The SEO Guys :: Web Design & SEO

Thailand search engine optimisation seekers now have a new option on their doorstep, because The SEO Guy is making the transition to a semi-permanent base in Bangkok, Thailand. We’ve completed company registration, been allocated our tax numbers and received work permits etc in recent weeks.   :-)

Bangkok’s telecommuncations infrastructure is excellent, making for seamless internet communications. Thailand’s convenient time zone location, midway between New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom, means that a part of our working day extends into all those time zones, allowing us same-day communications with clients in many countries! The central South-East Asia location means we can offer native English language SEO services throughout the region…

Major local clients now include;

• TheraVitae Co Ltd, specialists in adult stem cell research & treatment. TheraVitae is a multi-national company with offices in Thailand, Singapore, USa, and works with 3 Bangkok hospitals, as well as hospitals in Singapore and Israel. We’ve commenced search engine optimisation work on their www.TheraVitae.com and www.VesCell.com sites.  
• Siam International Legal Group - a multi-national company, specialists in company registration, purchase of land, house, condominium and/or business in Thailand, and in work permit applications, K1 Fiancee Visa applications and K3 Marriage Visa applications, plus all general legal services. We’re working on site issues and SEO at  www.FastK1.com and www.Siam-Legal.com for them.

We look forwards to building relationships with other local companies in the coming weeks and months, as well as continuing to service both new and existing clients in NZ, Australia and the UK. Growth is good…

Ben Kemp, aka The SEO Guy

SEO: www.comauth.co.nz : www.TheSeoGuy.co.uk : www.TheSeoGuy.us

Web Design: www.websitedesign.comauth.co.nz

E-Commerce: www.osCommerce-Ecommerce.comauth.co.nz 

Email: SEO@TheSeoGuy.co.nz

Contact us for a Free SEO Site Review….

For the past couple of months I’ve been trying to wipe the smug smile off my face - completely without success.  It seems to me that I must have had a  premonition regarding the impending winter. Right up until my departure from NZ in early May, I felt an odd sense of urgency to abandon ship… 

Reports of minus 12C in Hanmer Springs, and torrential rains at home on the West Coast, and a metre of snow here and there have made me feel extremely thankful I’m not participating!

Life in Thailand, by contrast, is rather pleasant! Well, today I did get caught without an umbrella in a monsoon deluge… but it was still at least 28C, and whilst I got damp around the edges, I was able to shelter under a shop verandah and pass the time with an expresso coffee and watch the girls go by! Quite bedraggled, some of them, but bloody gorgeous all the same!

Do you like mango - those unbelievably nice yellow ones, dripping with juice? Or pineapple and watermelons, ditto? For breakfast? Every morning? My god, I love Thailand!

Now I’m a country boy through and through… but Bangkok has to be the one of the most amazing places on the planet to live. The extraordinary contrasts between rich and poor, old and new are just amazing! Standing under a shop verandah, watching old ladies trying to erect tarpaulins over street stalls, street food vendors with wheeled carts trying to prevent their wares from getting drenched, and BMW’s and Benz’s negotiating the sheets of water on the streets… all this to a backdrop of skyscrapers and high-rise construction cranes, lightning flashes mixed with welding flashes, thunder mixed with buses and tuk-tuks…

My girlfriend and I live in an new apartment building in the central city, about 5 minutes walk to the Victory Monument BTS Skytrain station. Most of the city’s major malls are only a few minutes away. The Skytrain, coupled with the underground system, makes navigation around central Bangkok very easy. Hell, we’ve got taxis going past our back door that charge less than $8 for the 30-40 minute trip to the international airport! So, its like $2 to go 10 minutes to the MBK Shopping Mall…. or $1.50 to get to Pantip Plaza computer mall if there is any tech stuff required. Not only that, but at Pantip Plaza they got shit we ain’t even seen in NZ yet!

Broadband - available in most apartment buildings throughout the city… we pay 900 baht a month (NZ$35) for a shared 1mb connection. Through the day its great because everyone else is at work and I’m the only one on-line! Weekends are little more problematic…

I walk out the front door onto the little “soi” or lane - walk 100 metres to either end and there are fruit stalls and street food vendors all over the place - its like living on the  edge of the Christchurch Arts Centre!

It is hot as hell though, some days! 35C, and the traffic is a nightmare that you have to participate in to fully comprehend… truly, it makes “Spaghetti Junction” in Auckland look like a quiet country road… The amazing thing is that everyone is so philosophical and laid-back about it.

My second 30 day allocation is about up, and in a few days I am off to do the “Visa Run” thing again with Claudio at www.ThaiVisaService.com - time certainly flies when you are having fun! Well, I’ve finished my bottle of Jack Daniels anyway, so its high time I went back to Cambodia for lunch again…

Me and Claudio are quite good friends now - his web site was bloody dreadful, so last time around I offered to rebuild it for him in return for discounted visa trips! Looks pretty sharp now, and has jumped from zero to rank No.1 on www.google.co.th for “bangkok visa run”

Well, on the 28th day of being in the country, it was time to make a brief exit to meet the rather quaint Thai immigration requirements. Here in the Kingdom, you can stay for 30 days, after which you must leave - but you can come straight back again and stay another 30 days.
From Bangkok, visa runs are offerd by several companies; and there is some difficulty in finding them on the Internet - although they do advertise in the local newspapers, apparently. And thats fine, if you are a “newspaper” person. Well, I am not, I’m a ‘net guy! Eventually, I found an obscure reference on a Thai / falang forum… ended up with 3 web site references. Emailed one, and 2 weeks on have yet to receive a response! The next had no phone number…

The 3rd had both phone and emails listed, so I tried calling in the morning but no answer - so I sent an email. Tried the number again after lunch, got “Claudio” on the line, and booked myself in for 7th June. Hell, I even got a response to my email that evening, confirming the booking etc. Now that’s what we like, right??? Works for me!
Booking the Bangkok Visa Run

Two pieces of advice;

• DO NOT leave the visa run until the last day!
• DO NOT forget to BOOK your visa run with the operator!

A nice young man from Singapore approached me on arrival at the Tesco Lotus food court at On Nut, enquiring if I was going on the visa run to Ban Laem. A “guy at work” had told him to turn up at 7:30am and look for a group of Caucasians (aka falangs). His relief was obvious, when I assured him that I was… because his visa expired that day! What was not quite so good though, was the mini-bus was fully booked, and he could not go with us!!!
He was last seen, heading glumly towards the exit, his only option that day being a complicated series of public transport (bus) rides to Ban Laem, and negotiating the touts and “agents” all by himself if he ever actually made the border! An object lesson for all who follow! His other option was to book for the next day, and pay the 500Tbht fine.
Back to Claudio, proprietor of  Sawasdee Transport Co Ltd, and his immaculately presented, shiny new Toyota mini-bus… he rapidly introduced himself to all arrivals, and very efficiently distributed the required paperwork to all participants;

• Thai Arrival / Departure card for the return from Cambodia
• Cambodia Visa application
• Cambodia Arrival / Departure card

You are required to turn up with your passport AND a 4×6cm passport photograph for the Cambodian visa application. The fee (as at 7th June 2006) was 1800 Tbht - approx US$45 and includes the 600 km round trip, visa fees, and lunch at the casino on the Cambodian side of the border. Lunch may either be buffet, or from the menu, depending on time of arrival.

Bus trip - leaves at 8am - and if you’re at all nervous, it would be best to request to watch a movie so you don’t get to see all the demented traffic hazards! Stopped for a 20 minute break approx 2.25 hours into the trip, arrived in Ban Laem just on midday.

First part of the process is the Thai Immigration OUT window… where they take your old Departure Card, check the dates and (hopefully) add the correct stamp!

Next, the Cambodian guys take your passport, visa application and Arrival / Departure card away for processing, and Claudio then escorts the group through the Duty Free hall and on to the Casino for lunch… Its fair to say that the transition point is not the most pristine corner of Paradise. There were numerous children clamouring for coins, a begger or three - complete with bowls…

Lunch was good - on this occasion it was from the modest menu, with plenty of nam yen or coke included. Nothing fancy, but tasty - what more could a man want? Takes about 45 minutes for the Cambodians to process the visas, and passports were being returned by the time lunch was completed. There was ample opportunity for a spot of duty free shopping for those interested. I was... hell, they don’t HAVE Jack Daniels at 7/11 or my Tesco Lotus Express!

Pleased to report it was genuine JD in the bottle too! And yes, I waited til I got home to Bangkok before checking!

Returning to Thailand was straightforward - go the the IN window, give the nice guy your passport and Thai Arrival / Departure card… it was duly stamped, and it’s back in the van and head back to Bangkok…

THAI VISA SERVICES RATING: 10 out of 10

Good service, well presented vehicle, smooth operation, all phases explained so everyone understood what happened next.

Would I go with Claudio again? Damn right!!!

Reservation: Phone 01-8154803; E-mail: visathai@gmail.com

Ben Kemp

aka The SEO Guy

Bangkok, Thailand
bjk@TheSeoGuy.co.nz

Making the decision to “winter-over” in Thailand was quite a significant step - although I believe that everyone should take some BIG steps from time to time. Hell, I like to keep people guessing by “re-inventing” myself at random intervals, mainly because it confuses them immensely… and makes it hard for them to “describe” or “categorise” me!

And unlike most people, I really enjoy being outside my “comfort zone.”

I really like Thailand! My ex-wife is Thai, so I’ve had over 8 years of cultural exposure, and of course suffer an addiction to chilli… I even have some (modest) language skills, and I’ve been to The Kingdom of Smiles a few times before… the girls are real pretty - and its my good fortune to have a new Thai GF… we met in May 2005 and she is possibly the only girl in Thailand not prepared to leave… so me moving here for the winter was a logical step in the development of that friendship.

Winter sucks, in my opinion! I don’t ski, and I feel the cold something fierce. Fortunately, I’m in a position where I can pretty much please myself what I do - and its 34C here!

I enjoy being a quintessential “road warrior.” The power of the Internet is such that my clients are usually quite unaware of my location. Most SEO jobs arrive directly off my web site and are negotiated via email. Our apartment has 1Mb Broadband Internet access, and I have a VoIP phone with an Auckland number, although it hardly ever rings.

The secret to road warrior success is being responsive - deal with your emails immediately! That way, they don’t escalate into phone calls!

When living in one country and working in another, perhaps the biggest challenge is the time zone difference. Thailand is 5 hours behind NZ, so if you sleep in until lunchtime, its after 5pm in NZ! I try not to do that to often… although it seems many clients sort out their emails in the evening, which works out well.

Remembering to turn the mobile phone off before you go to bed is important for domestic harmony, I’ve discovered. Having a 4am call from a client who is just starting his day at 9am in NZ is a challenge!

Global roaming - its important to bear in mind that if someone calls your cellphone and you are overseas, YOU pay!!! At an horrendous rate, I might add. So if you call me, and I promply offer to call you back, its because the cellphone call is costing ME a buck-fifty a minute, but the VoIP is only costing me 10 cents!

The first month is drawing to a close, so this week I get to do the Visa Run… As you enter the country, most foreign nationals are automatically granted a 30 day Visa. Getting it renewed is a significant bureaucratic challenge, apparently one to be avoided if at all possible! The standard solution is the “Visa Run” where you exit the country at a convenient border crossing, and then come back…

There is a whole industry built around this - and in Bangkok there are at least 3 companies competing for clients. On Wednesday, I get to test the services of Claudio at Sawasdee Transport Co Ltd, the plan is;

• 08.00 AM departure for Ban Laem, a new Border Crossing 300 km from Bangkok.

I’m optimistic all will go smoothly - and if not I’ve still got a couple of days grace before overstaying my visa! Was reading on a Thai ex-pat forum about some guy who went on the last (30th) day and the bus broke down 2 hours away from the border crossing… and whilst there is a modest penalty added to every day you overstay, its more the black mark in the records thats of concern - and you might not get back in!