Goinghomesoon

To be honest I wasn't that impressed with most of the range, but I don't probably don't fall in their demographic either (large farang aged 35+). The exception for me was one room right in the back corner which seemed more expensive than the rest of the range. Lots of great dressy-dresses and stuff that I could wear at night to work functions and dinners. Western sizes!!! The jackety thing I bought was about 1,400.

We were there today, scored a very nice woolly jackety-thing to wear in Australia next week. It's a huge store, a real rabbit warren of lots of smaller rooms. Never did find the kids but by that point I'd found my own gear and wasn't really worried.

start writing a few letters between yourself and GF ,,, date them 6 months ago (but throw away the envelopes),, then get as much in the way of documents as you can,,,i.e ..banks statements , a letter from your employer and hers,,,a couple of letters from a sponsor or 2 in Oz (maybe your parents) saying that she will be supported while in the country,,,,if your GF has a job l think it is critical that you get a letter from her boss saying she has a job to come back to and maybe parents to look after ,,,, from memory (which is a bit dim) it took me 1 day to get a tourist visa for my wife(we were not legally married then) and had known each other for less than 6 months ,,,but a woman we spoke to at the embassy had tried 8 times to get to Oz ,,,, my wife also has a respectable job here ( she thinks so anyway)

the luck of the draw l think

good luck

Egg have you read the guidlines on the AustEmbassy's website? Any letters submitted must have the postmarked envelopes attached. We lodged earlier this week for a tourist visa and the girl at the counter checked every letter and stapled on the envelopes, as I just had them loose.

Thanks guys. MIL didn't improve after her Nong Khai Hospital experience, so my fiance flew up north and took her to Dr Nattapat, the female eye specialist at AEK Udon and thankfully her condition can be easily corrected. My man was very impressed with the doctor's gentle way of speaking with his little old Isaan mum who was literally shaking in her boots at the sight of the 'big city hospital'. He said the doc took a lot of time to explain what she was doing, and why. Would recommend her, especially if you have any Isaan relatives that are nervous in hospitals.

Ah yes, the no-travel thing. Seems in northern Isaan we are fine to travel until the day before the wedding but have to stay in the house for 48 hours after the ceremony. So my family and friends are booked into the only nice hotel in the area but I will be sleeping on my sister-in-law's wooden floor.

Cathy our maid makes all our own yogurt - she learned at an Indian cooking class she took. As a starter she uses a couple of spoonfuls of unsweetened yogurt (the one that comes in largish jars with a red screw-top lid). I'll ask her the exact process on Monday when she comes in. Once you have made one batch you can use the culture from that set to make the next batch.

Oh, and although we have a yogurt maker she prefers to make it in a saucepan and let it set the traditional way. I must admit the yogurt is much thicker and more 'set' made this way.

Lucky my MIL is nearly blind and may not be able to see whether I wear her chosen colour. But PINK ohmygod Devona you poor darling...

Sorry no - Phon Phisai is the next big town east of Nong Khai, along the Mekong.

Ah in a way I am glad someone else is going through this too. Sorry but it makes it much easier to know I'm not the only one. In our case it is my hubby-to-be that is being a stickler, insisting that only those who receive invitations will be welcome (his mother was aghast). He's even gone as far as moving our ceremony from his mother's village to his sister's village where noone knows us. His theory being that he won't feel obliged to invite people he doesn't know, and ignoring the fact that his sister is very social and is no doubt planning a cast of thousands. He insists that since he has not lived in the village for almost 20 years he (we) will not be paying for a bunch of people to eat and drink for free.

They are also arguing about what food to serve. Pig vs Cow is very boring to me but arouses incredibly strong feelings among the in-laws.

Devona I think you might have to hire a second bus (or increase the size of the first one). Better not to put too many noses out of joint, you never know which aggrieved staff member might end up as your teaching assistant next year... or have a separate 'after wedding party' in Khon Kaen and invite everyone from school.

MIL actually proposed selling a chunk of their land to raise the money for the sin sod. There's no way we would allow this as their land is their livelihood. So the compromise is that the groom will give the money to his parents before the wedding. They will present it to my mother as sin sod. Then it will be coming back to us as a wedding gift from my side of the family.

Gonna be away from Bangkok for the weekend, where can we watch the game in HH?

Oh John, where do you buy quark in Bkk? It is a great base for so many cheesy dishes, especially if you want to lower the kilojoule count.

I will be receiving SinSod from my Thai man when we do the traditional ceremony in January. Although neither of us have previously married we are a bit older than most (mid-30s) and have been living together for a while, so the amount will be modest, somewhere around the 200k mark. Although his parents were heavily involved in the negotiation of the amount (MIL wanted it to be much higher ) we will actually provide the cash on the day. They can load it up on the trays and return it to us in style and impress all the neighbours. They get to keep their status in the community and we get to keep our money. After all, it wouldn't be an auspicious start to bankrupt the in-laws.

Every time I'm at the Amphur in Phon Phisai I see at least 1 or 2 farangs, never the same ones. But when we wander around town we rarely see any at all. Admittedly we only make it up north for the occasional weekend but it's like farangs melts into thin air when they leave the district office. What do y'all do for fun?

Thanks guys. MIL was too scared to go to a 'big' city like Udon so she took herself off to the government hospital in Nong Khai. She was quite happy but treatment consists solely of 4 weeks worth of eyedrops. Personally I haven't heard of eyedrops curing the onset of blindness but....I'm not a doctor. We'll give it a month and if it's not effective my BF will go up north and escort her to Udon.

There is a group called WOMBLES (Working Mums of Bangkok Lets Eat Supper) associated with BAMBI. Although the name implies that you have to have kids, they actually welcome anyone and are a great bunch of professional women working in a fascinating range of industries. They get together monthly to eat dinner.

The Alliance Francaise www.alliance-francaise.or.th in Sathorn Rd run a number of adult education classes in English on weekends, including photography, painting in various mediums and French language.

Neilson Hayes Library is great not only for borrowing books but also for their exhibits and functions (eg: they just had a session on travel writing).

For cooking classes, places like Baipai Thai are very reasonably priced and for more 'gourmet' Thai you could try Blue Elephant restaurant. Benjarong at the Dusit Thani used to have 3-hour Saturday morning classes and then you eat what you cook, yummy!

We stayed recently at the Sofitel Khon Kaen and it was the best night's sleep of our 10 day Isaan driving holiday.

If the OP's parents ask what he wants for a farewell gift, I'd be asking for a decent travel insurance package including any risky activities, like diving or trekking, that he might want to do in the holidays. On a teaching salary good quality hospital care in the event of an accident would be out of his means and might mean Mum/Dad getting a frantic phone call for a huge amount of $$$.

I just spent the past 24 hours there and it's one well oiled machine. In Australia I have spent a lot of time in ER with accident prone children and know you can wait hours. Therefore I was impressed to be seen by the attending Dr at the ER within minutes of arriving at Bumrungrad. I was given the 'optimum' list of tests that could be done for my injury but they happily accepted that I only wanted the basics to first establish the extent of the injury. When it came time to pay and checkout they were a little slower but nothing compared to waiting in line at a public institution back home.

And although language is no indication of medical ability, when I was in pain and upset it was really nice that all the staff could speak english.

One day when MIL was being unbearable to her many adult children, hubby-to-be decided that we would stay at a guesthouse in Phon Phisai rather than at home. Gotta say the choice was pretty woeful and we ended up back on MIL's floor again that night.

DC One on Yenarkart (near Sathorn) is excellent, they have specialist paediatric dentists and their rooms are equipped/decorated for children, lots of toys, a spaceship painted on the ceiling etc. We are very happy with them. Search on the net, they have a website.

If you plan to stay in Nong Khai and drive east on the main day/evening beware that the traffic will be very, very heavy. Phon Phisai is one of the more popular places to watch for the fireballs and the traffic there comes virtually to a standstill.

Yes BigMove give it a try. Best thing is that you can spray it on most surfaces so we dosed up our dining room chairs and the curtains in all the rooms. Also the cane outdoor chair cos I was sick of sitting on it and finding little matts of cat hair caught up in the fibres. Doesn't have a smell that I can notice except when first applied, but the cat sure avoids it.

Best thing is the cat KNOWS she hates this stuff and she's trained to avoid it. I simply show her the bottle now and she moves over to her scratching post.

I suggest "No Scratch Spray" which is a herbal formula made in Australia that cats hate. You just spray it anywhere you don't want them to sit or scratch. It doesn't smell bad to adults, only the cat. I only have to show ours the bottle now and she moves, I don't even need to actually spray. We bought our bottle at the pet shop behind Villa Supermarket on Sukhumvit 33. It's expensive - 280 baht - but we've been using the same bottle for over a year.

I bought allspice at Tops Silom (in the basement of Silom Centre). I imagine the specialist spice shop, i think it is in the Paragon dept store, would have it.