Tornado

I have no idea, Chevrolet is the only company so far that imports cars from Australia, afaik.

Camry is the most boring car? Maybe back in the US or Europe. Here, in Thailand, there are only two other cars in its segment - Nissan Tiana and Accord.

Boring, more boring, and the most boring - that much is true.

I contacted Holden (Chevrolet Aus) to see if they were going to export the Monaro to Thailand, they told me on the phone that they do not export any cars to Thailand. What models are you talking about? cheers

bleach.

This thread is killing the "rain" thread. Most popular thread ever?

I find the best news on UBC is star asia news. As it is about the Asian region, you actually see news that is interesting.

They also have changed the news reader, which was a good move.

If and when you get the translation I am sure we would all like to see it and in particular know which arm of government is suggesting this.

i know for sure that deals like this are going on with no questions asked

splitlid - can you be clearer in what you say is going on please.

Do you mean that you have seen registrations into foreign owned and controlled companies or are you saying that your local Land Office is registering land up to one rai in foreigners names as the OP originally suggested?

have just re read the origional post and it says for foreign owned company.which is what im talking about,

foreign owned companies are doing land transferes here now.both buyer and seller. for sure

no checking no problem. however it is for plots under a rai and is obviious the buyers are not big time developers. maybe a different story if tornado went in to buy 20rai

20? not this year mate.

This clamp down has affected the market greatly.

Absolutely not true. He is having you on for some reason.

ummmmm where i live the LD are doing this for joe average farang wanting to buy a house.however i know of a farang who has managed to register alot of land at the LD also, things are returning to normal it appears.

maybe different where you are, for a few months to come.

Im currently sitting with a laywer (I have 5 working in my office) reading this thread and he says there is no such law in place in Phuket. I am hoping that we are wrong.

A few lawyers in Thailand are registering companies for foreigners with 100% Thai ownership and then when the land has been transferred to the company, they change the company structure back to 49%/51% with the foreigner owning 49% of the company. I would suggest that this isnt the way to go ahead as Im sure it will eventually be investigated.

There is a pertition to the government for a 1 off 90 year lease, that they are currently in talks on when/if to implement it.

http://www.phuketgazette.net/news/index.asp?id=5222

I knew this man quite well. He was a great man.

Absolutely not true. He is having you on for some reason.

Fox?

All fox viewers own two hats.

All the Thais eat is fruit, vegetables, fish, rice etc.

I would say an extemely healthy diet!

A bit of exercise wouldnt go astray though.

Governments need people with brains to run them.

great info sunbelt - cheers.

As with most things, Thailand is a joke when it comes to "checking" things...

As we know, the immigration blacklist was not updated for the last 3 years !

Can you imagine something like that ?

You add people to a list but no one cares about the execution of this since the list is outdated, people who should have been removed are still on the list and new people can still enter the kingdom...

I always said that the country is like some Mickey Mouse community because of the lack of things like good justice, good working immigration department, the way that tourists are treated (walking ATM machines) will not make the country more appealing as we all can see in the numbers of tourists visiting the country.

If nothing changes, the country will never come out of its 3rd world status, too bad for the people that are honest (I know, very, veryyyyyy few but ok...)

Sounds like you have never been to the 3rd world. If you had you would know the difference between it and Thailand. Best for you (and Thailand) would be if you returned to your 1st world, wherever that may be.

The arrogance of some farangs in this forum is really starting to piss me off. Remember, you are the foreigners here. They didn't ask you to come and they don't waste a tear drop if you leave.

Yes, you are quite right - with one ambulance for every 165,000 people in Bangkok compared to 1:10,000 in the west and an average per capita income of 7,015 baht per month with 49% of the population working in agriculture Thailand is demonstrably not the third world.

I am sure your Thailand is not the third world with your air-con, computer, big car and high-rise apartment.

They did ask us to come, at least those of us doing jobs on the 'falang can-do' list, perhaps not pompous idiots like you who can't see the truth through the haze of beer Chang and bar-girls.

Does Thailand benefit by people tearing it apart at every possible moment? I doubt it. It can hardly be any better for all those people who refuse to see that the place has a long way to go and that it is the people at the bottom of the pile getting shafted.

Who made you protector of the Thai people? If you were, refusing to see what is right in front of you would hardly help them.

Very interesting. But all your assumptions regarding air-con, computer, big car and high-rise apartment are totally wrong. I started living in a 2,200 Baht room, went to school and to work by bus 3.50 Bath at the time. My first job (for a british company) paid 10,000 Baht (without work permit only for 3 months). Now if YOU can live with this in Thailand, then we can discuss it further, if not you better shut up.

I'm now working in a factory in the southern suburb of Bangkok since 10 years, started there with 20,000 Baht, today I make a bit more and drive a 6 year old normal pick-up car (no fancy 4wheel). I have 1,000 workers in front of me every day most of them not making much more than the legal minimum of 184 Baht a day. And yes, I can speak, read and write Thai, because otherwise I couldn't communicate with them.

If you still think that I'm not seeing the truth then I can't help you. I'm not a protector of Thai people, I just think they have the right to live their way and those who have to adapt are we. Thailand has a long way to go... Where do you want it to go? Are you sure they want to go that way too? Why are western countries manufacturing their goods in countries like Thailand? Do you think the 1st world could afford the merchandise made in Thailand if the salaries here were as they are in USA or Europe? Once they are at the developped stage where you want them to be they will have to tackle with the same problems western countries do now. No jobs, drugs, and an economy that falls apart as soon as people stop buying goods for two days.

One more thing: I don't drink beer.

Maybe a beer or two might help you relax

any link to the article sbk? thanks.

I remember someone once posted a couple of websites for car and/or motorobike auctions in Bangkok...

After doing a search I can't find the relevant threads...

Can anyone do me a favour and post a link or offer any advice on how they operate???

Thanks in advance

check out

www.manheim-asia.com/auction.aspx?auction=ftbkk96

www.union-auction.com/en/home/index.aspx

Thanks for those links.

I noticed the schedule is only written in Thai though. No biggy, just an observation.

manheim asia also doesnt sem to have any info.

thanks!

exit stage left.

Nancy Grace is a moron.

Gutters on roofs would be a good start. The amount of rain we get on this Island is more than enough water for all.

The news media indeed seemed to jump to conclusions with bad information

Unlike us.

I always thought he was innocent.

The guy's a freakin American hero, dudes ! (subject to the other uncharged offences)

hero???

oh dear.

The amount of times I read things like this!!!

My wife was kidnapped, drugged, gagged, hand cuffed, with a gun at her head and made to sign documents pertaining to my business dealings because some prick had a gambling debt....... Bad mistake!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I will **** all of them - nanon!

(currently writing this story)

This country is getting more dangerous by the day. How can pricks like this call themselves buddhists!

Many dives from the Italians, Im still unsure about the penalty, but we did well against them.

Adelaide oval was packed and freezing!

The entire marine lesuire industry of marinas, pleasure craft, sailing schools, etc employing training and improving the lives of normal Thais is all farang started, invested, and created from nothing.. Its not 'rich farangs' coming here and buying everything up its the fact that without an uneven playing field the local population cant compete in providing these services.

It also looks to me that the farang based businesses are the most keen to pay fair real wages and hire people irrespective of if thier skin is a shade darker or thier nose a touch wider.. Look at a business like Yachtpro on Phuket, they have hired and trained thai staff now up to instructor level and started them in professions with carear structure and advancement opportunity.. The loyalty and way the staff speak about thier employer is unlike I have ever heard when you hear of staff working for thai hotel chains or other business where low wages and little job security is the order of the day, no one screws 'poor thais' harder than the rich thias IMHO. Which form of business was most likely to hold its staff through the lean times after the tsunami and which just fired and sent them away ??

So along this line of thinking, Thailand should sell all of its land to the US and have its citizens become servants to the Americans living here.

I have a slightly better idea - howabout we encourage REAL investors such as Toyota to build factories here that employ hundreds of Thai people to create goods that can actually be exported to the rest of the world, while learning technical skills so Thailand can create its own car company someday. And we keep the property to ourselves to prevent inflation and misallocation of resources to wasteful speculation, such as what happened before the 1997 crash. Even farangs here can't afford to live in their home countries, and now they want to spread this speculation contagion to our country.

Forstly Livinlos, a very good post!

Thaible - Please check the demographics of the actual foreigners that are coming to Thailand. I think you will find a very small percentage are American.

Im also not sure what farangs you are talking about in regard to: "Even farangs here can't afford to live in their home countries, and now they want to spread this speculation contagion to our country."

This might of been the norm about 10 years ago, but I think many of us could actually buy something very nice in our own countries. I for one, would have a far better standard of living in real estate terms/infrastructure etc.

So "Real investors" mean Toyota do they? How would this help the Thai people? It would only help the elite. Go and watch Noo Hin (the movie), there is a great scene when they are singing aout "the factory".

Here's a thought, why not ban all foreigners and foreign businesses and all of the technology and inventions that WE HAVE started.

TV, the car, the motorbike, the phone, football, electricity, the satellites, hospital equipment etc - bascially everything you do and need on a daily basis comes from us... even mama was copied from a frang noodle company.

When you sit down to your meal tonight, think about refrigeration, your sofa, your tv, your cooking utencils, your lights, your stove and bow your head and thank the farang for all his work, whilst your forefathers were sitting around just existing.

sad but true!

I was here 20 years ago and didn't see Thais of any walk of life (other than locals and chinese speculators) wanting to live on Phuket. Can you really see any development having taken place without foreigners? and why wasn't there any development here 10-15 years ago.

The island could still be a backwater without all the foreign investment and Phuket covered in rubber trees.

There's hundreds of Thai developers now that can easily replace farangs. And the money comes from tourists visiting, not poor Western retirees moving here permanently.

That to me is typical of Thai thinking.

Phuket for instance was nothing until the foreign retiree / sexpat moved here and told his friends and started web sites promoting the region. Phuket.com is owned by expats, phuketland.com owned by expats. It was foriegners like that and many others, that put the region on the map in the first place.

NOW you say they can be replaced?? A typical Thai way of taking back control of what the foreign market started. Without all of us here in Phuket, "your" little Island would be a 300 baht a night bungalow back water. (although I did like it like that)

The money does not come from Tourists, another misguided remark!. Real Esate in Phuket is major business and that is why the governmemnt is trying to take back control.

The Thai beaurocrats have been walking the dog for many years, and now they are shortening the leash so the Thai people can take what we all started. It shows the mentality of the dicatorship that is rife througout the country. It would not happen in any normal foreign country.

After my nearly 10 years here, I am also selling all of my assets and getting the hel_l out. Sick of the Thai attitude like the one you display here.

I would rather burn everything I own, that I worked so hard for, than let it go to some undeserving

person. Whilst I was working 16 hours a day to start my company the person who might inherit it, was probably sleeping or hanging out with his meer noi... (generalisations seems to be ok for you, so there you go).

I also have a footnote to this story that I am currently writing - coming soon.

This was posted on the Message Board of a Pattaya oriented website. I know the poster concerned: he is associated with a local Thai lawyer:

"the way it is at the moment is that you can not transfer any land into a thai company that has any form of ferang ownership whether it be shareholder or director.All you do is transfer the shares to 7 thai people and get the sharetransfer documents signed and resold back to you (so they cant do anything bad in the company) You then have a thai company 100% owned by thais but you have the papers they need to control the company so they cant do anything. Go to the land office and transfer the land into the 100% thai company then the following day go to company house and transfer back 49% of the shares to yourself. The law does not state you can not have property in a thai company that is not 100% thai but the land office state they will not transfer land into any company that is not 100% thai owned so thats the way around it. Anyone who has a house in a company that is 49% ferang owned before the middle of may has nothing to worry about the law in thailand can not be back dated so they cant take your house from you."

All of these legal loopholes can be changed in days. With elections coming up in October. I will personally be voting for the party that wants to reclaim Thailand back for the Thai people. I am not the only Thai person sick of seeing farangs buying real estate for speculation so they can sell it back to Thais at a higher price. It's pretty obvious to anyone who compares Phuket to any other parts of Thailand.