1-2 business days

ok great

FYI, 3G on True appears to be completely free for now. I bought an aircard for 2800 baht and a sim card for 99 baht and I've had access for the last two weeks. Over 200 hours connected and almost 100 gigs downloaded with no kind of monthly plan.

What kind of download speeds do you get with that? (speedtest.net)

Edit: or any of these air cards for that matter.

Can't be arsed to do visa runs. It's a lot easier if I don't have to look after things for a year. Plus it's not that much money.

yup because they take so long time ?

last one i made to KL(from phuket but can be done as easy from bkk) I left my home at 6am and was back at 2pm + getting/maintaining the visa is easy.

you still have to go to immigration to deal with thais and go to school so there will be head aches either way.

just saying if doing border runs is your concern then you maybe dont know how big of a "trouble" they really are

I just got around 1 Mbps. Unfortunately there are usually a few disconnects per day.

visa run to laos sucked big time, about 8-9 hours of deathracing in a minivan from pattaya to vientiane and vientiane was the biggest and most boring ****place NEVER AGAIN

gotta go to burma tomorrow via mai sai, went to the bus station too late it seems because the vip bus was sold out, best option i had was middle grade bus leaving at 6am, fml.

Drive your bike you sissy

was going to if miriam went but now that hes not im too much of a vag

Getting into the taxi, getting into the stupid airplane, sitting cramped for 1.5 hour. getting off the stupid airplane, getting through customs, wait for 30 minutes, repeat the same stupid process. All the while I'm thinking this is such a bunch of bollooocks just tilts me.

I prefer to smack down an amount and don't have to go through this every couple months. So I hoped the edu visa was an alternative

You take a taxi from the arrivals gate to the departures gate? ZING!

Seriously though I need to do my first visa run tomorrow and I'm so torn between going to Singapore for a few days or doing a limosuine-bus run to Vietnam with these guys (I only need 14 days extra). It's a lot cheaper and more practical, but 8 hours just seems like such a long time in a bus

No I don't. Nice zing;/

For someone who is as lazy as me being forced to travel is kinda annoying^^ Did anyone explore any options to avoid visa runs - which would probably end up in paying?

400 days of overstay?

Why not think of visa runs as mandatory 'vacations' and take few days to enjoy another country? I definitely agree that leaving/returning same day sucks.

seems like they have started abusing the special visa for sick and injured people, u get 30, 60 or 90 days and dont have to do anything, just leave ur passport at the visa-office and pay about 12k bht or something, havent tried it myself since its a little shady but whats not in thai

Does food poisoning count as being ill enough to get the extension? In that case it's easy ^^

dont have to be anything wrong with u, they just put it in the papers

yeah, i still have the cdma aircard. I may use it as my primary source. I was just considering some places to stay for the first few days and it'd be more convenient to have working internet.

I'm not sure how long I'll stay this time. As usual, I don't really know how long I'll stay but I'm planning at least 3 months for now then we'll see wehat happens.

So I'll see you in 5 weeks or so.

An "ED Visa" Sounds like something Pfizer would market for discerning male travelers on the go.

There are dodgy companies that will stamp your passport for cold hard cash. I assume they have connections to corrupt immigration officials.

A guy I know in Samui hasn't visa ran for years. He pays 20k baht per year to this company and they get a fake stamp in his passport every 3 months. It usually comes back saying he's been to Germany and back or something like that.

After reading the above post though I would definitely recommend the language tutor method since I doubt the dodgy brothers version is any cheaper and is fairly seriously illegal.

This might be an odd question to some but it's coming up around my workplace. I'm in the US military and a retiring buddy of mine is using his post 9/11 GI bill to go to school in Thailand. The US gvmt is paying for all his expenses/fees/visa fees and such plus giving him ~1300usd/month in living expenses. Now he is thai originally and his family is still in BKK so I've got no worries about him.

However. I've had a couple of my younger soldiers asking me how feasible this plan is for them... mainly living on that little money in a country with so many temptations... and I haven't even begun to research the quality of their education system. It kinda screams bad idea to me for an impressionable first-termer that got out to go to school. But before I tell them anything I'd prefer to consult a few Thailand experts. Am I way off here?

Hi I'm a former US Military. I separated awhile ago though without any GI bill benes (They already payed for my degrees on the front end).

I can't speak to using the GI benes here, other than being positive it is possible.

As for mindset....Those who want to try it should be fairly strong minded. Yeah, sure, soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines should already be that but most have low emoitional IQs which is the biggest downfall here for younger guys.

Back when I was in the Navy, my ship pulled into Pattaya. After 6 days, I had one of my sailors pull me into my stateroom beggging me to help him divorce his newlywed American bride in San Diego because he was soooooooo in luv with this bargirl he had just met 3 days ago. I locked my stateroom door and refused to let him leave for 2.5 hours until I figuratively beat the ******ed notion out of his mind. He thanked me months later when reunited with his bride back in the states. He wasn't an idiot either. He was very smart goodworking in a technical rating. BUT, he had never, as most haven't, been exposed to such high intensity Thai Girl treatment before and, for a short time, lost his friken mind.

So, I would say you can reccomend it to your guys, but with a "buyer beware" stipulation that if they have weak wills when it comes to women, the temptation/lifestyle maybe to much.

As for the living stipend, $1300/mo is plenty to live here very comfortably assuming they do some research and are decent budgeters.

lol lon should have videotaped that.....sounds like pretty good advice to your friend