briley

Just recently discovered,

No parking sign with the slash one way is no parking on even dates, the other way no-parking on odd dates.

Your local imigration office will give a letter of residence if you take photocopies of passport and visa and copy of your rental agreement (or house ownership papers)

And it is now free

(plus photo's -2 forgot that as I did when I got my last papers)

The figure of 6700baht given by the OP looks awfully like the tax on that ticket - might also include sceduled airline failure insurance that is about 60 baht?

Also you must make sure that you are sharing at least on drive on the machine, else there is nothing to see.

Supose I might add the the UK supermarkets can do similar things.

Ever wondered why some item is so expensive in, say, Asda? Look after the statutory 28 days and it is suddenly BOGOF, or 50% discount etc etc.

I just find Tesco Lotus just so blatent in their irregular 'sales'

Just been looking - and all the prices I can see for flights are valid until 31 March.

So hold on a bit!

I'm getting irritated with Tesco Lotus.

Last year I bought 4 ceiling fans. Two weeks later a friend laughed at me as they were in the sale at 50% discount - so I wandered down to Tesco to find the 'sale' price was MORE than I had paid. They were listed as 1860 baht, 50% reduction to 930 baht. I only paid 920 baht as the full, undiscounted price.

Now they are doing it again this year, an electric cooking pot is reduced by 30% to 919 baht, exactly the same as I paid for the non-reduced item. They'd even left the non-reduced price sticker on the pan to contradict their reduced price sticker!

I know this happens elsewhere but I really do think Tesco is begining to go beyond the limit these days and hope others will take 'sale' with more than a pinch of salt.

You can book a ticket up to twelve month in advance but most airlines only release the cheaper tickets about 3 months in advance and then only in dribs and drabs.

If tickets on a flight are selling well then they won't sell any discount tickets, if selling badly then lots of cheap tickets. The airlines employ high quality mathematicians to work out the supply of tickets to optimise their profit.

Don't forget Easter is 16th April this year so flight back to the UK in the week 16-24th April will be heavily booked.

Just tried Egg - no problems and you do not need an active X control (unless you use their money manager and then only to see other accounts)

Sometime clearing your Internet cache can help, or remove any cookies from Egg?

But mine's a genuine copy

Parts of this report are true .............

As from 14th February 2006 any card that is chip and pin enabled will, in the UK, have to be authorised using the PIN - if not the retailer takes the loss if there is fraud.

But cards that are not Chip and PIN enabled should still be fully usable.

Having said that the banks hullabahoo in the UK and the general poor state of education of cashiers in the UK does mean many people with valid cards will find shops refusing them.

As an aside to this if your card is fraudulantly used with a PIN it is impossible to prove you did not use the card or divulge the PIN to someone else - unlike the case with a signature. So effectively the UK banks are saying if a PIN is used fraudulantly it is your problem, if a PIN is not used, and it is fraud, it is the shops problem.

Not free, costs 3 baht a call (normal phone charges) and you are cut off after 2 hours.

Otherwise yes it is free and a good deal, I always got a good connection, but now have ADSL so ...............

For Maesto AFAIK no UK bank allows international transfers without either phone or personal appearance to confirm - I know other coutnries banks use books of numbers etc but they don't seem popular in the UK (Nor did I like them!)

But NATIONWIDE - I can't shout it loud enough. If you can open an account with them then ATM withdrawals are absolutely free - no surcharge no 2% on the exchange rate nothing.

If you want more than the ATM limit walk into your Thai bank and give them the card and ask for the money to be put into your account - appears to be no limit (I know it has been done for 600,000 baht in one transfer) and no charges at all.

As a bonus at least Bankok bank on Suthep road, Chiang Mai (maybe other banks) will mark it as FFT in your book.

Sort of could take offence at the maligning of the UK banking system.

The main UK banks have had internet sites since - well I've been using internet banking for at least 10 years.

All UK banks offer internet banking and I'd be prepared to bet all allow any type of transfer, bill payment, etc. within financial limits, say max transfer of £50,000.

No UK bank allow international transfers using only the Internet, all insist on either written instructions or telephone contact. For example using Cahoot (meantioned before) you have to phone with your instructions (takes under 2 minutes) and they phone you back on your registered number to check the transfer is genuine. Any bank that did not do checks like that risk being taken to the cleaners as they have (so far) always paid for any internet fraud.

BUT for non-UK residents it can be quite difficult to open a UK bank account unless you go via their head office and deal by mail or person.

I use google search engine and occasionally want to go to the advertised, paid for, link on the right hand side of the page.

But everytime I try that I get page not available. Once I strip all the google stuff from the address I can get the page I want.

I curious to know if others get the same problem? If it is a general problem then google must be losing a lot of revenue!

To take up Paul-s and his gulf air flight with a tax of £96 I just did a quick check of lastminute and got the following:

Royal Jordanian tax and fees £115

Aeroflot £78

Lufthansa £160

Emirate LHR £41

Emirates LGW £39

My point is that these taxes are NOT just LHR tax, but all the airports you stop at. Note Lufthansa has to pay Frankfurt tax for 2 landings and 2 take offs for the trip, another expensive airport whilst Dubai seems to make no charges at all for Emirates.

That is, unless you think LHR charge different taxes to different airlines?

If you have owned the bike for 12 months in Thailand you can import it into the UK - but to get it registered you must pass an MOT.

That includes the emmission control part - but there is an exception for import vehicles. If you can prove the emmission control regulations in the country of manufacture then the bike only has to meet those standards and not the UK standard.

Mind finding your little MOT shop that can find that regulation and getting proof of the Thai regulations could be hard. I have never managed it for a car imported from South Africa.

As an aside,

If you are non-resident for tax purposes in the UK then the UK is a very good offshore financial centre, good interest rates and low taxation.

But if you are UK resident for tax purposes then offshore accounts have little benefit as you get lower interest rates and you still have to declare the income - the only benefit is you pay the tax later.

There are many other senarios - some that make investing in the IOM etc a good idea - but it is not an inevitable good idea.

Thanks Lopburi3, exactly what I wanted to hear.

It is always a problem dealing with a country with and an apparent infinite number of names:

England

UK

Britain

Great Britain

not counting

Wales

Scotland

Northern Ireland

But the correct name is

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

So if you put that on your parcel (space permitting) there should be no complaints!

I always put UK, think your PO is being awkward.

Simple question,

When you renew a retirement visa does it run for 12 months from the date it was due to expire or the date you renew it?

ie - if your visa has to be renewed on the 1st Feb so you go in on the 10th January to renew it. Is the next renewal date the 10th Jan or the 1st Feb?

Thanks, I don't want to get renewal creep!

Is this assertion true?

AFAIK UK airport tax is £25 per passenger (international) and LHR charges the airline, think it is about £12 per passenger - this may be for both departing and arriving passengers. LGW is cheaper. But you also pay airport tax en route. The airline pays tax to land and take off from BKK and at all airports that you stop at, so flights via Qatar cost different to flight via Dubai as they have different taxes - and don't forget you might have 4 landings/ take offs in Qatar on the outward and return flight so pay 4 lots of tax.

The tax situation is highly complex and highly variable - just look at, say, www.lastminute.com and see how the tax vaires on a flight LHR to BKK - on my last look from £35 to £113, all for a final airline fare of around £450-£500 - ie up to over 20% of the fare.

Hospitals are not good places - lots of people die there.

But seriously, medicine is an art form not a science so diagnosing is all too often a matter of luck - both on your part and the doctors.

Prescribing should be more accurate, but anyone, anywhere, who does not read the leaflet that comes with all medicines is asking for trouble.

The best advice came from my father who said go away, if it is still bad in 24 hours I'll look at it. Normally it was better in 24 hours (or I'd forgotten about the problem!)

Interesting - I did have the same problem that proxy4free was blocked, and asked TOT about it. They denied it was blocked and it started working again.

Or you can google for the site and look at the cache version!

Sounds like Nok,

However I agree with Tywais that it was much noisier and longer lasting than normal, but that might just be because one is more sensitive to sound in the middle of the night.

Roll on the 5th!

Thanks