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Very sad! Ubon Joe was the go to person for all Thai immigration questions and issues.  His knowledge and experience will be sorely missed!

Same thing happened to me, 2 nights in Bangkok at a hotel and then an online 90-day report rejection because my home address for the past 8 years was no longer recognized by the system.  Interestingly, the drive thru 90-day report worked like a charm.  So, pretty sure the glitch is in the online system, which must change the registered address automatically, even if it is not required to be changed.

Another sad day for children in Thailand.  As the article stated, drowning is the leading cause of death for children 1 to 14.  We at the Chiang Mai International Rotary Club and at the Rotary Club of Patong Beach, Phuket are addressing this problem in our local areas.  For example, in Chiang Mai and Phrao we work with the municipal (tessabon) schools to give every 4th grader the opportunity to learn survival swimming and water safety in a 15-hour course, which includes 10 hours of in-pool swimming instruction by our team of professional Thai swim instructors.  We use a local sport club pool and the schools transport the kids from each school to our pool for the classes.  This might look like it is outrageously expensive, but we can do this for about 800 B / kid.  We teach about 350 4th-graders each year in Chiang Mai and another 200 in very rural Phrao.  Over the past 6 years we have taught over 4,000 kids in Thailand!  It can be done!!  If you know of an organization that would like to start a similar program in their community, message me here.  We will be happy to provide training and lessons we have learned from our years of experience. Finally, even if you cannot take on an instructional program, you can identify drowning risk areas and report them to local leaders and encourage them to build fences, or at least post warnings, around open, dangerous water, equip local pools and swim areas with life saving equipment, hooks, life rings, CPR courses for pool staff, etc. The World Health Organization has excellent resources and guides on how to improve water safety in your community.  OK, long message, but an important topic!!

Very sad, sad news!!  As a recent poster stated, drowning is the leading cause of death for children between the ages of 1 and 15 in Thailand and most of SE Asia. In 2014 the WHO published a report documenting this.  The Thai Ministry of Public Health has developed a program called Merit Maker: Drown No More to address the problem in some locations and we at the Chiang Mai International Rotary Club have programs for all municipal school children in Chiang Mai City and in nearby Phrao.  We use the Royal Lifesaving Society of the Commonwealth curriculum and teach water safety and survival swimming in a 15-hour, 10 lesson course at no charge for the mostly poor municipal school children.   The Rotary Club of Patong Beach in Phuket has also adopted this approach and the Rotary Club Royal Hua Hin is seeking to begin a similar program there.  Since 2015 we have taught over 3,000 children. And we hope to expand further.  The majority of Thai children do not know how to swim and even fewer know what to do when a friend or sibling is in trouble in the water, that's the reason multiple drowning deaths are so common!

In 2017 the WHO published another book: Preventing Drowning: An Implementation Guide.  It's free online and has some very practical ideas on how to make pools, ponds, rivers, streams, beaches, drainage ditches, rice fields, retention ponds, quarries, flooded areas safer.  So almost everyone can do something to make their areas near water safer!

Anyone who wants to learn how they can help can PM me here, or email me at [email protected] .  

Thanks for reading this long message and giving it some thought.

I too have found Assist Thai Visa to be very helpful and competent. They handle a full range of expat services including legal services.  They have also been a very good source of up-to-date and accurate information for the expat community.

Very sad! According to the WHO, drowning is the leading cause of death for children in most of SE Asia.  In Thailand over 1,000 children die from drowning each year. The Thai Ministry of Public Health has a Merit Maker-Drown No More program to teach kids and we at the Chiang Mai International Rotary Club are running Children's Water Safety and Drowning Prevention Programs at 12 municipal schools in Chiang Mai and another 12 schools in Phrao.  The Rotary Club of Patong Beach in Phuket is running programs there and the Rotary Club Royal Hua Hin is planning a water safety program now.  Thousands of kids have been taught survival swimming through these programs, but obviously much more needs to be done, most Thais cannot swim!! If you want to help, send me a message and I can help you find a way.