Iamemjay

Two things I find very strange here - both severe inconsistencies:

1. Remember the Bulgarian(?) arms dealer who was arrested at Don Muang a couple of years ago, and who was eventually shipped off to the US after spending some time in a BKK prison? After being in jail in the US and before his trial, he said that Thai prisons were like "holiday camps compared with the ones he had been in in the US.

2. My stepson is in a Thai prison after conviction for transporting drugs. My wife and I visit him regularly and have always taken advantage of the "open-prison" (for families) days. I have to say that I am constantly amazed at the leniency (slackness?) of the prison staff and of the conditions in which he lives. eg He often borrows a guard's cell phone to ring home, he eats well and engages in his sole passion - playing football - every day of his life, on the full sized football field they have inside there. (He even has his full gear, boots and all, inside for this purpose.)

The issue of multiple person cells should be put into a Thai cultural context - Thais are quite happy to do this inside or outside of prison, and they are not "cells" as such but rather large "bedrooms" where they all sleep on roll-up mats on the floor. Strange, even repulsive, for a Westerner, but this is not too different to many situations I have seen whilst living amongst the locals in Thailand.

I have no doubt there are "bad" Thai prisons, as there are in many countries including the US and Australia. But these should not be considered as representative of all of them.

SirDouglass - She lives with me in Thailand and visits Oz every second year - I think you will find your comment rather irrelevant in these circumstances.

Rubbish!! You CAN send the application in by secured mail (The Oz Embassy website tells you this too) enclosing a paid envelope for return by secured mail. I have done this a number if times and it is by far my preferred method - you just have to ,make absolutely sure that all the documentation is A1 before you send it - I tend to overdo it just to make sure!

Yes, you can use VFS, but they have caused me more problems than they are worth. Their Changmai office uses a different set of rules to the Embassy (and even their own website) and you don't know about them until you arrive. eg. The Oz Embassy site says to have a Bank Draft made out to "Australian Embassy Bangkok". VFS will reject that because they demand a "The" on the front end! Even the cheque to themselves will be rejected if it does not have a p/l  on the end - their own website did not even require this the last time I looked.

I have successfully applied for an Oz visitor's visa for my wife 5 times now. The last 3 have been done via secured post.

Your wife WILL have to personally  visit the Visa office for her first visa. After that, no need.

Here here Newbie! Methinks that many of the replies have been from Bangkokians who have not noticed the disproportionate amount of expenditure on Bangkok infrastructure in recent years and have not l attention had to bear the fast-increasing frustrations of attempting to get around Chinagmai. Nor have they even tried to buy a ticket on the seemingly always full, but extremely slow trains to CM, despite the availability of Air Asia cheap flights.

It is TIME for some real attention to be given to decent public transport to and in Chiangmai!

Yep - there is even a sign on the window at the passport counter on the Thai side saying just this.

Mario2008, on 2011-08-08 08:04:25, said: