Congrats, I'm glad you succeeded as I wasn't so lucky.
Went to the Sony store to buy one last weekend only to discover that Sony Thailand has a unique approach to combating the rampant piracy here. That being they don't stock or sell PS3's and won't be in the future either. So basically the only way to buy one is off some dodgy punter 'importing' them.
Same experience with my PSP (which I at least managed to buy), do you think I could buy legitimate copies of games, not bloody likely!