KhunDave

Planning a road trip to Ubon via Lampang, Uttaradit, Khon Kaen. Anyone know what the flooding (if any) is like along Highways 11, 12 and 23?

Well after 23 nail-biting days, Mrs KD has the longed for stamp in her passport.

I know there has been a bit of debate about visa agents on this forum in the last few days, so I wanted to publicly thank Paul and his team at Thai Visa Express for the invaluable assistance that they gave to my family. You see, it's not just filling in the form and dumping a crate-load of paper at VFS. The real value of an agent is the depth of detailled knowledge that they have - and have access to.

My situation: partner and two kids. My original plan: 3x settlement applications at 40,000 Baht each. As we weren't married at the time the kids were born (pre-2006 when the law on this changed) I had assumed from my own research that the kids were not eligible for British passports and would need to go through the full naturalisation process with mum. When I retained Paul's services, he quickly established with the Embassy that our kids could qualify for passports provided that we made statutory paternity declarations. Thus what would have been 120,000 Baht for settlement visas became 40,000 for mum and 2x 6,000 for the kids. The decision to use Thai Visa Express saved me money even after I'd paid for their fees, and even now after the visa has been issued Paul is still working away at getting ILE added to it as he believes that we qualify.

So horses for courses, but I'm dam_n glad that I went the agent route. Cheers Paul.

I'm wondering if we're seeing the end of this year's South West Monsoon today. Humidity is noticeably lower, and a steady North-East breeze has set in for the last few hours. Also looks like former typhoon Nalgae is going to track south into lower Issan/Cambodia.

End of the rainy season? Or do I presume too much?

Noticed today that this place has closed down - don't know if it has moved or ceased - but the shop across from Nong Kwai market has been stripped bare.

Noticed that the KUL-STN flight switches to Gatwick on 24th October - bit more convenient for some I guess?