NancyL

You can do a simple Thai will yourself using forms available at your amphur office. You'll need to list the specific assets, like each bank account number and specify who is the beneficiary. A do-it-yourself amphur will isn't suitable for complex situations for example, when children are involved or assets in another country. Here are the details from a previous post:

http://www.thaivisa....09#entry3844009

Here's how I protect myself from these hazards.

First, I have medical/accident insurance coverage that's valid in Thailand and an existing relationship with some doctors at a local hospital.

Then, (to take these in the order presented), I

Don't eat anything that looks or smells dicey and don't have any commitments I can't cancel at the last minute if I have a case of thong sia.

Watch where I'm walking, because I've fallen over sidewalk hazards before and the medical bill and recovery time were not much fun.

Don't drive a vehicle.

Both Hubby and I have degrees in engineering and have been involved in large construction projects. One of us always watch tradesmen when they do anything around our place. We're politely insistent that they do things like ground electrical wiring.

Buy our appliances at Central Dept store KSK which has stood behind their products. Don't buy the cheapest, Chinese-made stuff, either.

Watch whenever a shop clerk measures out something like wire, fabric, granite, etc.

Carry an adequate supply of 20 and 100 baht notes. Come on, people, you can't expect small merchants to be a bank and change 1000 baht notes for small purchases! (This is a pet peeve, since I've often helped out a shop clerk by providing smaller bills when some other westerner claims to have only 1000 baht notes.)

MY rabies shots are up-to-date, so I just need a little booster if I'm bitten by a stray dog. Have you had YOUR rabies shots?

It's all a matter of thinking about where you live, taking responsibility for your actions and planning ahead.

You should know the foreign transaction fee rate of the financial institution that issued your credit card. Many U.S. institutions charge 3%, but our credit union charges just 1%, so we always insist that a Thai business reverse USD charges and resubmit in Thai baht. Sometimes this creates much consternation and I hope we help everyone save face by being polite but insistent. Credit-unions are owned by their members, so we receive a rebate each year that depends upon the profits of the credit union. So far, it's been about 1-1.25% of our "activity" and the Visa card charges count as "activity", so basically we aren't paying anything extra for the foreign transaction.

Billing in GBP or USD isn't really a credit card scam. It's a "legitimate" business practice and something that all foreigners should check whenever they use a foreign-issued credit card.

We opened an account at the KSK branch with just our passport, O-A retirement visas and rental contract for our condo unit. Hubby and I came by ourselves without any references except for mentioning our new neighbors at the condo building recommended the bank. The U.S. $1000 in cash we wanted to deposit may have helped, too. Yes, the individual branch managers do have some leeway and can use their discretion.

Hi Yelly! We get together on the first and third Thursday every month. The third Thursday lunch is the "informal" lunch, always at the Grandview Hotel buffet. The "formal" lunch on the first Thursday of the month is at various venues around town. You can send me a PM, or just keep checking the Thai visa Chiang Mai News and Events forum. I post an announcement a couple weeks before each lunch.

Mixed, it sounds like you've already figured out what to do. Have your paperwork in order, bareroot the plants prior to the trip and you'll probably just get waved thru.

If they want to quarantine them, then just raise a fuss about how that would kill them. We imported some bareroot plants into the U.S. that had to be quarantined for a year. All we had to do was grow them in an an area that was XX ft away from any other nursery stock. I don't remember the exact distance. The ag inspectors came out to look at them every so often, always with a charge, of course. I think they were bored with the goings-on at the airport and decided to come out and inspect the plants we had in quarantine. The good news was that they usually bought some plants for their personal gardens, so it made it worth our time to put up with them.

The American NPR radio show "This American Life" did a show in August about one day at a interstate highway rest area in upstate NY. Turns out that one of the restaurants in the rest area particpated in a program that sounds very similar to what the OP describes. The foreign students didn't realize they were going to be in upstate NY, not NYC and didn't have transportation beyond the bicycles they were given to go to work at the rest area. Oh and yes, they all were female. The best at adapting were the Ukaraine gals who quickly befriended American guys at work and had a non-stop party at their apartment for the rest of the summer. The worst at adapting were the "good girls" from Hong Kong who had come from households where their families had maids and they'd basically spent their entire lives trying to fulfill their parents' expectations. I think the Thai gals (maybe princesses would be a better word) fall into the later category.

Apparently after they put in a summer of working, their reward was to get a couple weeks of vacation time within the U.S.

So, does this mean that our supply chain for Kraft Real Mayo and their various salad dressings is going to get disrupted, too? Maybe it's time to start some panic buying! Otherwise, it's Thai salad creme on everything.

Ashoka, thank you for clarification the CMU CPE program. Based on your description it does sound like a legitimate eductional program for the 6 students who meet the entrance qualifications and I don't think anyone would argue that it's wrong for CMU to obtain ED visas for them.

What if someone wants to volunteer but doesn't have an appropriate visa? Is CMU offering ED visas for people in this situation, i.e. those who don't meet the entrance requirements and/or aren't able to do the required coursework?

Has anyone utilized the services of this program as a client? It would be nice to hear of some first-hand client experiences. It seems that the students in this program could be of assistance in some of the specific cases highlighted on this thread.

Saw it yesterday afternoon at KSK. Only about 7 people in the audience. It doesn't help that it isn't listed in the schedule on MovieSeer.com but it is listed on the Visa website. I think the confusion is because it started on Friday instead of the usual Thursday. The showed Rapunzel/Tangled on Thursday and then moved it out when The King's Speech came in on Friday. They didn't change the MovieSeer site, though.

Yeesh, it's almost impossible to get accurate showtimes movies and then they wonder why no one comes to see the movie! And don't get me started about how you can't obtain showtimes for movies a day or two in advance.

I love to see movies in the big screen. It's only 70 baht Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at KSK Vista.

The phyto certificate is issued in the country of origin of the plants. A licensed nursery operator should be able to contact their Dept of Agriculture or whatever similar government agency (in the country of origin) that issues these phyto certificates. The government agency will want to know the exact destination of for the plants, perhaps as detailed as the specific amphur; certainly the province of destination. In the U.S., the rules are different for each state and we had to go thru a process to ship to California as if it were a foreign country. It's all rather straightforward, but can be expensive. Thailand may require that the certificates be translated into Thai. I don't know as I have never imported plants into Thailand. Once the plants reach the destination airport they will be routed to an ag inspection facility near the airport. They can be delayed there if the paperwork is not in order and/or the inspectors don't like what they see.

Hubby and I ran a plant nursery in the U.S. before retiring and moving to Thailand. The vast majority of our sales were within a very small geographic region, but several times a year we'd ship plants overseas for specific customer orders. The costs to do the paperwork were pretty much the same for one plant as for a thousand plants.

If the OP is planning to bring the plants into the country by air, as personal baggage -- well then things could get interesting! Most of those dogs you see around incoming international baggage at airports aren't looking for drugs -- they're checking for agriculture-related imports, i.e. food and plants, especially plants. Our plant nursery was close, too close to an international airport and sometimes I'd get called by the USDA inspectors to "help them out" when a passenger was especially unwilling to give up some undocumented plants. Most times, I think the USDA just confiscated them and the passengers gave them up without a major fight. But sometimes, the USDA could get involved in battles with incoming passengers that had the potential to blow up into international incidents if the plants were especially valuable or important to the passenger. That's when I got called.

In most cases the big problem is with the soil. All manner of nasty insects and disease lurk in the soil. If a plant must be shipped with its roots, then it's always easier to pass inspection if you wash off the soil immediately prior to shipping, wrap the plant in plastic, keep it cool and replant it into soil with a few hours of arrival. Unrooted cuttings are usually no problem for international arrivals. In some countries they aren't even considered plants, but rather cut flowers or foliage. The Thai people are pros at rooting plants from cuttings. Maybe the plants in question could be brought in as cuttings, to be rooted in Thailand.

Based upon my observation of the USDA in action, if a passenger was insistent enough and seemed to know something about plants, they could "talk" undocumented plants into the U.S., provided those plants were healthy as deemed by the expert eye of me and their horticultural inspectors. I don't know about Thailand, though. <BR><BR>It would help to know how the OP plans to ship the plants. Both the originating nursery (provided they're licensed) and the shipper (like DHL, FedEx) should be able to provide assistance.<BR><BR>

Oh no, did Hubby leave one of the water bottles for his plants laying around again? He puts some blue powdered fertilizer in the plant water about once a week. Unfortunately, he uses old drinking water bottles to water the plants so I must admit that I've mistakenly used light blue water for toothbrushing water when he forgets and leaves a bottle in the bathroom.

Wow, this thread is an oldie-but-goodie. We ended up getting two smaller mats at one of the wicker/rattan furniture shops on Chang Moi road. Not quite what I had in mind, but they work. Basically we have a discontinuity under our dining table, where the two mats come together. In retrospect, I'm glad we didn't get anything more expensive because we adopted a cat shortly after getting the mats and he's turned them into grooming aids for his manicures/pedicures.

I agree with the earlier observations about sheets and towels. I finally ended up making a trip to Bangkok just to spend a small fortune on them. I did find bras in CM (I'm a 34 C in the U.S.) but still haven't found good cotton underpants. Ditto on socks and I'm a size 8 shoe. Mitchum deodorant isn't available here, but after reading about it on the internet, I finally had my armpits botoxed. Procedures like that are much cheaper here than in the U.S. and now the Thai deodorants work just fine. I don't use tampons anymore, but the selection here seems very limited. There are many varieties of pads available, though.

I've found that I dress very differently than I did in my home country. There are many excellent fabric shops and dressmakers in CM. Get to know some ladies about the same age and build as you, that dress nicely. Ask them where they get their clothes and they'll be pleased to take you to their dressmaker. The Thai dressmakers are pros at copying an item, even from photographs. In the U.S. I wore khaki pants and tee shirts from Lands Ends as daily attire. Now I wear flowing dresses and skirts. Indulge your inner girlie-girl.

I miss some of my kitchen items. Yes, definitely bring a good manual can-opener with you. We go thru 4 or 5 Thai can openers a year. Thank god we brought our wine-bottle opener. I hate think what they must be like here. I wish I'd brought my larger teflon-coated skillet. I brought the smaller one, mainly because I could fit it into a 12" x 12" priority mail box. I eye the bigger ones at Rim Ping grocery store and gulp at the prices.

I agree with sbk on this one. We have a firm rule when we shop in Burma that could apply here. We don't buy anything that we're going to ingest or use on our body in a way that could be harmful. The Chinese are experts at duplicating packaging -- to judge by all the DVDs/CDs we see in the shops at the border crossings at Burma. They even include the little brochures that some singers include in their recordings. They could probably do the same with packaging inserts for pharmacutical products.

OK, I'm not in my 20s and I don't really lack for female friends of my age in Chiang Mai, but these activities always pick-me-up:

having a good work-out at my health club and enjoying a long whirlpool bath afterwards. They have great towels!

visiting the local som tam shop for a meal where the staff fawns all over me because I can order a meal in Thai (and I always leave them a 5B tip, do you think that helps?)

enjoying spa services, like a manicure/pedicure or foot massage. The trick, at least in CM, is to find a place that has A/C, good soothing music and a quiet peaceful atmosphere.

checking out fashion ideas on the internet and then going to the fabric shops to purchase goods that the dressmaker can make into close approximations of what I found on the thin, much-younger models

spending time in the local western grocery store, really checking out their goods and trying to cook some new menu item for dinner

taking a shower at least three times daily and doing my hair and makeup again after each shower

eating our meals with our best china and silver. We brought this stuff to Thailand, we might as well use it everyday!

Don't know if this helps the OP, but it sure does me.

Mapguy, are you doing market research? For whom? Why?

My goodness, if any guy needs guidance about what questions to ask a prospective wife then he really should consider renting by the hour rather than signing up for the life-time plan.

Splendid! I couldn't have said it better myself.

This time last year we were lamenting how our A/C couldn't "keep up" despite running 24/7 and seriously considering installing new A/C units and/or a second set of windows/doors at our own expense in a rental unit.

I just hope Hubby's prediction doesn't come true. He says that once things dry out "they'll be burning with a vengence to make up for lost time!"

No chesiregent, I don't think you'll be making things worse.

It's my understanding that the consular staff has received training in the "special needs" of their local American population and they realize the "special need" in CM is dealing with elderly, at-risk people. It will be interesting to learn if anyone from the American Consulate will be involved in the April 7th meeting at Raintree.

chesiregent, it's good of you to be concerned for this gentleman. Why don't you contact the American Consulate yourself since you know where he lives? They're pretty responsive to emails sent via their website. It may take a couple of days, but you should get a response.

Amykat, have you looked at moving to one of the better condos in CM, like Rim Ping and Flora? They would seem to offer everything you like about Penang, except maybe for the beach.

It's difficult to sustain friendships when living isolated, out of town. I think that's the problem of some of the elderly foreigners in need. For whatever reason, they live out of the center of town and just don't have an opportunity to go out during the day, to walk to the markets, health club, book stores, AUA library, malls, restaurants or any of the number of places where westerners have a chance for casual, daily interaction.

Many of the Outside Group Activity clubs of the Expats Club meet during the day, like computer club, the bridge club, textile club, reading club, ladies lunch group, board & card games, etc. You can make friends thru these groups and then set up lunch dates or shopping expeditions with people you meet. It's difficult to do this when it's a special effort to "come into town" for an activity.

Oh and don't give up on the health clubs and people who are here just six months of the year. Many of them return every year and can become friends. I wouldn't consider them tourists. Plus, there's many positive mental and physical benefits to regular exercise even if you don't meet friends thru the activity.

I liked Songkran much better when we lived in a high rise near KSK and I could watch the fun from my balcony and the swimming pool deck. Now we live at ground level near Thapae Gate and it's awful. We don't really get to see the overall action like we did from the balcony and the tourists are much less respectful of a grim-faced older lady out at 10 am, loaded with her morning food shopping. The Thais are much better at reading that kind of body language and not throwing water. The one good thing about our new place is that we have a much larger refrigerator so I can stay totally indoors much longer without having to venture out for fresh produce.

Hubby, on the other hand, loves it and goes out every day during the official Songkran period. He's busy doing comparison shopping on super-soakers now.

Hubby and I have had five cats during our marriage. All but one lived beyond the age of 20, and we adopted that one knowing he had feline leukemia. I can't believe how many of our Chiang Mai friends express amazement about the lifespan of our cats and immediately ask what we fed them. They're shocked when we say commercial cat food and go onto to tell us how they fed their cats a diet of organic, free-range meat and organic veggies that they'd go to great lengths to cook themselves. Yet they let these same pampered cats wander around outside because "after all, cats need to roam, don't they?"

Our secret for bringing cats into old age is to never let them leave the house or courtyard with really high walls and to take them to the vet regularly for shots and at the first sign of any problems.

To all who showed interest.The next meeting of Ageing Network is now Thursday 7th April at The Raintree Resource Centre At 5.30pm.

It has been moved as the 6th is a Thai holiday.

Maybe you could invite this group to answer some questions.

http://www.chiangmaicpe.org/

I checked out the website of this organization and, at first, it seemed to be an answer to many of the concerns posted on this thread. In fact, its mission overlaps that of the Ageing Network in many areas. However, the more I dug into the site, I realized that it was created just a few weeks ago. Maybe the organization has been around for a while, but the site is new. Has anyone had experience with this Chiang Mai CPE organization as a client? Not as someone who pays for their training courses and receives (guess what!) a one-year ED visa! This group is affiliated with CMU and given their history in leaving a couple hundred foreigners in their Language Institute stranded without visas, I'm doubtful about how genuine their mission "to care for the local expat community and help in times of crisis and need."