We have just refreshed the look and feel of the Farang Thai shop and we'd love your feedback!

It's hoped that the new layout will make it a little bit easier to find everything you need when shopping in our store.

Today we put all of our Lonely Planet items on sale so now would be a great time to pick up some bargains.

We currently stock all six Lonely Planet items for Thailand so if you or a friend is thinking of heading up to Thailand now's the time to get your guide book!

Visit our Thai shop sale items page now!

Today I went had a closer look at the Austin Bush photoblog. Austin is a brilliant photographer who takes beautiful, candid photos of people just going about their business and places in Thailand amongst other Asian countries.

Visit: www.austinbushphotography.com

If you live in Thailand or are planning to do so then a web site you might want to check out is www.ait.org.au - the Australians In Thailand (AIT) web site.

The AIT are a social network for Australians living in Thailand (Bangkok in particular) and those with a close connection to Australia. They host various social events throughout the year so you never feel too far from home.

Two memberships exist currently:

• 500 baht per year for Family, Couple or Single Membership.
• 2,000 baht for lifetime membership

If you would like to join AIT visit: www.ait.org.au/join.aspx

We currently have two items on sale in the Farang Thai online store:

• Thai for Gay Tourists (Book)
• Thai for Beginners (Book)

Soon we will also be combining some of our products into bundles so keep your eye out for some savings.

This coming week the Farang Thai Shop will add a number of Lonely Planet books to it's growing product list including the well known Thailand travel guides produced by Lonely Planet.

We will also be stocking their Thai phrasebook which is an excellent size for travellers who are willing to make an effort in communicating with Thais in their own language. Thais do appreciate it and it adds to the fun of being in Thailand! If you just want to learn some basic Thai, check out Thai for Travellers - a book and CD pack already on sale.

We have been surprised by the attitudes of some of the book wholesalers we've contacted regarding stocking their products in our online store. You would assume that after approaching the sales representatives of these companies that you expect a reply at the very least. Not so.

We found Paiboon Publishing to be the best o deal with by far. Polite, prompt and interested in forming a relationship. Some of the others however have not even bothered to reply, have sent information irrelevant to our situation or give the impressions they really don't want to sell their own products.

At the end of the day there is no skin off our nose, Paiboon produce the best quality Thai learning materials and we look forward to working with them in the future!

We have received our first shipment of Thai language learning products from Paiboon Publishing, leaders in Thai language learning materials. We hope to maintain a close relationship with this company as their material is of excellent quality and used in many Thai language classes both in Australia and abroad.

We are still in discussions with publishers of Thai travel books and CDs and should have these products in stock prior to the shop going live in late October 2007.

We knew it would happen but we didn't expect it this early in the forum's life. Yup, we've had our first spammer sign up and post annoying ads. Our administrator (me ;) was online at the time and so caught him in the act.

It's amazing that people are still trying this. You'd think this annoyance would eventually fade away over time but it seems there will always be people with nothing better to do.

We will aggressively protect the forum and it's genuine members. Spammers will be tracked and reported where ever possible.

If you see any posts in the forum that are clearly ads or suspicious in any way please let us know. The moderators will do their best to stay on top of it however we can all help by staying vigilant.

See you in the forum...

Our plans to expand the site are now moving forward with the launch of our news, articles and blog sections. The address you should bookmark for this part of the site is:

http://news.farangthai.com.au

And we aren't stopping it there! We are currently in the process of preparing our online store where we will have a number of Thai products available. Initially we'll focus on Thai language learning materials including CD's and books.

We will keep our newsletter subscribers up-to-date with the major developments as our site grows so if you haven't already done so, register for our newsletter!

And as always, feel free to login in and take part in the forum.