billd766

Try this link

http://www.humbrol.com/

From your address I assume you need the US Embassy but the UK Embassy will be the same.

Depending on where you are staying, from the Sukhumvit end you coul take the Skytrain to either Nana or Ploenchit then get a motorcycle taxi or perhaps walk in the shade if it is early in the morning.

From the other end I really have no idea as I rarely go that far.

However here is the URL which may help you.

http://www.bts.co.th/en/index.asp

It seems as though the NYT thinks that rural Thailand is Issan.

I live in central region 65km south west of Khampaeng Phet and it is really rural.

Most of the people I have talked to in my poor Thai and some with the help of my Thai wife and friends who speak Thai and English tell me that up here they are far too busy worrying about the price of cassava, rice, corn and lack of water to care about what the xxxxxxxxxxxx shirts (pick a colour) and government are doing in Bangkok.

They just want to get on with their lives and get a better life for their children.

Most of them wouldn't even bother to pxss on any politician ( make your own choice) if he was on fire.

Where I live there are at least 3 moo bans including mine where there has been NO water for a month now and it is unlikely to come back for another month.

I have pick up truck with a 1,300 litre water tank and so far in the last 2 weeks I have gone to the klong and taken about 20,000 litres out to use for the house and my wife's shop and restaurant.

It happens every 4 or 5 years and in the future it will happen more often.

Get some water storage and be ready for when it happens.

Think how many people are staying where you are and work out how much water you actually use every day.

Go for a pee, 2 or 300 millilitres, flush it away and use 3 or 4 litres.

Sorry to hear about your plight. We recently had no water for just a day and were lost, can only imagine what you must be suffering.

What part of CM do you stay and what are the names of the affected moo bans....

Good luck ....

Please accept my apology as I don't live in the far north but in the central region down near Khampaeng Phet.

What is driving me crazy is that in the big village/small town at Klong Lan there is water up to about1 km outside.

My wife's shop and restaurant is 3 km the other side of me and they have water but the bit in the middle.

Nada.

I normally have 20 ongs each with about 1,500 litre capacity but foolishly I let them get too low and now I am a bit screwed.

This years plan is to dig an underground tank of something like 80,000 litres and move 8 ongs to the shop as she ran out this year as well.

Normally there are 4 of us at home but her niece and nephew have been here since late March, a friends son came around the same time and 6 more of the family came for Songkran.

All from Bangkok and have no idea of water conservation.

No wonder I don't have much hair left and I drink a lot.

Where I live there are at least 3 moo bans including mine where there has been NO water for a month now and it is unlikely to come back for another month.

I have pick up truck with a 1,300 litre water tank and so far in the last 2 weeks I have gone to the klong and taken about 20,000 litres out to use for the house and my wife's shop and restaurant.

It happens every 4 or 5 years and in the future it will happen more often.

Get some water storage and be ready for when it happens.

Think how many people are staying where you are and work out how much water you actually use every day.

Go for a pee, 2 or 300 millilitres, flush it away and use 3 or 4 litres.

I suppose then that my Dad was wrong as he was 55 and my Mum 40 when I was born.

My brother is 78 this year.

Barring accidents I hope to be around another 20 years so does that make me selfish?

I was 32 when I married the first time and my son from that marriage is now 32.

This is always a touchy one, which I'm sure would be best left alone, but this is a public forum and we're all adults here, so I don't see why I should hold back.

I can't possibly comment on your personal situation. If you say you had a normal upbringing with a dad who was 70 when you were 15 (if he was still alive) then I'm happy for you. I personally wouldn't wish it on anyone.

I hate to tell you this, but what we hope for and what happens are two different things. You may want to be around for 20 more years, but as a gambling man, I would happily wager a few quid you won't be. Even if you are, what level of physical and mental input will you be able to put in between now and then? It will get less and less fairly rapidly I assure you. And even if you do make it that much longer, it still leaves your son fatherless, in his early twenties!! I'm sure he'll be thrilled!

People come to Thailand to start second families, with women much younger than themselves, at an age, at which quite frankly they should no better. Why? Because they want to, and because they can.

So I'm sorry to say it, but in answer to your question. Yes, I consider you selfish for having a child at your age.

If that makes me selfish in your eyes then so be it.

But in my eyes and my wife and sons eyes I am nt.

I didn't come to Thailand to start a second family as I was married in the UK at that time.

I knew my Thai wife for 7 years before I divorced and remarried and it was 3 years later that we decided to try.

Actually if I was was that selfish and thought only of myself I would have told my wife that I had decided that WE would not have a child.

However as I loved my wife that much at the time we had a son, a joint decision because we also thought about the future.

I love him more than my wife but not much because I am the past, my wife is the present and he is the future.

Incidentally my Dad died of a heart attack 4 months before his 70th birthday and my Mum died of lung cancer at the age of 69 some 15 years later.

One advantage I have over many younger fathers is that I can spend all my time with my son as I have done all the 60 and 70 hour weeks and the stress that comes with it.

I do what I can do and what I can't we figure a work around.

Please, how does one get a replacement green book if the original one is lost?

Not sure of the full process...but i would start to report the green book lost or stolen. You should than get some kind of paper from the police which may help you further when you visit the Department of Land transportation iun getting a new green book.

Tiger/Sachs Club - Mbox

What I do now with all my important documents including the green book for my bike etc is to scan them into my computer and then back it up to an external drive and keep it separate from the computer.

Also I print a copy and take it with me if I am going long distances.

I have done the same with my licences.

I have about 80% hearing in my left ear and 70% in the right ear. Often I have to turn to look at someone who is speaking to me from behind.

I no this is harsh and some people won't like it, but.... perhaps five years ago wasn't such a good time to have a kid then. At your age, you will not be able to be a good, all round parent, as far as I'm concerned. The stuff you can do, you may do very well, but not being able to be the complete package, I think is slightly selfish to say the least.

Hmmm, ok and it's because he's English that there should be low expectations of him?

I've only spent four weeks with my girlfriends two lovely daughters who are 9 and 6.

Does that mean you have only been with her for four weeks? If that's the case, those children shouldn't be calling you Pappa, in my opinion. You seem like a nice bloke who's doing right by them, but being a father figure to kids you have known for four weeks is not good, lets face the facts there is a chance things could go belly up any time. Where does that leave the kids? Without a Pappa, AGAIN!

No, we've been together for almost a year. We wanted to be as sure as possible that we had something that was going to last, well as sure as anyone can be, before involving the kids. I take this very seriously and have not entered into it lightly at all. I fully understand, and share, the concerns you have expressed. The kids, until October last year, lived with her sister, now their Mother has joined them and I visit when I can.

As with any relationship there is always a chance for it to go belly up, and we are both aware of the difficulties but with love, communication and hard work I think we'll be OK.

In which case I beg your pardon. Good luck to you.

I suppose then that my Dad was wrong as he was 55 and my Mum 40 when I was born.

My brother is 78 this year.

Barring accidents I hope to be around another 20 years so does that make me selfish?

I was 32 when I married the first time and my son from that marriage is now 32.

I normally use the village water and run 4 ongs at a time, change to the next set when they run low, and then refill them.

This year is only the second time since 2003 the water level has been this low.

Later this year after the rains I am planning to dig a water tank of about 6 x 4 x 3.5 metres and concrete line the walls about 15 cm thick and the base 25cm thick with concrete pillars to support the roof structure of perhaps 10 cm thick.

It should give me perhaps another 75 cu/m of water and more than double that which I now have.

Granted that I will use more village water until the tank is full but after that it will be normal usage.

I can then move some 8 ongs to my wife's shop/restaurant and increase her storage as well then leave the rest here and keep hers topped up if necessary.

I normally store rainwater in 2 x 3,000 litre stainless steel storage tanks for drinking only.

These are my fresh water storage tanks though I have moved them since the photo was taken. It is also where I plan to put my underground tank.

In the rainy season I can fill a 3,000 litre tank from the roof in 2 days.

I have been offshore for a long while so this year I will top one tank from the other, take it off the stand and find a small person to climb inside (or not) to clean it then do the other tank the same way.

Seen it quite a lot too. Is a shame & shows a lazy nature imo. Maybe he wasn't interested in having the kids & only had them under pressure from his wife & therefore couldn't give a monkies about talking to them or the benefits of having english skills from a native speaker? This sounds a bit harsh but tbh I've see what appears to be this exact attitude from quite a few foreign men l(living in Thailand full time) over the years. Either got trapped by pregnancy or had kids to keep the wife happy & have zero involvement in their upbringing beyond living in the same house as them. Often it seems (to me) that they don't want anything to interfere with their self involved life in Thailand & the kids are the pure domain of the mother & her family.

Sad for the kids whatever the reason.

I have to agree with Boo on this topic. It is one thing to take on a complete Thai family who ALREADY speaks only Thai and try to teach them English, but it's entirely different to start a NEW family and not have some MUTUAL form of communication. Either the man should learn Thai or the children should learn English. Preferably, the children should earn English because at some point in their life it WILL come in handy for finding jobs as adults. As already noted, children learn far quicker than adults and they are little sponges when it comes to language skills. The little girl of the Thai family I support is a perfect mimic. I say a sentence in English and she can parrot it back to me perfectly. She may not understand what I've said, but she certainly mimics the words perfectly. It is only a short step from that to actually understanding.

It is too bad the man/father of the little children in the OP's topic is so pig headed. He is doing his family a terrible disservice.

I KNOW that Thais can learn English very quickly. I've known many young Thai women who could barely speak a word of English 5 years ago and now they are perfectly fluent in many subtle ways.

Learning Thai is quite difficult for us older blokes whose memory is not as good as it once was and neither is our hearing.

I am 65 and I have known my wife for 17 years and we have been married for the last 10.

Our son is 5 and he can speak a little English.

I have been coming to Thailand for those 17 years but have actually only lived here since 2001 and I have worked off shore fo half of that.

I can speak some Thai but not much and to quote IanForbes

Learning Thai is quite difficult for us older blokes whose memory is not as good as it once was and neither is our hearing.

I am not shouting but that is what a lot of people do when someone appears not to listen but in reality they can't hear so well.

I have about 80% hearing in my left ear and 70% in the right ear. Often I have to turn to look at someone who is speaking to me from behind.

As Thai is a tonal language I find it very difficult to tell the difference between a lot of words and if I ask my wife a question and pronounce it wrongly she gets confused as I do.

Also what I try to do with my son is to speak to him in English about something I know in Thai and then say it again in Thai and he often corrects me.

I try to learn Thai using "Thai for beginners" by Benjawan Poomsan Becker but without feedback from a Thai speaker to correct my mistakes what I mean to say may not actually be what I said.

There is a pinned thread somewhere about becoming a Thai citizen and as I remember 1 point is that you must have at least 5 years continuous visa in Thailand and have paid taxes for those 5 years which means 5 years of work permits. Any break in the chain you must start again.

I am also retired so no WP but I did have to produce a letter confirming my address though in my case I gave them a copy of my yellow tabien baan.

I gave in

1 copy of my passport photo page

2 copy of my visa page

3 copy of my TM7 card

4 copy of my letter of confirmation of address from the embassy translated and verified at the MFA ( I needed it for the yellow tabien baan anyway)

5 old licence

This was in Khampaeng Phet in March this year some 2 months before expiry date.

I probably gave them too much paperwork but they were happy enough with it.

Good luck

I live in the central region 65 km southwest of Khampaeng Phet and most afternoons about 2pm it has been 39 or 40C.

Around 7 am most mornings it is about 29C except this morning was 26 as we had 10 minutes rain yesterday afternoon.

3 photos of my truck turned water carrier with a 1,300 litre tank and a chinese/honda water pump on the back.

How does your truck handle with aprox 13oo Kg of weight on ? Did you have to install overload springs ?

It makes me drive with great care especially if the tank is less than full as the water sloshing around in the tank makes driving "interesting".

I haven't upgraded the springs as the journey is only about 3km loaded and about 5 minutes in time and I only do it every 3 or 4 years.

I have 20 ongs out the back of the kitchen for water storage.

That was taken in 2006 as was the next one of the klong across the road from the house.

Today the klong is virtually dry.

Hi Galvheim

If you are 100% sure of not being able to get a cable into your house, the feedback I get from many members/friends (some in Srisaket) on our local forum is

go CAT CDMA and dont bother with IPStar.

Dave

CAT CDMA may well be all it advertises however first check with your nearest CAT office if they actually have coverage in your area.

If they do, fine and dandy but you may not find it so easy after you buy your new CDMA mobile as the normal mobiles cannot be used with CDMA.

You may also need to keep your original mobile and contract / top up Sim card to use as your normal conversation phone.

Hmmm...maybe it's not the right time to ask questions about water supplies - it being Songkran and all

SONGKHRAN!!! Forget about red or yellow and forget about water shortage. ENJOY!

Obviously you live in an area with unlimited water supplies and have little thought for others

We will be using less water this Songkran mainly because the government supply was turned off over 2 weeks ago.

Unfortunately as at every Songkran the family in BKK come up and stay with us for a few days holiday so instead of my wife, our son and her mother we have another 6 which means that under normal circumstances I am using 250 % more water

Water is fast becoming a world-wide concern - or the coming lack of it is. I have been hauling my own water for years back in Canada, as I live out of town and my property has no well water available - thanks to permafrost. Nothing encourages conservation like having to haul every litre yourself.

In the last 3 days I have hauled about 20,000 litres of water from the klong to my wifes shop, the house and dumped about 10,000 or 10 cu/m into my fishpond which looks almost empty again.

The klong water is not that clear but it is only used for toilets, showers, etc and it does go through 2 filters before it gets near the house or shop and the fish don't care.

3 photos of my truck turned water carrier with a 1,300 litre tank and a chinese/honda water pump on the back.

It is set up as a 1 man system except when I have to fill the ongs when I need someone at that end.

Thanks for the useful advice.

I have never heard of tying the dead chicken to the dog before.

Maybe I can tywrap it to his head or perhaps use a 6 inch nail.

The only problem is now do I let the dog free to kill another chicken or what.

Maybe I will ask my wife if we can get a fresh killed chicken rather than losing another one of ours.

Another problem is that I am 65 and the dog can run faster than me though yesterday I caught it lying in the shade under the washing machine.

I can still hang on for the terminal solution for a while.

Not long if you just store it but most of the tanks here I presume are like a buffer zone. You use water out of one end and new water is poured into the other end

That is what I do.

I have 20 tanks in 5 blocks of 4 and I just run 4 at a time until they get a bit low and then I close them and open the next 4 and so on.

How long it takes to empty them depends on how many people are here and how hot it is.

They are only used for washing, showers, laundry etc.

The water also goes through 2 filters before use.

Our fresh water is rainwater stored in 2 x 3,000 litre stainless steel tanks and in the last 8 years we have only run out once.

A couple of months ago I got 3 new puppies all male as we were down to the last dog and he only has 3 legs anyway.

We have 10 rai for all the chickens, ducks, fish, dogs and people so they are not herded together.

In the last 2 days 1 of the dogs has killed a chicken a day.

The other 2 dogs are into the usual things like stealing shoes and chewing things but not killing chickens and none of the other dogs we have had over the years has killed chickens.

Yesterday I chained it up in the shade and made sure that it had water and food to keep it from the chickens.

It was originally on a nylon leash but it was chewing its way out of that so I replaced it with a dog chain attached to its collar.

I let it off this morning and bugger me if not 10 minutes later it was chasing chickens again.

When I shouted at it the dog ran away and hid but later I found it lying under the washing machine in the cool and damp place.

My question is what can I do with the dog now?

If I let it off it will go and kill more chickens and I can't keep it chained up for ever.

I could give it away to a Thai family but most of them around here keep chickens too.

Up here in Central we have had no water for 2 weeks and I had to get out my 1300 litre plastic storage tank and my water pump.

It has taken me a couple of days to get it all working then I go to the dammed klong in the local government place and pump up into my tank then over to my wife's shop and fill up her 6 x 1500 litre ongs plus the ready use tanks and the toilet water storage.

That took me all day today and tomorrow I need to fill 12 x 1500 litre ongs at the house and dump water into my almost empty fish pond.

It normally costs 2 baht cu/m but this way it is over 10 baht per cu/m.

My mates resort next gets their water from the same place as me but his wife gets the local tanker driver to deliver it.

For 50 baht cu/m.

I just buy the government guys a few cold Archa beers and each time I pass the gate there is always a cold beer for me.

Normally there is only my wife, me, out son and her mother but as it is Songkran and school holidays there are 10 of us at the moment and it is hot so I am using about 3 times as much water as normal.

The Marriage extension is not that difficult.

You are given 30 days under consideration stamp. Go back in a month and get the remainder.

That always worked for me until last year.

I was retired then and they slipped me into a retirement visa without me looking.

It was easier though.

It was about 55 baht to the GBP then not like it is now but I have until August for the GBP to pick up again.

If it were my wife and son and me in the pickup taking my son to hospital and some red/yellow/ black/green or any other shirt colour tried to stop us I am 100% certain that my wife would not be so polite and neither would I.

If my wife explained what the problem was and some red/yellow/ black/green or any other shirt colour would not let us through I suspect that my wife would run him/ her / them over and throw them into the pickup to take to hospital as well.

Our son is far more important than any red/yellow/ black/green or any other shirt colour to us.

Hmmmm I expect your wife would be beaten to death and the vehicle flipped over. No one in their right mind tries to drive through 1000's of protesters.

Equally no one in their right mind would stop a mother taking her child to hospital.

Oh that's right. some people did.

So who would be in their right mind?

In all honesty it doesn't really matter in the slightest what WE want as it is not our country and with a few exceptions we don't have any say in it.

All I wish for Thailand is for some sort of discussions for the future to start soon.

When the government is dissolved there will be one shirt colour or the other out on the streets shouting PM xxxxx out we was robbed.

It will probably be several generations before this mess is cleared up and sanity rules in the country again I am very sad to say.

Many thanks for the replies.I was worried that my wiring was not up to scratch but the only problem was the actual rear bulbs being a different wattage.These have now been replaced and everything is fine.

Also many thanks for the Phantom manual.

No prob Bob

If it were my wife and son and me in the pickup taking my son to hospital and some red/yellow/ black/green or any other shirt colour tried to stop us I am 100% certain that my wife would not be so polite and neither would I.

If my wife explained what the problem was and some red/yellow/ black/green or any other shirt colour would not let us through I suspect that my wife would run him/ her / them over and throw them into the pickup to take to hospital as well.

Our son is far more important than any red/yellow/ black/green or any other shirt colour to us.