery surrounding autism's causes, makes the field ripe - as a top American pediatric gastrointestinal specialist put it - for "charlatanism."

"If there's nothing else that you think is going to help and you're desperate, you'll do anything," said Wendy Roberts, the head of the autism research unit at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

Here's an inflammatory article about Dr. Bradstreet's credentials: http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2007/02/jeff-bradstreet-deserts-the-sinking-ship/

Please read http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2006/10/dan-on-a-mission-from-god/

And Ricci, the owner and list-moderator for the ABMD board also voiced concern in a long list of troubling DAN! traits. Its too long to quote here (screenshot here, but the lsit included DAN! practitioners who:

1) Have had their licenses suspended for overbilling insurance companies

2) Have had their licenses suspended for substance abuse

3) Have pushed MLM (multi level marketing/pyramid schemes – outlawed in the UK I believe) and lied about their involvement.

4) Received their degrees from a diploma mill in a strip mall

5) Have treated children for conditions they didn’t have and ignored conditions they clearly did have

6) Charged outrageous fees (Ricci quotes $300 for a bottle of Japanese secretin one can buy onesself for $5)

7) Have performed exorcism on their own autistic children and recommended others to do the same

Frankly, this is a little more than disturbing. Its crazy. Here’s Jeff Bradstreet – who the Autism Omnibus lawyers are putting forward as an expert witness recommending exorcism as a viable treatment for autistic kids.

Finally, the ICDRC is a partnership between Bradstreet and Dan Rossignol, who I wrote about earlier in this thread. See http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/03/suing_dan_practitioners_for_malpractice.php

Indeed it is big business to be bilking the parents of autistic children of considerable sums of money to use pseudoscientific "treatments" based largely on the scientifically discredited idea that autism is some form of "vaccine injury" or "toxicity" due to a combination of vaccines and environmental "toxins" (almost always vaguely defined or completely undefined). As a result, children are subjected to potentially dangerous treatments like chelation therapy, which can kill when it goes wrong, designed to "detoxify" the heavy metals that are supposedly causing the child's autism. Coman alleges a whole host of unscientific and unsupportable "tests" by Doctor's Data and "therapies" by Drs. Usman and Rossignol that, in their totality, are truly horrifying.

So, I can relate to your seeking cures. I've lived with an autistic kid now for over a decade. I can attest to the frustrations of watching his peers grow up and develop full, engaging lives while my son lives in social isolation. But it doesn't take a lot of digging to discover that people who offer "miracle" cures are just trying to separate you from your money.