yieldman

Asbestos sheeting has a distinct ring when you hit it with something like a spanner, sheeting using cellulose fibre just gives a thud. 

A friend recently moved his family to Australia, Thai wife, daughter on Aussie passport, son on Thai passport I think:

Cost for partner visas about $17000, with residency etc, total cost around $30,000. Get a bl... passport and jump though all the hoops if you have to!  

Thai consular guarantee stamp required for retirement extension at Suphanburi.

The Suphanburi immigration office is now located in Soi 9 , Suphanburi. Apparently they moved from Ayutthaya to Suphanburi 3 weeks ago.

Phone:035-440464

Email: [email protected]

My friend was advised that the rules had changed in the last three weeks. He is Swedish and his English is not very good, hence my posting. The problem may have arisen with the drop in exchange rate of the Euro and immigration wanting to see more of a reserve in case of a future drop in exchange rate. He did manage to get a bank statement in his and his wife''s name showing 50,000 baht and took that to the new immigration office in Suphanburi. It appears to be open, but not yet fully functional. They phoned Bangkok to verify they had sighted the bank statement (and may have copied it to mail to Bangkok). Presumably all is well now. It appears at least in this case they allowed a combination of money in the bank and the income statement. Immigration official told him that when they investigated marriage visas they found a large number of cheats (something like 1 in 3), so they are expanding requirements to catch these. Ayuthaya immigration requirements include photos of both partners in the house with tv on, food on the table and in front of the house,  photo in the bedroom (you can keep your pants on), translation of the passport to Thai, and the house inspection at short notice . 

Thank you ubonjoe. From the sound of it in this case they have allowed a combination of income and bank balance (without seasoning) in what I assume is a transition from 400,000 baht  per year to 480,000 baht per year. They probably allowed for the 20,000 baht for exchange rate variation.

A friend last week went to Ayuthaya immigration to extend his Marriage visa, with an income statement from the embassy for 450,000 baht income per year. Today he was advised from Bangkok immigration that the income or combined income and bank balance required was now increased to 500,000 baht. He is given a day to show a bank account in his and his wife''s name showing a balance of 50,000 baht. Anyone else had the same experience?

Anyone know of a reliable supplier of firewood (Red Oak or fruit tree wood, dried for six months or more) around Suphanburi or Bangkok?

Door closers

In Australia there are cheap screen door closers available, much cheaper versions then the heavy duty door closers commonly sold. Before these became available, many people used just a simple, soft spring about 20-30 cm long. A bit of rubber inside the door opening dampens the noise.

Plants

Mosquitos dislike strong odors of some plants, like Citronella, Marigolds, and Lavender.

Wind curtain

A wind curtain is a technical solution. These are manufactured for shops and work by generating such a high air speed in the door opening that insects cannot enter. One could gerry rig one by mounting a number of the axial fans you see being used at markets around the door opening, operated by a switch connected to the door

Mosquito catchers, some costing 35000-45000 baht.

They usually combine a number of methods:

1. Visual attractant.

UV (the blueish light in cheap mosquito catchers) light does not appear to attract mosquitoes

One of the manufacturers claims that their pulsating LED array simulates the way the arteries in your skin pulsate with each heartbeat. However during the day the mosquitos are attracted to dark places and also seem to be attracted to dark or black clothing. The pulsating LEDS seem to be more to attract human attention to the product!

2. A fan that draws mosquitos in, sometimes into a dry catchment net where they dehydrate, while in others the fan blows them into a chemical attractant pool.

3. A way to emit the carbon dioxide (Either by slowly releasing carbon dioxide from a carbon dioxide cylinder like those used in restaurants for fizzy drinks OR by converting LP gas using a catalyst) that mosquitos are attracted to. The Carbon dioxide cylinders are harder to get then the gas cylinders.

4. One or more chemical attractants. The attractants vary depending on the type of mosquitos you are trying to trap: The attractant for the Malaria and Dengue carrying tiger mosquitos differs from that used to attract the smaller mosquitos. (Lactic acid, Octanol)

The attractants and carbon dioxide means in addition to the electricity those machines are expensive to run.

5. Heat / Infrared light (Simulating body heat)

6. Moist air stream

We tested one of the fancier mosquito catchers (using a Carbon Dioxide cylinder, a honey based attractant together with a liquid attractant. The Tiger mosquito attractant stank like urine) and found it caught 5 to 6 mosquitos per day. The manufacturer claims a cost of A$1.07 per day in consumables, which worked out at about 5 baht per mosquito. The manufacturer’s video show a net with tens of thousands of mosquitos caught.........

A friend tested one of the machines using LP gas and found it to perform better (They are or were available at Homepro)

These mosquito catchers, like the upside down bottle traps, may perform better in windless areas, allowing the Carbon Dioxide to pool.

No, they only generate a small amount of carbon dioxde. To generate more is expensive and may kill you when used in doors!

Mosquito net

Use a mosquito net soaked in pyrethroid insecticide: You act as the attractant: You emit carbon dioxide (heavy breathing increases the emisssion of carbon dioxide!), emit the odours humans do, your skin is the right temperature the mosquitos are attracted to ...... The pyrethroid insecticde kills the mosquitos and you will have fun generating the carbon dioxide!

For infrequent use ALWAYS get a Laser printer. I bough a Samsung M2070 (Mono print & copy, Colour scan) for 2370 Baht after battling with a commonly used Canon Inket printer with External tanks every time I needed it.

No more paper jams, no more ink spills, no more clogegd printheads.On the odd occasion that you need colour, go to a printshopfor photographic quality prints (rather then the washed out prints you get from the inkjet printer with external tanks and ink refills).

Have a look at

World Nomads
http://www.worldnomads.com/

They quoted me one year travel insurance at A$1001.00.

Note that their cover & price varies depending on your country of residence as they will use different underwriters. Their reviews vary greatly by country.

Termites don't like water. A common treatment in Fiji is to soak the ground repeatedly until it is saturated. After that keep it moist by spraying water around the house with a garden hose every day.

Asbestos has not been banned in Thailand. The coloured rooftiles (ours were installed 3 years ago), the imitation wood strips, everything that looks like asbestos IS. The only exception I found was some very old (20-30 years) roofing materiail that did not show the clumped fibres typical of asbestos. Use a camera on Macro setting on a damaged area. If it is asbestos you will see what looks like clumped fibres. There was a move earlier this year to ban asbestos, but it has not been passed. But rest assured a recent check of asbestos factory workers in Thailand found that 85-91% of the workers were free of asbestosis....

Numbeo is crowd sourced and not generated from official statistics. So the rating is generated from surveys of contributing members. I assume the results are biased because you have to be computer literate and know of the existence of Numbeo to contribute. Still biased as it may be, at least the people contributing rate Thailand relatively safe.

I was surprised to find that numbeo.com (a crowd sourced website reporting CPI and various other statistics by country and major cities) rates Thailand as one of the safer countries, with a lower crime rate then for example Australia, USA and Sweden. It doesn't feel that way! I have noticed some curious things in the past, for example under reporting of number of deaths and injuries in the case of a fireworks explosion at the Dragon temple Suphanburi, where the hospitals indicated more than 35 death while in the news there were 4 or 5 death reported. Also a huge explosion a few months later where a factory was levelled near Suphanburi with a number of death: It never made it to the news. For safety on the roads Thailand has one of the worst safety records in the world.

How can Thailand be rated safe?

Incidentally in Healthcare Numbeo ranked Thailand second best in the world.

I spend from 2003 to 2010 learning about and trading Shares, CFD's, Forex, Futures and Options.

I started learning with Home trader in Sydney. The course was great teaching the basic of the market, trading (placing and managing trades), risk management, technical trading and so on. They also suggested many approaches to systematic approaches to trading (algoritmic trading) & system testing.

I also did a Forex course that with them that flaunted the very good principles they taught in the Shares and CFD's course. It did teach the Forex basics and trading methods, but the algortihms developed were useless (No, actually one method was workable).

I worked with a varying group of people developing ideas fro trading system and machine testing them against historical data.

Along the way came across many of the people involved in training. The obvious questions always is why do you bother training other people when you could just trade? The equally obvious answer is that you make more money selling the dream to other people!

There are some very convincing tactics out there:

One company advertised "Look over our shoulder doing live trading". with impressive historical results. How could they possibly fake that?

Then, when looking over their shoulder we noticed their charts were 3 minutes delayed compared to our live data feed! Finally, they would announce a possible trade, then respond to people that might comment that the trade did not appear to satisfy the system purportedly used. While discussing the trade the price would develop and, if it went in the right direction they would comment "We entered that trade at 9:11 AM for $..." OR " Our order was not accepted, there must have been insufficient volume".

Another supplier allows you to trade "With their funds". You subscribe for the course, say $8000. The supplier gives you a nominal trading fund of $20,000 (on Margin). They stop you trading when your losses exceed $5000 and you must abide by ther trading rules.

The people I worked with included a builder who has been trading now since 2003 and is doing reasonably well, a programmer with Westpac who spend many years backtesting systems and with whom we developed an automated trading system, a couple of guys involved in training, a guy who retired early after selling his IT business in the Netherlands and so on. Between us we easlily spend 50,000 man hours on trading systems.

My conclusion:

Share and CFD trading works well in a trending market in the period 2003 -2009 oops 2008 it was possible to make 23-28% trading CFDs. The systems then folded (That is they did not announce potential trades, good, no further losses, but bad: no income). I found people were then temped to develop systems that on the face of it ought to work well in the adverse conditions but rarely did. Example if the trend now is down: Trade short or Combine trend follow, reversal, long & short systems, while one , tow or three are dormant the other should work. Unfortunately I have never seen a short tarding system that worked.

Forex trading: The Forex market is not centralised , neither are the data! So if you question a trade with the broker you are at their mercy! You can't go to a authority to determine wether or not there was trading at that level. Secondly great sudden peaks and troughs would appear in the live trading data (that would hit my stops and take me out of the trade) that never made it into the historical data (which you can purchase from various sources, but not necessarily from your broker!). This made a mockery of any systematic testing we did agaist the historical data. Further I worked out even if our system worked half as good as tested, the hours involved in monitoring (Starting at New York open, midnight our time) the market, placing and controlling the trade would give us a return of $100 per sleepless, antisocial hour with an investment of $500,000!

Futures trading: We developed a trading system (in Amibroker) that flagged setup of a trade, then marked entry of a trade if the data suggested we should have entered a trade (By the system rues we developed). Then something strange happended: The setup and entry flags would disapppear! We found the cause was that Amibroker would re backfill the now historical data. (E.g. the data from a few minutes ago) and this data was not the same as the data reported immediately! Did we enter or not enter the trade? If not was it because of the corrected data or because of the original data? (Hint the broker will use the data that is to your disadvantage).

Options trading with a gentleman that had worked for many years with various banks and finally with a trading company. HIs comment was there is no way you can consistently do 20% or more. He claimed the Options trading methods he used alowed 1.5 to 2% better return on any system. At the time he said you would be doing bloody well to make 10% if you knew what you were doing and had access to all the banks intelectual resources. I found Options trading the most difficult and least supported by mechanical trading systems (making back testing very difficult).

For a detailed introduction to system testing and trading have a look at the Howard Bandy books (Blue Owl Press).

Also look up Collective2, which as an independent party tests the live trading signals provided by system developers and logs the system performance. It clearly indicates the return curve for many systems, many never performing at all, others initailly performing well, then loosing. That is no system performs well forever, so ongoing development has to be part of the plan. Look at the charts, cover your self for the inevitable reversals (Some people suggest alow for double the reversal in your system that you see historically, but then the next record drop will be in the future!).

No I don't trade financial markets anymore, but it is an exciting idea (and exciting to do).

For the consiracy theorists out there: 2003 was the end of a bear run that started before September 11 (Did the market antcipate the attack? or did Bin Laden attack at a most vulnerable time? If so did he short trade on the financial market?), bull runs started with the Afghan and Iraq wars, The Iraq bull run ended in the GFC in 2009.

The processing at Ban Nam Phu Ron changed since my last crossing. The Myanmar side now take a photo using a webcam strategically oriented on a louvred window. I paid 900 baht to Thai immigration for the visa, photo copying and minibus. They filled in the arrival departure card and processed the exit. A minibus was provided to take me the 4 km to the Myanmar immigration office. About ten minutes at the office for them to process and take the photo. They were very considerate with the stamp space, using what space was left. Back on the minibus to Thai immigration who finished the entry process. All together about 1hour. They seem to process about 60 foreigners per day. On Sunday as was one of two people around 1 pm and had the minibus to myself.

Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

At our first visit on the evening opening day we were greeted with a foul stench at the south end of the car park. The stench filtered into the southern entrance and half way through the complex. The stench emanated from a settlement pond that was used during the building phase to collect the toilet runoff from the toilets surrounding the temporary shacks that were build to house the workers. We are living 600 meters away and when the wind is in the wrong direction if infiltrates our home. To date I have seen no efforts by Big C to clean it up. Flood waters are rising in the area. At this rate soon we will be wading need deep through the runoff. It shows the regard Big C has for it's customers.

The power calculator mentioned before :

I mist be missing something. How are you supposed to hold 800,000 baht in an account for two months in Thailand to get a retirement visa if you can't open an account without a WP, marriage or retirement visa?

Thank you Elwood and Bereak for the info. That is a great help!

My fiancee has two children, Her daughter will be ready to migrate by April 2013 when she finishes primary school. Her son may not be ready to do so for a few years yet. I will have her daughter directly in the fiancee visa application, although she may travel later (But within one year of the application being lodged). My fiancees daughter will be twelve at the time. Is there a requirement for all people within the fiancee application to arrive together? Will the daughter be able to travel on her own?

Any advice appreciated,

Yieldman

The fireworks were placed at Wat Phra Srirattana Mahathat, Google maps 14.479618,100.112132

Just to the south of the Wat is the densiy populated area where most of the fires broke out. This area was affected by floods 3 mnths ago.

500 meters to the west windows were broken. The monks living area (Kuti) shown in the photo is 50 meters away to the east. The crematorium also 50 meters away appears undamaged in photos.