Upcountry

As OP, my goal is to find out what people living in LOS think of the environmental, political and economic future of living in Thailand. For me it's not just my status as an expat, but also about my Thai wife and our financial and health future here. I should have specified that.

Chiang Mai will get warmer, Bangkok may suffer more from to ocean rising, etc. Already water-starved areas of Thailand may become difficult to live in (water shortages for daily living) and so on. And of course the political situation will change as usual.

I've been thinking about this off and on.

Political, societal (including attitudes toward farang), environmental, so many things spell change in the next five, ten, twenty years and more (or even less).

It makes me think twice about long term investments (building a house, etc.). The political situation requires no repeating, and, as society adjusts, patterns we've seen in other countries could have a positive or negative affect on the attitude to farangs, etc.. One of the bigger things though, relates to an article I saw in the Post today (it doesn't seem to be on the web version) about rice and flooding. See page 6, "Warming has led to higher yields of rice".

The ideal environment for growing rice is shifting North up to China. This may not have an impact here quite yet, but, to complicate the equation, other parts of the article indicate that demand for rice may be dropping around the world for socio-economic reasons. Moreover, the risk of flooding in the future is not just due to deforestation here, but also from melting snow caps in the Himalayas. When that's not happening, I think there may be the opposite problem of China's control of water flow when Thailand needs the water.

I'm not trying to be overly pessimistic. I'm pondering the nature of being flexible as an expat as the world changes speed up.

Is it smart to put down roots here? If not, where?

Basically I need just a simple tube style florescent light to mount under the kitchen cupboards that are above the sink.

Tube style florescent light?

We have that in a couple of places, and I'm planning to do away with it, particularly in the cooking/sink area of the kitchen. It takes too long to start up, and if you don't leave it on for a while it's not that efficient.

Better to install the compact florescent incandescent bulb replacements for standard sockets or get the latest LED lights.

I have an LED flashlight I bought at Phantip. I came in handy during a recent blackout (while packing up to leave a hotel room). The batteries last forever.

I think white LED is a good way to go for instant on and below cabinet lighting, etc.

It's the fewtchah!

The option to live on a budget is to rent a large house and share it or even sublet. You might have some headaches but you can brake even or make some small profit.

That's interesting. When I lived in Boston I shared houses and apartments for a lot of the time. I wonder how common it is here among the farang population. I can't imagine it's too popular, given the lifestyle of most expats.

I am not the pheasant plucker,

I'm the pheasant plucker's mate.

I am only plucking pheasants

'cause the pheasant plucker's running late.

Last week, at a shopping mall not far from Mochit bus terminal, an hour to get there, I saw the parking garage chock full of BMW's, Merc's and Volvo's (half the cars were as mentioned). Status is status.

I have a car here, upcountry, and I get funny looks when I walk to the market.

US, Thailand or China, people will rubber heal it only when it's is considered the cool thing to do.

Well, kind of a slow thread, marshbags,

I just thought I'd add that I'm another one that wished cable companies here would grow up.

I can get BBC now on my setup, which makes recording it easier. But not CNN. Forget movie channels, of course.

Well, in light of recent events, this is not much more than the pot calling the kettle black. What's to hope for? Politicians, in uniform or not, are never "pure white". As indicated above, this is all just politics as usual.

I've been thinking of starting a similar thread. I think I missed the cable cutting story, but I did hear that Maxnet (max-time-net?) got into trouble with TOT a couple of weeks ago for stealing bandwidth (like the cable companies trying to pirate satellite signals) and had to stop. My overseas connections got really bad about that time.

Two things about my traceroute (in windows, tracert) below.

1. You can see the mega-ms times trying to reach google USA

2. Note the timeout after 10.122.65.254

I didn't see that when first signed up for Maxnet. That's a Maxnet link for sure. Why the timeout? Anyone else seeing this?

Tracing route to www.l.google.com [66.102.9.147]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms 11 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1

2 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 10.122.65.253

3 12 ms 12 ms 11 ms 10.122.65.254

4 * * * Request timed out.

5 16 ms 16 ms 16 ms mx-ll-58.147.0-25.tttmaxnet.com [58.147.0.25]

6 18 ms 16 ms 17 ms mx-ll-58.147.0-50.tttmaxnet.com [58.147.0.50]

7 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms mx-ll-58.147.0-46.tttmaxnet.com [58.147.0.46]

8 788 ms 810 ms 808 ms 61.19.10.1

9 806 ms 821 ms 818 ms 202.47.253.146

10 796 ms 806 ms 792 ms pal9-cat-telecom-3-id.pal.seabone.net [195.22.197.193]

11 778 ms 783 ms 778 ms decix-fra50-racc2.fra.seabone.net [195.22.211.107]

12 307 ms 306 ms 307 ms 72.14.198.129

13 312 ms 308 ms 320 ms 209.85.249.178

14 305 ms 308 ms 331 ms 72.14.238.119

15 306 ms 332 ms 326 ms 72.14.233.62

16 356 ms 317 ms 318 ms 209.85.250.216

17 322 ms 321 ms 341 ms 72.14.232.233

18 320 ms 330 ms 316 ms 72.14.232.239

19 325 ms 322 ms 316 ms 64.233.174.14

20 316 ms 317 ms 318 ms lm-in-f147.google.com [66.102.9.147]

Call Bangkok Bank and explain what you want. If there is an office and representative in Pattaya that can help you, hopefully they will let you know.

Of course, you might get faster, more dependable results if the caller speaks in Thai, but the main BB bank has plenty of English speakers on the phone who can help you.

Once you have an account set up, it may not matter that much if the rep is local.

UC

I have a NON O thai wife that is expiring 2. nov. I was rejected an extension in Nong Khai because in addition to the letter from my embassy showing income of more than 40k/mnth, the wanted a bank book with at least 3 months deposit of this pension money.

Wow, that sucks. I've wondered what would happen in this circumstance. You said "rejected". Didn't they give you at least a 30 day extension to sort things out? The 90 day bank balance issue is relatively recent (not in effect last year at this time). You can combine your income with your wife's income. Did they tell you that?

What are your options?

In this country, wine is only for 'hi-so's".

For a while now, I've been buying King's Valley (KV) wine at Big-C. It's their cheapest wine (started out at 200 a couple of years ago, and now it's 335 up country). Lotus carries it too, but usually at a higher price.

I've bought much more expensive wine that tasted worse. It's a decent table wine that I can enjoy a glass or two at time. Let it breathe a little, of course.

I too am sickened by the high prices here. Besides Trader Joe's, I miss the adventure cases in the front of some package stores in the Boston area. Three bottles for $10 or $12, and there were some good finds there.

Seriously, it ticks me off that cheap liquor remains easily available to quell the masses, but healthy wine is taxed though the ceiling. Big C used to sell a great Thai wine instead of KV, but its not available there anymore.

Based on his comments on this thread, by the way, "kmart" really is living up to his name isn't he?

...Then he requested the following: a photo of the happy couple in front of our home, a map to our home, a photo of my workplace building and a map to my workplace. After a 40 km drive back to the immigration office the next day with the requested documents, they were promptly discarded while the core set of documents was assembled to send off to Bangkok.

Jeesh, I forgot about the map. My wife had to draw one by hand.

The interesting thing about the photo requirement is that it was known by an officer in another department we visited later. He apologized to us about the difficulty.

Sill, it could indeed be one of those new optional things. I still scratch my head about what we did to get possibly get on our officer's bad side. She didn't look like her day was starting out too well, so that could explain it.

Bureaucrats are the same everywhere, I guess.

silapin, thanks for confirming that this wasn't just an isolated case for us.

We didn't get asked for double copies of paperwork, though.

UC

I guess I wasn't clear enough. This is a renewal of my marriage visa. I suppose we did this the first time a few years ago, but I don't recall.

Perhaps the immigration officer just didn't like us? Probably wouldn't be the first time an officer in a bad mood decided to impose something like this.

Hello fellow farangs, married to a Thai,

We visited the Immigration Bureau on Thursday, Oct. 4, for my annual visa renewal. I'm an American expat, and I've been here several years now.

In addition to discovering that my 4x6 photo from last year (didn't realize it was the one I had used for my visa) was not acceptable, necessitating a run across the street to the lucky photo shop, we found out that the Bureau had just put a new requirement in place at the beginning of the week:

Four color photos are required:

- One Photo of the couple outside the place of residence, with the house number showing.

- Three photos of the couple inside, in different rooms of the house (or at least different views).

The immigration officer showed us an example, with two photos printed per page. So each image is a little less than half a portrait A4 page. These apparently were digital images printed out on glossy paper. She said that we had to supply these by Monday (the last day of my current visa period, no exception).

We explained that we live hours north upcountry, and that taking a trip back down would be a real hardship. The officer said that we could email them to a friend and have them bring the photos in to the desk of the officer. Apparently it isn't necessary for us to sign the printed photo pages, at least in this case.

I can't seem to find any info about this on the immigration website (trouble even getting the required doc info to display properly at the moment), so I can't confirm whether the bureau has updated their web info to make this new requirement official and clear.

Seems unfair to have to be surprised by this (glad we came a few days early), but such is to be expected I guess.

My memory of the photos is not clear right now, so I don't know if there is any size rule beyond fitting on the page. The officer was unsmiling and not speaking English, so it was hard for me to get clear on the situation. I had to rely on what my wife found out in the rushed end of the process.

Anyone else run into this situation?

UC

There are lots of IT jobs in Bangkok. Being of Chinese decent doesn't seem like a big drawback, since many successful Thai's are ethnic Chinese. I don't know about the Malay aspect of it.

But if are living in Bangkok, and you knock on enough doors, it seems to me that sooner or later you'll land some sort of entry level IT job, at least.

Your employer will help you with the work permit.

UC

/edit: forgot to add that honing your strongest skill will help you show proficiency and readiness. Try doing something on your own that will show your abilities.

Last time I visited Phantip, I could not find any store selling toner cartridges and other supplies for a printer that I bought there.

Can anyone suggest a shop at Phantip or Fortune, or convenient to public transportation, where I can get laser printer toner, etc., for my color laser printer?

Thanks,

UC

ajarnmark, solo siam, thanks for your replies.

ajarnmark, how much does your Philips cost?

Prompted by your mention that the Philips 3146 gives more info on screen, I decided to make another attempt to get my B&J DVD player to output to my computer LCD analog input. No dice. My model has a VGA output, but I guess I have to hook it up to a regular TV first, and play with the settings, I don't know.

I really want something that simply lets me navigate between tracks and displays track numbers correctly. THE B&J is inconsistent.

solo siam, I'll PM you.

UC

I do the same thing. I closed my BoA account a couple of years ago because they were disabling my transfers to BB's NY routing number. I opened a USAA account, and have had no problems since.

I think BB's fee depends on the amount you transfer, but I don't remember how that works now.

Nevertheless, it is the least expensive way to do it, unless you plan to transfer a huge amount. I just wish the daggone dollar bath ratio wouldn't stop killing me.

UC

For a couple of silly reasons, I sold my quality CD player and DVD player before moving here a few years ago.

I've bought a few inexpensive DVD players in Thailand, and they all handle CD's terribly. They don't display the tracks numbers appropriately, fast forwarding, skipping tracks, entering track numbers, is all problematic.

I can't find a standard CD player upcountry.

So, I thought I'd ask TV members about brands and models of DVD players that work well with CD's.

Here are my requirements:

1. High quality sound of course (S/PDIF stereo output would be really great)

2. Display CD track numbers correctly (CD text would be good, but not required)

3. Remote and maybe face mounted > >>, < << buttons that correctly fast/rewind and skip back and forth between tracks

4. Capable of playing DVD's with any country code, like most players here.

It's amazing that even advanced models by B&J (Thai brand) can't do 2 and 3.

Thanks,

UC

As I read the Bangkok Post, or The Nation, especially some of the very insightful opinion and analysis pieces, including letters to the editor, I sometimes wonder if the Thai powers that be, academics or other English-literate Thai people who might be opinion leaders, read them as well.

Is all the reporting and analysis just meant for the small English speaking "choir"?

I also wonder how much of the English material in the Post appears in Post Today in some form. Aside from the movie-star boiler plate stuff in the Thai papers, how much news analysis is available to Thais in their language?

I don't know many, really any, Thai people who seem to pay much attention to the news in any case, but I do think wishfully that maybe the Thai government has a team of people who monitor the farang news and opinion regarding Thailand, and perhaps take what they can use and leave the rest.

I'm looking for insightful anecdotes from TV members who have some knowledge in this area, rather than the usual knee-jerk whinging. I'm posting this out of genuine curiosity. It's too easy to make an assumption.

Oops, my bad. I indeed meant to say "not" allowed, as indicated by the URL I included.

First, he needs to know whether he is allowed to practice his profession in Thailand.

http://www.thaivisa.com/330.0.html

Next, assuming he still wants to relocate and maybe retire here, he might ask if he knows about local "architectural" techniques and practices, some of which are appalling).

Personally, my wife and I, located upcountry, are considering building an extension (really a separate building with overlapping roofs), and one major concern we have is making it energy efficient. Buildings go up here with nothing but simple brick walls and dark colored tile roofs. Then in some cases an air conditioner is attached to certain rooms. Crazy. We also suffer from chronic roof leaks from an extension that was added to the back of an existing building.

Your friend might do better as an unofficial cash-based consultant, assuming customers who want a bit more than the local technique and style are available where he chooses to get his somtam.

UC