Sel

I take it you are planning to not return the vehicle to Thailand (taking it to australia?) Or are you going to ship it back?

It would be cheaper to hire a car, take some thai plates with you and get a few fines from the cops for no rego than to transport your car their and back?

As for taking your car out of thailand to Malaysia with the condition of returning it to thailand you need

1. I did it at the boarder. (as far as I know this is the only place to do it)

2. Had to get an entry permit for the car price depending on it's length of stay

3. Had to get or strongly advised to get (can't remember) insurance

4. Had to show car ownership papers and ID or if the car is not yours then a letter from the owner giving you permission to take the car out of the country.

Don't know about singapore

Try this link

http://www.geocities.com/asiaoverland2000/...procedures.html

Couriers, EMS and international parcels are prohibative in cost for small weights

Place your dvd in a small circular plastic cover that can be bought at a lot of places in Thailand (8 to 10 baht each I think )(don't know about US) Should help customs in US to not suspect it is for resale in states.

Use Regular Post at the post office

mark as a gift. As long as the dvds are genuine you should not have trouble in the states with customs I would say as the dvds will have the security/authentic hologram or whatever they use these days.

From the post office:

Use SOFT outer package (NOT hard cardboard box packet or your own packet)

Buy the smallest soft packet (has bubble wrap inside and fits about 3 covered dvds) from post office. Price is about 18 baht I think

One CD in case including post packet weighs in at about 50 grams (40 grams CD and case)

Cost to USA

Up to 100 grams 25 baht

100 to 250 grams 65 baht

250 to 500 grams 115 baht

This should be the airmail price (if it isn't then airmail only cost about 50% more)

MAKE SURE YOU USE THE SOFT PACKET otherwise you will pay minimum 950 baht for the first kilogram regardless if the weight is only 50 grams or 100 etc up to 1 kg

I think the information above is still current?

As side note

If you go across the boarder at mai sei or to the markets in Loa you can see a much larger choice of DVD titles. Lots of festival films sundance caines etc, and foreign films. (some older classics but sparse pickings). 100 baht is the going price. A lot seem very genuine as they seem to be factory packaged and have what look like official seals. (Chineese manufactured I think) Haven't had a bad copy. Downside are that region 9 cost extra (50 baht?) so have a multiregion player, a lot don't have thai subtitles if the other half wants them.

So

1. You have been teaching kindie.

2. You haven't taught primary yet but you feel confident.

3. You haven't taught business English but you're semi confident in your abilities although you don't have the qualifications and don't want to lie.

4. You don't have a degree or any teaching certificates/qualifications?

5. You want to up your income overall by changing your bread and butter type teaching and pick up some extra hours?

Firstly 13 hour teaching days are a killer. You won't be doing your body or your students any good after a few weeks. And for an extra 5000 a month not worth it.

Start with just doing primary as bread and butter. Concentrate your extra work on secondary students or young adults if you feel confident. Start learning a specialty course now. I suggest academic writing. It is very structured and easy to learn if you are in to it. A lot of teachers (ajarn.com crowd) don't know anything about academic writing so you can get one up on the tugnuts. It is easy to teach once you know what your doing, it's in very high demand for young adults (people you feel confident in teaching?), you get bigger class sizes bumping up your hourly rate, you get staedy income as writing is always a set course and your students tend to usually post. it is very gratifying as you can see physical improvement.

Only a suggestion

This is a summary of how I protect my PC and data against viruses, trojans, adware, spyware and hackers.

1. Partition my hard drive.

I have a 40 gig hard drive. I have partitioned the drive 50/50. That is one 20 gig drive space for operating system and all my other software, and the second 20 gig drive space for storing anything I create or anything downloaded that is not software (like music, video, pictures etc) Depending on the size of your total physical hard drive and how much software you use and its size, you may require less or more for each partition. With a partitioned hard drive, if your operating system becomes corrupted by a virus etc., then you can delete everything in its' partition without deleting your documents etc in the second partition.

Read about it here

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,73826,pg,2,00.asp

2. Backup

Religiously backup your your second partition on cd. I do mine every month. You can use something like Norton Ghost as well to backup as an image file.

3. Update operating system

Make sure your operating system is up to date. At least for the critical updates. Windows will scan your system and then recommend the updates to download.

Try it here

http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/en/default.asp

3. Peer to peer file sharing

I don't use peer to peer file sharing networks anymore. Be aware that if you use Peer to Peer file sharing like winmx to swap music files etc, that you are leaving yourself open to attack/infection. By downloading other peoples files through the network you are by-passing your firewall protection. If you do use PTP file sharing, you should scan the download with your anti-virus software once it's on your computer.

4. Antivirus, Firewall, Privacy control and spam killer

I now use McAfee for the above four task. I found that the Norton package uses a lot of my system resources and frequently hanged or crashed my computer. I personally stick to main stream brands above and apparently McAfee has better deection than Norton. Make sure that you regularly update your virus definitions from the vendors site at least once a week. I virus check at least once a week. You can set up virus scans as a task so you don't have to remember to manually do it.

5. Adware, spyware etc detection programs

There are so many to choose from and I don't think any one on it's own is completely effective. I use the following four.

A. Ad aware, which can be found here (free)

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

B. Spybot Search and destroy, which can be found here (free)

http://www.safer-networking.org/

These programs find and eliminate spyware etc that may slow your internet connections down by send out information about what websites you visit etc. Make sure you regularly update these as well. I do it every week. I use them at the end of everyday as they run quite fast. I use both as some spyware etc is picked up by one and not the other and vice a versa.

C. win patrol (free)

Can be found here

http://www.winpatrol.com/

It shows what processes are running on your computer and allows you to disable them if you think they are suspicious (or re-enable if they're necessary) Good if you want to learn about what different running processes are doing on your computer. (use google to find out more about the process)

D. Bazooka Spyware Scanner (free)

Can be found here

http://www.kephyr.com/spywarescanner/

You'll have to remove trojans etc manually but it will tell you how to do it. Picks up things that adaware and spybot don't.

6. Finally

Don't download anything that is suspicious especially email attachments that have .exe as the file extension (antivirus should pick this up unless your definitions aren't up to date or the virus is very new)

Scan with antivirus any floppy or cd roms before you transfer files to your hard disk.

http://yanhee.net/

Many foreigners go to them. They have prices on the website.

If you only want a 3 day pass for Thai citizen with ID card.

As you are driving into Nong Khai on highway from Khon Kaen you can see a large govt. style building on the left. The building has a lot of open greenery around it and a see-through fence. Drive in one of the entrances and ask one of the guards or where you go for boarder passes to Laos. Or drive around looking for where most of the cars/vans are parked with people waiting.

You need:

1. ID Card

2. 2 Photos (You can get a set of 6 photos there for 80 baht)

3. To fill in the forms they give you

4. 50 baht

They start processing passes at 7.30 am, but the official signer is usually late ?8.00am? Takes about 15 mins depending on how many people are there.

The pass doesn't allow you to leave the Vientiane area.

When you go through the boarder on the bus (20 baht), you need to pay 40 baht entry fee into Laos after you have your boarder pass stamped.

When you leave Laos you have to pay another 20 Baht (40?) exit fee before you get on the bus (20 Baht/6000 kip as of 31/05/2004) back to the Thai side.

If you want to use a Thai passport (for longer stays)

You will need to go through the same process as other foreigners.

I.E. Get a visa (embassy or boarder) at normal prices

Anyone stayed in any of the more up market hotels?

Any opinions on any of them?

Yanhee hospital.

They specialise in cosmetic surgery. Lots of international customers. I here it's very good.

Here is they're website. It has cost listed.

http://www.yanhee.net/services.htm

I doubt if anyone doing such a job would be on this forum, but I find it highly unlikely that an engineer on such a project, (a large responsibility being safety) would give the signing off duties to a subordinate. I think you would find that an engineer is a true peofessional and would be legally responsible for what happens on thier watch.

A friend who is a new zealander was offered a functioning engineering position on the last bridge they built from Thailand to Loa (5 or 6 years ago?). He didn't take it but another foreigner took it. I think a French guy. (It was a French Engineering company I think) The newest bridge accross the Choa Phaya was built by the chinese. I lived a couple of hundred meters from it overlooking the river and frequently saw hard hatted supervisors that really didn't seem like Thais (appearance, dress and manner etc but not positive) I'm quite sure especially for large scale engineering projects that outside professionals (engineers) have to be involved and they have to be 'signing off' as they are responsible for safety etc at some point.

As an example the underground. I don't think the thais had the expertise to build the tunnels. A joint venture builds it but they would have to hire specialist foreign engineers. They would need foreign engineers for the cutting/drilling machines working at the face (if they used them) even doing the concrete/formwork, or possibly even a foreign mechanical engineer with a local team maintaining the specialised machinery. Construction would go on 24 hrs a day on a shift rotation. At some point one of the foreigners would also be responsible for day to day workers safety as this duty is rotated around amongst the project engineers.