BarnicaleBob

Retired at age 33 I would assume you have a military disability retirement. In which case you would be able to receive medical benefits for your disability through the VA via the FMP program. If you have full medical coverage through Tri-care then they will pay 75% of your medical bills.

If you have a college degree you could supplement your income by teaching English but to begin with I would use your GI education bill to attend one of the universities such as Payap as Jarhead suggested.

Go to the Chiang Mai VFW website at http://www.vfw-chiangmai.com/ and contact one of the post officers for more information, you don't to be a member as we offer help to all veterans member or not. We have at least a couple of guys in the same situation as you, recently medically retired and living here on their pension. You PM me if you like.

Pintball guns are generally set to 300 fps which is well under the legal limit for airguns in Thailand. However, if you are a good tinkerer you can adjust the fps up to the limit or....

After you have done this look for ball bearings sized to 68 cal., they will work well in the paintball gun and you will then have something to shoot targets with that will make big holes and go deep.

Have you tried Celebrex? You can purchase it over the counter here at most pharmacies for about 850 to 900 baht for a months supply. Works great for me, and only took about two weeks to take hold.

NancyL and BB1955 have it right. Another thought is that for some reason the immigration people don't seem to like to deal with marriage visas and do everything they can to discourage you from changing so be ready to jump through all the hoops they will put out before you. It is also a lot easier to extend a retirement visa every year.

I'm married and still on a retirement visa and like it that way.

I got mine there at Eagles on the second floor at Pantip Plaza, good price and works great.

The way elections are held in Iran is very different from how
we do it in the West. The only people
that can run for president are those that have been approved of by the
Ayatollah and his committee of 12 religious leaders. Thus insuring that all candidates are
screened as acceptable before they are allowed to run for office.

I went to Immigration today at about 1:50, got my number from the kid at the center counter, waited about 20 minutes and they called my number. I was done about three minutes later.

I did see the barcode machine there and after the man did his stamp with my paperwork he handed it over to another guy at a computer who used the barcode reader to bring me up on his computer. A few seconds later that guy handed my passport to me and I was out of there. So it appears the barcode reader is up and running again.

when i travel to USA (california) i rent cars and show my thai drivers license..have never been asked for US or international license.

Just returned from the USA. Drove and rented cars on my 5 year Thai license from New York to South Carolina no problem at all. A one year Thai licenses is NOT accepted its a TEMPORARY LICENSEES and says so at top and will be refused.

As far as using a IDL in the States goes, you will find the laws of each state may vary. It's true that most states accept most other countries DL but some states such as Florida require anyone from another country to have a IDL as they will not accept any other nations DL for driving in Florida. All the car rental agencies in Florida follow this rule.

If your wife is a U.S. citizen it should be no problem. In that case she only needs to have worked 40 quarters to get the full early benefit at age 62 or if you have been married 10 or more years and she is a citizen she can file on your earnings record.

If she is Thai and has not lived in the U.S. for five or more years and is not a U.S. citizen she is not entitled to any benefit.

Manborobert,

All of the points you have brought up are worthy. My answer to that would be open to suggestion by those who choose to attend a luncheon with us.

When I said Western LEOs my only thought at the time would be those that could all converse in English to one degree or another and only so that we could communicate. Not much of a luncheon if we can't all understand each other.

I am not the one who should pick what type of officer can or can not attend, that is up to all come. I think if they attended an academy, were sworn in, and served with a badge they should be one of us regardless of what type of officer they were. I would include corrections as well because they meet the above suggested requirements. Nearly any of us who have attended an academy, were sworn in, and served with a badge; at one time or another were face to face with a common evil in one form or another during our careers.

I would like to know if there is any interest by retired LEO’s who live in the Chiang Mai area
in joining a luncheon group that would meet once or twice a month to share the comradely
of the brotherhood. This group would be open only to LEOs who have
served 20 plus years with a Federal, State, County or City agency of any
Western nation.

If interested PM me and we will set up a luncheon date.

There is an ANZAC Day which was just held a week or so ago by Australian Veterans.

Members of the local British Legion holds a Remembrance Day here on November 11th every year jointly with the American VFW Post in Chiang Mai also celebrates their Veteran's Day on the same date.

The best you can do for now is to contact your embassy or
consulate to see if your child is able to receive any sort of support. I
know you may not have the funds but you should also get translations of any
Thai documents your child has so as to be sure as to what they say. Your
embassy will most likely want to see the translations. Next you need to
get a passport from your home country for your child so that he/she can be recognized
as a citizen and to give you the option to return home with him/her. The
child must have a passport to go anywhere out of Thailand.

Directions to the Fed X office. If you are coming from inside the city go east on Charoen Muang Road aka 1006 until you get to the Super Highway #11. Turn left or north onto Hwy 11 and go about 700 meters, you will see the well signed Fed X office on your left. It is almost directly accross the road from the Makro.

This question of who to call might be answered by asking your Thai nieghbors what number they would call. When you get that number look for a back up number to call from other nieghbors. I know this next part is a bit off topic but burglars look for easy targets, they will pass by fortified targets in most cases and hit the easy ones. So a little outward appearence of being well fortified should cut down the number of attempts and you will not need a number to call.

At best you're going to get some anecdotes with a question like this on a forum like this. Anecdotes either of someone having stuff stolen all the time, and then others who lived here XX years and never had as much as incorrect change at 7-11.

Next people will debate the differences of living in a codo/apartment vs a house, and then the difference between a commercial development home or a home anywhere.

At the end of it all you won't be much wiser.

My own opinion is that CM won't compare unfavorably to any other place you could reasonably compare it to, within Thailand or anywhere else.

This was the best answer so far. I would add that you are safe in most places in and around Chiang Mai but after midnight like any other large city in the World what bad elements that are here come out to make problems. A normal good family man that doesn't play around getting drunk and wondering around late has very little to fear here.

I have assisted 7 women of various ages who live in my muban
or know me in vetting men that they had become serious with that they met
on-line. In doing so I have found that there are many
scammers out there and what they target.

Only the older woman 45 and up were targeted and the older
they were the more often they were. The
scam I have seen five times mostly to two women I helped to vet the man they
were falling for. In all cases the men
claimed to me white males between the ages of 45 and 55, who were business
owners or involved in a business that required high education, most of the time
a high end engineer and they all claimed to be British living in England. Some of them even claimed to have a child
living at home with them.

The typical story would be that they had fallen madly in
love with the lady and that wanted to marry them, wanted to be their kid’s
mother and to live together forever. Then they would say that they were coming to
Thailand to meet and marry the lady and that they were bringing their kid with
them. In one case the man who claimed to
own a high end handy craft store said he had to stop in Africa on the way to
Thailand to purchase more hand crafted items for his store and he would fly on
to Thailand from there with his 10 year old daughter. He writes to her from Africa (still not
saying what country he was in) and says the trip is going well and that he has
made many purchases to be shipped back to his store in Great Britton. Then in the next e-mail he says he may be
delayed a day or two because his daughter came down with some sort of
illness. The next day he goes on to say
they are keeping his daughter another night in the hospital. All the time he is playing on the victim’s
feelings for the kid and the love of her life.
The final day he says he is going to pick up his daughter from the
hospital and should be on his way. Then
another e-mail comes and it says the hospital will not take his bank card and
he has already spent all the cash he had on him buying and shipping the items
for his store. He goes on to say it is a
weekend and he can’t get money from the bank and asks her if she to send him
$1,000.00 via Western Union. He gives
his location as Lagos, Nigeria and gives her a phone number to reach him there. This is when the lady came to me, lucky for
her she had enough sense to smell a rat.
I ran his name on the Internet, nothing, I put his phone number in Google
and bingo, comes back as a number used by Nigerian scammers. I looked up the address of the FBI Internet crime
unit that has an office in Lagos and we sent an e-mail to the scammer advising
him she had a friend in Lagos that would give him the money right away so he
would not have wait. Then gave him the
FBI ICU’s address and told him to ask for the unit chief when he gets
there.

The way to spot these guys who all claim to be well educated is to pay attention to their grammer and capitalization in their letters. They alway mess it up a bit. The best way to weed them out is to insist that they talk to you on Skpye or other such service where you can talk to them face to face and see if they are the same person as in their profile photos.

This is a tragedy for sure. Young people ruining there lives for what?

I hope we can get some more information on why Muslim "insurgents" (terrorists) are helping this family out and who in the Thai government is complicit in a murders escape. I know it is common for rich people to get bail for murder but I would "follow the money" and look at the prosecutor and police very closely, just to make sure nothing illegal on their part contributed to the escape. It may not be obvious to the police but there may have been a conspiracy carefully orchestrated by the suspect's family.

The only thing positive to come out of this is that young Mamood may have to spend the rest of his life in Sweden and will not be available to participate in the civil war in the South.

Being that the kid's last name is Mamood a Musluim name, I would suspect that possibility that he had family connections if not religious connections to the insurgents. That could explain the reason for taking that route.

Oh my, I hope this doesn't mean the price of Chicken/Country Fried Steak isn't going up at Pun Pun! Don't worry, I'll still stop by from time to time for my chicken fried steak no matter what the price, it just tastes so good to me. :>)

This past Summer I renewed 2 1/2 months early because I was going back to the States for three months and would not be back in time for my renewal. Once I explained it to them they renewed me for my normal date and sent me to the other desk to get my slip to reenter. No problems all went well. You just need a good reason if it is going to be more than 30 days.

Transfer you PayPal money to your BOA, then use the slow three day transfer (really takes a week) to your Bangkok Bank using the New Yoek branch of Bangkok Bank's routing number.

Bank of American has three different ways for you to transfer money:

One is right away transfer which costs $30.00 (This really takes a day or so)

Second is next day which costs $10.00 (This really takes about three days)

Third is their three day transfer which they only charge $3.00 for. (This really takes a week).

Bank of America has a $1,000.00 per transaction limit on these but you can sign onto a verification program and they up it to $2,000.00 per transaction.

I have been contacted by some asking if the VFW could set up a point where people could go to in order to buy their Duke's pizza coupon. Bill says he goes to Cafe da L'Amour Right next door to Whole earth restuarant on Sri doan Chi. Close to Pantip Plaza every Tuesdays 9am to 11am and every Thrusdays 9am to 11am. So if you don't have time to set up a meeting with Bill, just show up at the Cafe da L'Amour on the above days and times. Bill is a tall mature man and will be wearing a VFW ballcap.

I'm happy this this subject has received so much attention. However, in spite of all the attention here our coupon sales have not increased much. So don't forget this is for a good cause and you can save a little bit of cash on a good pizza at the same time.

Call Bill at 087-302-9830 and let him know where to meet you to sell you a coupon. By the way there is no limit on the number of coupons you want to purchase, Bill will sell you as many as you want to buy.

So why would the US need such a large compound with so many employees? What are all those people doing?

The UK gets by with a consulate that has 2 local full-time hires and a (voluntary) honorary consul. You don't need an appointment and the staff are professional and pleasant.

Compare the 2 nations, one is the worlds leading economy, covering most of a continent with 300,000,000 people, the other is a small, nearly insignificant island nation.

I think you missed the point I was trying to make. I guess it wasn't clear.

Is the consulate serving Americans well? I've read posts on here that you need an appointment to enter, you wait weeks for an appointment and then you wait outside a high wall with no seating nor shade while you wait to enter and then the staff aren't particularly friendly or helpful anyway.

With reference to the comment "world's leading economy":

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

My first answer is to the need for such a large complex: It is just a matter that there are whole lot more Thais wanting to get visas to the U.S. than any of the other countries that have consulates in Chiang Mai. Coupled with that is the fact that the U.S. requires a lot more documentation and paperwork follow up than most of the other nations. In addition to that the U.S. has many more assistance programs going on in Thailand than most other nations and it takes people to run these programs.

About the need for an appointment to enter the U.S. Consulate: Yes an appointment is needed but for most services you can have that appiontment within a week. As for having to wait outside the wall for your appointment, that just is not true. If you arrive at the appointment time you will be allowed in and you will find a waiting area with seating and a TV to help pass the time.