Shazza

I've had bronchitis so every time I've left the air con (which dries me out and makes me cough) I've collapsed into a super heap of coughing (much worse than if I'm IN the air con!)... Been sleeping with air on and with two of my three sons in the room as well. Not sure what to do when hubby comes home next week as he doesn't like to sleep with air on... hopefully it'll be cooler then or I may sleep in the spare room with sons! and beloved air con...

Funny thing, my mum came over a few times from New Zealand around December/January/February and always ALWAYS complained about the heat and the humidity! Ha ha! If only she knew....

Be careful with wetting all your clothing and sitting around by fans, my friend did that and ended up with a massive body rash... ew...

> The fan actually blows hotter air on me than in the room? How is that?! Weird!

When the ambient temperature is higher than your body temperature (37 or so), breeze will feel warm, as will surfaces that normally feel cool, including your bed linen, granite surfaces, etc.

Learn something new every day....thanks.....still a bit weird though!

Well it may be not as bad as other years, but I think my lungs are deteriorating, I've been coughing since Christmas due to a horrible cold/flu thing and now the dirty air is keeping the cough there. Any suggestions? Are inhalers bad for you in other ways even though they keep the cough away? Any natural remedies? Leaving isn't an option at this stage....

Mmmmm, how about Chiang Mai? Are we ok up here?

Our family hasn't worn red or yellow clothing for nearly a year now. Our oldest is looking forward to wearing his red t-shirts when he leaves CM for university this year... hopefully they still fit!

I have CNN and Facebook no problem. with True

LOL.... every time I see you here on Thai Visa, I think (quietly) mmmmmm, he's really good looking....well actually I think something more like.... yummmy! then I realise that your avatar is from Snatch and it's not you!!!! I got FB ok today as well!

Not sure if they have colouring books, but there is a huge stationery shop in town that has all sorts of stuff, paints, pencils, crayons, paper, glue, scissors, thread to make friendship bracelets, all sorts of stuff...

It's on the same road as the Irish Pub, just near Tae Pae Gate.... coming from Tae Pae Gate, it's on your left, just next door to the big optomotrist shop, it's a three story place and is before the Irish Pub... across the road from it is Paradise Pizza.

Hope this helps...

... how about schools not encouraging little girls (sometimes as young as three) dressing up with faces loaded with makeup and strutting around to slutty music at school concerts... how about parents and others not sitting there saying, "oh that's so cute".... how about schools beginning at a very young age to 'encourage' boys to treat girls with respect, not push them around, poke them and prod them etc... how about schools teaching girls to stand up for themselves when boys bully them rather than put their heads down and put up with it all?

How about guys getting arrested for peeing on the side of the road when there are bathrooms nearby?

There are more problems than rape when so much rape is a problem....

I didn't know that victims could be made to marry the person who raped them.... I think I'm going to feel a bit sick about that for quite a while...

MMMmmmmmm........ a friend of mine comes from a village way up a mountain.... each year the people in her village (where they are pretty poor compared to us lot) try to raise money among themselves to buy blankets and warm clothing for the people in the villages further up the mountain..... who are waaaaaaaaaaaaay poorer than them.....

I'm looking forward to asking her what she thinks happens to the blankets and clothing.... I would imagine they have nowhere to store them for the rest of the year so likely sell them.... I would....

Pran tells us stories about winters in the mountains... her and her sister sharing one blanket and not sleeping much at all as they rolled the blanket on and off each other all night.... most the people there exist on a diet of rice, salt and chilli peppers.... a lot of the villages up there are desperately poor since the people from the west came and told them they can't grow opium any more but didn't really stick with them until they had other crops that would feed their families as well!!! They were poor when they grew opium but not as poor...

I laugh (rather than ranting and throwing things) when I read some of the posts that are written here... think, people, think..... if you live in a tiny shack where are you going to store your winter stuff that saves your life for a couple of months? If you are desparately poor and need food why would you keep something that can be sold that you have nowhere to store? If you store winter stuff for most of the year in a place where you have no storage space, do you think creatures might end up living in it? If you are in a cycle of poverty, how easy is it to get out?

My son and I went to Huay Kaew waterfall one day and sat with our feet in the water for a while.... some little guppies came up to our feet and started nibbling.... it was really weird and ticklish and FREE! But only about ten of them....that was enough really... And we got to be outside for a morning and our dog enjoyed herself running around...

My fifteen year old son had swine flu a month or so ago. He doesn't often get sick and he was pretty sick indeed...I took him to the doctor as I was thinking it might be dengue. He was diagnosed with swine flu and they phoned me to come in and get Tamiflu. This was about five days into the illness. I read that Tamiflu is no use after the first few days and that it really only lessens the symptoms. When I refused the 'help' the nurse put me through to the doctor where I gave my little Doctor Face Saving speech and everything was fine after she told me that he was getting better now and didn't need the drugs!

I'm glad that he's got a natural immunisation now and that it wasn't dengue.

I agree with the fact that many teenagers drink themselves silly often, in New Zealand it's a huge issue... BUT... a school trip is a a school trip and teachers need to do their homework.... there is no way those kids should ever have ended up in such a seedy place....

...for some of them this will stick in their minds for years.... oh ha ha - I can hear some of you saying stuff like, "lucky people" and things like that... but for some kids this could be extremely traumatic....

...think about the things that affected you a lot when you were that age, words that someone else said that have never quite left you, things others did to you that were just plain mean that have left bits of you still hurting now that you're old.... sure some of them would have thought it was awesome, but even if only one kid damaged by this then it sucks majorly!!!!!

...Shame on those teachers if they had anything to do with it... oh and I'd be totally p***ed off it one of my kids had been taken there...

We have a couple of wallpapered rooms in our house, we asked the landlord if we could take it off and paint them instead, he said NO.... ah well...i love painted walls and would love to go crazy with colour in our house, but our LL (who is actually wonderful by the way) won't let us do more than pale yellow ...

Guess I think differently to the rest of you who have commented here on this thread... all I can see is the photo of the poor man who (I think) is holding his child and looking absolutely terrified! What a horrible thing to happen, no matter who did it and why... yeah it's kinda freaky for all of us, political situation and so on, but much more so for those people who have been hurt and for those who love them... I don't think I'll forget that man's face for quite a while...

Could you hire someone to go with you travelling? Like a nanny?

I would imagine it would be pretty hard for someone to take your 4 year old without them knowing the child previously... I was thinking about it and the thought of how distressed he would be at the beginning put me off, then I remembered I can't anyway cos I'm away every afternoon for a couple of hours.....

Hope you find someone to help.

Downstairs at RimPing, the one with the clock on the Mae Joh Road.... if you go in the front door past the bookshop with the cute little dog, then turn right before you get to the supermarket, there is a bunch of little 'shops' there... go about three down and you'll find a lovely lady who sells wonderful quality capri pants for women, they have small sizes up to size 18 or so, lovely colours and range, stretch fabric, all around 500 baht per pair, amazing quality, wash well, I've got four pairs now and thinking about a couple more!!! These are made for the US market and if I remember correctly, the label said $40 US... so would that be mid range casual price.... worth a look ladies

If you go to Chiang Mai Plastics you can buy whole spools of kind of waxy coated linen (I think) thread which is great for hanging cool things around your neck with.... then at Airport Plaza, downstairs there is a bead shop where you can find all the findings (is that what they're called?) to make your own clasps etc..... Hopefully you can ask someone where Chiang Mai Plastics is, being directionally challenged, sometimes I find it, sometimes I don't.... remember though it is kind of two shops, you go right out the back and around into the other side.... the thread is in the side where all the beads and ribbons are..... Hope this is helpful..... there are also shops around Wararot that sells beads and findings as well, but I totally cannot tell you how to get to them, I just wander around until I find them usually... hopeless case I am....

....the biggest problem I have is that my boobs are bigger than average Thai size.... meaning absolutely non-existent!!! Tailors here can tend to put darts in the weirdest places.... unless your moobs (man boobs) are large, you guys are sooooooooo lucky....... I find that little 'non-tailors' can be just as good as specialised places around CM.... I'm just trying another one at a local market to see how she goes.... 500 baht for a full length dress, not including fabric....

Back to topic...

I generally think Chiang Mai is a pretty safe place... but...

A friend of our from NZ was whacked around the head with a chunk of four by two by some louts on motorbikes (five years ago) .... and about six years ago our mere baan was chased home at night by a bunch of guys on motor bikes.. I stupidly ran outside with a hammer, not quite sure what I would have done if they were still there... then of course David Crisp was murdered at the beginning of this year...just a few examples... our teenaged son (17) could tell a few tales about places around the place and how they keep away from certain of them, and how even the guys in their group of friends don't go to the loo on their own...

but... I still love Chiang Mai, I feel fine going out at night (even though I always check my car before getting into it)... and I think it's safer than many parts of Auckland City where I come from...

Don't think I'd chose to live anywhere else - but Chiang Mai would of course be perfect if it was only near the ocean... ah

...and the tiny ones really hurt when they nip you....

I totally agree, I had a useless History teacher in NZ when I was 15 - she would sit up the front, read from a book and expect us to take notes and learn.... we sat bored through Hitler's Germany, Mae Tse Tung's China and Richard (King Dick) Seddon's New Zealand... so boring.... later on, however, I read heaps about World War 2 and the horrors therein....

Reading is definitely the key to learning, love of reading, love of learning....

I don't know much about Thai schools, but know that if going to an International school many are American based so you would get a lot of American History and not so much World History... if you're a Kiwi (you'll know what I mean) you won't likely get any New Zealand history, we're too little and unimportant, you'd need to do that yourself!

Seriously, if kids are under 3 they don't have huge amounts of language anyway... if they are hearing good Thai and good English day by day then I think they will develop well in both - some children are always more vocal, some are very quiet.... my middle child didn't speak much at all until his brother went away to stay at my Mum's place for a week... he went from two or three words per sentence to nine or so IN A WEEK...

I haven't done much reading about bilingual issues, but would imagine that if kids are exposed regularly to both, they will pick up both. My friends two year olds (three live in one compound) speak and understand Thai, English and their own language that they make up between the three of them... I think one knows some Karen as well... none of them go to any type of nursery school, just hang around home...

Good luck with your nursery school. I'm not officially trained in Montessori but have qualifications in elementary school teaching so if you need native English speaking staff later on I may be interested. I do have a bit of a New Zealand accent though, I can make it sound British!!

Sounds like a great idea. Not sure about the price though, my friend sends her foster daughter three days a week to a bilingual preschool and it costs her 3,000 a month...

Our kids were brought up psuedo Mont... as we lived in NZ and they went to Playcentre which is a child centred, activity based, parent run preschool... we were there with our kids but all helped each other. Wonderful institution!

All the best for you endeavour...

Oh please remind me not to show my pyro son this thread!!!!! Sad that kids were injured.... even if it was their own fault.... my brothers used to fill up empty 22 shells with match stick heads then smash them with a hammer, I was about 5 at the time and used to copy them... and my three year old brother joined in... loads of fun!

Mmmmmm.... if it goes to 6,000 baht then mine will cost me two week's pay and it's 300 NZ dollars... our money's not so great... and there are heaps of people here who need work permits to do voluntary work so that's pretty hard on them.... sad...

Steve makes chocolate desserts to die for!!!! Really difficult for me to go there and not have dessert.... I love the atmosphere at the Spirit House. :D