CWMcMurray

Our company has just accepted an Intern who is a University Student in France (French National).

This will be for a 3 month Internship position and I understand that the best visa should be a non-im B visa, but just wondering where would be the best place to advise him to get his visa, if he would be able to get a multiple entry or just a single entry and what docs our company will need to give him to support his visa application.

I realize that I could advise him to just go to Thai Embassy, but am aware that sometimes consulates are more accommodating and not all embassies are as "user freindly" as others, so I would like to ask anyone with any experience in requesting visa from France to give a little feedback on their experience.

Thanks all ...

... they could have basic success and be loaded with infinitely renewable content, accents and vocabulary.

From reading the article, it appears that each robot will have a real live teacher sitting in the Philippines operation the robot and "speaking though" the robot. So I understand that the robot it self will not be the "teacher" but rather it is just an upgrade of a video conference call from teacher in Philippines.

Maybe the taxi driver in Question has family in the area, so he was willing to give a low price to get the customer and a "Free Trip" back home...

I served in the US army for aprox 6 yr and I honestly do not think there would have been any problems if any of the guys in our unit were openly gay, as long as they didn't try hitting on any of the non -gay guys, but I really do not think that would be an issue...

I believe the OP is talking about "Long Term Fund" ... basically if you invest in this type of investment fund you can deduct the amount invested from your taxable income upto 15% or 150,000 thb (if memory serves me right)

This means if you are in one of the upper tax brackets...like 30%... you will get a tax refund of 30% of what ever you buy... and I believe you are only required to keep your money in for 5yrs to qualify.

Basically buy up to 150,000 thb worth of mutual funds and get a refund of up to 45,000 thb a few months later when you file your taxes.

All -in - all a pretty good deal...

As for the OP's question, you should be able to pick them up at any Bank... I believe Bangkok Bank has quite a few different options for mutual funds

She may need to be there for the court case (if it came to that), but she could surely hire a lawyer to start the divorce without her being in country. As others have said, it it did go to court, she could surely get a visa to attend.

From my understanding, you need to claim the total earned income made in both USA and Thailand on your USA taxes and you will then be able to deduct the amount of tax paid in Thailand from what you owe in the USA.

For Example:

Lets say you make a total of 50,000 after combining both USA and Thai income and lets say that after your standard deductions would owe Uncle Sam 6,350 USD. Then lets say you have paid Thai Taxes in the amount of USD 2,500 and you have had taxes withheld from you us salary of 4,000 USD.... then you would need to pay uncle Sam 6,350 - 2,500 - 4,000 = tax refund of 150 USD

but I understand that you could not get a refund from USA if you paid more taxes in Thailand that you would have paid in the USA...

For example... if in the same situation, you made the majority of your money in Thailand... lets say 45,000 in Thailand and USD 5,000 in the USA

Then you may have been liable to pay Thai taxes in the amount of USD 8,450 but based upon total income of USD 50,000 you would only need to pay US taxes of 6,350.

Lets say you had USD 1,000 withheld from your USA salary...

This means that you have paid 9,450 USD in total taxes, which is an over payment of USD 3,100. But you can only get a refund of USD 1,000 because this is all that was paid to uncle Sam.

My question is... What is your forwarder saying is the reason why Thai customs is asking for a under the table payment?

Are they advising that there is something incorrect in your paperwork?

I applaud your commitment not to bow to corruption, but you also may want to make sure that all your ducks are in a row.... otherwise you may find out that you have a pretty big problem on your hands...

There are many different types of Mutual funds available in the Thai market, you can find some offered by Bangkok Bank below...

Bangkok Bank Mutual Funds

Based upon your OP, I think you my be interested in the below fund...

Bualuang Top-Ten Open-end Fund

The Bualuang Top-Ten Open-end Fund is a medium to long term investment in the top ten stocks considered most likely to yield the highest total returns in the Stock Exchange of Thailand. At least 65% of the fund's NAV is allocated to equities while the rest will be invested in debt instruments, deposits, or other financial assets, as approved by the SEC.

I also agree with many that the new immigration center is much better than the old one....

It may take me a few more minutes to get there, but just knowing that I will be able to find a parking spot makes up for that. It used to be a complete nightmare finding parking at the old place. I am sure that if I added in the time spent looking for a parking spot once I arrived it would take about the same time door to door (or maybe even a little bit less).

Not mention that sometimes after fighting traffic and spending nearly 20 min (sometimes) trying to find a parking space, I was usually frustrated and miserable by the time I even walked through the doors.

Add that to the long lines, bad a/c system, inadequate seating and longer processing times.... every trip to Suan Phlu was a complete nightmare.

At the new place, there is always plenty of parking, it is spacious, with plenty of seating and clean. The bathrooms are clean and do not smell (used to have to hold my breathe when using the ones at the old place) and working A/C. Not to mention the fact that it seems like the officers are able to process things much faster. This could be due to better systems or more officers or it could even that based upon better working conditions, peoples productivity may have increased.

Even if you get stuck during the lunch break, there are numerous restaurants and food courts to go to. All-in-all the new place is 1000x time better.

Have had a Bangkok ban account for about 3 1/2 yrs now and have never had an phantom withdraws.

Also even if it did cost 50k it may still be worth it....

If my understanding is correct, since you were never married and only girlfriend / boyfriend, that you may not officially be the father. Although if your child has UK citizen ship and a UK passport, one would presume that you may have gone through the process of getting yourself legally declared as the father.

If not, then it would be really really important for you to go through the courts to get official sole custody, otherwise on any given day your ex could change her mind and come pick up your child and you would have no legal standing.

If you are legally the father, I would also recomend getting the situation legalized through the courts now while your wife seems to be ok with you having full custody. If she changed her mind in the future, she could easily take things to the court and fight you for custody regardless of the signed agreement that you have in your hands.

If you get custody settled now and are given sole custody in the courts there is really almost no chance what so ever she could come back later and take your child from you.

That being said, what is the cost of 2 round trip plane tickets to UK ever year.... I am guessing by year number two it would have been cheaper to go through the courts to get sole custody and then do yearly extensions her in Thailand.

Also could you even legally take your child overseas with you, I think I remember some one mentioning that you would need a letter from the mother giving permission.... that is unless you have docs from the courts showing that you have been awarded sole custody...

You can also try the below website, it is what I use to monitor my credit.. It is completely free and allows you to check your score and that the nothing crazy has happened

Credit Karma

You can not only monitor your credit score through "soft credit requests" (does not decrease your score), but also monitor number of outstanding accounts, total outstanding debt and if any "Hard Credit inquiries" have been made on your credit.

Been using it for the last few years and absolutely no costs what so ever.

The law state that the wife would get 50% and the remaining 50% would be split among your children.

Also as Mario pointed out, so long as you are legally married, in the eyes of the Law, all Children given birth to by your wife are considered to be your children.

There are driving schools all over Bangkok (not sure about other areas) and all of them that I have seen have cars for the students to use. My wife took one of these courses before she got her license. The teacher will then also arrange for all the student to go to the DMV for the test and provide the car for the driving test.

If I remember correctly, the cost was 3,300 for15 hours of driving lessons. The school had a set up in a large open lot with traffic cones for practice in driving, backing up, parking (parallel and backing into spot).

She liked it and worked for her, she was able to pass the test on the first shot.

ps. The driving school was on Srinakarin Rd just passed Samitivet Hospital on the opposite side. If you go by that area, you will see the open lot with the cones set up, just stop by and ask for details. I believe they operate everyday but sat and sun are the busy days.

When my wife goes back with me to the states, she ends up buying around 20lbs of assorted candies to give to everyone when we come back.

Hershey miniatures, Jolly ranchers, Jelly beans,miniature Peanut butter cups, butter fingers, nestle crunches etc...

If I remember correctly, the biggest hits with her friends were the Jolly Ranchers

Last time was during Easter season and the time before that was during the Christmas season, so she had a field day both times....

The only thing I don't understand is people saying to give money if you were not invited to the wedding???

I am sure that there are hundreds of weddings happening every day in Thailand, but I would never give money to any of them unless I was invited to the wedding.

Mt original visa 6 ys ago was an ed visa...

I extended it 3 yr while I was a student and then when I was about to graduate, I switched reason for extension to be Thai Wife and then a few month later received my work permit on this extension without leaving the country.

I think that the two cases are similar...

The only additional information that was required was a letter from my university stating that I was still a student when I changed the reason for extension.

As per the immigration officer, they do not mind changing the reason for the extension, but the letter was needed to ensure that my extension for studying was still valid.

If I was no longer studyung then my extension for the reason of studying would have expired the day I was no longer a student and that would have meant that I was on an overstay as my previous extension would not be valid regardless of what my passport said.

So if you are going to go this route, be sure to do it before your wife stops studying or she will still need to leave the country and may even face a fine for overstay if she is no longer a student.

best way would just wait until the window for her next extension opens up and then just go down to immigration and apply for the extension under dependent rather than for the reason of studying. Then no need to leave the country.

I have been curious about this issue as well....

If you have turned in application for PR, then from my understanding, you will be able to continue going into immigration for extensions while PR application is pending.

So what exactly is your status?

Are you still under the same rules as your last extension or are you now in a "new group" of Pending PR application?

When you go back into Immigration for visa extensions, do they check anything?

Do you still need to provide all of the same info that was required before submitting the PR application?

Or do they just verify that your application is still pending, stamp another extension and send you on your way?

What if your status changes, is your extension of stay immediately revoked ?

What about your PR application? Does that immediately get revoked as well?

If in the OP case above, if he loses his extension of stay, how does that affect his PR application? Does he have to start over again (i.e. wait for 3 more yrs of unbroken visa extensions? )

Separate issue... so separate post...

You will need to have your forwarder check with Japanese side as well. It is entirely possible that import duty may need to be paid when importing goods into Japan.

You should be asking your forwarder:

What are the requirements for temporary import into Japan?

What is the normal duty and tax rates for this commodity?

Can a bond be placed with Japanese customs that can be refunded at the time of re-export from Japan?

After having the above answers, if you find that import duty would need to be paid or if a bond would need to be placed with customs, I would then go back to the UK company that you bought the goods from and advise them of the situation and ask there advise on how to proceed as this may be something that they have faced in the past.

If you are sending out for repair, then you should not need to pay import duty at the time the goods are returned and re-imported. (as long as the process is done correctly).

- You must do formal export customs (that means no post office,DHL,UPS courier).

- You must tell your forwarder that the goods are being exported for repair, so that they can note at the time of export.

- You must keep all docs from the time of export (invoice / packing list / AWB / export entry)

- If telescope has a serial number, this should be on export docs and photos should be taken of goods at the time of export.

- At the time of re-import, the invoice should be identical in description and value (including serial number), with one exception... a separate line item should be added to the invoice for "Repair cost"

- At the time of re-import into Thailand (also must be formal customs processing), import duty is only payable on the "repair cost" not the actual value of goods.

I actually believe that the American Embassy will help with an ""Emergency Loan" that can only be used to get back to USA... not cash.

I believe it because it was told to be by a Embassy Officer. granted, this was only mentioned in passing. We were just having a social conversation about what the embassy can and can not do.

I understand that this is a loan and must be paid back and that if not paid back uncle Sam will garnish your wages. I also remember her mentioning that there were safeguards to ensure that you could only use the money to travel back to the USA and that you would not be allowed to leave the country or get a passport again until the money was paid back to the government.

Seems like thew school is is pretty sqaured away....

You resign and they still follow up with you to ensure that all of your WP and Visa paperwork is taken care of correctly and give you correct information on your visa status.

The wife had one of these 7-11 cards at one point.... they were pushing them a while back and if you got one, they gave you extra points for one of the free give-a0way promotions if you bought stuff with the smart card. I do not remember there being any fees associated with it... just fill up and use, when empty, fill it up again...

That being said, you can only use it at 7-11.

Based upon your post, it seems the better solution for you would be to get a debit card from your Thai Bank, as you could then just use one card instead of trying to find a prepaid card for every outlet...

The Bangkok Bank debit card can also be used for Sky train as well...

Be 1st Debit Card