thaiguy55

new dehli is the best. curry pot is the worst. everything else is in-between.

Oh; and beer here works out at about 70p a pint if you buy a box of 12 bottles. Over 3 quid a pint now in most British pubs!

Don't compare wholesale prices here with pub prices in UK. Hardly a level playing field. How about comparing the "by the case price here" with the special offers you get in the likes of Tesco in UK. Last time I was there, a year ago, I was getting very tasty ales by the bottle at 1 quid a pint.

OK, at Share bar in Santhitham area, 3 large changs are 139bht (ice extra), a female university student (with great legs) sits with you, pours your beer, and chats while you drink. You can't buy her a drink (no scrounging allowed), the girls rotate every 20 minutes ... bit like speed dating. That pretty much trumps anything in British pubs, both on price and service.

For some reason this bar is packed out with Thai guys every night.

I recently moved to Santhitham, but haven't seen this bar anywhere. Could you please give directions?

i'm sure the owner of spicy can answer both your questions

are any bars showing the ufc live this sunday morning?

i heard 4mod is playing during the festival, but i can't find out when? does anyone know hte date?

In regards to Matt being a Doctor. This was brought up years ago by some other TEFL organisations upset about new competition. Again like alot of threads, it was a head hunt. At the time Matt was a lecturer at CMU and one person with a chip on their shoulder sent a letter to CMU accusing Matt of not holding the correct credentials. If i remember correctly his PHD is in Philosophy which was confirmed by CMU and also by the university Matt attended.

People are upset about what has happened and the situation was handled very poorly by LICMU. Turning this into a witch hunt and making accusations based on opinions or heresay is not going to solve the problem but might actually destroy peoples lives who might have been the victim from the start.

Yes, other TEFL organisations were jealous on Matt and tried to destroy him. Then CMU was jealous on his success and is now trying to destroy him.

But Matt is NEVER to blame !

Great first post! I bet you have no personal vendetta against Matt.

Also (someone correct me if I'm wrong), when I signed up for the course back in March, I'm sure I did it directly through the Language Institute website.

I have 2 receipts because I paid in 2 installments. Both receipts have CMULI logo in the top left corner, and a blue Language Institute stamp.

I received the same email from my teacher. The teacher asked why students had to pay extra (~ 3k baht each in the case of our class for 5 more months), for a course they already payed 30k baht to enroll in. The LICMU manager said that the course had 2 parts - part 1 was the 1yr course ran by IUS that the students will get a refund for asap. Part 2 was the new remaining 5 months of the course that the students pay half the teachers wage for the remaining hours and receive a certification at the end.

It seems like a pretty good deal offered by CMU and I would definitely take it if I could believe they would honor their part of the deal. Obviously, that's not the case.

The thread in the visa forum is locked, so I'll post this here. Mods please don't move.

As many people know, CMU recently terminated the 1yr Thai Langauge and Cultural Exchange Programs offered by IUS at CMU. Then CMU decided at the last minute to reinstate the 1yr Language Programs under many conditions outlined in this letter - http://www.li.chiangmai.ac.th/. The thread detailing the whole mess is here

A few days ago, my thai teacher informed me that classes would be starting up again, and asked if I (along with the other 5 students in class) wanted to continue with the same class and the same teacher. We all said yes, and were happy to here that classes would likely be starting up again soon. I spoke with my thai teacher today, and was informed that CMU plan to charge the students who choose to continue the course extra money for doing so. My teacher was unsure about the exact amount, but should find out soon. CMU has caused the students (and people enrolled in the cultural exchange program), much stress and financial loss with respect to visas and not refunding the course. Now they want students to pay more to continue a course they already payed for. This is absolutely appalling. Has anyone else enrolled in the 1 yr course heard a similar story from their teachers?

nimman is one of the best roads. huay kaew is near nimmnan. sankampaeng is very far away.

offence taken! i've been to tops and watsons and boots dozens of times and have never seen the stuff, and haff to settle for the lousy spray kind. i guess the brands / shape of the container look different then at home. thanks for the help, i'll keep an eye out for the silver nidvea one.

I can't seem to find this stuff anywhere. Preferably near Kad Suan Kaew

bbv4life

Walen, it would be pretty stupid of you to keep posting here. You have done nothing but drive potential customers away from your school.

One of my friends just got back from chiang mai immigration and reported the same thing as hookemlaw. He question the immigration officer a couple of times to make sure his visa is good until the expiry date (march), and the immigration officer said the only way the visa would become invalid is if he (my friend) brought in his passport with a letter from cmu stating to void the visa.

Mario,

Where does it say it applies for student visas too? Hookemlaw reported that Thai Immigration in Chiang Mai said he was ok for 3 months.

I have it on VERY good authority that the prz of cmu is completely freaked out by the threat of personally being sued! There are many many Thai CMU staff and admin who detest this prz and his position is very tenous - this issue has cause those factions that dislike prz to have some real ammunition and the prz is frightened of any idea of foreigners personally suing him - some students went to the police station and took out a report on the prz (anyone can do this and the police station near zoo) and then went to the prz office and told staff that they had taken given a police report against prz and that they would be personally suing the prz - if enough people do this - i would guarantee you are going to see a reverse on this visa decision that the prz took and you might even see classes reinstated

spare us. Before anyone thinks of following this advice think very carefully through the possible consequences.

someone in an earlier post is getting closer...

the truth is still out there

spare us with your 'the truth is still out there posts'

UPDATE:

This morning I got news from someone on the Thai course that immigration had arrested some of the 300 people on the course, I don't know any further details.

This seems very unlikely. Why would Thai Immigration arrest 300 people in the course?

Walen here.

I am sad to hear that CMU has treated students this way. It is bad for the whole business. It is a long thread but basically CMU were audited by the Ministry of Education and were found not good enough to provide student visa support so their paperwork is not recognized by the immigration office. Walen was audited about the same time but as things are run strictly according to the exact government guidelines we had no problems at all. Those who have not visited our school in Chiangmai yet and live there please do come to see for yourself. We did not always get a fair coverage on thaivisa.com by some who do not like us so much however we strive to provide the highest quality of service and certainly provide the most reliable ED visa support for our students.

Till date we had no problems at any of of the Walen schools. One reason is that we indeed teach Thai and not just pretend we do but really hope to make money on ED visa support. This is our 10th year of doing business in Thailand and each year we are becoming more and more popular so we must be doing something right.

Walen School - Great method and reliable ED visa support

www.thaiwalen.com

Walen,

Thanks for posting this. You just made my list of language schools to choose from shorter by one.

I've gotta say, as much as I dislike the director and feel bad for the students who he tricked, that letter is brilliant and pretty amusing.

I did a Google search on "Chiang Mai University foreign university collaboration agreements". The top search result URL contained "inter.oop.cmu" which is a PDF document. If you go to page 27 of this PDF, you will find a listing by country of the universities and colleges which CMU has collaboration agreements with. Whichever country you are a citizen of, you might consider voicing your concerns to those institutions listed for your home country. I found the school where I received my masters degrees listed and I will be voicing my concerns to them.

Good idea Roger. I will be doing the same.

If anyone knows a good lawyer in Chiang Mai please PM me

pbert,

i confused dr. kay with another employee who quit earlier this month.

on monday, everybody thought the deal with feu was set, and the visas would be issued with no problem. afaik, dr. kay and his staff we're only aware of the potential problem with the visas last night and tried everything they could do fix it early today. they have been very sympathetic to the students and are trying their best to recover some of the lost money.

Dr Kay was contracted by the language institute to start up and run a TEFL course. After running a very successful program he then helped CMULI to develop a 1 Year Thai program amongst others. All this was done while under the supervision of the old CMULI director and with the support of the president of the University. These programs were ran very well and gained alot of popularity and i am sure if you ask most of the Thai language students they will rave about how much they had enjoyed studying on these courses. Everything was going well until the old director retired and a new director took over CMULI. The new director without any notice refused to sign Visas and announced that no more of the programs Dr Kay had set up were allowed to run after September and that CMULI would not be liable for refunds even though they had taken the majority of the enrolled students money. So from the sounds of this CMULI is essentially stealing money and leaving students high and dry without Visa's. Also to add another twist. The new director looks to be starting up programs that mimic alot of Dr Kays work.

That's pretty ridiculous. After treating foreign students the way he has this month, does the new director actually believe he will be able to attract foreigners to a new program?? Then again, it does seem in line with everything I've heard he's done so far.