billd766

The other world that I prefer not to inhabit is one in the UK at the moment.

A 20 year old woman was kicked and stamped to death by 2 teenagers because she was dressed as a Goth (i.e. different to them) as she tried to help her 21 year old boyfriend who was also being kicked and beaten.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england...ire/7370637.stm

There is not a lot of difference between the OP story and this one except the outcome as both participants were "different".

The OP was a good stroy, true or not, and the BBC report is real life.

I know where I want to live and it is not the country of my birth.

I can live with rose tinted spectacles, but the new reality, I prefer not to live with.

Afew years ago whil on a Thai Wife support visa I went back to the UK and forgot to get a re-entry permit. The net result was that I was given a 30 VOA and had to go out of Thailand with all my paperwork (to Penang), get another 3 month Non Imm O visa and start all over again.

The earache I got from my wife was instrumental in always gettin a multi re-entry permit at 3,800 baht instead of 1,900 baht and I never get earache any more and life is easy.

If you are going for a re-entry permit, get a multi. It is twice the price and valid for the life of the visa.

Does it include my company pension, my armed forces pension, both earned in the UK and my state pension due next year?

When I spoke to HMRC a couple of years ago I was told that as the pensions were earned in the UK they had to stay there and be taxed there as well.

Rice going up

Palm oil going up

dairy products going up

Diesel going up! Whats not going up?

4.5% a joke!

What is not going up is my pension income but if that went up by 4.5% it would not be a joke but a miracle.

It all depends on where and how you want to live.

I am married to a Thai lady and our son will be 4 in August. We live on 10 rai of land 65km southwest of Khampaeng Phet in the central region with a collection of odd dogs.

My nearest permanent farang neighbour is about 60 km away but there are several who come and go during the year. There are only a couple of bars in the village 6km away and it is a rural community. There is very little crime and people up here give me a genuine smile and we try to talk in their not so good English and my poor Thai but everybody is friendly.

They probably know all my business and I expect my wife knows theirs but that is it. My wife started a noodle restaurant and small shop this year on another 10 rai of land she owns mainly because she was bored and she is a good cook anyway.

Up here there is not much for a farang to do and the nearest pizza or KFC is about 125km away but I am certainly happy enough here and expect to live out my days and die here.

I am probably of the rose tinted spectacles variety of farang though there are a lot of petty things that annoy me I just live with it.

Better err' on the pesimisstic side than a long hot walk to the gas station.

Consider an error the other way - although I agree with your comment about "technology these days" people haven't kept up with the times and still run a car on fumes in the hope of squeezing a little more out of the tank.

I used to see a lot of that in Pakistan and Bangladesh where guys would lie their motorbikes down in order to get the last drops of fuel out of the tank so that they could get to the pumps and put in 1 litre and repeat the operation again and again.

Thanks OP for this wonderful story....

I have read this post since morning via my pda (which it is too complicate to make a replying)

it made me cry out, full of tear on my face....

Good to know, to realize that there still be something people help people by no any money involved.

In this cruel world, world of consuming, and money can buy almost everything just to make people happy.

Sometimes it is so easy to find happiness around, to give, not to get..

I have started my today with rose color!!!!

Kob-kun-kha...

I felt the same way as you did this morning and even at 63 it brought a tear to my eyes.

However the post following by pliny

Am I alone in thinking this story is just so much mawkish drivel effective only as a simplistic parable fit for American daytime TV viewers?

Far, far better if Shay had been pile driven into a heap just before the final base to an accompanying jibe that life ain't for losers.

So much more satisfying, don't you think?

made me think that he is more right than the rest of us who enjoyed the OP.

Then I thought that if that is the kind of world he is living in I am glad that I live in a different one which is a lot nicer.

Well I am a married parent and my son is nearly 4 now. I am English and his mother is Thai and we live together on about 10 rai of land near Khampaeng Phet. I am 63 and my wife is 42.

He is my second son, the first is now 30 living in the UK.

I have NEVER used a belt on either child and I NEVER would. I think that I only really smacked my first son about 3 times in 15 years and my second one I have never smacked. It doesn't solve the problem and will cause a lot more problems, both now and in the future. Now, because your son will believe that you don't love him and don't care, also your sons grandparents will find out and there could be problems along that road, and in the future when he gets bigger he may do the same to smaller children.

I can understand how frustrating children can be especially if he doesn't speak the same language as you do. My son eats at a different time to me mostly and now in the hot weather he doesn't always want to eat so I just let it go. When he is hungry he will eat.

Your child is only a small boy and at his age he really doesn't know what he wants except that he wants security and love and care.

If, as you say that money is not a problem for you then follow yetis' advice and get a part time nanny who can speak some English and Thai and you will find that will help a lot. It will also be easier for his grandparents as I am sure that they worry about a farang taking care of their grandson on his own.

Your son will grow out of it as he is going through the terrible twos which all children go through, followed by the equally terrible threes after which they settle down for a while until they turn into teenagers when the problems really start, but that is in quite a way into the future.

Persevere and in a while your son will change into a lovely boy. I know, both of mine did.

Down here in Klong Lan, central region, my water came back this morning after 3 weeks.

I have a water tank farm composed of 20 ongs (concrete water jars) and each holds about 1600 litres.

This week I spent 3 1/2 days hauling water from the local klong to fill them all up. It took me about 45 minutes per run which includes unloading and setting up the pump, filling up a 1300 litre tank, reloading the truck, going home, unloading the truck, setting it all up again, pumping the tank into an ong (and not completely filling it), reloading the truck and doing it all over again 6, 7 or 8 times a day.

To be fair it has been SongKran and we had 16 people in our house and 4 in the workers house and if you work out how many times people take a shower or use the toilet not to mention the washing machine you can understand how I feel looking at all the empty tanks.

My tank farm

Sorry I can't seem to delete one photo

Bloody hel_l that means someone is making huge profits while the farmers do all the hard work!

Taking 10% off for dirt - that's ridiculous!

All the Cassava I've seen on the trucks is fairly clean.

At the most 2% would be dirt. (I reckon they'd take 10% off even if it was washed!)

Then they take off another 20% if it's not "dry"?

I wonder how they measure if it's dry or not?

I doubt very much that they use any scientific method.

It's probably left up to how generous the agent feels on that day after he's had "a feel" of a few potatoes in your truck. Are the potatoes on top of the load dryer than the ones underneath? That's an idea ..

In theory you could dessicate the potatoes until they weighed next to nothing.

So by "drying" your potatoes before delivery, you're doing yourself a huge dis-favour by making your harvest weigh-in

at a much lower weight!

The agents must love nice dry loads! - they can pay out a lot less per load.

I thought that was a scam anyway.

If they would just give one good price for cassava straight from the ground, it would save everyone a lot of time and work trying to dry it out on hired concrete slabs and paying fees for front-end loaders to move it about to dry properly before reloading it onto trucks. A lot of double handling seems terribly wasteful to me.

If the domestic price is 12,900 Baht per tonne that means only 50% goes to the farmer for "wet" potatoes!

Surely there must be some way to beat the middle men?

At the gate just up the road from me the price has dropped to 2100 baht a ton from 2200 a few days ago and it will drop further as the rains come.

Some people up here chop up the cassava themselves but they only have less that 1 rai to deal with.

If you could become a middleman with the concrete area, the front-end loaders etc you too could make much more money, IF ONLY the local "mafia" will let you play. They have been in the business a long time and can afford to outbid you until you go bust, then buy you out at a low cost and consolidate your place into their empire and it will all go back to normal again.

I started my drinking time in Bangkok back in 1993 at the Cats Meow/NoProblem and I still drink in there regularly whenever I am in town. I was in the darts team for a few years but now I have moved up country it is a bit difficult to tell my wife I am off for a game of darts and come home 2 or 3 days later.

Maew from Cats Meow is a regular visitor at my house and she is up here now for a short while.

To my knowledge over the years there have been at laest a dozen marriages of girls working there and only a couple have gone bad.

Hi

Mine Yamaha RXZ fuel gauge was ridiculously correct - when it reached the left end of the scale (empty) i had about five kilometers to find a gas station (no reserve cock on it).

So i changed the calibration somewhat and now when it reaches left end, i still have some 4 liters left.

Hey better your tank isn't empty when it alerts you to fill up than it actually IS empty at the moment the light comes on - right? Or do you like to push your vehicles?

I don't

Best regards.....

Thanh

Hi Thanh

I have never seen the low fuel light come on in the Ford in the 6 1/2 years that I have had the car and I usually stick 500 or 1,000 baht in when it gets low.

On the Mio I just lift the saddle, open the tank cap and have a look and I always have enough to get to the village or in an emergency I can go to the little shop but that is about 2 baht a litre more expensive and I am a cheap charlie at times.

The last time I filled the Mio tank it cost me 130 baht and the Ford full to the brim cost me 1,800 baht.

I can't remember seeing it before but I cannot understand fuel gauges nowadays.

I have a Ford Ranger which when the tank is full to the brim reads past the full mark and on the empty mark when I filled it last week I put 54 litres into a 70 litre tank.

My Yamaha Fino motor scooter has the same problem (except for the amount).

In this modern day and age surely it is not that hard or expensive to do.

If we can send men to the moon, explore the deepest ocean why is it so hard to get a fuel gauge to work accurately?

have seen farang fathers in their mid-late fifties (at child's birth) have seen many who might be in their 60's. who is blizzard?

I am 64 next month and my son will be 4 in August.

I missed his birth by about 3 hours as I was in Bangkok clearing up ready for moving to Klong Lan and my wife was early for about the first time in her life having our son. She did, however forget to tell me which hospital she was in so I had a friend ask every hospital in Nakhon Sawan if she was there. When I got to NS with a Thai friend we than had to find the hospital.

I was only a little late and he was worth it.

I was then 60 and my wife 39 (or 29 by her counting)

Sorry, I just assumed you had met someone from Glasgow. Most incomprehensible dialect of English I have ever heard, and in my now 20 years of living overseas, I have heard quite a few.

OK, back to the price of goods in thailand and how much teachers make

I apologise for being slightly off topic but when I was in Glasgow many years ago I was totally confused in Chinese and Indian reataurants where the ethnic waiters spoke broad Glaswegian.

I was down to pointing at the menu to order and I am English but well travelled.

Over the last couple of days here in Phuket, I've seen a a few foreign husbands speaking Thai to their kids.

I really don't see any reason for this as they should be speaking to them in their mother

tongue so the kids

can be bilingual. Anyone have any idea why it is preferable to speak Thai to yo

ur kids when you are not Thai?

I would think that most parents would want their kids to be bilingual and speak

each native language like a

native. I would certainly not like my kids speaking Thai like myself, nor would

I want them speaking English

like my wife. I'm not saying it's either good nor bad, but just trying to understand why the native tongue isn't used.

P.S. Not sure why the formatting turned out like it did, but I guess the forum software doesn't like my browser.

hi, for me, i would speak thai with my kid because: have u ever seen a young kid at the age of around 4 with a thai mother and foreign father? what u may find is that the kid obviously has difficulty working out what is what and he still cant even speak at the age of 4. if my kid couldn't speak at this age i wouldn't feel so good. also perhaps the father feels the kid should learn the national language first, after all this is thailand and thais' speak thai.

I see a young boy of nearly 4 every day and he has a Thai Mother and an English father. He speaks Thai very well and understands English up to a point as most of the time he is surrounded by Thais. He can also speak and understand some Muser which is a hill tribe dialect spoken by the people who work on the land where he lives. He goes to a Thai school where he will learn some English as well.

All in all I am quite proud of my son and I am confident that he will do well in his chosen career, whatever that may be.

My son with his older friend

Young farang 13

Quote

that is a good point. those from England and Australia can barely speak their own language.

I cannot comment about Australia as my only visit was when the flight to Port Moresby was diverted to Darwin airport which is hardly the cultural centre of Australia

For the current crop of children leaving school in the UK I can probably agree with but when I left school at 15 in 1959 everybody could read, write, comprehend, understand mathematics (no calculators in those days) and had both the ability and willingness to work hard. We were also taught to use our memory and to rely on ourselves first.

We were also allowed to play unsupervised, have accidents and blame nobody but ourselves.

I could go on for a long time about the "good old days" but only us oldies would understand.

The continued targeting of elderly farangs in these violent robbery attempts is just foul. We're

all becoming a little desensitized to it because it's happened too many times. The Thais should

be embarrassed that their own citizens are doing this. Within the Thai culture elders are revered

and deserving of special respect. When they're foreigners, they simply become more attractive

victims because it's perceived they can't fight back and are likely to have items of value worth

stealing. It all just raises the bile in my stomach. Take measures to protect yourself.

As far as I can remember this is happening all the time in the UK as well to elderly people so it is not just a Thai or Jomtien/Pattaya thing.

As cali4995 says elderly people will be looked on as easy targets and probably be worth more in a robbery.

On the other hand it is very rare to find a 25 year old guy, over 2 metres tall and very fit as a victim.

I suspect that robbers mentality runs along the line of, why pick on somebody who will fight back and win when there are easier targets around.

I am 64 next month but then again I live near a village out in the country in the central region.

It works for me except that my wife came from Bang Na in Bangkok and we live in Central Thailand near the Mae Wong National park.

Most of her family still live in Bang Na and visit on holidays but her Mum lives with us in the small house.

I am more than happy with my life now with my Thai wife of 8 years and our 3 1/2 year old son and, yes I was married to a farang wife before.

Up where I live it is just taking the key out (if I remember)

Please have a look at a previous thread: What to Say to People Who Interrupt

Thank you for that link.

I will be memorising some of them ready for use the next time.

So whats the problem here ??

He goes there on a tourist visa.. He voluntarily gives a kidney to another Thai... Then his visa runs out.. immigration follow the rules but the country is understanding and lets him stay longer.. And so ???

Imagine a Farang in Thailand on his 30 day.. You think they are going to give free extensions ?? Probably free medical care ?? Would be bye bye farang and thanks for the money.. I have seen a guy in the immigration offices all bandaged up with a letter from the hosdpital saying he couldnt travel until then, no dice overstay !! Then visa run..

I suspect that the problem is that there is not a visa for visiting the family as there is in Thailand which is why he went on a tourist visa.

He gives a kidney to another Thai who is in fact his sister and not a stranger off the street.

His visa expires but the medical authorities of that country gave their medical advice and it seems that it was ignored by the immigration authorities.

Yes they were absolutely correct in the interpretation of the law but totally lacking in common sense.

Would the same thing happen in Thailand? Maybe and maybe not.

It seems the guy you saw in the immigration offices all bandaged up have a letter from the hospital doctor stating that he was unfit to travel. If he did and was turned down he could have asked to meet with a higher ranking officer and he could well have been permitted to stay.

Mostly the immigration rules are the same but it is possible to appeal.

Is it right for one and not another. No but it is life.

I am getting fed up of trying to talk to people, my wife for instance, only to have other Thais rudely break into the conversation and take over talking to my wife.

A mate suggested that I say something like khor marriyat but when I asked my wife she looked blank and did not seem to understand the phrase.

I think that it maens something like please be polite and give respect but I am not 100% sure.

It is getting extremely boring and annoying and I would like to stop it happening.

I really need a conversation stopper to use on the other person.

Where could I get a copy of this?

I dont have a phone line and use my mobile and EDGE for internet access and Utube videos take forever to download.

A lot of the time my wife waits until they fall off the tree. The fruit is delicious cold from the fridge with sticky rice. My wife has been making rice which tastes a biy like Ambrosia creamed rice from the UK. When she does that she goes up about 20 points in her favour and I dont nag her for at least 2 days.

"The shocks to the food supply are very real and that means we could potentially be moving into a reality where there is not enough food to feed the world," said Pamela Anderson, director of the International Potato Center in Lima''

From Baywatch to potatoes whatever next.

On a serious note a great article that rings true. On my land we have a few potatoes that grow very well but I'm the only one that eats them, when I make mash or fries the family turns their nose up at it. But then again it could be my cooking!

Are you growing Potatoes in Thailand? Are they the Thai Potatoes or farang. I noticed it is quite tough to get Farang style taters to take & grow & other posters have not had to much luck except with the small Potatoes.I am curious as If you have found a way to grow the big spuds I would love to know the secret( along with the rest of this forum I am sure!)

Me too. I live in the central region about 65 km southwest of Khampaeng Phet.

When I go and do my monthly bulk shopping in Nakhon Sawan I can buy potatos at about 25 baht/kg. Here in the village they are 50 baht/kg