I wish I knew then what I know now. 

     AKA Things I've learned the hard way...  AKA Things I wish somebody had told me before we moved here...  AKA Lowell's tips for moving to Thaialnd

I decided to keep this list mostly for my own good if I ever choose to move to another country again...but this is a list of things that we've learned here that would have been nice to know before we moved here.  And we did fairly extensive research before moving, so there have been fewer surprises than I expected...  But as with parenthood, you can only prepare so much "by book."  The rest you have to learn by doing.  I'll add to the list as things come up...
 

So with that, I present to you the following:


I wish somebody had told me..

1. It doesn't really pay to get currency at the airport before flying to another country.  If I had to do it all over again, I'd convert maybe $40, just for emergency cash upon arrival.  Then as soon as I got there, I'd hit a cash machine and get more.  The exchange rate at the airport was horrible.  The exchange rate my bank uses when I withdraw from an ATM is great.
    
2. That I should just use a friend or relative to handle the mail, rather than using an expensive mail service that doesn't work right anyway.
    
3. To find time to buy the correct electrical outlet "converters."  Most electronics will work fine here (computers, etc.) as the power supplies can handle 110-240 V AC.  But the clippers that I use to cut my hair certainly didn't appreciate the higher voltage.  I knew they sounded funny the first time I used them...but I wasn't sure why...until I heard a big "pop" and saw a big puff of smoke coming from them...  (Truth is...I knew this one before coming over here, but in our massive tour of the west coast, etc. I didn't find time.  Bad idea.  I should have found the time to buy the correct converters.)
    
4. That I should bring my own Nalgene bottles.  (The ones we found here aren't all that sturdy.  Devin melted one in boiling water...a real Nalgene bottle would withstand boiling water.)
    
5. That I should file form 8802 with the IRS before leaving the US, so that I can receive Form 6166 back from the IRS to take the the US Embassy in Bangkok so that it can be taken to the Thai Tax Office.  Questions about this?  Just ask...it's not too complicated if you do it correctly...  (And truthfully, we WERE told about this...in a paragraph within an e-mail that I didn't take the time to read carefully enough...lesson learned.)
    
6.  

And it's quite possible that somebody did tell me some of the things listed above...but there's so much that goes into moving to another country that some of it may have been lost on me.  So if you told me something above, and I didn't listen...  Thanks for trying to tell me!