Darrel

And the implied assumption from the "battered" and "bruised" crowd is that Thai women are all gold-diggers and not to be trusted as as many of us know FROM EXPERIENCE that this is not the case. So yes, just answer the question and leave the pontificating for the man next to you on the bar-stool

Or, to put it another way, you can tell people what they can and cant say, but they cant say anything with which you dont happen to agree.

Perhaps you should practice a little of the philosophy of your namesake?

Actually there was a buffet breakfast upstairs at the original Lek building 20 years ago. I seem to remember that is was 40B or so, and I think that the Boat cheapy was about 15. So long ago that I cant remember clearly.

If you take the 2005 price and today's price, and convert them into farang currency, the price has multiplied by a factor of 3.

This seems quite high, and in any normal person's book a one-off overnight increase of 40% is pretty astounding.

As I said, I dont go to Lek or Apex so I'm not bothered personally about it. I did calculate that at today's price I could eat breakfast there every day for well over 1000 years without emptying my bank account., which is something to think about. Not sure I would want to though!

the decision whether it is an advantage or not should be left to the individual who, e.g. wants to live in a home built to his specific demands and specifications. "outsiders" who have no idea what these demands are should not and cannot judge the decision.

Precisely why I gave my personal opinion and clearly qualified it as such.

I have mine, you have yours, and Joe Public has his. And none of them is worth any more than any other.

Or arent opinions allowed any more?

You didnt pay stamp duty (it's a small purchase tax on shares, for anyone unfamiliar with UK finance) on your manual T3, T5 and T10 trades because technically they never took place. You never actually sold them and so didnt actually buy them back. You just earned (or lost) the difference between the two prices. The sale or purchase only actually happens at the end of the T period and in your case the two just cancelled each other out.

These days of course wth the cheap online brokers it is all done electronically and settlement is assumed to be a fact. So you pay the duty.

If you want to avoid the duty (and indeed the broker fee) then you can trade options or "spread bet" instead. And in fact for what you do that might make more sense, though you need to remember that you can (potentially) lose far more than the value of your investment if you get it wrong, due to leverage. Personally I would rather sleep at night.

You're getting worked up over nothing.

No, I'm not getting worked up at all. I never eat in either place and so I dont really care either way. I will be interested to see what the other places do though, and what other totally different restaurants might do also.

Thanks for these extra comments. Testing a few different models seems a very good idea, and now I have an idea what to look for.

Guy's just because you've been burned in the past doesn't mean it happens to all of us.

In 30+ years of visiting and living in SE Asia I have never lost more than loose change from my pocket. I've certainly never been burned. I consider myself both lucky and prudent.

However I have seen myriad people who have been burned, and it seems reasonable to me to take the trouble just to point out a potential pitfall to someone who may not have considered it.

I suppose you wouldnt take the trouble to warn a blind man that he was walking towards a hole either?

Thanks for all the further comments. Testing a few different models for a day seems to be a very good idea, and quite possibly a slightly smaller machine would be better suited to my needs. Cant imagine I will ever do that many km on it so fuel consumption versus purchase price shouldnt be a big issue, but who knows?

As talked about this many times it is possible to own a house (building) separate from the land. The company can thus own the land give a lease for the land and the person can own the house.

Yes indeed. But I am not convinced of the advantage of owning a house but not the land it is built on. Personally I would want it all.

A usufruct is often better ......

Yes. Another possible alternative.

99 year leases will make everything a lot more expensive. Another option would be to make renewable rights real rights so if the landowner sells a piece of land those renewable clauses are still valid. Another would be to get rid of the "no need to register" for leases with a maximum duration of 3 years. This if often the main obstacle, longer leases would be more common without that rule.

Yes, though I am not convinced that 99 year leases would necessarily increase costs that much, and certainly not as time progresses and leases of varying duration start to change hands. But the property market here is so artificial that it is hard to guess what might happen when any of the goalposts move.

All a bit hypothetical though. I cant remember ever seeing a house for sale advert in Pattaya that didnt say either "company" or "Thai" underneath. And that's surely the bottom line.

Some of you guys pay a lot for breakfast !!

Luckily for me I am near the Shagwell Hotel. 2 rashers of bacon. Scrambled egg, baked beans, 1 sausage. 1 wedge of toast n butter n jam. 1 large coffee and 1 juice. 99 Baht.

A buffet for just 6B more sounds much better value to me.

удача

(Courtesy of Google Translate, so dont blame me if it means "your mother was a warthog".)

There is a huge sign outside the Apex saying 150 and 250. I went inside the other evening, just to see what they might be doing for the new price but apart from that I never go in there.

As mentioned in my original post, Apex are still honouring (and selling?) the books of tickets at the old price but that stops in September, I think.

I drink Pattaya tap water from the reverse osmosis machines that abound here, though I do always choose new machines. Seems fine to me. I note that at least one of the brands of bottled water, sold for 40B/5litres in 7/11, is actually reverse osmosis tap water. The label states this clearly, but in tiny print. My water costs 5B/6litres.

If I was going to worry about anything it would be the illegal toxins and pesticides in just about every type of food you can buy here. But short of growing my own there is nothing I can do about it, so I dont worry. Given that I only eat out, I have no real control over any aspect of what I eat and dont know what has gone in it. However, in spite of only eating very spicy Thai food (or perhaps because of that) from small restaurants and street vendors, and the occasional Western breakfast or fresh very hot pizza, I have never had any stomach problem in Thailand in the last 30 years.

Just one bit of advice: I'm sure that your girl is a wonderful person and I hope that you will have many happy years together, but please dont invest any money in any property here that you cant afford to lose. This applies in spades to houses/land which can never be in your name.

There are very many threads in here about farangs who have lost large sums on property in Thailand, following breakups in relationships or in-law intervention.

I have never hear of an apt or condo that charges 3.5 baht have you?

Yes. I know people in View Talay buildings who pay government rate, and also in some buildings on Pratumnak.

The first thing people need to do when look at apts or condo is ask price for water and elec.

They should, but they probably dont on the assumption that there is only one price. This is what one would expect coming from the West.

At the moment I am looking at different places to buy or rent. One of the first questions I ask is "how much is the maintenance fee per sqm", followed by "how much do you pay per unit". You would be surprised how many owners have not the faintest idea of how much they are. Some of them know approximately how much they pay for the average month, but not all by any means.

In my home I pay 7b per unit. I use Micro wave, TV, computers, fridge, cooker oven, electric grill, rice cooker, hot water heater, mobile chargers, fan 24/7, hot water for coffee, printers and my bill is around 900 - 1,100 baht per month so obviously the OP is being rip off

You dont mention aircon. I have mine on nearly 24/7, though I only set the temperature to around 25-26°. I would expect to pay perhaps 2000B/mth for my electricity at government rate, though this could increase to 4000 at your rate or even nearly 6000 at a place in Jomtien that I could mention which charges 10B per unit. The daft thing about that place is that it only charges 8000B rent per month for quite a nice studio, and so they could be making nearly 50% of that on the overcharge for the electricity.

No matter how you look at it, to charge anything above the official rate is a rip-off. But caveat emptor, of course, and everyone has the option of renting/buying elsewhere.

I've been coming to Pattaya for 30+ years and have never been on a motorbike taxi at all (though I did used to rent a motorbike on occasions, back when traffic was light). Having seen the inebriated state of most of the drivers, I have no intention of ever putting my life in their hands.

I live on 2nd Rd and in 5 or 10 minutes I can walk to just about everywhere I want to go. Occasionally I take a bahtbus to get to Jomtien etc., and never have any problem paying 10B for that and never have to wait more than a minute or two to get one. I would not consider living anywhere in Pattaya that was not within a couple of minutes walk of a main bahtbus route, though I would consider living completely out of town (Bang Saray, Si Racha etc) and having a car. Living on the dark side and using a motorbike for all transport would be out of the question for me, but if I lived somewhere like Pratumnak, I would probably have a motorbike just for getting to Jomtien or Pattaya.

It seems to me that the worst that is likely to happen to you on a bahtbus is that someone will pick your pocket or puke on you. And if you avoid the ones with many people on (which is easy) even that isnt very likely. The bahtbuses rarely go fast enough in town to suffer real damage if they crashed.

There is another interesting pizza option in the same neighborhood.

It's called LOAF.

Far and away the best pizza in the entire area (if not the entire city). Also probably the best bakery.

On Wednesday they do a pizza buffet for 199B.

I've been going there every Wednesday for ages and was rather hoping that no one would mention it on here.

Only fair to give them some support though.

What barely made the Lek and Apex worth it for me was bacon, now they've raised the prices and have cut bacon out of the menu as well.

Both Diana Inn (110B) and Diana Dragon (105B) have bacon, as does Casa Pascal (165B). I suppose that at some point these prices will change.

Over the last 6 months Diana Dragon has gone slightly downhill as they stopped doing the cheap factory croissants that they used to have, which were much nicer than the factory American bread they still do. Diana Inn has improved over the same time span and offers a better choice than Diana Dragon, especially on the Thai food side. Diana Inn also has nearly decent "orange" juice and does have manao quarters available that you can squeeze into the juice to make it less sweet.

For me Diana Dragon is still a nicer place to eat though as it is much more relaxed. Every time I blink in Diana Inn some well-meaning waiter tries to take my cutlery away.

Casa Pascal is the best place, but the food is very rich and I dont think that eating there more than once a week is a very good idea. I tend to go only on Sunday, and was there this morning.

In my country 7 baht is normal electrical fee for apt or condo NOT 3.5 baht which you claim. The 3.5 baht is if you have your own house and a contract with the electric company.

I think that what you mean is that it is "normal" here for a building to overcharge by nearly 100% (or more) when they bill for utilites themselves and if they think they can get away with it, regardless of who the person paying the bill is. This is not "Thai rak Thai" but is more like "Thai overcharge Thai and Farang, same same".

However there are plenty of people in condos who pay their electricity bills directly to the electricity company and at the official rate. Indeed they even benefit from the waiver on bills of less than 50B per month. So there really is nothing normal at all about being ripped off, no matter what nationality you are.

Few of them own property that I would consider worth buying. There is an incredibly large amount of overpriced rubbish on the property market in Pattaya. Badly built, badly located and badly maintained, if at all.

The sort of properties I would consider buying tend to be owned by people who gave some thought to the initial purchase, and bought the right thing in the right place, and didnt leave themselves in a position where they would have many properties, no apparent income and no savings. I'm in no hurry at all as I suspect that many asking prices will fall significantly in Pattaya at some point over the next couple of years as the global cuts begin to bite (this has barely started). I also suspect that the Baht will further decrease in value.

That said, some places now being sold by motivated sellers are actually near to a fair price, and as such I would buy one of them if I liked it enough to want to live in it.

Over the last week it seems the value THB is slipping against the Euro a little bit

Your post is very unclear.

In fact the Baht has been quite stable against the Euro over the last week, and has increased in value by about 5% over the last month or so, having reached a one-year low at 44.75 in early May.

It is, however, somewhat overvalued in my opinion.

Where is Casa pasquale ? What is different between this buffet breakfast and the other ones ?

Casa Pascal (ex-Poseidon in Jomtien) offers a smaller selection of much better quality ingredients. There is no comparing the quality of the products and setting at all: chalk and cheese. The only thing that Casa Pascal falls down on is that they have that crappy ersatz "orange" juice, just like everyone else.

Simply because the electric co had not done what they needed to do to start taking over the charging of the individual condo units .It took a year for this to happen with my condo ,and some units there are still waiting i believe .I think that this is standard with every new Condo building ?

Possibly. I dont like new buildings much and so I dont pay much attention to the way they function (or dont function!).

Someone is making a hell of a lot of money during that year though. On an average (occupied) unit it could amount to much more than the annual maintenance charge.

I cant find anything about building committee at lobby....no idea whete to find it

Do they REALLY have a right to read and charge whatever they like?

I've never heard of an established building that doesnt have a committee (albeit a committee of dead people and absentees). But maybe as a (fairly) new building that one doesnt have one yet. Have all the chanotes been issued? Is there a Juristic Person Office? Perhaps the developer is still runnning the show. If there is a committee then the front office will know who they are and should give you their contact details.

As for charging, yes they can charge what they like if you agree to getting the service from them. But I would like to know why they are handling it anyway? Why doesnt everyone just get a bill to be paid directly at the official rate? Someone in that building is earning a 90% profit on ALL electricity bills they are issuing, not to mention any extra 900% markup by misreading the meters by a factor of 10. So some people (that includes you ) are paying nearly 20 times what they should be.

Sounds like a good scam to me.

My electric bill there now comes direct from the electric company ( for 6 weeks now ) .Before that i was paying the management company 7 baht a unit and they did not overcharge as far as i know.

Well, they were overcharging you by the simple act of demanding 7B for something that is really just half that.

I dont really understand why anyone in that building is paying the management company directly for electricity anyway: why not just do it at 7/11 or online and pay the proper government rate? This is the sort of question that the committee should be looking at. Or maybe they are involved in the management?