Horatio Poke

In my experience UK banks are happy for me to use my Thailand residential address for most correspondence. Some banks seem to need a UK correspondence address for sending cards to. But all of them seem to insist on knowing where I actually live (am resident) and require to know that a correspondence address is only my correspondence address. So, in response to the OP's questions, "is the address they provide recognized by Uk banks etc as acceptable?" - Maybe/probably, so long as they aware that it's a correspondence address. "how do you provide proof of address?" - You only need to provide proof of your residential address. It's the only one that you can provide honest proof of. Then you ask them to send correspondence to your mail handling service correspondence address.

Thanks for your help.

Thanks for this useful info. Do you have any contact info for "Lifecare lab" please?

I'm not certain that I understand exactly what you want to do, but if you're only wanting to chop up one long audio file to become several shorter audio files then I would suggest the following (in my view the last one, Audacity, is the best one):- I think that Real Player will allow you to cut and save pieces of both video and audio files. I'm fairly sure that you can do the same with Any Video Convertor. "Audacity" is an audio file editor. It's easy to use and you can do pretty much anything with it. All of the above are free. I hope that I've been of some help. All the best

".... will I be disappointed" - ....the unanswerable question. I guess it depends on what you're seeking.... and whether you find it. Good luck!

You do appear to be eminently qualified

It must be difficult to know what to do with a large lump of cash every month. I look forward to reading others' suggestions as to where the OP might best stick it.

In answer to the original question, " Do you think if I encourage her to roll her 'r' it will help her? " my answer is Yes it often helps when a word begins with R. It is my experience that it makes the speaker very aware of when a word begins with an R, so more than actually helping directly with pronunciation it in fact increases awareness of how a word should be spoken. Rolling Rs is counterproductive when the R is within a word i.e. "parade" and "mirage" are very difficult to pronounce with rolled Rs and the "palace-Paris difficulty" is as much to do with listening skills as with pronunciation skills.

I say "kop khun kap" whenever it pleases me to do so and I would advise anyone else to do the same, in Thai or English. If it feels right, do it. Your partner advises the same - " My Thai partner tells me it's ok to say thanks if I want....". That seems like excellent advice to me. I see no need to apologise or feel awkward about being courteous and if others are so ignorant and uncouth as to laugh at your dedication to courtesy, respect and good manners then it says a lot more about them than it says about you, none of which shows them in a good light. Thanks for starting this discussion, and good luck.

I have in the past visited offices at Chaeng Wattana Bangkok, Soi Suan Plu Bangkok, Imperial Lad Prao Bangkok, Kap Choeng Surin, and Buriram. All have ramps and or dropped curbs. Some have wheelchairs available too. The only ramp that I could find at Imperial was tucked away behind some stalls, very steep, and required a step up a high curb to access it. Maybe there's an easier ramp elsewhere in the building. The ramp at Kap Choeng is steep but short. All other immigration office ramps that I've seen are OK.

My understanding is the same as MAZ3's, but I would suggest that you contact Bangkok Bank to confirm one way or the other. I note with some concern that both onshore and offshore banking opportunities for UK expats are diminishing. However it does seem to me that although current account opportunities are disappearing savings accounts in Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man are still fairly readily available. My guess is that these are suitable for receiving and holding private and state pension payments and subsequently forwarding them as lump sums to Thailand. It's a possibility that you might wish to consider. Good luck!

My guess and subsequent interpretation is that "thong nai" is in fact "trong nai" where the R has either been dropped by the speaker or not noticed by the OP, as often is the case with the polite particle "krap" (often pronounced and or heard as "k'ap"). In the context of the original post I guessed that "thong nai" was a representation of "t'ong nai"/trong nai. I have used transliterated Thai in this thread because the OP did so. My feeling is that my response to the OP would be diminished by complicating it with Thai script.

In everyday speech as you describe I would understand:- "tee nai?" as "where" "thong nai?" as "where?" and or "exactly/precisely where?" and, if I understand your transcription OK:- "tee noon?" = "there" and or "over there" "fang noon" = "that side" I hope the above is helpful.

My Thai relatives agree with "Mrs Somporn" (and so do I) but add that the surname looks to be Simonite (nite pronounced as in "night", so Sim-mo-night). They would pronounce the final T. They see the first syllable of the surname as confusing/unclear but agree that the first consonant looks to be "Sor Soh".

Somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 baht, so I'm told.... It would seem to me to be prudent to avoid using any of the bottom-end massage shops though.