durianfan

Thanks for the replies. Wife is going to call a few places and see if there's any way that she can do this without me. I'm also going to ring the Thai consulate here in the US and see if they know anything. 

About two years ago we had to renew my eldest daughter's Thai passport, and we both definitely had to be there to sign some documents. 

Hopefully this will be sorted out soon.

I have an interesting query here. I'm an American and left Thailand back in June. My Thai wife is currently in Thailand waiting for her green card to be approved. Our daughter, who is dual nationality, is with her. She is two years old, has an American passport but no Thai passport. It's my understanding that in order for her to obtain a Thai passport, both parents have to physically appear to apply. 

Will there be a problem when they leave Thailand, as our daughter has no stamp in her American passport (she's never left the country). And if so, then what are some solutions? 

I haven't had a drop of Thai beer since moving back here 7 years ago. Chang grenades are by far the worst but the others aren't much better. 

Honestly I'm not a huge fan of Asian beer in general. The Koreans make the worst of the lot, followed closely by the Chinese and the Thais. Japan's drops are decent enough, however. 

I was looking at the xiaomi pro as well but those are for rather large rooms (up to 65m). I'm going for the xiaomi 3H, which is around 4,000. 

Do buy them now, however - last year they were all sold out by March unless you wanted one for 20k or more.

Thank you for the replies. To clarify, yes, my wife is Thai but I don't think that matters very much in this case as everything will be in my name (otherwise the school won't pay). I have been informed that I should wait until I have an approximate date of when the work permit will be issued and then to inform my shipping company to ship the container, which will take 6-8 weeks to get to Chiang Mai. The shipment primarily contains household items, along with a very nice bed and a massive sofa bed. We do have a few electronic items such as an iMac, a big LCD television, a dryer and a few appliances. I hope to pay zero duty on these things due to my work permit. 

Okay, so I did do a search for this but have come up short. I am currently teaching in Germany and have been hired by a school in Chiang Mai. We want to ship our belongings in a container (20 sq. metres) and have contacted a few private companies here but the question is regarding the timeline, as we obviously do not want to be taxed heavily by customs. We plan on leaving Germany at the end of June for Chiang Mai.

Do I have to wait until after my work permit is issued and then tell my shipping company to ship my belongings, or can I tell them at the end of June, as long as my belongings arrive after I am issued my work permit? If it is the former, then we won't get our shipment for quite some time (12 weeks or so), which will impact what we bring in suitcases.

Thanks for any help!

American Crime Story is very good despite the horrible miscasting of Cuba Gooding as OJ. Everyone else is top-notch.

Billions is great, perfect casting of Giamatti and Lewis.

House of Cards season 4 will be available March 4th.

I'm in the middle of getting 3 root canals now. I first went to Phuket Bangkok hospital and they quoted me 35,000 baht all in for a back molar. Rang Hill charges the same as Bangkok Phuket Hospital. A few colleagues recommended DN Dental clinic across from the big Tesco Lotus near central: http://www.phuketdndental.com/

Ask for Dr. Nan. She's the best dentist I've been to in Thailand. Treatment hasn't been nearly as painful as other places I've been to. 10,000 for root canal treatment (back molar), 4,000 for the pin and crowns start at 8,000. You'll need to call first for an appointment - she's usually quite busy.

I've watched loads recently, mostly from Netflix:

Daredevil - Try and forget about the horrible trainwreck that was the Ben Affleck film. This series is brilliant. The acting is top-notch and it's mostly character-driven. The villain, played by Vincent D'onofrio, is especially good.

Sense8 - A very good series from the Wachowskis. All of the actors are in top form, except for perhaps the trans-gender actress, who is a bit <deleted>. The premise is a bit confusing at first but then it gets really good.

Bloodline - A series about a family who owns a hotel resort in the Florida Keys. The black sheep of the family comes back for his parent's anniversary. Drama ensues. Pretty good and very well-acted.

There's a shop in Kamala on the main road called "100 Beers" - it's quite small but has a good selection of beers around the world, many of which I haven't seen anywhere else in Phuket.

Wow! Didn't know about that. Do you know what kind of beers they have? Any British or craft beers? Have to check it out.

Mostly craft beers. The prices range from 150-300 baht per bottle. Mostly Belgium, British and American craft beers. They also don't adhere to that silly rule where you can't buy beers from 2-5.

There's a shop in Kamala on the main road called "100 Beers" - it's quite small but has a good selection of beers around the world, many of which I haven't seen anywhere else in Phuket.

TOT sucks balls, that's for sure! Speeds have ground to a halt for the past month. Whenever we call, they send a guy over and he says everything is okay. Yeah, right! Downloading torrents is quite frustrating - I'm getting speed averages of 50-60 kb/s, but often utorrent won't download anything. Takes me about 2-3 days to download a movie, about a day for a tv show. I've been downloading stuff at work where the internet is actually reasonable. We attempted switching to 3BB or TRUE but they both informed us that TOT has a monopoly in our moo baan - no other ISPs allowed. My wife informed me today that we are now able to get a better package next week but I'm not optimistic. These are the slowest speeds I've ever experienced in my life, and that includes the two years I spent in China where they block everything!

Here's the speed test from 10pm tonight:

The Daily Mail website has been blocked. I still was able to access it via VPN. The article reporting this BS ends like this:

There has also been growing criticism over the standard of the investigation, from not sealing off the crime scene quickly enough to letting potential suspects leave the island.

Migrant workers, particularly from neighbouring Myanmar, have been used as scapegoats for crimes in Thailand.

The rape and murder of 23-year-old Welsh backpacker Kirsty Jones in 2000 was blamed on an ethnic guide from Myanmar who was beaten by police in an attempt to coerce a confession.

Despite a number of arrests, no charges have ever been brought over her death.

Anyone know if the Flipside has been shut? I've driven by 3 times this week and it looks to have closed down.

An enforcement of the driving laws - especially speeding, tailgating, and driving on the wrong side of the road. 

Still pissing down here in Thalang. Was really heavy a few hours ago. There was a tree down on the road heading towards Surin. Be careful out there!

Flip Side burger joint, which used to be Bangkok Burger, on the road into Laguna has the best burgers I've had in years. Certainly the best I've ever had in Asia.

I will second that. Best I've had in Asia. I go there about once a week. The prices are fairly expensive (300-400 for a burger) and the beer prices are insane. I rarely see anyone else in there so I don't know how much longer they're going to stay in business, which is unfortunate.

^True. I bought both last night while I was there. I saw Young's as well but there was no price. In fact, pretty much the entire bottom 3 shelves are just stacked randomly with beers with no matching prices.

BIS = British International School

PIADS = Phuket International Academy Day School

PYP = Primary Years Program

MYP = Middle Years Program

DP = Diploma Program

BIS and PIADS are the best.

BIS has more students. They also do IGCSE but only do IB at the Diploma level. No MYP or PYP.

PIADS has less students but will have boarders next year, so it is growing. They are full IB - PYP, MYP and DP (starting next year).

Both have awesome sport facilities. Hell, Olympic athletes and triathletes come to train at the Thanyapura Sports & Leisure Club, which is a part of PIADS.

I believe it was 179 baht per can.

In Central Food Hall yesterday afternoon. One last bottle of Fuller's London Pride on the shelf. I'll have that, I thought and was about to put it into the basket when a sudden realisation hit me: it was only 4 o'clock.

So my evening tipple was scuppered by one of the most stupid laws in Thailand.

I understand your grievances. If they had the stocks, you could have bought 20 bottles to get an exemption. I did that once. I was going to buy 5-6 bottles of Fuller's at Tesco, but I was late by 3 minutes at the cashier and it suddenly became impossible, so I went back in and got 15 bottles more, as from 10 liters and above the rules don't apply.

A good alternative to London Pride is Well's Bombardier at Villa Market Chalong. It reminds me of London Pride in many ways. At 145bht for 500ml it's not nearly as expensive as the Hook Norton, St Austell or Wadworth beers, not to mention the +300bht Shepherd's Neame sold at Central.

Really? I didn't know you could do that. One the dumbest rules in Thailand.

On a similar note, I saw Murphy's Irish Stout (can) in Central Supermarket the other day. But alas it was 2:30 so I couldn't partake, even though it was a Saturday (for some reason I thought this stupid rule didn't apply on weekends).

I still see very little progress being made. I suspect it will still be over a year before that mess is functional.

I love this completely illogical quote:

The Governor went on to note that the north-south lanes of the B670 million underpass under construction in front of Central Festival, are expected to be functional "after the Songkran holiday" (April 13).

“The east-west lanes should be open to traffic by October,” he said

I guess "functional" and "open to traffic" are completely different?

I use TP-Link as well. After the first month of using 3BB's router I knew that it was awful. The connection kept timing out and disconnecting. I called them and told them to replace it and they were pretty useless; just told me that they could replace it but I would have the same problems. How can you sell an internet service and yet not give your customers the right tools to use said service? Anyway, we went over to PowerBuy and got the fastest one available. It's called 300Mbps Wireless N ADSL2+ Modem Router. 2,400 baht but I'm very happy with it.

Boardwalk empire and game of thrones classics in the making IMO

Never liked the mafia series. Except the opening tune to the Godfather.

Game of Thrones, yes liked it a lot till I read all the books, now it's just old news.

Damages ! Nobody mentioned that did they? Nasty, nasty Clenn Close (or whatever her name is)

Agree on Damages. One of the nastiest shows ever - Glenn Close is brilliant at playing one of the most despicable characters ever to grace the television screen.