curious297

I was curious do I did some checking. So the maximum fine for:

Drink and driving after 3rd count is 100K THB

Punch someone then 4K THB.

but drive your car on the beach and it’s 500K THB fine. 
Crazy that I see the jet ski towing cars drive up on the same beach everyday and what then… 

You couldn’t make this up!! 

5 hours ago, JensenZ said:

Whoever writes these reports - it would be appreciated if you could reduce your use of adjectives and adverbs. It is unnecessary. You're reporting news, not writing a novel. 

 

 

They overkilled the article  using ChatGPT to rewrite it in the style of Jordan Peterson

I have watched with my own eyes how checkpoint police will let thais go for traffic infractions like no insurance, helmet, etc yet a foreigner is always charges the maximum fine for any infraction. The minimum / maximum penalty charges are just biased against foreigners and a joke. Make each penalty 1 charge. Why is it left to the police to decide the level of the penalty just adds to the already existing corruption?

Years ago, I passed a policeman standing on the side of the road. 1 minute later I was pulled over at a police checkpoint. I was accused and charged for speeding 2KM over the speed limit on a major highway just outside of Phuket yet other cars were overtaking me at much higher speeds. The police showed me their radar gun but when I asked for proof it referred to my car, like a kid having a tantrum, this is when the sour face and shouting starts to appear. For the sake of my time and his negativity, I just paid the fine. They gave me a receipt and I went on my way.

6 Months later I go to renew my tax disc where I was informed that I had an outstanding speeding fine logged against my registration plate. I disputed the charge so they asked me for the receipt!! I explained it was over 6 months ago and as i had paid on the road side and i didn't think I needed to keep the receipt for 6 months. Again out comes the sour face and the "Pay or I am not talking with you" attitude with no further discussion. In this case, I ended up paying twice as they were holding my new tax disc hostage until I paid the fine as I could not prove i had paid the fine previously.  

Now, I saw that the new penalty for running a red light is now 4,000 THB, what a killing the police could make if they did their job. Stand next to the traffic lights and charge those pesky bikes that run the red lights, they would make millions. Do they not do this as it is probably in the high 90'% these red light runners are thai's?  The fact that these runners do it in front of an occupied police box amazes me still. It is a clear money grab that us foreigners stand no chance. 

Don't get me started with the land office and their tea money.....

The fact that in Thailand you will be sued for deformation if you mention the company that allows these scammy barstands to continue in their wicked ways. No real protection for the consumer when Thailand has this policy. 

I was in the market looking for a newer GPU. I was on one of Aisa's biggest online market places when I saw what I wanted. The thing is, you could clearly see which vendors were attempting to fraud you as:

1. The shop name was just a jumble of letters with no past history of sales or comments.

2. In most cases, they had only the one item for sale.

3. The product page only had the one picture of the GPU and had no real product information unlike the genuine vendors on the same site with the same product.

4. In thai language, they would offer you a discount if you contacted them direct when ordering offsite via the Line app. 

5. When contacting the vendor they would either not answer or sent you their line ID to get you off the main platform and get you to send money direct to their bank account.

6. The item is far cheaper than the real identical product on the same platform.

I actually made a list of these scammy vendors and informed the online shopping platform of these scam stores on their platform. The stores were removed in a few days only to pop up again under another store name, same product and with the same line ID!!

This was over a year ago and still these stores pop up every day on the online shopping platform. 

I asked the shoping platform that if their chat can block / filter out  telephone numbers, emails, etc, why cant they do the same with line ID's in both their chat and within the product description,? I received no answer. 

It's as if these online shopping companies don't give a damn if vendors fraud their customers as long as they keep getting their sales commissions even if the products are fake or non existent. They also receive the ID's of the scammy vendors when they create their shop so why don't these vendors get reported to the police for fraud?

For fun, i  ordered a GPU for 20K via cash on delivery. The order went though but as always, it was stuck on the item waiting to be shipped. This went on for about 7 days before the online shopping platform (that has 3 syllables which we cannot mention), cancelled my order on behalf of the scammy vendor. This allows the vendor to continue scamming customers without any fear of being stopped. 

Please, do your due diligence and NEVER pay for anything outside of the shopping platforms payment system as this is the only way you have any recourse to get your money back.

22 hours ago, Robin said:

How many of the critics he could make  better job of bus route signs in Thai for their home cities.

At least Thailand is trying to be helpful

However, the difference is, E.G. an English person is more likely to Google it then check, send translation to management, check, maybe find a Local Thai and double check. 

We have all been to those restaurants that the food smells so good but the menu will bring you a smile by offering Frenhc Freis, <deleted> fried rice, side salda or the Weakly spechal,  lamp roast - Loverrrly!!

Most every mobile phone, computer has access to a spelling checker which will underline the confusing english words and in most cases will offer suggestions.  In my many years living here, I have to say that more and more thais are speaking english. Hopefully it will be less confusing as time goes on.

As a previous poster said, my Thai is worst than most thai's english so I don't complain. I just get out google translate and the world is right again ????

I think He was trying to copy this guy ????

A guy once swapped a paper clip to get a house

24 minutes ago, Stoker58 said:

 Remember those videos of people dropping dead in the street in China from “Covid 19”?

 Do you still believe they were real?

This was 25th January 2020 - Remember this, still seems real now? 

Disturbing videos have emerged purporting to show people collapsing in the streets of the Chinese city at the centre of the new coronavirus outbreak. 

https://videos.dailymail.co.uk/preview/mol/2020/01/24/2255681910686892688/636x382_MP4_2255681910686892688.mp4

Bought my Fist computer, a ZX spectrum 48K from Woolworths for 130 GBP with the rubber keyboard, kempston programable joystick and an Opus 3.5" Disk drive. It took 5 seconds to load a game Vs tape loading which we all knew you could make a cup a tea and drink it before the game was loaded if it loaded at all.  We used to buy crash magazine and check out the poke and peek pages for gaming cheats and level helpers.  This was the start of the home gaming revolution after the nintendo game boy and other such hand held cartridge gaming which was a total contrast against the Atari. Then the commodore 64 arrived. Suddenly it was spectrum vs commodore 64. Which one did you choose?

Commodore 64 vs ZX Spectrum - The Great British Computer War

35 minutes ago, FritsSikkink said:

You don't pay the rent, you are out. What does your contract say about this.

All Bills had been paid in full however, they ask for more utility deposits over and beyond what is in our agreement. When we were late to pay these extra deposits, they sent a man to lock the doors with customers inside the premises.

Due to defamation laws, I am unable to go into full details however, there is a business located in a popular location in Thailand that has been running for many years. In January the business had cleared all debts until the government made yet another lockdown causing the business to run into financial difficulties due to the covid situation. The landlord has continually locked our doors (10+ times this year alone and more than this last year) with their own padlock and turning off the electric to the building in an attempt to get us to pay all outstanding bills + demanding additional deposits on top of what is listed in our lease agreement. Just recently, even though we managed to pay all outstanding arrears, the landlord has:

1. Landlords have added their own bracket and padlock to our doors and demanding a post dated cheque to cover the dept of additional deposits (not arrears) which they are requested above what is listed on our lease. We explained that we there was not enough funds in our account to write this cheque however, they still demanded it. Without the cheque, they insisted they would not reopen our doors and we would have to close the business for good. As the landlord already put their own personal lock on our business doors , we had to ask the landlord to give us access to our own business to take our cheque book from the company safe which, they did then promptly locked our doors behind us.

2. The landlord is demanding more money as additional security deposits (taking our paid deposits to around 1 million THB) which heavily effects our cash flow and ability to pay future bills and salaries etc.

3, Landlord recently had their maintenance man again outside our open business ready to close and padlock our doors (4pm) even though they knew we had paying customers on the premises. We have pictures / CCTV and time lines of the landlords actions.

4. The landlord asks us for our payment schedule for an outstanding balance. We state we need e.g. 2 weeks to clear the balance so they only give us 1 week or less then return and lock and barrier our business doors again.

5. The landlord even locks our doors and turns off electric at night so when staff and customers arrive the next morning, we have no access to our building. They will only open their lock and remove their barrier on receipt of more money.

6. The landlord keeps their big red and white, 2 metre x 1.5 metre no entry barrier right next to our business in anticipation for their next door lock.

7. It takes us days / weeks to recover every time they lock our doors as customers think we have closed / gone out of business.

8. The landlords have not giving us receipts for or paid deposits even though we have requested this from them.

9. We have expressed that by locking down the business, they are stopping us from making revenue to pay the outstanding balances. In this latest case, the landlord demands money for additional security deposits as all arrears are paid in full.

My questions are:

1.  What is the legality of what the landlord is doing?
2.  How much deposits can a landlord demand proportionally to the rental and utility costs of the commercial business?
3.  Are there any legal regulations under Covid for business operations under this time of force majeure?

There is much more to this story however, understanding the "TLDR - Too Long Didn't Read" crowd, I'm keeping to the main points.

13 hours ago, jobsworth said:

NGO's are often mentally handicapped beggars. I would never attack one of them but they are very provocative and do engage in low level assault.

This story might not be as it appears. it could be a genuine case of self defense. Are we not allowed to defend ourselves?

The NGO I met yesterday had only one leg but still managed to be aggressive.

 

Yes there could be 2 sides of this story but lets take what we see from the video. The man was already down! Around 10 kicks  and stomps to the head and body with at least 4 kicks including to the head once he was unconscious. Please explain at which part of the video does it become self defence? 

and there was me thinking that the vegetarian festival was the local witch doctors annual convention........ 

Yes but it's not Gangster unless you are carrying it yourself ????

1 hour ago, Kwasaki said:

I really don't understand people wanting to take cannabis other sick people, that is my view and my opinion. 

In England we called people who took it for just getting high smack heads. 

It's not really about the  money, it's more about the principle of the taxi service offered. I normally give a handsome tip based on a few factors.

1. Driver talks some English / Good attitude

2.  Clean taxi

3. Offers to help with the luggage

4. Drives direct to my destination without the run around

5. Uses the meter.

6. If he is decent, I will take his number and offer first refusal for my return trip.

So now I guess I'll just use the tip to cover any baggage cost - Simple.

By the way, is this really only for airport baggage or will this spill over to shopping bags etc outside from the airport? 

Cant wait for the BS to start
 

On 10/16/2020 at 5:41 PM, snoop1130 said:

"Their failure to act was unacceptable and affected hundreds of thousands of people, which may have caused some anxiety and distress as a result," the ICO said.

So who get's a share of the 20 Million penalty as it won't be these guys!! Ever wonder where this money goes, how it us used because God knows the people will pay more taxes next year!

From what I understand, it all started when Covid arrived and the Ice arena had to continue running the Ice machine otherwise it would be one large swimming pool. The biggest problem are the rink barriers which the ice supports in place. These would collapse, making it very difficult to refreeze them in position on the ice.  Then of course all recreation on the island was halted due to social distancing etc. They still had to cover rent and electricity etc. Now with the economic downturn, people just don't have that much disposable income.

It seems Thais are one of their biggest customers. I've seen young Thai figure skaters practicing their jumps and spins. Was at one of their first 4 days ice hockey tournaments. That place was packed with hundreds of thais from all over thailand. I think there were 20+ teams, many from all over S.E. Asia. Im not into ice hockey myself, I was passing to villa mart and was curious about the huge crowd of thais outside the venue and to went to take a look. 

Personally I think it is an ideal place to take the kids for something to do on an island where there are few safe places for the young to have fun in a safe, friendly environment especially if you want to dump the kids and go shopping or chill in the warm  upstairs restaurant while watching the kids.

I like the idea they have no dual pricing unlike many venues in Phuket. I recall my non thai son going out with his thai school friends to a "Water Park" and having to pay double price compared to is thai friends. How fair is that?

I understand their prices include all skate, helmet hire and there is no entrance fee which makes it a great deal. We follow them on facebook so are informed of any upcoming activities and special offers. 

I used to take my son to their Saturday night "Disco on ice" parties which looked a lot of fun.

Personally, I think it is a great community place for all. If you have not been, then at least take a look.

14 hours ago, bannork said:

'The Harder They Come' was a great song.

I believe it was Jimmy Cliff that sang "The harder they come" from the film with the same name. Jimmy Cliff did do a cover version of "I Can See Clearly Now" for the film, Cool Runnings (1993) - The fist Jamaican Bobsleigh team staring John Candy who unfortunately passed away in 1994, just after filming.

Wooden penis in Princess cave (Phra Nang Shrine Temple). South Railay beach in Krabi. Thailand

Anyone got a match?

4 hours ago, Misterwhisper said:

And Bill never came, let alone settled and invested here. Nor did Tiger Woods, another "Elite Card" laureate courtesy of the "Square Faced One". Bummer.

Oh he did come however, Thailand didn't like what he had to say:

4 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

Considering all this, why exactly don't you have a work permit? 

Curious wrote:
 

"Immigration know I have lived here for almost 20 years. Myself and immigration have a full history of my yearly visas, work permit renewals, 90 day re-entry visa stamps etc, yet I am still just a tourist."

I mentioned at least 4 times my Non B Visa

Foreigners who intend to work in Thailand should apply for an initial 90-Day Non-Immigrant B visa from their home country under employment category. ... 90-day reporting to any Thai Immigration Office is required to the visa holder under this category.

Please pay attention in class, thank you ????