boonbohmee

14 hours ago, DrJack54 said:

When was last time you obtained TDL.

As for international DL just your DL from home country is fine. 

 

I took my family in for our TDL's just last month. We submitted our DL's along with our international drivers licences. My children paid their 505 baht and walked out with their new licences. My wife and I were about to do the same but while they were entering our information they found that we had TDL's 10 years ago. We had to do the tests again.

I recently got my first "marriage" visa after 20 years of marriage. 

I think you're better off with using tourist visas until you decide to live here. Just much easier.

You need a tabien bahn to get a bank account. You need a bank account and 400,000 baht in it for two months before you can get a marriage visa.

The tabien bahn took two months and included having all family members and the local phuyaibahn making in person visits. The nice surprise is that I got a Thai ID card with it. It's pink instead of blue and it says you aren't Thai. So far, it works just like a Thai ID for health care. I've been to the local clinic (anamie) many times and not paid. I just had a covid booster, and just like the locals I didn't pay. 

For your driving licence the best way to do it is to get an international licence in the UK before you come. That can be turned into a Thai licence without the written and driving tests.

There's no word for 'stress.'

A like a few Thai words that don't translate to English.

Numjai and Kengjai.

During my first few years in Thailand, I thought that Thai's always talked about money. I've been here for ten years now, am pretty fluent and no longer notice it.

I think part of the reason for thinking as you do is a lack of Thai language skills. When your Thai is limited, about all you pick up on in conversations is numbers and money.

I did a lot of bamboo work on a house I built a few years ago. In the end, I had to rip most of it out. A little bug called "mot", I'm not sure of the Thai spelling, but it's sounds almost the same as "mot" for ant, began to eat away at everything. They get into anything that's split pretty quickly, but eventually they start onto even poles. They eat little holes in the bamboo and leave a fine dust behind. I had it so bad that the munching could be heard. Where I live now, there are some villages that do so lovely furniture with bamboo but the same thing happens to their work after about a year.

I've heard that this problem can be dealt with a couple of ways. One is to 'burn' the outside of the poles. This I heard will help but just to extend the life. I also read, and heard from the old boys, that bamboo should be sunk into water for a year before it's used.

Yah, I speak English to my kids. They're young and it's the right time for the exposure.

But, . . . It's frustrating.

I spend my days at school, speaking English with the students. I spend my evenings speaking English to my children.

I live in Thailand. I've been here for 8 years and learnt most of my Thai the first. Before teaching and children. My Thai is very good but I feel I should be like a native speaker by now.

But, . . . I live in Thailand and speak English all day.

Yep,

Been married for seven years now and have added two more children to the roster.

Expect someday to have problems because my eldest son has a name different than the rest of us.

I'm in quite the similar situation. My wife had a child when I met her. He was less than a year old so knows only me as father. She left the real father when she was only a few months pregnant, but for some reason put his name on the birth certificate.

We tried to change his name over to mine, as would be done quite easily at the local jungwat if I were a Thai man. Instead we were directed to the provincial hall and were given a huge list of paperwork which would need to be delivered in Bangkok.

It took about a month to get our huge stack together and and were quite excited when we travelled to the big stink. I was surprised to find out that we had to go through adoption. They took about a third of our paperwork and gave us some more lists of paperwork and hurdles.

That was a few years ago.

We were frustrated and gave up.

It just seems so stupid for a mother and her husband to have to go through an adoption process.

We've talked lately about my wife tracking down the boy's father and getting him to sign off.

Please post if you have any success changing your child's name over to yours.