mjnaus

This young boy has a very bright future ahead of him

Zoloft is available OTC in Thailand?

One might wonder what the current stat of Iraq would be if a certain nation did not decide to invade it several years back, leaving behind a wasteland up for grabs...

Young people do this all over the world. Get over yourselves those giving the big adult lecture. I did similar stuff when I was a teen. Did I continue with that irresponsible type behaviour. No. It's a tragic event and sadly will probably continue.

It's true young people do dumb shit all over the world; hell, I sure did! The main difference though, it appears as if Thai youngsters never grow over this stupid behaviour and often keep up the drinking and driving into adulthood. With there being little to zero repercussions to this type of behaviour, there's little incentive to change.

Bargirls

Haha. A dowry is supposed to be paid from girl's parents to you as is tradition. They can give you a cow or chicken.

Don't get sucked into their brain washing.

Unless he's marrying an Indian girl; you're wrong

First off; try and ignore all the typical crap responses from all the regular sad figures...

I married my wife (also from Hat Yai) almost six years ago. My experience, and this is pretty much confirmed by farang friends (all in the Hat Yai area) having similar experiences, is that more and more Thai families see the dowry as a simply a part of the marriage ceremony rather then a way to extort money from the new husband and therefor typically will have little problems giving back all of the cash or some of it, depending on what you agree upon. I even know of a few cases where the family themselves simply put up the money, just for show. This might be different in other part of the country though...

Especially when dealing with families that are doing ok money wise, they will not be interested in taking/keeping the money. If I remember correctly, we put up 500.000 plus some gold jewellery. And before the wedding, we made an agreement on how much the family could keep (I think it was about half, to be used to pay off some debts). This last bit will come down on your chats with the family; you can start this process to check with your wife.

I know it comes as a major shock to all the bar dwellers on this forum, however not all Thais are out to rob us blind Like I said, for many modern families, the dowry is just a part of the ceremony, some money on dish to show the world the new husband can scrape some together.

It's just part of the Thai wedding stuff; you can choose to be a dick about it, keep your foot down and expect everyone to do things your way rather then the way it's been done here for ages. I found it easier to simply go with the flow... if you're family in law are decent people, this dowry thing should not have to be a big pain point.

Why go through so much hassle if you can simply drive up to Macro and buy a box for a little over 1.000 baht?

I'd love to get some Laos Beer over here a Thai beer prices!

Beer Lao has been available for bottom prices at Macro forever; around 1100b or () so for a box full.

I don't know about Australia; but I do know car insurance here is a pittance compared to car insurance in The Netherlands.

Please ignore whatever people post here; unless they have experience dealing with the EXACT SAME labour office you yourself will be dealing with. In some places they do have a grace period during which you do not need any Thai staff for your work permit. In other places they do not have such a period. In yet other places, they simply do not care/do not know/do not enforce the Thai employee rule (one of my best friends has had his own company, with a work permit, for almost five years without ever having employed a single Thai person). Go to your local labour office and ask them what it is they require...

I head out to Trang every couple of months to spend a couple of days at the Anantara Si Kao resort. Lovely place with a wonderful private beach, massive swimming pool, wonderful spa, etc. They can arrange all sorts of trips as well, to the islands, diving (I think they have their own diving operation as well).

Did you go an official Apple dealer? I had the same issue a few years ago, turner it in and had it fixed in about 10 days, has been working fine since...

Having had a number of kind cobras in our yard the past few months; I definitely now how you feel The largest one was a good four meters long and was pretty terrifying. Chasing it off is all good, however you should definitely look into why you have snakes in your yard in the first place. After running into cobras several times, we decided to get serious about keeping our yard as clean as possible, cut weeds, keep the lawn short, get rid of fallen leaves, etc. We also put mesh wiring at many locations in our drains, making sure rats and snakes can't move through 'em. It's been about two months and we haven't seen any since... fingers crossed

You can't own more then %49 of the business (in most cases) and you're allowed to work in the business assuming:

1. The job you're is not a job reserved for Thai nationals only
2. You have registered capital of 2 mil baht (or 1 mil baht if you're married to a Thai national, in most areas). This is registered capital only and you're NOT required to have this amount in a bank account (but you're Thai partners will likely be required to show they have 25% of their share in a bank account somewhere, at least this was the case with our company)
3. You meet the requirements for the number of Thai employees (usually 4, 2 if married to a Thai national). Depending on where you're located, the labour department might not enforce the Thai employee quota for the first year, or two, in case of a newly registered company

Can we stop calling them attacks please. They are not. Jelly fish aren't sentient beings that hunt you down and attack. They are just "there" and poor unfortunate swimmers swim into them and their tentacles.

I hope the man makes a quick and full recovery.

Its about time some warning signs went up about jelly fish since it seems they are becoming a more common occurrence.

You might want to read up on box jelly fish before making silly, unfounded statements. If you were to do just a little bit of research on these creatures, you'd learn that box jelly fish, other then most other jelly fish species, can in fact hunt and chase after prey.

I say complete and utter nonsense .............................

Until you provide reputable links to the evidence for what is claimed.

Say/think what you want, my friend. I have better things to do than educating TV posters. Sure you can manage typing a few words into Google? Let me give you a hint, try "box jelly fish hunting"... Even the Wikipedia entry for box jelly fish mentions its hunting capabilities.

Can we stop calling them attacks please. They are not. Jelly fish aren't sentient beings that hunt you down and attack. They are just "there" and poor unfortunate swimmers swim into them and their tentacles.

I hope the man makes a quick and full recovery.

Its about time some warning signs went up about jelly fish since it seems they are becoming a more common occurrence.

You might want to read up on box jelly fish before making silly, unfounded statements. If you were to do just a little bit of research on these creatures, you'd learn that box jelly fish, other then most other jelly fish species, can in fact hunt and chase after prey.

Nope, I sure don't. As long as whatever happens does not directly affect my day-to-day live (fortunately, almost nothing affects me directly), I say it's their country to <deleted> up anyway they'd like.

Any such trade agreement would in no way benefit the Europeans in any significant way. We are talking about making another agreement with a country that held Germany's gold reserves for decades under the so called Fed Reserve requirements, then when Germany asked to have the gold (1000's of tonnes) returned it was not there. Gone (ok, after a year they were given 85 tonnes back). But no problem they will get it back to Germany in a decade or so...maybe. Better yet the Merkel govt just capitulated and then said that the gold is safe there in NYC. Safe, how is it safe, if it is not there at all? And they want to make MORE deals with these people. Really? KIV, it is the Merkel govt that will be making this new slick deal with these people as well. Never deal with the new Amers on large sums of money, it will be the last time you see it. Ask the guys that have started the BRICs banks. They know.

Gold bugs and conspiracy theorists all in a tizzy.

Right... Because anyone taking a critical point of view and asking questions must be a conspirary theorist. While those who just blindly buy into all the crap shoved down their throats by their governments have a much healthier attitude...

Please note that this does not only happen in third world countries. Many European savers lost their deposits with Iceland banks a couple of years back... Granted, some of the money came back after several years, but this was never certain.

If something seems to good to be true, it often is

You will need to get minimum 40.000 baht in salary to get a work permit and extension of stay.

You can get a Thai Senior programmer for half.

You don't need any specific salary to get the work permit itself... I know local teachers who have a proper work permit with salaries well below 30.000. The income requirement only applies when applying for an extension of stay based on monthly income. And this could be possibly be prevented by getting the extension of stay based on marriage and 400.000b in the bank.

Either way, not exactly a helpful answer to the OP's question.

To answer the OP; yes, there are junior programmers jobs available for foreign workers. That said, you will be competing with Thai peers, who are generally ok working for next to nothing (since competition amongst Thai programmers is high as well). Your best bet would be to contact as many foreign owned software/web development companies in Thailand as possible. There are quite a few of these in Bangkok along and many of them are hiring.

Russia has the wrong strategy, this from a country which has a long history of backing the the wrong regimes.

Seriously? Shall we make a little list of evil regimes backed by the US over time?

1. The Taliban in Afghanistan

2. Sadam Hussein in Iraq

3. Pinochet in Chile

4. Noriega in Panama

5. Marcos in the Philippines

6. Abdullah in Saudi Arabia

Mind you, this is just a short list, there are in fact tons more.

Wouldn't stop me from swimming in the ocean though. Living life to it's fullest is full of risks. "You pays your money and you takes your chances", as the old saying goes.

A fine example of "natural selection"

Btw, I feel your frustration. My actual livelihood depends on fast internet access, so I'm right there with you

TiT.... who knows... Could by days, months, years. My advice, get a VPN with encrypted tunnel setup, as these are not currently blocked.