NightOwl888

Most people Telecommuting here keep there head down and keep quite as no one will really know what they are doing.

But technically you do need a Work Permit to do any kind of work here. Even unpaid voluntary work.

I will get whatever is required for my working there to be legal activity. I wasn't planning to do this on a tourist visa. I am still here in the US now and have a little time to apply, I just need to figure out what specific visa to apply for and how. Siam Legal said I have to get a "B" but I am unsure how to proceed because I don't meet most of the requirements.

The work permit is a given, but thanks for the advice about it anyway. From what I understand, this is quick and easy to obtain in Thailand given you have the proper visa.

To be honest I find trying to work out 'normal' Visas difficult enough let alone trying to work here.

How anyone gets through the Work Permit plus Visa regulations is beyond me.

Yea it seems like there are a lot of requirements, but Siam Legal made it sound like it was pretty simple. At least, they are willing to make it simple for me for a modest $489 US fee (not including the visa application fee). I would rather do it myself if I can figure out how to dot the i's and cross the t's correctly.

Still, I can't be the only one working over the Internet in a foreign country while living in Thailand...someone must have figured this paperwork out.

You can also work on a Non O Visa.

Ok, so by "Non O" are you referring to a "Non-Immigrant O" type visa? Sorry, it occurred to me that maybe I just didn't understand the shorthand.

It helps if you use the correct terminology. Good one LB.

No, I am using the terminology that was given from Siam Legal exactly. I chatted with them online a few weeks ago, but unfortunately their system doesn't send a transcript of the conversation. I am sure he said "Non-B" because I was taking notes.

Foreigners who wish to conduct business in Thailand must provide the following documents:

- Passport or travel document with a validity of not less than 6 months.

- Completed application form.

- Recent passport-sized photograph (4 x 6 cm) photograph of the applicant taken within the past 6 months.

- Evidence of adequate finance (20,000 Baht per person and 40,000 Baht per family) for the duration of stay in Thailand

- Letter from the applicant's company indicating the applicant's position, length of employment, salary and purpose of visit(s) to Thailand.

- Documents showing correspondence with business partners in Thailand.

- Evidence of financial status in the case where the applicant is self-employed.

- Letter of invitation from trading or associated partners/companies in Thailand.

- Corporate documents of associated partners/companies in Thailand such as:

1) business registration and business license

2) list of shareholders

3) company profile

4) details of business operation

5) map indicating location of the company

6) balance sheet, statement of Income Tax and Business Tax (Por

Ngor Dor 50 and Por Ngor Dor 30) of the latest year

7) value-added tax registration (Por Por 20)

The problem here is that none of the information in red even applies to me. I will be working for a company in the USA, not for a company in Thailand. This is why a "Non-B" visa was suggested by Siam Legal.

I am planning to apply for a 1-year non-resident visa to Thailand. I will be working in Thailand for a company in the USA by using the Internet. I contacted Siam Legal about how I should approach this and they recommended to get a "Non-B" visa.

After looking over the Thai Embassy website here in the US, I don't see "Non-B" as an option. Has anyone done this and if so could you provide info on the process?

Thanks in advance.

I am planning to get a 24" or 25.5" LCD monitor when I move to Thailand next month. However, I would like to know how much this item is going to run me so I can budget accordingly. Of course, there may be a range depdending on brand, quality, etc. but I would like to know what that range is.

Here in the US I can get a fairly good 25.5" monitor for around $550-$600 (19,000 - 20,700 baht) but it is too big of an item to bring with. I used Google Thailand to try to find a price, but no such luck.

I will be moving to the Pattaya/Jomtien area, but will commute to Bangkok to get this if necessary.

Thanks in advance.

Another thing to consider being an American - a scale that you can weigh yourself in pounds, or perhaps smaller items in ounces. Of course, that depends on whether it is really important to hang on to these archaic systems of measurement.

Also, check around for the best currency conversion rates. There's a site that specializes in FX transfers and probably offers pretty good rates. I think it has "FX" or "FXTransfer" or something like that in its title. Google it and you should be able to find it. Or someone else here might know it and be kind enough to post its address.

Credit/Debit cards are probably one of the most expensive ways to transer funds. Bank to bank wire transfers are better, but ask them about their rates and then see if the FX transfer web site might be better. Shopping around there can save you some money.

Good luck.

Could you provide a link to the service? I did a search and all I can seem to find are UK websites that allow you to exchange Pounds Sterling into Baht. I am looking for a better way to transfer USD and unfortunately this post (with a fairly misleading title) is about when to transfer the money, now how.

When I traveled to Thailand last time, I ended up paying in excess of $400 USD in bank transfer fees on top of the rather poor exchange rate by using my ATM card. I would like to find a better alternative now as I am planning to move there for 1 year.

I am surprised nobody mentioned a good men's electric shaver. I don't know if you noticed but the Thai don't have much facial hair, and I can't imagine they import enough of them to bring the price down to affodability level.

Since I buy one of these every year and have to use it daily or I will look like Sasquatch, it is a concern for me.

I recently saw a double feature Thai comedy called "The Bodyguard" and "The Bodyguard 2". While I usually second guess using movies as a way to learn about a culture, there was something very interesting in the sequel that caught my attention.

There was a scene where the main character and his (obviously exaggerated) overbearing Thai wife forced him to go to a fortune teller. The fortune teller started by making fun of how goofy his face looked (as was done throughout the movie), and then proceeded to put his bare feet on the main character's face. Not just a mere touch, but he covered the face entirely with his feet, rubbing them all over his cheeks and forehead.

While this scene was very funny regardless of the culture of the viewer who watched it, I couldn't help but to think that it had particular significance to the Thai who are insulted by being touched on the head by another person's feet. In fact, the whole movie was filled with demeaning comments that were obviously chosen to make the characters lose face.

This made me wonder if someone causes another person to lose face, do Thai onlookers think the situation is comical?

I was scammed the first time I went to Thailand and I didn't even realize it. Sure, 1000 baht for a 1 hour longtail boat ride is a large sum in Thailand, but it was about on the average by western tourism standards (at the time) so I didn't even bat an eye. I wasn't even aware I was overcharged (for the boat or several other things I was overcharged for) until I got home.

The fact of the matter is, the difference in price (not just the fact you are a tourist) in Thailand makes it a much easier opportunity to be scammed. It is not that it is racially motivated, it is that it is easier to identify who the tourists are by their race.

The fact of the matter is, because of the Thai perception of "losing face", they are less likely to reveal the fact they were scammed by another Thai so us farang are less aware it is happening to the Thai just as frequently. Not to mention the government and businesses are as likely to blame it on them as they are on us.

This reminds me of the perception that we have here in Los Angeles about our friendly immigrants from the south. Often one of the first English words that is learned is "rasicm" because they know if they call fowl that something might be done about it here. It seems that this is the same attitude that is portrayed on this thread - if you are a minority, it is ok to cry racism for any wrongdoing or discrimination that occurs.

Personally, I don't agree with this perception. Racism is something very specific in that an injustice is done to you because you are (or aren't) a specific race. Discrimination is much broader and is usually done with other motivations in mind such as opportunity, education level, skill level, gender, age, social class, etc.

While discrimination may apply to being scammed regularly, racism is rarely the type of motivation as much as it is opportunity on the scammers' part or education (street wise) about the types of scams that go on on the farangs' part.

Racism is unfortunately akin to crying wolf in that it is overused (abused) so much that nobody is likely to believe it when it does actually happen.

UPDATE:

FYI, I found another great post on Lonely Planet? concerning traveling around and staying in hotels with a laptop in Thailand, for which there was a shortage of replies on this thread.

"Or leave it at the hotel reception for safe keeping. That's what I do anyway; I prefer to not leave it in my room." from your link.

I did so in a hotel in France some time ago when we went out for dinner. When we came back a few hours later, the desk help said "Oh Sir, we put it back in your room because it's safer there than behind our desk..."

Luckily it was there, but I mean, it depends, and this was a 4* hotel...(French though )

LaoPo

Well, true...and this was a question I had on my original post. Is it safer to leave it in your room or at reception? It seems to me if you bring your own lock and are able to lock your room from the outside, it would be safer in your room. However, if that is not an option it would seem that if the reception has a way to lock it behind a gate, a door, or in a lock box it would be a better choice. If neither of those options are available, it is time to look for a new hotel.

There was an exception to the rule of placing the lock on the outside of the room at a hotel I stayed at on Khao San road - it had a way to lock the room from the outside (and I did), however before I checked out of the hotel, I noticed that there was a window on the opposite side of the room that faced a hallway. The room had obviously been robbed before I got there, as the latch on the window was broken and no longer functional. It was pure luck nobody robbed me during my stay there by breaking in through the unlatched window.

UPDATE:

I just ordered my new laptop. I went with the Lenovo T500 because it can be locked into a docking port that can be tethered to a desk or other secure object using a Kensington cable. This will also allow me to quickly unhook the laptop from my desk so it can be stowed in a safe as often as needed. I had to sacrifice some portability and features by going with this brand and pay a little more to get the added security. It probably will be worth the reletively minor expense compared to having it stolen, though. I made sure the power adapter and warranty will both be good in Thailand.

I also got a rather ordinary looking backpack without a computer brand name on it so I can carry it around without anyone having to know its contents. Unfortunately, the lack of hip belt and the fact I went with a heavier laptop will make traveling with it more of a challenge though.

FYI, I found another great post on Lonely Planet? concerning traveling around and staying in hotels with a laptop in Thailand, for which there was a shortage of replies on this thread.

There has been a lot of rumors about a so called "Storm surge", but this is the first I have heard about a Tsunami...

Tsunamis are not caused be rain, even excessive amounts of rain... they are usually caused by seismic disturbances, such as underwater earthquakes, or possibly a big volcanic eruption... a big meteorite strike would also cause a tsunami...

But not rain.

Tsunamis are caused by earthquakes, not rain.

Tsunamis can also be caused by landslides. In fact, landslides are capable of producing much larger tsunamis than earthquakes. In turn, landslides can be caused by excessive rain.

That said, for Pattaya to be hit by a tsunami, there would need to be a landslide on the opposite (Western) side of the gulf or somewhere underwater within the gulf. Since underwater landslides are unlikely to be caused by too much rain, is there anything in the news of there being a potential landslide near Hua Hin?

Just in case anyone else is looking for an answer to this...

Passport received 2008-09-12. So from the time I mailed it until the time I received it, it was 16 days total for the regular service.

I am in Los Angeles and the processing center is in Philadelphia. Mailing time each direction was 3 days. Maybe there is some fluctuation from this, but let's face it, how busy could the US passport service get being that only 4% of Americans even have a passport?

So if you have at least 3 weeks before you need your passport to go on a trip or to get a visa, you don't need to pay for the expidited service.

Hmm...as of 2008-07-11, I haven't received my passport back. It has been nearly two weeks since it was received at the processing center.

I wish I would have posted here sooner - if I knew how quick and easy it was to add pages in Bangkok, I would have waited until I got there.

Well, I don't know where you can get VB.NET training in Bangkok, but I might be able to point the way how to solve this issue with ASP.NET.

The way I would handle a scenario like this is to build a parser to load the fields you are interested in into an object and then allow the user to load the data from the object as default values into your form. Then they can just submit the form back to save the data in your datastore.

In ASP.NET it is a pretty simple operation to get the text output of a web site using the WebRequest and WebResponse objects (in the System.Net namespace). Here is a code sample how to do it.

'Gets the output of a webpage as utf-8 encoded text

Public Function GetUrlOutput(ByVal url As String) As String

Dim wr As WebRequest = WebRequest.Create(url)

Dim resp As WebResponse

Try

'Get the page

resp = wr.GetResponse

Try

'Return resp.GetResponseStream.ToString

Dim reader As New StreamReader(resp.GetResponseStream, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8)

Return reader.ReadToEnd

Finally

resp.Close()

End Try

Catch ex As System.Net.WebException

'This will trap any nonresponsive page so we

'can safely ignore it

Return ex.Message

End Try

End Function

This function just returns the raw HTML from a given URL. From there, I would use regular expressions to parse out the fields I am interested in, but some people find regular expressions a bit difficult to adjust to. There is no reason why you couldn't just manually create parsing code in VB though. Either way, you will need to make changes to your code when the 3rd party website changes.

Another route you might try is to see if the owner of the website has or would be willing to create an XML web service to supply the data to you. This of course depends on the specific type of relationship you have with the owner of that website.

What version of Visual Basic are you using? If you are using VB.NET this can be done fairly easily with ASP.NET, but personally I would not use frames in the interface because it complicates things considerably. Similar effects can be created using DIV tags and CSS.

Hello,

I recently sent my US passport in to get more pages added because I didn't have much more room than for 1 more visa. I sent it registered mail to the US office in Pennsylvania and I got notification that it was delivered on 2008-08-30. I got the regular service rather than springing for the expidited service. However, there is no indication on their website how long either service will take: http://travel.state.gov/passport/fri/add/add_850.html

Has anyone used this service before, and if so how long did you have to wait before receiving your passport? I am planning to apply for a 1 year visa to Thailand, but I can't do it until I get my passport back!

TIA

I went to a Thai food restaurant and was looking over the menu. I noticed you could have your selection of meat with each dish. I picked one out that sounded interesting and the waitress came over to my table. I asked for the dish with pork. "Moo?" asked the waitress. "No, oink!", I replied. She wrote it down and went to turn in my order for preparation.

It wasn't until much later on my trip that I found out that moo is the Thai word for pork and she wasn't trying to imitate an animal.

I thought I read somewhere that the addresses (at least in Bangkok) are decided by the developer that subdivides the land. Therefore, you can have numbers incrementing on one side of the street and decrementing on the other depending on how the particular developer decides to do it. Then again, they don't even have to put them in order if they don't want to. Someone correct me if I am wrong about this.

I know that in Japan the addresses are given according to the order which they are built CHRONOLOGICALLY. That system is even more confusing, since #300 and #301 can be several blocks apart, and only people who have lived there a long time will know approximately when a building was built.

Update: The visit is on. Expect the seamen to arrive on Friday.

(insert your own joke here)____________________________.

Seamen can be spelled 2 ways - and that will arrive on Friday as well.

I have been to Angeles City, but I gotta say I personally like Pattaya much better. Aside from my preference of Thai women to Filipina, I found the Phillipines to be a bit run down for my taste. Sure there are some that like to go there regularly, but it is not for me. I doubt I will be returning to the Phillipines anytime soon unless one of my Filipino friends invites me.

Chaing Mai in my opionion is one of the most "International" cities in Asia, at least when it comes to food. Some places like Pattaya are considered International, but it is hard to find dining choices outside of European, Thai, or some fusion of the two.

Chaing Mai on the other hand has a great selection of food including Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, American, Chinese, several European countries, and of course Thai. The food in Chaing Mai is one of the many reasons why it is my favorite spot in Thailand.

It is easy to police the rules by stopping people bringing gas on site, once you start bending the rules where will it stop?

With a bang, of course.