billd766

A couple of months ago I went to see RC and took a leg of lamb and he cooked a wonderful roast lamb dinner but then I had to come back home to my wifes very good Thai cooking using either the 2 burner gas griller or the charcoal burner.

I must see RC again next month as I have started drooling with the thought of it.

You bring the lamb mate and I'll be happy to cook the dinner

Where are you guys located? A lamb roast is worth a trip!

I'm In Nakorn Sawan and Bill is in Kampengpet...anyone bringing meat is always welcome

RC

To keep this on thread. I will be in BKK this week but I will be down on an overnight pass from the wife before Songkran.

How do you want the corned beef. Shoulder or leg from New Zealand?

canned corned beef stew beuutiful, dont forget to take it out the can first

I wondered why mine was a bit crunchy now and again.

You could always boil and mash some spuds, carrots and cabbage, fry up some onions and a bit of garlic if you like it, then fry it all up with the corned beef and close your eyes to the calories

If you have an old frying pan that the stuf sticks to the bottom of the pan, that is the best part.

That's Bubble and Sqeak.. aka Fry Up ! Usually made from the left over veg from a Sunday Roast, or Xmas dinner of course ! (minus the corned beef)

totster

I don't have a cooker and as I am the only farang for about 15km in any direction (apart from the Frog git who lives near the village) there is no Sunday roast ( my Thai family wouldn't eat it).

A couple of months ago I went to see RC and took a leg of lamb and he cooked a wonderful roast lamb dinner but then I had to come back home to my wifes very good Thai cooking using either the 2 burner gas griller or the charcoal burner.

I must see RC again next month as I have started drooling with the thought of it.

Forget about GPRS - if you live in Central Thailand get a Hutch! It's far faster and less complicated to use. Just a PCMCIA Card in your laptop and there you go. Downside.....doesn't work in Yasothorn and Nakhorn Nowhere.

Actually that is not strictly correct.

If you live in the city or big towns or close to the main highways then the answer is yes. If not or you are more than 10km from the highway or way off the antenna centre line then CDMA is of no use to you.

Also if you only have a CDMA mobile and go to another country without CDMA either rent or buy a GSM mobile.

3G is not available in Thailand yet and when it does arrive it will take a long time to reach the same coverage as 2 or 2.5G due to cost of re-equipping all of the operarors.

I use AIS on a Nokia 6260 with a GPRS package of 120 hours a month for 350 baht.

It works as long as not too many people are on my local site and if they are the service is very slow.

This is due solely to the small size of the site and the fact that AIS doesn't want to expand the site.

It all depends on where you live. If you live in a place with a permanent mais supply which never fails all you will need is a 3 or 4,000 litre tank, a filter and an electric well pump. The whole lot will be less than 15,000 baht and you can buy in house filters with uv and all the extras to purify your water to drinkable standards.

I have no idea of the cost of a tower and it will depend on the local water pressure if it is able to get up to the tower tank anyway

If you live where I live in the sticks we have had no government water supply for about a month so we go to the stream and share a pump and pipes with our neighbour and pump the water about 250 metres to our storage once a week.

On the other hand I haven't had a water bill this year.

I have 14 x 2,000 precast concrete water storage tanks which we use for general use, around the house, showers etc, irrigation. They cost 5,000 baht each and the metal lid to keep most of the crap out is an extra 600 baht. 8 of them are inter-connected both inlet and outlet, and the other 6 are storage that we pump in and out as necessary.

We use a pressure fed water pump to move the water around the 3 houses (a Mitsubishi WP205) but my next pump will be a Mitsubishi WP 255 for more pressure.

Before the tank water goes into the system I use a Pure water filter (cost about 4,000 baht) which is a system of plastic plates in a pressure bowl to keep out most of the sediment then to a big Mazuma charcoal filter to clean it more (cost about 12,500 baht). I used to use replaceable paper filters at 100 baht each but both the 10 micron and the 30 micron filters were blocked solid in less than a week.

We use 2 x 3,000 stainless steel tanks for fresh water which we catch off the roof in the rainy season.

We have looked at drilling a borehole and digging a well but we go down about 50 to 100 cm and hit rock from the hills. I suspect we would need a diamond tipped oil drilling rig to bore into that lot and the cost would be too high.

I wish you the best of luch whichever way you go.

canned corned beef stew beuutiful, dont forget to take it out the can first

I wondered why mine was a bit crunchy now and again.

You could always boil and mash some spuds, carrots and cabbage, fry up some onions and a bit of garlic if you like it, then fry it all up with the corned beef and close your eyes to the calories

If you have an old frying pan that the stuf sticks to the bottom of the pan, that is the best part.

Maybe it's just leftover stock....................Big C in Surin say they can't get it, and the same thing in Friendship Pattaya, Best and Foodland Pattaya. And that is all brands.

Next time you go to Big C tell them that it is available in their stores in Bangkok and Nakhon Sawan and would he please order it, if not you will contact Big C head office in BKK and get them to kick his ass.

No Corned Beef in Thailand so it seems. Not a trace in any Supermarket up and down the land. What has happened. Have they connected it to Mad Cow? Or maybe Chicken Flu?

I bought some today in Big C at Nakhon Sawan and I have also bought it at Lotus Tesco and Villa in BKK. The brand bought was "Hormel" but there is another brand whose name I have forgotten.

It tastes nice with mashed potato and processed peas (I actually like cold processed peas straight from the tin).

I did not not start this thread to argue with anyone. I just wanted to hear remote area people defend their place in Thai society after enduring a thread from someone trashing tourist areas. The OP in that thread got under my skin

QUOTE

I wouldn't have bothered replying to such a stupid question by a troll.

RC

It got right up my nose.

I am a farang. I do not have any place in Thai society and I am satisfied with that.

I am also satisfied with my lot in life.

The OP in this thread got under my skin as well.

I also noticed monochaser that you did not trouble yourself with replying to any of my questions.

Were they too difficult?

This is my answer to the "why do farangs live in tourist area" thread. I just want to know whether the majority of people living in the sticks are very short on cash so they exploit poor areas of the country to get by on their miserly pensions. Would these same people be homeless in their own countries? Is this exploitation good for Thailand? I mean afterall what is going n here is some of these people are trying to live on the equivalent of Thai wages. Does Thailand really want these people here? How belittling is it to go from a 1st world nation to living like a 3rd world refugee? I am in no way suggesting that all of those in remote Thailand areas are doing this but clearly many are.

As a farang who lives deep in the sticks I will attempt to reply to your post.

I just want to know whether the majority of people living in the sticks are very short on cash so they exploit poor areas of the country to get by on their miserly pensions.

The amount of money that people live on in Thailand is actually none of your business at all.

Do you actually know anybody who lives in the country?

Would these same people be homeless in their own countries? NO.

I mean afterall what is going here is some of these people are trying to live on the equivalent of Thai wages. Does Thailand really want these people here?

Are you a Thai national? Are you speaking on behalf of all the Thai people?

How belittling is it to go from a 1st world nation to living like a 3rd world refugee? I am in no way suggesting that all of those in remote Thailand areas are doing this but clearly many are.

Why is belittling to go from a 1st ? world nation to a 3rd world refugee.

In my village I have no real need for locks, bolt and bars to keep me safe. I can go out at any time day or night and worry that I will be mugged, assualted, my house burgled, my car stolen. There is very little vandalism or graffiti here. I dont have crowds of drunken yobs puking up in my garden, smashing up phone boxes etc.

In the UK where used to live it was not safe to go out at night and this is 5 miles from Portsmouth where I would NEVER go alone at night.

Read some of the Pattaya and Bangkok forums about violence.

I have fresh air and space to move around in and my family have a good place to grow up without fear.

Where I live I have a lot of Thai friends, I shop in the local village and markets, I spend 90% of my money in the local economy where it is needed. We have 26 rai of land, we employ 4 people full time, more in the planting and harvesting season and we are actively involved in the locality.

What do YOU contribute to the Thai economy?

I am in no way suggesting that all of those in remote Thailand areas are doing this but clearly many are.

Actually you are suggesting that all of the expats who live in the sticks are poor and I for one resent that totally. All of the expats I know here live well and help out Thailand and put back into the economy more that they take out which is nothing as we are entitled to nothing in Thailand.

In my country my government would support me if I have nowhere to live, pay for my hospital treatment, and at the end of my life they would even pay for me to live in a home until I die.

I did not go from a 1st world country to a third world, I merely exchanged two second world countries.

You have 3 problems with your post.

1 You have no facts so you generalise.

2 You moralise.

3 If you are not Thai who are you to say where and how people live and what they do?

When in 1997, before or after the crash?

I came to Thailand 13 years ago because my company sent me.

I live here because I met my Thai wife 3 days after I got here but we did not marry for 7 years until I got a divorce from a failing marriage in the UK.

I live out in the sticks about 6 km from a national park in the Central region.

Yes there are many poor people outside of the villages and there are also a lot of children who don't go to school as their parents have very little in the way of "spare" money to send them.

My wife and I do a bit to help. We have 2 permanent workers to help on our farm and their families stay as well plus we give seasonable employment when we need labour to help on the farm.

The one thing I miss more than anything else is a good library, so whenever I go to BKK I always buy books.

For those among us who can remember pantomime,

All together children;

Oh no he's not

Oh yes he is

For those among us who can remember pantomime,

All together children;

Oh no he's not

Oh yes he is

Is it that hard to find honest people in Thailand.............?

What a sad state of affairs.

It is not hard to find honest people in Thailand at all.

Just go around any of the villages in the country and you will find that the majority of people are honest. Unfortunately they either lack the proper qualifications or they have no "friends" in high places.

I moved here in my late 30's (ok 39.5 years old -- and I'll be 42 in May) I'll start working again during this year at some point. Is Thailand good for that? Probably not. Working here I will make about 25% of what I was paid in the USA. So I take some losses on the income scale living here.

OK ... it may seem odd to some people ... but you don't HAVE to hook up with someone with less income than you in Thailand. There ARE women (or men ... whatever floats your boat) with GOOD incomes here. That come from families that have the things that folks "back home" would have.

Granted I won't have to work for long ... but be realistic ... if it weren't for some wise choices and hard work back in the US I'd never be able to do this.

The poster above was already retirement age ... am guessing "not wealthy". ((I am not being disparaging ... just a guess)) The reason I guess this is that a 50 year old can find a HOT woman anywhere ... if he's got something to trade for it in the initial interest phase. I don't even mean Donald Trump rich. I mean ... has a 75,000 USD income and not so debt ridden that they can't pay for stuff :-)

So all in all ... I'd say the answer is "Yes to retirees ... maybe yes to ex-pats on a foriegn budget ... and not really to guys like me .... That is IF you are looking at $$ etc. For me Thailand is not about poverty ... hel_l Laos or Cambodia would be more attractive on those levels.

Actually wrong guess.

I am semi retired and I generally make enough in 6 months to buy land, extend the house etc, put money in my wifes account and not work the other 6 months.

many of use like thailand because we can life a better life style here then we can back in our home countries. because thailand is a poor nation, it is easy to have a hot girl friend half your age. without poverty this does not exist.

so is thailand's poverty a good thing for us?

Why do you assume that because Thailand is (relatively) poor it is easy to have a hot girlfriend half your age.

Why not try India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, half the countries in Africa who are also poverty stricken.

Many of us here on the forum are happily married with children and don't actually have hot girlfriend half our age.

When I first met my wife 13 years ago she certainly was half my age, not hot but beautiful an d she still is in my eyes, but now we have grown together oner the years ans our son is 19 months old and I am 62 in May.

To get the extension on your O visa based on marriage...

You either have to show a monthly amount coming into a Thai bank account of bt40,000 or more,

or,

show bt400,000 or more in a Thai bank account every year.

totster

Hi Totster

I have 2 pensions from the UK and every year I get a letter from each of them and I take them to The British embassy and write a letter confirming the amounts.

I have a sneaky suspicion that they actually dont check back to the UK though as their letter is available next morning.

Bill

I got this lawbook from a lawyers office and had it copied.

The book is bi-lingual Thai- English.

I needed reliable info after the passing away of my wife last year.

Nice if people tell you something but I like to see it in (understandable) writing.

Hi Dutch

I am trying to get hold of a copy of this book and DK bookshops in BKK dont seem to be able to find it anywhere. Do you know if it has an ISBN number?

Cheers

Bill

When I renewed my passport a couple of years ago in Bangkok the embassy told me to fold down the pages with current visas and then they cut the top and bottom corners of the old passport including the covers.

I then went to Suan Phlu with both passports and the immigration dept renewed the visas in the new passport.

This made me legal in Thailand again.

I don't know what type of visa the OP has but he will have to show the old passport which held the original visa at the airline check in and if there is no corresponding visa in the new passport he may not get any farther unless he goes to the immigration desk before checking in.

At that stage what happens will be up to immigration.

It must have been a long term visa as most countries require at least 6 months on your existing passport before they ill allow you into the country.

In the politically correct world nothing is ever re-used.

It is always recycled.

Something occurred to me....when I lived in a village up north water cuts were a frequent fact of life, when the water came on again it came out extremely dirty until the pipes cleared. Storing water is a good idea but surely the tank would refill with dirty water when it came on again, no? That would mean ditching a whole tank of water, not good.

That could be a problem but in the village where I lived I think the supply pipes were simply too small and when everyone was using their water there simply wasn't enough to go around. The water being dirty was never a problem.

I have 14 storage tanks at 2,000 litres each but there are 15 people including 5 small children living here. The tanks have an output tap maybe 12 inches from the bottom and 8 of them are li nked together for both input and output.

When I get government water (none for nearly 3 weeks now) it comes froma 4 inch blue PVC pipe and fed into the tanks. The output of the tanks is then fed through a carbon filter to get rid of as much crap as possible and we only use it for washing, showers etc and general use and it is pump fed.

When there is no water supply like now we have a petrol driven water pump that runs under the road and onto the property about 150 metres to an electric pump which pushes it another 75 metres to the tanks.

It is not the best water but the alternative costs 100 baht per 1,000 litres and comes from the same place.

At least we can get water until the stream dries up and then as the say in the politest of circles, we're buggered.

Something occurred to me....when I lived in a village up north water cuts were a frequent fact of life, when the water came on again it came out extremely dirty until the pipes cleared. Storing water is a good idea but surely the tank would refill with dirty water when it came on again, no? That would mean ditching a whole tank of water, not good.

That could be a problem but in the village where I lived I think the supply pipes were simply too small and when everyone was using their water there simply wasn't enough to go around. The water being dirty was never a problem.

I have 14 storage tanks at 2,000 litres each but there are 15 people including 5 small children living here. The tanks have an output tap maybe 12 inches from the bottom and 8 of them are li nked together for both input and output.

When I get government water (none for nearly 3 weeks now) it comes froma 4 inch blue PVC pipe and fed into the tanks. The output of the tanks is then fed through a dirt filter which I clean every week and then into a big 50 litre carbon filter to get rid of as much crap as possible and we only use it for washing, showers etc and general use and it is pump fed.

When there is no water supply like now we have a petrol driven water pump that runs under the road and onto the property about 150 metres to an electric pump which pushes it another 75 metres to the tanks.

It is not the best water but the alternative costs 100 baht per 1,000 litres and comes from the same place.

At least we can get water until the stream dries up and then as the say in the politest of circles, we're buggered.

quote lomatopo Posted Today, 2006-03-16 11:29:02

BTW, I did see mention of local number portability possibly being legislated by the end of this year, although I have my doubts that the Shingapore Mobile Telephone Company would allow such a law to be enacted.

I would have though that any mobile operator, Thai or foreign owned would have to comply with the laws of Thailand and if the NTCC ever gets going properly (hollow laugh) and passes that particular law, the former Thai owned AIS will HAVE to comply.

On the other hand what NTCC?

What Thailand needs is organizations that keep the government in check, but if TRT gets booted out I really doubt that the next majority party will be in a hurry to put institutions in place that are against its own interest

and you can't be more wrong here. Democrats allowed the Concstitution Court to ban their Secretary General from politics for asset concealment, for example, and the only modern day former minister arrested for corruption was busted in Democrats time.

Really you should read what Jaruwan said about levels of corruption under Taksin, and she won't spare Democrats if they come to power either.

That may be but they haven't been very effective in the past at putting a good justice system in place or at stamping out corruption. The so called "checks and balances" were never really effective or Thaksin wouldn't have had the powers to corrode them. If you argue that no "checks and balances" could have been strong enough to keep Thaksin in check in a corrupt country like Thailand then surely you must realize that sooner or later a PM who has learned Thaksins tricks is going to come along and do exactly the same thing, the Democrats are not the only party

When Thaksin won the election the first time he had to face the courts over his alleged asset concealement. This court let him off the hook and allowed him to become prime minister. This corrupt court that allowed Thaksin to become PM in spite of his hidden assets is the legacy of the Democrats administration

I vaguely remember that Thaksin was found not guilty with a majority of 1 vote, however 3 judges said that as he had just won the election by a large majority they judged what was best for the country and not according to the law.

I also think that some of those judges are faced with impeachment.

lopburi3 Posted Today, 2006-03-12 19:04:07

Nothing is automatic and any visa is issued at the discretion of the Consular Officer who issues it. In this area of the world Penang is the best choice and even there you may not receive a multi entry the first time you apply (per recent report).

Lopburi3

Nearly 2 years ago I forgot to get a re-entry permit (stupid boy) and screwed up my Support visa.

Eventually I went to Penang and used an agent to get me a 3 month Non Imm "O" visa and they guy said at that time that he could have got me a 1 year multi entry visa.

What the status is now I am not sure. Perhaps someone who has been recently can update us.

Lopburi3

Sorry that I made some errors but this was from the stuff I did 2 years ago.

When I read the original post I assumed that the OP wanted a 1 year Support visa for Thailand so if he is coming into the country frequently and was on a support visa he would need a re-entry permit.

On the other hand if he does not intend to stay here full time it may be easier to get a 3 month Non Imm O in his own country and not bother with a support visa.