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ThailandGuru Services & ProductsThailandGuru.com > ThailandGuru can help you with ...
In all cases, please send us e-mail at ThailandGuru is a group of experienced people who provide a variety of services to ex-pats moving to Thailand, including but not limited to the above topics. We are mostly Thais who speak good English. In fact, some of us have university degrees in translation and English, and one of our businesses is an English-Thai and Thai-English translation service. You can come get to know us by visiting our office. We are not just an internet website front. We are a real incorporated business, located in a real commercial office, with real staff.
We have English and Thai speaking veteran staff to help ex-pats now. Contact us.
History of Thailand Guru, and CommentaryThe following is written solely by Mark Prado, the founder of Thailand Guru. I first set foot in Thailand in September, 1994, almost right on my 35th birthday. I came associated with a contractor to the U.S. government (USAID). Even though I was better supported than most arriving expats, there were still too many problems and difficulties ... all at once! My written preparations were heavy on theory and light on the practicalities of setting up my condo, with countless oversights. Incoming calls of "how are you doing?" gave me an opportunity to ask questions, and I was also told to "just talk with your neighbors, as there are many good staff and their wives in your building." (My arrangement there ended less than 6 months later, but that's another story.) I will never forget the immediate problems in communicating, finding home and business products and services, and getting oriented in general. I felt like an illiterate deaf mute. It was actually peaceful and exotic, having escaped from an exhausting workload in the Washington, D.C., region and being plunked here in Asia into a luxurious condo in the city center with little to do but smell the flowers, and everything was new & different. However, whenever I really needed to get something practical done, I couldn't just pick up the phone or go out and hail a taxi without running into the challenge of being an illiterate deaf mute. Thailand Guru now wants to make sure you don't experience the same frustrations (especially in one-time tasks), and don't waste valuable time and energy, upon arrival to this otherwise wonderful country. Admittedly, this website started as a hobby, not a business. I simply saw too many people struggling with getting started in Thailand, dealing with many of the same kinds of problems and frustrations I'd experienced years before. Further, they would sometimes get misleading information from other foreigners who knew just a little bit more about Thailand than they did. In early 1995, I resumed my purely private consulting career ... in Thailand, this place where I was illiterate at the time. My market was multinational construction companies, whereby I provided mainly computer and I.T. consulting. (I was American but working for mostly Australian and British companies.) To do my business well, I was forced to learn the ropes. What many other foreign businesses considered acceptable, I considered terribly inefficient, and I was determined to get things done the right way, "better sooner than later" (a motto of mine). After I figured things out, I'd help my friends and colleagues. I started this website (without the domain name) just because I thought it would be a good thing to do. As an I.T. pioneer, I've been creating websites since the web first came into existence, and providing internet services since well before the web, when it was only email, usenet and various other non-graphical information services. Running my own server, I can start a new website and get it up onto the world wide web in less than an hour (as a section of another website; or, within a couple of days, as a new domain name usable worldwide). In other words, websites are something I do particularly well. What made Thailand Guru successful, however, is that I continued to put time and effort into it over the years. At that time, a lot of people (especially foreigners) asked me, "Why are you doing this?" I thought it was obvious, but they were clearly perplexed. At that time, I was not offering any business services. It was just a hobby website, giving analysis and helping people for free. However, it did start me thinking... Some people didn't ask, but would say things like "I believe that if you help other people, then good things will come back to you", kind've like the belief that "People who do bad things to other people, well, eventually they'll get what's coming to them". It was a kind thing to say, but I don't necessarily believe that in the same way. I've seen bad people do bad things to other people and as a result live rich to the day they die of natural causes. I've seen good people ripped off terribly because they were too trusting of bad people, which thereby disabled their ability to continue helping the world very well. I don't believe there's a direct cause & effect. However, I do believe there's cause & cause, in that bad people don't get much substantive fulfillment in life because they are clueless about "love" in life, and good people get fulfillment in life thru a "love" disposition. (Of course, I'm not talking about a mate, but about appreciating our universe, life itself, other living beings and the goodness that many people have.) As regards Thailand Guru, I initially did it for the same reason that many people help other people on the internet (and usenet): Because I had empathy for other people, and I was in a unique position to help. It's not that I expected anything in return. I simply had the combination of web skills, experience and writing skills, which wasn't that common back then. It was one of those situations where "it needed to be done, but nobody else was doing it". (I do not believe in reinventing the wheel, or being a copycat, with the limited time in my life.) Likewise, there are other people around who have done similar things, such as www.ThaiWorldView.com (a Thai guy studying in France), among others. They share their experiences, provide their analyses and commentaries, and prepare some photos. These kinds of websites have grown considerably in number since Thailand Guru was started. It's not vanity, nor striving to be "the top dog" of the pack in farangland, nor ego gratification. People like us simply enjoy writing, analysis and getting to know other good people. (Those with too much envy or a negative attitude may see us differently, but that's just their illusion and their negative problem.) Overall, there is much good advice spread around the web, though usually not in a very structured way. However, as of September 2003 (the time this is written), I still cannot find any one website which systematically guides people to moving to Thailand to work and live, and getting settled in, addressing their needs fairly comprehensively, and giving some kinds of practical advice in a more complete way. I've tried to bring many pieces of the puzzle together into one place, add the missing pieces, and verify accuracy. This website wasn't created in a short time. For many topics, I have provided links to other websites and their specific pages which go into sufficient depth, allowing me to spend time on the missing pieces of the big puzzle. Unfortunately, some other websites eventually disappeared, or else reorganized (renamed) their pages so that links to them become broken, so I have become more careful about that. (I never rename or reorganize my pages for this reason. Better for the one webmaster to live with his sprawling website behind the scenes, than to break a lot of links that affect countless others.)
The business side comesAround 2001, Thailand Guru started developing a business angle. This started when people pointed out its business potential (which I was somewhat aware of already), and some of my friends volunteered to help. Also, as the website grew, the email traffic was rising, which meant increased demands on my time, which exceeded my hobby time budget. There was a considerable number of queries coming in every day. I had never intended to try to help every stranger who just wanted to ask a question. I do not believe in "dot communism", where everything on the internet should be free. (To people who assert this, I ask "Where is your free website and free advice?") The Thailand Guru website was designed to help people en masse. I am happy to provide a free website for visitors to browse. However, personalized help by email is at the recipient's discretion. Most inquiries could be sorted into three categories:
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