SGD

Yeah, another of those man boys the world is propagating. In my day, we'd have been able to go off grid for weeks if not more likely months and in truth, I reckon if we'd wanted to simple disappear they would never have found us. As digitised and tracked as we are today, I still think I could drop totally off radar and if required, reappear under a new ID without very much trouble and a modicum of planning.

No-one upsets the apple cart because they are waiting for their turn at the trough and like the police, people have to pay to get into a position where they can abuse the system. There is no end to it because for example, take the police. The official salary is nothing, 10/20k a month but they have to pay hundreds of thousands to get into the police. So say you've paid yesterday and they end corruption today, how do you pay back the money you borrowed to get into the police ? If you are already on the gravy train, making a few million a year, how do you get out because you cannot go back to a salary of 20k a month. There is no way out of this.

Absolutely. If asked for her number he wouldn't know. Not a chance. Very little chance of him knowing his phone number until he had spoken to the wife. He's robbed or spent the money and is pretending there was a thief.

I've spent about 3 months in Phuket across a few trips and I fall into the hate and don't hate camps, perhaps on the fence. I should add that I have also lived in the South Andaman, Bangkok, Pattaya and Buriram. Strip out the beach life and would you live in Phuket ? No, I would not because I think other places are better. Is the beach life enough to overcome that ? Possibly but I wonder if living there all the time wouldn't exacerbate the negatives rather than accentuate the positives. I am often in the south and I think about Phuket and seeing more of the island but as a visitor it is truly the worst of Thailand and I don't think I want to go through that to try to find something else because 99% of Phuket is tainted with some degree of tourist rip off.

Or could it be Lennie, as in Steinbeck's classic ? Phuket - one of the top 5 Thai murder islands with hardly an honest person anywhere.

Explain how they became a "former" employee and enlighten us

No, just don't get in one. Pay more and plan better to not leave that as the only option.

There are few facts in this case and no evidence of sexual activity. However, we do know that this woman and her friend are used to going to parties with strange men they do not know. They admit knowing that drug taking would happen and they admit drugs were freely offered and taken. I suspect nothing would be heard from this girl if she had woken up with some money in her purse and that her claims stem from not being paid. She now accuses her friend of possibly being paid but not passing on her share and her friend responds by telling her that the guy involved is rich. There is a word for girls who get paid for sex and that word is prostitute; someone who exchanges sexual favours for money and there is an old (and inappropriate for woke folks) joke about how does a prostitute know she has been raped and the answer is when the cheque bounces. For the uninitiated, that means that the "rape" is only claimed when the payment doesn't materialise and that had the money been paid, then there would have been no "rape". This is a story of a hooker who has not been paid or her also hooker friend didn't pass on her share. In so far as you can believe any of it of course.

Pre covid I was paying circa £1800 business class from LHR-BKK on Etihad and about £1250/1500 LHR-BKK on Swiss / Austrian / Lufty etc. I could also skiplag and go from OSL or ARN to BKK for about £1000 and I have had it under £900. In August 2022 it was £4500, today it is £6500 and through most of next year it is also £4000-5000 with Swiss sometimes coming down to £2250/2500. I won't travel in economy and I won't pay over about £2000, maybe £2500 in business. Sure, my choice but the idea of £5k return to Bangkok is not happening.

Same in Pattaya and everywhere else by the look of it. The whole tourist industry is turning into a drug based mental asylum.

So the whole Thai economy is not dependent on pot ? 1m Thais have asked to grow pot. In a land of some 70m people with maybe 20m under 21 and 10m too old, that is 1 in 40 people who are going to make their business growing pot. Right !

You need to remember George Orwell. Four wheels good, two wheels bad.

I prefer house life but it is only safe if you are there all the time. If you leave a house even for just a short time, the thieves will be in unless you have armed guards and the friends and relatives are the first suspects. In a condo, get one high enough up so Somchai cannot get a ladder up to it and over 7 floors keeps the mosquitoes away as well. Good locks on any balconies and preferably internal grills that simply cannot be gotten through without heavy cutting equipment. Front door is high security steel in a steel frame with a secondary security grill. But year, if I was living there full time, a house and my own pool would be the right way to enjoy life.

I think the Thai ID card says "male". No doubt he referred to himself as a ladyboy, not a ladygirl. Let's stick with DNA eh ?

Yes it is wrong to steal but say the average wage for a maid was 8000 baht then, so 100,000 baht a year, it was a year's salary. If the annual salary in your country is say £30,000 then consider how many normally good people would be tempted if they saw £30,000 lying around in a hotel room ? Doesn't make it right but ....

So he renounced USA citizenship aged 18 did he ? Did he serve in the Thai military for national service ? Or did he circumvent tax laws and then decide, in his latter years, to dump USA citizenship when the tax burden became too burdensome and FATCA was being initiated ? If he wanted rid of the USA passport, he could have done so 50 years ago !

He renounced US citizenship as Uncle Sam wants to tax you on your worldwide income and whilst Bill was happy to have the USA passport and live under the umbrella of protection the USA offers, he wasn't willing to contribute to the upkeep of the country or its institutions. So he wangled a Thai passport and citizenship and got rid of a problematic tax burden. He when it comes to influence and doing the right thing, he is clearly more more Thai than the Thais !

I totally agree. Equally, if you are the sort who has 40m baht lying around for a holiday home, then presumably you have other, better assets elsewhere and some means of managing them, including setting up dodgy Thai companies to own your Thai house. In any case, get outside Bangkok, Phuket and Samui enclaves and you would really struggle to see what you could spend 40m on and for a maximum of 1 rai, it would most surely not be worth it.

Decent theory but the detail doesn't support the projection. The assumption is that people don't have work, which rules out the majority. Then family, as most people need that closeness. Then you have inertia, as people want what they know and the unknown is scary. Financially, the hypothesis suggests people might go overseas to "save" money but if they had more money last year when fuel and most other prices were lower, why didn't they go then ? The notion that someone can save even the £1500 cost of two round trip economy tickets on their fuel bills over what, say 3 months, is ludicrous plus you cannot rent a villa in Phuket for £500 a month. It is an opportunistic comment by a corrupt government hoping to profit on the back of misery suffered by others. How very very Thai.

Yeah, I miss those simpler times too. I had identical twin sisters teach me Thai numbers, 1-10 but I could never remember which one was which.

Never worn a face nappy and never will. Also not deficient mentally and a bit to smart to be conned into thinking covidbollocks was anything other than a scam.

It is the aggressive "demand" from the vendors that is the (occasional) problem but in reality, shouldn't they be off public beaches altogether ?

Proving beyond doubt that non of it was necessary. By the way, any news on where the trillions of dollars, pounds, euros etc. have gone to because no-one seems to know, except we now have a World War debt to pay back over the next 100 years. Perhaps look at who usually profits from war.

Joe le Taxi ?

Seems news of the 200,000 received for someone touching a women on Walking Street in Pattaya has reached the girls in the red light district of Bangkok.