Goinghomesoon

An update - still hoping someone else might pitch in. Latest is the hospital insists no 30 baht coverage and bill is 15,000 baht for 3 days, which the patient - who works in a laundry shop - doesn't have. He is in the orthopedics ward because the hospital has no psych services. The treating doctor refuses to provide a referral for psych services at a different hospital because she doesn't believe he has mental health issues. Um, hello...the patient can't remember his name, is hearing voices and refuses to talk to anyone except his imaginary friends. Oh yeah and he tried to kill himself 48 hours ago. Sigh.

Unfortunately a close family member (Thai) tried to kill himself a few days ago and ended up in a government hospital on the outskirts of Bangkok. Today hospital staff told his assembled family that he is not eligible to claim treatment on the 30 baht scheme because it doesn't cover incidents of self-harm. Has anyone else run up against this and where would we go to find out if it is true? It seems a strange policy when he is someone that right now REALLY needs all the medical support he can get.

Your Thai spouse can lodge the Australian passport application. You don't need to be there although you do need to have signed the application form.

Email [email protected] for their full guideline.

Some good points but I also do not agree that the Australian system would have acted as the OP describes were his daughter to go with him to Australia. He is the legal true father and no way would the Australian government put a baby on a plane back to Thailand to a very uncertain future.

While the above is currently true, if Thailand does implement the Hague Convention then this will change. One of the key aims of the Hague is to ensure that custody cases are heard in the country where the child is habitually resident. Thus if a child who normally resides in Thailand is snatched and taken to Australia, the courts in Oz may well return the child to Thailand until a custody decision is made.

A very good document explaining how the Hague works is here. There are some interesting stats in there on international child abductions involving Australian children www.iss.org.au/documents/ChildAbductionReport05_000.pdf

Bangkok Dolphins come to our condo once per week and teach a bunch of kids. They run classes all over Bangkok, generally in big condos. You don't need to live in the apartment building to attend their classes (at least in ours this is true). They seem very good but don't go much beyond beginners level, at least in our small pool. There is also another group called Lets Asia that is similar.

I find the 'tude' often comes from men on holidays, rather than guys that live here. I come in contact everyday with both expat foreigners and tourists. By and large any negative comments I hear are from tourists, the ones who only see what a great place this is for guys looking for a 'certain type of holiday'. The worst service I have ever had from Thais have been in places with lots of tourists, like Phuket. I must make it to SBK's neck of the woods one day to see what it's like there!

uote]

How do I find these maids? My kids range from 13 to 3yr so I will only need help with the 2 youngest and the one on the way. I am wanting 1 live in maid/cook and then a day nanny ( I also homeschool). I have called several agencies and they charge a lot. Having a large family of 7 (soon to be 8) I do not want to pay 12000.00 to 15000.00 per helper especially a live in who is getting free room and board. If you guys know of anyone available please PM me or email me direct at [email protected]. We move into our permanent house Feb 28. So I am needing to find one to start Mar. 1. I am starting to get a little overwhelmed and am not sure how I am going to be able to homeschool and take care of all the daily household chores.

Thanks Peregrine8

To be honest, we pay ours the upper limit of the 12-15,000 mark. What we get for our money is quality waaaay above what any of my friends get for their 4,000 or 8,000 or even 10,000 baht a month:

- someone who can do everything for our family, important because I travel frequently, often at short notice, for work. She is cook, cleaner and parent rolled into one. She lives-in and usually works 5-6 days a week and 7 days a week when I am away for work.

- a responsible, educated, older woman with years of experience in a number of different jobs, not just as a nanny. Her most recent position was working for an international NGO on a child welfare program where she earned THB 24,000 a month. She left because she burnt out being faced with daily child abuse and trafficking cases.

- a helper fluent in 3 languages (Khmer, Thai, English) and conversational in at least 2 others. Since our family is multicultural, this was important to us.

- someone who values education, reading etc and puts this into practice. She does not allow youngest child to lay in front of the TV, she is constantly engaged with some hands-on activity-or-other. She is more than capable of supervising homework and is partly computer literate, can set up the computer and help daughter plays educational maths games and surf kiddies online sites without a problem.

- someone I trust 100%. New hubby, much as he loves his step-kids, is not yet at the point where he is confident handling everything in the house on his own.

I'm not making these points simply to show-off. At a higher paypoint range you simply find a far greater pool of talent. At a higher paypoint you should also be able to hire someone with some proper teaching or childcare training.

Ooh Boo you're right! I take those with me when I'm travelling for work. When I'm at home I have Shiseido face cleansing oil in a pump container. Just a couple of bursts and then rub oil all over the face, with a little bit of extra attention for my lashes. Then rinse off with warm water or in the shower. It gets my super-waterproof mascara and all other makeup off in seconds. It's the lazy women's way of cleansing, but it really works.

The lady who owns Furr Purr (in the soi behind the Robin Hood pub in Sukhumvit Rd, Bangkok) breeds Siamese, Korat cats and Khao Manees.

Maybe try Spice Story in Siam Paragon, on the ground floor opposite the entry to the supermarket.

So Swelters what have you found works best in your traditional Thai house? After abandoning expensive modern tiles we are back to traditional clay tiles for our place. Looking up at the tiles butts seems preferable to looking up at silver reflective surfaces, but we do want to be as cool as possible. We have allowed extra big windows, large sized vents in each end of the roof cavity and trees as near as possible. The plants will come after construction finishes...anything else that Thai farmers haven't already discovered?

There's a sad stereotype about Thai men if I've ever heard one. The Thai men I see on construction sites certainly don't seem to be lazy. In fact, I see many hard working Thai men around Bangkok and in other places I have been in Thailand. If we were going to go that route and base our assumptions on people based on what we choose to observe then I could state that western men tend to be a drunken, lecherous lot.

I agree. In hubby's Isaan village there are very few men, they are all away working, many of them as overseas labourers. Last year in rice-planting season, hubby and his parents did it all themselves because there were no labourers available in the village. A favourite with men in this particular place (east of Nong Khai) seems to be jobs on oil tankers out of Singapore or Malaysia. Hubby's best friend just spent 2 years away on a contract in Singapore, came home for 10 days then shipped out for another 2 year stint. FIL spent many years in Malaysia working and sending home money to pay off the purchase of the family farm. The flip side is that there are a bunch of women in the village who don't need to work. They sit around gambling, drinking and frittering away the money their husbands send home. I'm sure this is not the case just in our village...

Great guitars. We bought beautiful old 'sralao' furniture in Cambodia, I think this is the same as 'tabek' in Thailand (lagerstroemia ovalifolia I am told). The Khmers used it in their houses in the old days, so it must be reasonably durable. Our furniture is polished up to a sheen and seems to hold the surface well. It has a dark brown tiger-stripe pattern through deep gold-coloured wood, it's really distinctive.

Airflow under my FIL's Isaan house means it is pretty comfortable most of the time. I'm not sure what percentage of the cooling effect comes from being raised up. He also has lots of big shady trees over the house, large windows, vents in the eaves of the house and a large dam nearby which all contribute. Where his house is located is not flood-prone so for him it is not related to floods. When I lived in Cambodia houses in many rural areas had to be raised to stay out of the water in rainy season.

Also with the house raised up you get a nice shaded area underneath to laze around in hammocks or eat lunch and the kids can play in the shade. By building up you effectively double the size of your living area.

For me the most enjoyable thing is that the stilts keep the animals out. FIL's favourite cow has a habit of hanging around at the bottom of the stairs looking balefully up at her beloved owner. I'm sure she's plotting how to get up there!

So being drunk and/or having a stalker is the main starting point?

Haha, too true, I guess I had a semi-stalker! My hubby had seen me many times over a number of months at his workplace, even though I never saw him. He told his workmates he was in love with me from afar, which might explain why there were lots of giggles whenever I went there One day in his spare time he was helping a friend advertise his new business, an upmarket spa. I stopped at a pedestrian crossing nearby and he decided it was 'now or never'. He literally jumped in front of me on the pretext of handing out the advertising material. He was so sweet and earnest he managed to convince me to take a look at the shop. That led to coffee and later dates 'to learn English'. Fast forward nearly 2 years and here we are happily married.

We enquired recently and were advised that partnerships where both, or one, partner is Thai receive priority to adopt over foreign couples. Not sure if that actually works in practice but that's what the social worker said. We haven't taken it any further at this stage. If you'd like me to email you the official brochure which lists all the requirements, just PM me.

Strange, I just renewed mine and it was a one-page form, 2 photos and the fee.

No additional pages for Australian passports. As far as the unused pages, the observation page is just that, a page for a special label, for example if you are a dignitary or hold some special rank. It can't be used for visa stamps.

One of the Royal-supported projects makes it, I bought some at one of their food fairs a few months ago, it was really yummy.

Perhaps it's the absolute nature of some of the statements made here that polarise people. Stating categorically that a particular trait (negative or positive) MUST be present in ALL Thai men seems pretty pointless when it can't possibly be true.

Yes but Sabum not everyone has the same opinion as you. Why should the OP expect to be vilified (or "mildly berated" as you put it), and mostly by men, for stating her feelings in a women's forum?

Personally, I would not be concerned at all with any dealings/interviews with the Consular section at the OZ embassy in BKK as, in my experience with them over the past 12 years, its always been a very well run place staffed by people who actually seem to care and they have always been extremely pleasant and helpful, particularly if you visit in person.

Finally, I would also mention the payment issue to them directly when you're there as I'm sure they will sort it out as it really is nonsense.

Yes but the OP is talking about visas and Consular Section don't issue visas, the Immigration Section do.

This gets me every year, last year I was 8,000 miles short, and would have hit it last week if not for the re-set. If its just the lounge you want, get an Amex or Citi Thai Airlines co-branded credit card, or a K-Bank Platinum credit card. All allow access to the TG Biz Class lounge at Suwanabpumi.

I use a platinum Amex/Thai Airlines linked card, but I cannot use it to access business class lounges. Can you give me any reference in print of this? Then I can wave it under their noses the next time I fly.

I also have the platinum Amex/TG card and haven't been able to use the lounge either. Would also love any confirmation that this is the case, as I can't find it in my Amex handbook.

Simon, if those boards are 20cm wide then they were some old trees. The mai daeng we've cut and milled for our house was planted 30 years ago and the widest boards we are around 15cm. Then again we are in far north Isaan and the trees don't get a huge amount of water. Wide boards seem to hard to get, even from salvage jobs. Or maybe that's just our location, down your way it might be different. Old mai daeng makes spectacular flooring. The look of my in-laws mai-daeng floors after 25 years is amazing. Lots of bare feet have smoothed them down to a beautiful shiny dark red patina and the only care they've had is a daily sweeping and the occasional bucket of water thrown over them.