Oswulf

I recently opened a deposit account at Krung Thai Bank.

Actually, I first had to open a savings account with them and transfer money into that. Only then could I open the deposit account with money from the savings account.

The only documents required were my passport, work permit and driving licence.

I need a document from my bank to show to Immigration. My laywer calls it a "Foreign Exchange Transaction Certificate" - what used to be form Tor Dor 3. Krung Thai Bank (both my local branch and their call centre) haven't a clue what document I'm referring to. Does anyone know the correct Thai translation for this essential document? Thanks.

Hi all and thanks for reading,

I have a website, am based in CM and would like to improve my search engine rating ie get on page 1. I'm currently reading about meta tags, key words etc but would like to outsource this task. One company quoted around 50K for the first month - aaahh!!

Any ideas?

The key factor in getting a good ranking on modern search engines such as Google isn't to do with meta tags and keywords, but rather is the number of sites which link to your site, and the perceived "quality" of those sites. The quickest way to boost your ranking is to get yourself listed with the DMOZ directory and with Yahoo! - though you're going to need a lot of other sites linking to you to get a number one ranking.

A quick way to drop to the bottom of the ranking is to employ the services of a "link farm" to provide a large number of spurious links to your site. Before you pay someone to boost your ranking, make sure they're not simply going to put links to you on a farm.

Your friend also needs to take into account a few other factors. For example:

(a) His UK state pension (when it kicks in) will never increase, even though pensioners in the UK get annual increases.

( If he's sick, he probably won't want to make regular visa runs, so he'll want a retirement visa. That means having a minimum of 800,000 Baht in the bank in Thailand.

Hi.

Does anyone know how to enable the grave accent (`) to switch languages on windows XP. Some of the computers at work have the "Grave Accent" option in Language Bar->Settings->Key settings and some don't.

Staff can't get use to using Left Alt & Shift to switch languages which is the other option.

Is is the Thai version of XP only that has this option?

I'm pretty sure that with English XP you can't just use the grave accent. You can set it up to use various other key combinations by going to Regional and Language Options in Control Panel. Then click the "Languages" tab, followed by the "Details" button. Now select "Switch to Thai" and press the Change Key Sequence button.

Yesterday, the connection was very good for TOT, allowing me to download Google Earth in a little more than 2 minutes. Very unusual.

I guess that's because you're the only person on their system.

I've been unable to connect to TOT Online (dial-up) for a couple of days now. My PC gets as far as checking the UserID/Password, but there's no response from TOT. Is it just me? Or is TOT Online down at the moment?

David Thompson provides a recipe for geng oom gradtai sap (minced rabbit curry) in his book "Thai Food". To quote

This is one of the things i dislike about the Thai mentality. Have kids, leave them with the Grand parents (or other familly members) and live elsewhere.

The reality is that there are many, many people out there living at a level of poverty that is almost inconceivable. There are families without land who earn as little as 20 Baht a day doing odd jobs for neighbouring farmers. There are families without money to buy even a little rice and whose children eat clay to take away the hunger pangs. For parents like this - and there are a lot of them - moving to Bangkok to work on a building site is the only option. They live many to a room in squalid conditions, and often get addicted to drugs and alcohol to take away the mental and physical pain of their condition. That's no environment in which to bring up a child.

So, please don't blame the "Thai mentality", blame the poverty and the desperation.

I need bank statement which shows every detail from where my funds are coming from or from which bank. I talk to my bank (Krungsri) and they are very reluctant to do and they said they cannot track any transaction older than 6 months. Is this true? Doesnt bank keep all their records how and where money is remitted? Is nt it a requirement by Law? I suppose they need to audit every year and they must have all the records. What options do I have , please give suggestions

By Krungsri, I presume you mean Bank of Ayudhya. Have you considered registering for Internet banking with them? That might give you the info. you need.

http://www.krungsri.com/eng/index.htm

And it is called a 'Swift' transfer and I was asked by Nationwide in branch to go and get two forms of photo ID before they would effect the transfer ( even though I have account and flex card etc.!), so be warned.

This surprises me. If you're registered for Internet banking with them, you simply print off a form from the web, then post it to them.

If you want to fax the form to them, you need to notify them in advance, and send a copy of your passport or UK driving licence.

Of course, if the amount is small, you can simply withdraw the cash using your Nationwide debit card - best exchange rate and no charges.

Anyone know if Thai is available on any of the linux distro's/

I use Mandrake and Suse 10.0, or is there some way of a rpm to switch desktops between

Thai and English?

http://linux.thai.net/

For Gmail, the easiest way is to use the autoconfiguration tool, available from http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer....3276&topic=1555

Just delete the account you've already set up in Outlook Express, then run the tool. Simple.

Apparently, one can simply deposit 3M Baht with Krung Thai bank and get a one year visa. I'm currently on a non-Imm B visa, and am thinking of giving up work and getting one of these. It seems too easy. Are there any drawbacks?

And has anyone actually done this?

Secondly, I think I am right in saying that under the terms of the double taxation agreement between Thailand and the UK, your UK pension is not exempt from UK tax. As above, you can offset your personal tax allowance against your pensionable income to minimise your tax liability. As your pension is taxed in the UK you should not pay tax in Thailand.

This is wrong. The UK/Thailand agreement gives full relief for government pensions (i.e. pensions paid to former government employees), but not for the state pension (i.e. the "normal" one), or private pensions. (See http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cnr/dtdigest.pdf, page 20.) In other words, one's state and private pensions will definitely be taxed by the UK, and are (at least in theory) taxable in Thailand, too.

I'd also recommend a visit to the Museum at Ayuttaya. Remove your shoes before entering. It's worth a visit. I can't remember if cameras are allowed or not.

Actually, there are quite a few museums in Ayutthaya. There's the Chao Sam Phraya National Museum on Thanon Rotchana. It's got a nice selection of old statues and some gold artefacts, as well as a small display of items from daily life in the old days.

Then there's the Chantharakasem National Museum in the north east of the island. It's an old, 17th century palace with more old statues and a few historical displays. The exhibits are a little dusty, but the building itself is interesting.

The Ayutthaya Historical Study Center has two buildings (Thanon Rotchana and near Wat Phananchoeng) with high tech exhibits covering the city's history.

There's the Thai Boat Museum, with model boats made by a former boatmaker. It's between Thanon Horattanachai Road and Thanon Bang-Eant, not far from Wat Mahathat.

All are worth a visit if you've got the time.

Is NAV free now ???

Yes, at least a trial for 6 months. Great!

Hmmm. They give you 6 months free, then hope you're too stupid/lazy to switch to a free option such as AVG from Grisoft www.grisoft.com.

As for Google Pack - it adds up to an almost 100 MB download - totally pointless for those of us living in the sticks without access to ADSL.

(Good selection of programs, though - apart from Norton.)

You need to configure your PC to allow incoming connections as used by Limewire. Exactly how you do this depends upon the kind of firewall you have.

If you are on a college/university network, the firewall is centrally managed, and it's highly unlikely they will open the firewall to let you download music. Bandwidth isn't free.

If it's your own PC, you are probably running a software firewall. How to allow specific programs to receive incoming connections varies according to the particular firewall software running.

If you're running the Windows XP firewall, you need to do the following:

(1) Click Start --> Settings --> Control Panel --> Windows Firewall

(2) Click on the Exceptions tab

(3) Click on the "Add Program" button

(4) Select Limewire from the list of programs and click OK.

Contact a travel agent. They often have surprisingly good prices on offer. If you want to arrange it all through the Internet, these guys are good: http://www.dtctravel.com/

I have the necessary funds in a Thai bank which I have had for 8 years. Is showing this bank account sufficient or do I have to show anything else?

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The 800,000 baht must have come into your bank from outside Thailand. If this isn't the case, of course, you can wire the money out of the country, then wire it back in into a different bank account.

See http://www.thaivisa.com/318.0.html for the visa requirements in detail.

3% duty + 7% VAT

PUBLIC HAS BEEN WARNED OF A NEW CULT SAYING ALIENS MADE MAN

Culture Minister URAIWAN THIENTONG (อุไรวรรณ เทียนทอง) said the Ministry of Culture will keep a close eye on RA ALIEN (ราเอลเลี่ยน) Cult, while insisting that the authority will certainly not endorse such ideology.

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Surely the cult concerned isn't RA ALIEN, but the Raelian religious cult. They have a website http://www.rael.org/index.php?elan=English which explains their views (though it appears to being blocked). The Wayback Machine has copies of their site, though: English and Thai.

You can read the Wikipedia write up on them here

All is explained at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking

Is anyone paying contributions towards their UK pension whilst working in Thailand?

How much is it?

I have only paid about 5 years worth when I was working in the UK, before and after I went to University.

Can anyone advise me if this is a good idea? I think I will be in Thailand for the rest of my life.

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(1) For you to get any state pension you have to have made a minimum of 11 years' National Insurance contributions.

(2) Pensioners living in the UK get an annual increase based on inflation, but if you are living in Thailand there is no increase; the value of your pension will quickly erode.

Putting these two facts together, and given your circumstances, making additional NI contributions is not a good way forward. Find a different way for saving towards your retirement, such as a range of unit trusts.

The easiest way to block a site is to modify your PC's HOSTS file. Look in the following directory according to your PC's operating system. The file is called "HOSTS" (no file extension)

Windows XP: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\

Windows 2K: C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC

Win 98\ME: C:\WINDOWS

Now open the file using Notepad. Add the following lines:

127.0.0.1 myspace.com

127.0.0.1 www.myspace.com

Save the file, then reboot your PC. Any attempt to access myspace.com will then be blocked.