RY12

Could anyone who has heard ANYTHING about the effect a U.S. tourist visa rejection has on future applications for that same visa please post? My gf has a relatively weak case but I'm thinking of just going for it and trying this summer anyway while I'm employed in Phnom Penh, but I don't want to do it if it will make future attempts viewed with more suspicion rather than tenacity. (I know it doesn't have an effect on the K-1/3). Officially, the US Embassy says you "may" apply again "if circumstances change", which sounds benign I guess...

Thanks,

Other Questions:

1.) Will the interviewer and reviewer of the "sufficient ties" packet be the same person, and will he/she be bilingual? Does the 'sufficient ties' packet have to be in Thai as well as English?

2.) On the DS-156 form it asks "What is the purpose of your trip" and "Who will pay for your trip", ...are there generally accepted no-no's to answering these questions? Is it ok to write that I will pay for the trip?

3.) The embassy website states: "While an applicant needs to show he has enough money to make the trip, an individual does not need to be rich to get a visa. It is more useful to show the consular officer a steady banking history, with regular deposits and withdrawals, than a letter stating simply that the applicant has lots of money in the bank." Her banking history is going to show 3 big deposits over the last year and a half since we knew eachother, should one try to hide or avoid the fact that it came from the bf or just admit orally or in the paperwork?

4.) It is better to be unmarried than married for the tourist visa right? especially if I'm living in the US? Should anything about marriage be mentioned at all in the 'sufficient ties' packet?

Wouldn't his Embassy know the answer to these questions? or is it one of those cases where "officially" he can't take the baby out but in reality no one checks, and he doesn't want to reveal himself in case they remember his call?

If no one here ends up knowing the answer, maybe he could just call the airline, they sometimes know. Does the foreign passport indicate in anyway the mother is from Thailand?

My girl has expressed a desire to beef up, so this summer I'm going to get her on a basic routine in whatever gym i can find in phnom penh. She's really skinny, so I'm thinking of getting lots of protein in her diet, doing slow push-pull exercises, and focusing her cardio on something that builds muscle concurrently, like the sliding seat rowing machines with high resistance. I'm fairly knowledgable about weightlifting so I'm not going to have her doing anything stupid like clean&jerks with massive amounts of weight (sorry Slavs). One thing that concerns me is that I'm worried maybe she was malnurished as a child... though the Isaan diet seems healthy with all the fruits and vegetables, she's told me she didn't get protein much except for eggs. Does anyone else have experience beefing up a skinny girl?

So as I understand it, if I'm going with gold it has to be 23kt or above, and ought not to be purchased in the US (if there's even a place that sells it) because I'll pay extra for superfulous reasons ...is this right? I want to give it to her the first night I see her in Singapore (where we'll meet in a couple weeks), so unless I can sneak out to some jewelry shop there, I better not go with gold? Is there some other jewelry material I can buy or is everything going to be overpriced in the US?

Thanks

18 days and counting for me, who'd ever thought sea-tac would be a place of hope?

Well, I sure thought it was when I left Ft. "Jerry" Lewis for good!

That place sucked....

How dare u insult the base and the sacred city of lakewood! with its wet, dirty strip malls and decaying geo metros. ...agreed, mortal beings are not meant to inhabit such places for long.

It hasn't really drastically crashed since 1997 right? Seems unlikely to happen again. Looking at the charts (since I was in elementary school at the time), that was pretty crazy, it was like 25 baht to the dollar then jumped to 40 something by the end of the year. All I can say is that I hope to no end that it crashes again, for u that have businesses in thailand, i assume your hopes are the opposite

Man, 25 baht to the dollar in 97? Was thailand more expensive then or were prices cheaper?

Wait, aren't all the problems mentioned above about heat retention just as applicable to cement block houses? And isn't cement block the main construction method in Thailand? Ok, it looks like poured concrete is too expensive, but I don't have the money for some fancy alternative building method that's more heat efficient... isn't a cement block house with vents near the ceiling good enough for cross-ventilation? ...But what I gather from above is that ventilation might not be as important as stopping the heat sorce eminating from the hot walls... so it's more important to stop the problem there rather than the venilation of the resulting hot air?

Seems like an un-air-conditioned house is always going to be awful in Thailand no matter what you do.... then again i've never really been in well-build places much... can they be comfortable?

18 days and counting for me, who'd ever thought sea-tac would be a place of hope?

The gold in the US is only around 14K. For reselling, you really need the gold they sell in Thailand.

Ok, now I understand the old thread about '9k gold in isaan.' So the shops won't even consider buying it?

What about another material? silver, etc?

I was thinking of buying some jewelry here in the US as a gift for the gf when I meet her in a few weeks in Thailand. Originally I thought of getting a ring, but the prospect of it not fitting her, or accidently being viewed as an engagement ring , scared me away from that (actually, do I have to know the exact size for it to fit? I roughly remember how much smaller her fingers are than mine). I want her to be able to resell whatever I give her for however much I paid for it if she doesn't like it, is gold the best material for that? and would it matter if it was a necklace or bracelet? I am but a lowly and common peon, so I can't pay over say $150 US for the piece. humble thanks.

Well, very few Thais actually meditate, including most monks, so it's not exactly right to expect them to all be samadhi masters. Moreover, they do claim to be 'buddhists' but to 99% of Thais that means something very different from the puritanical Pali theravada that most westerners read about... in fact the majority of religious practices in thailand are spirit-worship practices traceable to pre-buddhist times. That's not to say that it hasn't effected the country somewhat, I think a lot of people agree that the jai-yen (cool heart) ideal among thais is traceable to the theravada. I don't know if I agree with that, it might be due more to their older tradition of 'face' (which mostly just means 'pride').

With regards to violence, that's probably due to a combination of being poor and frustrated and wanting to protect their face or pride. Beyond cultural explainations, it's also just a flat-out developing country, and the taboo of using violence hasn't really caught on like it has in the west, where we've been in dense, ordered and organized society for centuries.

Concern or respect for the stranger is a notion that is almost nil in SE Asia, and it's even worse in places like China or India. Again, this is due to the scarcity of resources and the need for self-preservation (and to the heirarchical nature of Asia societies, as opposed to say the Anglo-Saxon tribes, where there was no real division of labor and the chief was relatively equal with the rest of the tribe). This is how I explain the distrubing aspects of los, maybe i'm wrong?

As far as 'fibre mesh' additives, I'm lost on this one.

Ooo! fancy commonwealth fellow reverses his r's, "fiber=fibre" lah-dah-da! just kidding, i love playing the part of the obnoxious american. fiber mesh is an additive they put into the conrete mixture here in the US at least, it looks and I think is, the same as fiber glass strands. after it's dried you see little hairs sticking up everywhere. supposedly it makes it stronger and prevents cracking.

I was wondering if it was at all economically practicable to make a house like a hollow concrete cube, with say 8-inch thick reinforced poured concrete, walls, ceiling, and floor as opposed to the usual block method in thai construction. I assume it would be sound proof and much stronger than normal contruction, but would it be overly expensive? (I'd be building a small rectangular house, just four walls, ceiling and floor, and a interior dividing walls) What about ventilation? Would it be cool like a cave or stuffy and require a wall fan to shoot a current across the rooms?

The reason I ask is because noise really bothers me and I've read all these posts about thai houses falling apart quickly (though they mostly address finish-work), and I just assumed a poured concrete house would solve these problems. I guess the other positive of having a poured ceiling, especially if you sealed the exterior, is that the roof wouldn't be too critical anymore, and you wouldn't have to worry about roof or attic insulation. is this right?

I imagine it being expensive because of 1.) the cost of the forms and set-up time, 2.) the cost of lots more reinforcing rebar than usual, 3.) the necessity of bringing in a big mixture truck at least a few times (a big problem with my lot because it's at the end of a long alley not wide enough for cars).

Are there problems with finding quality cement or sand in thailand or does it not much matter? The reason I ask is becasue I hear people talking about thai houses falling apart quickly, is it ever the actual concrete that decays? What about fiber mesh to add to the mix, is that available and advisable?

16/17/18 July for the festival.

Oi! the one time i'll be in SE Asia in the summer and they have to schedule it during the middle of the week! This is the Asanha Puja holiday right? I'll be in phnom penh during the summer, do you think cambodia will have a holiday too? maybe i can drive up to Ubon for it

I posted this exact same question a while back, "is owning a house enough to show sufficient ties?" and the general consensus was "no." my girl on the other hand doesn't have a good job or a lot in the bank, but she does have land, i guess similar to your's.

I've noticed some posts where successful girls have been able to get their visa with little assetts when the boyfriend or husband was working permanently in thailand. I'm thinking of applying for one this summer when i have 2 month internship with a Phnom Penh NGO, for say a 5 day visit in the middle of the two months (do i have to pay for the ticket before the application?) to show that I at least have to go back to SE Asia. I know it's not perfect and probably won't work, but is there any harm in trying? jstumbo, you seem to know these things, does a refusal for a tourist visa get put in her record or is each application viewed with virgin eyes?

I just called them up and they said ATM withdrawals from the Bank of American Branch on Wireless Road would be free, but with other atm machines it would be 5$ plus 1% of the transaction amount. So is this a good way to do it? Are the exchange rates really bad at the BofA in BKK? Unless it's really bad exchange rate, seems like doing a few withdrawals from the branch's atm would be the best way to go (since i'm not going to carry $3000 on the airplane unless it's really economical).... am i right?

I'm completely new to this international banking thing; I'll be spending up to $5000 USD over 3 months in thailand and cambodia this summer, and I was wondering the best way to bring that money over in terms of exchange rate and fees. I'm using Bank of America, and I found some old posts that said they're pretty bad for this type of thing. So is there a way to get free ATM withdrawals, maybe in the bkk branch of B of A ? or should I bring traveller's checks (I don't even know what those are actually), or do a wire transfer into my gf's account? Maybe bringing cold hard cash is the best way? Shouldn't I be able to just withdraw that money for free from the Bangkok branch of B of A?

If the difference between using one method over the other is less than $50 or so over the summer, then I'll probably just use the most convenient method (atm).

Maybe I'm wrong, but I wouldn't automatically assume it'd be cool, the subterranean temperature is much higher in thailand than in our home countries. I've noticed caves are still pretty hot. but it'd definitely be cooler than the air temperature. I also don't know how you'd waterproof it, maybe poured concrete walls with sealant? import some Hycrete? I don't know anything about water tables, but in my plot of land in Ubon we're like like 50 feet higher than the nearby Mun river, so I don't see how rainwater alone would be enough to raise a basement... maybe it can do that in the flat soggy plains elsewhere in isaan or siam, but i'd like to know more about it since it's not intuitive. It's just that I've noticed lots of houses up on posts where they're clearly wasn't a water problem, like propped up on giant rocks in pha taem

a mixed child will generate more income in the future for the family... i hope thats not what they/she is thinking.

how so? it's not guaranteed that all mixed kids are attractive and can be models. are u refering to bilingualism or something?

If u've got a law degree, I got a few online jobs i've been thinking about where i'd organize a legal search engine of caselaw, but it only pays 60k USD a year and seems incredibly boring; it's really hard to sit at a computer all day doing pure legal work... much easier with face-to-face clients, which is also higher pay.

Don't call it Siam! that's too modern for us Americans. Try 'Farther India', the 400 year old name the explorers used. that's about how updated our textbooks are

Oh yeh, she only works me when I'm here.

Oi! well, i guess if neither of you have much else to lose it's ok. I don't want to be judgemental, i know some people are coming at life with radically different experiences and twists of fate.

and one other thing to bear in mind is that if she is "working" then it wont be her that is looking after the baby

I don't think there's anyone immoral enough let their gf or wife keep working in bars while the relationship is going on... is there?