Darrel

My word, you do like sniping at people, don't you?

In case it was beyond your perspicacity, my post immediately prior to yours did indeed show concern for the only farang of the four who deserves any sympathy. Had he hurled abuse at me with a British accent I would have contacted the UK consulate myself (not that they would do anything, apart from try to charge me for taking up valuable drinking working time). As he is German(ish) I will leave it to the many German nationals around to take care of their own. We won the war, after all. (And there I'm being facetious, in case you still aren't quite in gear.)

The other three deadbeats in my original post can look after themselves. There is nothing wrong with them apart from (apparently) being on the breadline, which is probably due to a total lack of desire to go home and do some work.

oh and pizza too

warning

some items may contain MSG

Having eaten that lot a bit of MSG will be the least of your worries.

My personal opinion is that anyone who wants extra facilities (apart from security and common lighting etc) should pay for them. I dont really see why everyone should have to pay for gym or jacuzzi facilities for the few who use them, especially as there are commercial gyms on every street corner. As such I prefer buldings that dont offer these extra facilities at all, and have a correspondingly lower maintenance fee.

Even the swimming pool is an arguable point, though I suspect that a pool is used by a much higher proportion of residents than any other facility is and is, of course, a much larger capital cost than a gym.

The Soi Diana loony is on the move. This morning he was just outside View Talay 6 on 2nd road.

He hurled abuse at me (I dont know why: maybe he is a TV reader ) in German. Maybe someone should tell the German consulate about him. Unlike the others, he needs help.

OK. So the half-naked loony farang who lives in Soi Diana is not really unusual. I've seen an assortment of them over the years.

The Irish guy who bums cigarettes on Beach Rd isnt the only one of his type either.

But just now I went for a stroll along Beach Rd and came across a farang squatting opposite the Royal Garden, with a begging bowl and no shoes.

And then just 50 yards further down there was a farang guy going through the big wastebins collecting plastic bottles which he was putting into a large sack he was carrying, presumably for resale.

What sort of visa do these high-enders have, I wonder?

Now I know what "nanny state" really means: they must have employed the Play School production team to produce that video, which seemed to be aimed specifically at 3 year olds.

"Can you count to 5? Let's count together! And then let's go through the round window to collect your passport. Yippee!"

Another GBP20 on the cost of a passport.

Sound more like some Arab names to be honest than French. Are they sure they are Frenchmen?

There are many French people of Arab descent.

The last lot of Frenchmen arrested for ATM scams in Soi Buakow were French Arabs too.

I think my best bet is to replace the modem with some thing a bit better than TOT gave me

I dont think that this will really solve the problem. It may mask the symptoms but I want to know what is causing your mouse to move and click on icons on its own. It will not be the modem.

Has anyone ever had access to your PC since the operating system was installed?

There are lots of cheep kitchens, again cheep and only last a few years. I went to CM and got real solid teak for only a small amount more for custom work and I amsure it wall last longer than me

Indeed. Such a shame to see all the incredibly cheap and nasty chipboard and melamine laminate finishes on new and refitted condos here.

This rubbish is crappy enough in farangland but to use it here is criminal.

The website says that all you need is some photo ID. No other requirements.

You are right about the interest on the credit card of course. I have definitely used the Zero debit card this year for withdrawals here and paid no fee or weighting at all. I did it once, just to try.

Just looked at the Santander website and they seem to have removed the references to the debit card being free for use abroad. In fact they seem to have completely removed all references to debit cards. Or maybe they have just hidden them.

They have also introduced another account called the Preference account, which seems to be very similar to the Zero account, which still exists.

As a Santander shareholder I can say without fear of error or contradiction that they are indeed a complete load of wbankers. But they do have some competitive products.

Those 'international' places do Thai food also.

"It's Thai food Jim, but not as we know it."

There's just not so many 'nice' Thai restaurants with the best food usually being available at streetside food carts or local open air restaurants which are not big on decor.

Well, when I get visitors from farangland I take them to the sort of Thai places I eat in every day and they all seem to love it. In fact they usually say it's the most memorable part of the visit. Not much nice decor in any of those places though. No burgers either!

YMMV

Most of us are expats and eat plenty of Thai food and miss a taste of something else from time to time.

Indeed. I'm an expat and I sometimes eat farang food too. Not often though.

Just seems a shame that there are so many recommendations for farang places and so few for Thai ones, which places would be a little more unusual for visitors such as the OP was talking about. I do realise that he said Thai and international though.

Don't just look at their advertised rates thou as I have always managed to get a few points lower than their advertised rates.

Lower ????????

You wouldnt be interested in buying a condo, would you?

soon after I had this new modem strange things started to happen and then I saw the cursor move by its self and clicking on icons ..... but when I switched back to the TP Link the attacks started again ...

Very odd. As others have mentioned the modem cant be doing this: there just isnt enough computing power in a modem to allow it. What could be happening is that someone is accessing the modem from the internet and setting up some port forwarding, but even so they would still need some sort of programme running on the PC for them to control. Even finding the modem in the first place isnt easy unless they have also set up some sort of DynDNS service, or some service pinging their own servers to say where it is.

I would flash the firmware in the modem with the most recent version available from the manufacturer (even if it appears to be the same version that you have now), then reset and reconfigure the modem and immediately change the default password. If you do all that then anything in the modem will have been eradicated.

However, as others have mentioned, I would certainly recommend looking for malware of some type on the PC as that is surely where the problem is.

All very odd though as no malware actually needs to move the mouse and click on icons to retrieve your data. Are you sure that you dont have something like logmein or teamviewer installed and running, and that someone doesnt have the access codes? You wouldnt be using a pirated "cheap" version of Windows such as one might get at Tukcom or some other shopping mall, would you?

I can't explain the huge jump in my electric bill.

You have cleaned your filters but have you ever had the coolant level checked on your 5-year-old compressors? It can leak away over time, and if the pressure is low the compressor will churn endlessly but provide little cooling.

"At present I use my UK Visa Debit card to draw money from my Santander account at ATM's in Thailand. Of course I get charged 150 BHT at the ATM and about 2.5% by Santander."

You are using the wrong card. Get the Santander Zero credit card and you wont pay the 2.5% weighting. If you dont qualify for the Zero credit card then get a Zero current account and use the debit card with it. Also 0% weighting.

Thanks for the extra info. May wait until August to see what happens to the rates.

Presumably there is nothing stopping you from opening a second low-interest account with them that does have an ATM/direct debit function, and using the high-interest one as a feeder? You could use the internet banking to do the feed transfers, once or twice a month.

This TMB account is actually rather good. Think I will open one for my retirement visa deposit.

http://www.tmbbank.com/personal/deposits/nofixed/tmb-no-fixed-account-en.php

As it is the Thai Military Bank there may even be the possibility of a bonus if they win a skirmish or something.

How disappointing that most of the recommendations are for "international" places. Seems such a shame to travel halfway round the world to eat the same stuff you can buy at home. Each to his own though.

Reminds me of the local TV advert for one or other of the farang restaurants: "yes, we specialise in steaks but we are a truly international restaurant and so we also do pasta and burgers".

They could up the 800.000 Bt you need to 2 million and you don t have it and you have to move out of Thailand as a result....

"Could" is not the question. "When" is the question.

When Thailand thinks it can do without the revenue generated by poorer retired farangs, it will increase the requirements for a visa extension. And progressively they will weed out all but the richest retirees. At the same time I expect them to be much more stringent about work permits, as there are many incompetent farangs working here that arent doing any sort of job that a Thai person couldnt do just as well (or just as badly).

It may take 1 year, or 10, or 50, or more. But both will happen one day.

Just one reason why I am cautious about the property market here.

But there is no doubt that most people prefer countries with freedom of speech, but obviously to some blokes it does not matter a bit, they are quite happy with a subliminal life style, as long as booze is available.

Funny how it always come to back to "holier than thou" when the bubble of delusion is pricked, isnt it?

The best rates I have found recently (June) for UKP to Baht are ..... the exchange on Soi Bukhau, almost opposite the end of Soi LK Metro. Don't know its name but a tiny little place with a printed sheet stuck to the glass showing rates.

That place seems to get its rates from TT, of which there is a branch just opposite. Also another branch a couple of hundred yards up the road and two branches on 2nd Rd near the Boat restaurant.

I would say that if you want to take them somewhere original then try the Thai buffet steamboat place on South Rd, one block beyond Third Rd.

180B per person, plus drinks. Tasty, fun, good value (and also unusual if you come from half-way round the world). The ingredients are all Thai but if anyone doesnt like spicy things then it can be treated rather like a normal BBQ just by not adding the spicy sauces. So pretty suitable for anyone, even those who dont eat meat.

I wasnt aware that Walking Street contained any type of establishment that is worth visiting for any reason, except perhaps to use the toilets in an emergency. Walking Street is hideously overpriced and soooo boring. Cant imagine why anyone goes there.

......recommendable for people living in autocratic countries ruled by dictatorial despot's, this is obviously not the case in Thailand, if it was, we the farangs would not be in retirement here.

Speak for yourself. I've spent quite a lot of time in countries run by dictators and despots, and I would happily repeat most of it.