Swiss1960

"The water has to be released en masse otherwise the dams would have been broken apart."

Has anyone answered this question yet, if so I missed it. Why does, "the water has to be released en masse otherwise the dams would have been broken apart."

This is my 5 cents to this question which I have posted:

So let's assume a dam or an embarkment is built to resist two weeks of high rain and completely filled up lakes or rivers... the dams and embarkments would hold that... but here we talk about 2 months of this situation... look what happened in New Orleans with the dams... you can not build security margins for worst worst worst worst case scenarios... nobody will pay for that...

Once you are in that situation (embankments filled to capacity for too long and getting weak and weaker), there is no more controlled (slow) water release possible but the urgent need to get out as much water in as short time as possible

I'm betting that on this one, the women say it is cheating and the men say its not.

Let's see how it goes.

I'm a woman and I would say it is cheating.

I am a man and I say it is cheating IF there is not a mutual agreement between the partners that both of them can (and want tp) have their online flirts.

It will get problematic, if one partner wants to flirt online and the other agrees for the sake of the relationship but doe not really like it...

It is definitely cheating if one partner does it without the knowledge of the other

In any case, I think it is dangerous for every relation, as online flirting can evolve and end in more serious actions like meeting and .... - that is why personally, i will never do any online flirts while in a relation and would never accept my GF doing it.

Sorry to hear what happened to you, but look at this:

your MAIN problems are

- your passport - it is with the bike rental agency as you write, so you go to the Thai police without any ID... which might be an issue.

- Assuming you don't find your bike as it was also stolen (not only the key), you will not get your passport back from the rental agency until you paid them for a new bike... which you can't before you have money...

- you can't get money as you have no passport and yes, WU requires an ID

Therefore I would suggest to take your friends with you to the police station (they have an ID and can guarantee to the police that you are who you are) and then have the money sent to your friend to pick up for you, as you might not get your passport back from the rental agency without paying them for the loss of the bike...

hi hi... you made my morning with your post you seem to understand how not to get into fights with your GF...

But it's different for banks... first they get interest on the money they lend... when they have to write it off, they write it if off their profit over 3-5 years and hence pay less taxes... so the government has less income and might (will) raise taxes... so at the end of the day it is you and me who pay for the losses of the banks... so why should the banks care too much?

In short, does this really mean that these dams have been build following a design that doesn't allow them to resist their water content?

I used to believe this is the very idea behind erecting a dam...

In theory, you are right... but not in the current practical situation... every engineer, whether building houses, dams, nuclear plants or embankments, will do a worst case szenario and add this worst case szenario to the security margin + 10-20% on top... normally, it is even requested in some building laws. Of course there is always the question whether those top-up security margins have really been built or just been paid for by the government...

So let's assume a dam or an embarkment is built to resist two weeks of high rain and completely filled up lakes or rivers... the dams and embarkments would hold that... but here we talk about 2 months of this situation... look what happened in New Orleans with the dams... you can not build security margins for worst worst worst worst case scenarios... nobody will pay for that...

The most dangerous situation you will find with natural embankments (stones and earth). After weeks of high water levels, these embankments are completely soaking wet and get weaker every day... till you either release the water or they will break.

Google broken dams... you find articles from all over Europe, this is not specific to Thailand... we just had such situations in Switzerland few weeks ago...

The problem, more for Pattaya than resorts further south, could be where these tourists are going to stay. One of the Pattaya newspapers today already stated that hotels in Pattaya were full, if the impact of the floods are going to mean ppl can't return to their homes for a number of weeks there could well be a problem when things get busier.

You are right that such a situation would cause problems - but I think it will not be the problem for the tourists arriving but for the people who had to flee from BKK. I think that at the end of the day, the hotels will rather honour the (mostly pre-paid) bookings of the tourists coming and will "remove" the people from BKK from their hotels if necessary. As mentioned, hotels know that tourist will spend more money (not only but also) on the hotel's premisise (bar, restaurant, laundry etc.) than the people fleeing from BKK will do...

For the hotels, it's business... they want the tourists to come back to their hotel next time, and tourists would not come back if their current booking would not be honoured.

Can confirm this. Internet search engines show increased prices, some hotels have decided "now it's time for high season rates..:" Number of available rooms and hotels is going down very fast.

My girl friend confirms that going to work takes much more time now (i.e. Baht bus from Jomtien to Central) as traffic is absolutely crazy. She says situation is like on long-holiday weekends... middle of the week...

Friend of mine who owns Thai massage shops confirms city is full and she tells me it looks like her best ever low-season month... she just hired 10 more staff last weekend and is looking for another 10 for the coming days, normally she needs that staffing level only starting middle of November

Just did a search for rooms for the coming weekend... not many rooms left... Dusit Thani (which really can't be rated to be cheap...) is already full...

I also remember another friend of mine being refused entry to a Middle Eastern country as they had previously visited Israel, ( I can't remember which country ). On top of that a female ex flatmate was detained for two days in Chicago as she had previously visited Colombia.

Many countries in Europe allow you to have two passports to omit such situations... was mainly used during the cold war for business travelers who needed to travel between the US of A and the Evil Satan USSR.... one passport was always at the government passport office and you could just drop by and exchange the passports when needed.

The point is, your passport is your most precious possession when traveling, and what's on it, or in it, can have serious consequences.

Absolutely agree, just add "... or not in it..." to cover for missing pages

Yes, and here is a simple way to stimulate a comeback.

Current nationalities getting 30 day stamps by air and 15 days by land, give them 90 days!

Duh.

Does not help at all! When I am coming for a holiday, I am coming for a limited amount of days and for that, I will have my Visa. I don't need a prolongation, as the chance of a tourist booking another holiday just based on the fact that he COULD do so based on the Visa prolongation is virtually nill.

Also, tourists who have booked their holidays will come to Thailand as long as they don't have BKK itself as main holiday destination. As long as governments and travel offices dont' recommend rebooking, destinations like Phuket or Pattaya are "safe" to see all tourists that have a booking, even right now. Tourist normally have their hotels booked months before they arrive, so no Thai who now tries to relocate from BKK to what ever place will take rooms away from tourists.

Sorry for the late answer, just seen your questions:

1) I only have the account to quaterly (depending on exchange rate) put cash in (through SWIFT) for my holidays and for later retirement purposes

2) When I opened the account, I did directly get an ATM card (MasterCard Debit Plus) and had to choose the PIN code at the branch. I did not sign up for any phone services, as my Thai phone does not work in Switzerland (it's blocked here)

3) The branch told me that I can not open Internet in their office, I would need to call their call center and they would open it for me. But this is obviously wrong.

4) You can open the e-banking online on https://www.scbeasy....01.aspx?LANG=en

5) You identiy yourself with the ATM card number, the PIn code for the card and your date of birth. Then you add your account number from the passbook, choose your login-ID and password and you are all set within 2 minutes. I did all this when I was back in Switzerland.

6) Now you can add other accounts, make money transfers, add mobile services etc. etc... all of which I don't need now.

Why SCB? Well, it was recommended by Thai friends...

Interesting. Would be nice if all of the banks were that easy to setup. So without having your account linked to a phone, what can you do without phone password access with SCB?

Unfortunately, I can not answer your question as I do not need any other service except view my account. But i am sure there are other people here who will be able to tell you

500 Baht minimum deposit with SCB, 200 Baht for the ATM card plus 2'920 for the accident coverage insurance (gives you 100K for each treatment in hospitals for accidents plus up to 2 Mio for death and disability). No need for mobile, as you can open Internet banking without any verification (all you need is your account number...). All very easy... that is probably why their e-banking site is called scbeasy

Interesting. Can you do anything significant besides view balances/transactions without using a mobile phone for confirmation? Do you have to setup the internet banking in the branch? Or you can do it all online with just the account #?

Sorry for the late answer, just seen your questions:

1) I only have the account to quaterly (depending on exchange rate) put cash in (through SWIFT) for my holidays and for later retirement purposes

2) When I opened the account, I did directly get an ATM card (MasterCard Debit Plus) and had to choose the PIN code at the branch. I did not sign up for any phone services, as my Thai phone does not work in Switzerland (it's blocked here)

3) The branch told me that I can not open Internet in their office, I would need to call their call center and they would open it for me. But this is obviously wrong.

4) You can open the e-banking online on https://www.scbeasy....01.aspx?LANG=en

5) You identiy yourself with the ATM card number, the PIn code for the card and your date of birth. Then you add your account number from the passbook, choose your login-ID and password and you are all set within 2 minutes. I did all this when I was back in Switzerland.

6) Now you can add other accounts, make money transfers, add mobile services etc. etc... all of which I don't need now.

Why SCB? Well, it was recommended by Thai friends...

Thai immigration would not deface another countries passport, it may in fact be illegal.....Swiss immigration would only punch holes through a Swiss passport not another nations passport.....A passport does not belong to an indiviudal, it belongs to a goverment of specific country

What you say is NOT true! Whatever countries immigration office finds an invalid / faked passport, it is their job to make sure that this invalid passport can not be used anymore. Therefore the invalidation by punching holes / cutting off edges or just not returning the passport anymore is standard international procedure!

I will state again Thai immigration will not cut the corner off another countries passport....I will refer you to note 6 in a British passport...I quote....."this passport remains the property of her majestys goverment in the United kingdom and........blah blah...It should not be tampered with......"

Therefore this is a legal goverment document and Thai immigration has absolutely no legal right to tamper with said document....

Again you are wrong. As the passport had a missing page, it obviously was already tampered with. For the Thai immigration, this passport is invalid. The Swiss passport clearly states that fact. Now an invalid, tampered, maybe even fake passport (who knows) is still property of the Britisch government, BUT... and that is important... NO immigration authority will just tell you "sorry, your passport is not valid, here you have it back, please try another country...."

If it would be about an invalid or missing Visa, then I agree with you that invalidating the passport would be illegal by the Thai authorities. BUT again, they did "confiscate" an already illegal and invalidated passport (invalidated through the missing page) and therefore, cutting off the corner just makes it more obvious for the next immigration officer that might be confronted with that passport.

Or shorter: I is not illegal to cut off the corner of an illegal / invalidated passport...

Tell you about Russian women... they are even worse... I had a Russian girlfriend here in Switzerland, she lived here six months when i met her... and I tell you when we discussed Swiss issues... she would never believe ME, but always tell me that "my Russian Girl Friend told me different so you must be wrong..." obviously, that relationship ended soon...

Despite the best efforts of her family to get her out, Ms Salt was told that she would be deported back to Indonesia and jailed there for at least two weeks.

There her family would be expected to pay for a translator and local lawyer.

why would they fly her back there, plus why would she be locked up in that country????? .....

Every airline is responsible to make sure that the documents of their passengers are complete and in order. International agreements (look at IATA) clearly state that immigration has the right to reject a persons entry into their country and the airline flying the passenger in must take the passenger back to the country of origin (in this case it would have been Indonesia).

Whether she would have been jailed there or not would have been up to the Indonesian authorities, but Indonesia might not have let her enter the country again and might have kept her inside the airport until the British government would have given her a new / emergency passport.

So actually, the fact that the Thai authorities let her fly to London (and Britisch Airways did take her on Board) is an exception to standard procedures... she should be happy about that

Sounds like a terrible ordeal.

One oddity is that the picture that the DM claim is her passport has the top right corner of the front cover cut off which I thought meant the passport was invalid???

Passport was already invalid with the missing / torn out page. So Thai immigration probably just cut the corner off in order to make it clear to everybody. Normal procedure, even though Swiss immigration would punch two holes through the passport...

Thai immigration would not deface another countries passport, it may in fact be illegal.....Swiss immigration would only punch holes through a Swiss passport not another nations passport.....A passport does not belong to an indiviudal, it belongs to a goverment of specific country

What you say is NOT true! Whatever countries immigration office finds an invalid / faked passport, it is their job to make sure that this invalid passport can not be used anymore. Therefore the invalidation by punching holes / cutting off edges or just not returning the passport anymore is standard international procedure!

Sounds like a terrible ordeal.

One oddity is that the picture that the DM claim is her passport has the top right corner of the front cover cut off which I thought meant the passport was invalid???

It does...it means the PP has been cancelled/invalid...so if she attempted to enter Thailand on a cancelled passport, one could well understand why immigration pulled her in..

The picture shows indeed her passport was invalid and the missing pages are another reason why the passport was invalid. It serves as a warning not to travel with a damaged passport.

One wanders why her passport was made invalid and by who, and how comes the passport pages where missing. There might be more to this and by the look of her passport, immigration was right t want to question her. That would have happend in any country.

The Passport became invalid / void the second a page was torn out / missing! So this woman tried to enter Thailand illegally! It is only fair to assume that the Thai immigration officer thereafter cut off the corner of the passport to make it fully clear to every other immigration officer that this passport is not valid anymore. Standard procedure all over the world (as far as invalidation of the passport is concerned).

Sounds like a terrible ordeal.

One oddity is that the picture that the DM claim is her passport has the top right corner of the front cover cut off which I thought meant the passport was invalid???

Passport was already invalid with the missing / torn out page. So Thai immigration probably just cut the corner off in order to make it clear to everybody. Normal procedure, even though Swiss immigration would punch two holes through the passport...

Fact:

Passports contain numbered pages. Passports with missing pages are invalid. Therefore, this woman tried to enter Thailand with a void passport. Therefore immigration has every right to take her in for questioning.

Questions:

How can pages of passports be torn out, how can a passport be so badly damaged? I'm travelling a lot and when I had to change my old passport after expiry (10 years), it was still in very good condition.

How can somebody not realize that a page in a passport is missing / torn out? Or if it was realized, how can somebody be so stupid and not know that the passport is now invalid and not immediately contact their nearest Embassy for issuing of a new / emergency passport

Treatment in Thailand

If all is true that she told the press, then welcome to the Thai way... she would have been treated differently i.e. in Switzerland, but in any case would have been sent back either to the country of origin of the flight or to her home country (after validation that she truly is a British citizen).

All in All

not too much to this story, I would say...

So atms working or not? Not really a place for more rumours, there is enough wrong info around as it is.

I withdrew cash this afternoon at Kasikorn ATM - using my Aussie visa card

May I issue a word of caution? ATM's might soon stop working or being stopped working

a) The need energy and as a bank, I would not keep my ATM's turned on when the water is coming... ATM could think he get's attacked and the alarm system would spray colour over all money inside... and of course, the electronic inside is not really waterproof...

The need for cash to leave BKK is so high that ATM's will soon be empty anyway and no bank will put their employees in danger and send them in flooded areas to refill ATM's...

so take out what you can as long as you can!

I have 2500 (2800 short time) Watt beastie and Mr. Chinese shopowner told me 1 Liter 30 min if no or low load and much more if it has full load.

Book tells <=374 g/ps.h and rated power is 3.8 kW/3600 rpm.

I don't know what g/ps.h should be.

PSh is an old energy unit which is not used any more. 1 hph (horespower per hour) = 1.014 PSh = 0,7457 kwh

Actually, 1 hph should be equal to 1 PSH (Pferdestärke (German for horsepower) Hour), but as usual, some very clever (German) academic needed to invent something new and screwed up with the definition and ended with 1 horsepower per hour not being equal to 1 horespower per hour.... That is why use of PSH has been decommissioned.

The problem with this flood situation is that for many people working toilets won't be available. And that is a worrying dangerous situation.

Absolutely true! When the water will finally go down and the sun will be shining, Thailand will have all the mud from the water on the streets and this will be a humid and hot climate... the best breeding climate for all germs and viruses.

That's why I said that this government acts abolutely irresponsible when they send mental health units out instead of medical disease units!

At last somebody telling the people the truth about what they have to expect.... finally ending all the lies that have been told...

I talked with a Thai friend on Skype this morning, she did see the PM on television yesterday evening... was shocked about that performance, the PM must have made stuttering manifestations, not looking into camera but reading from a written script, completely insecure about what to do and say... and of course in major denial of any responsibility...

One wonders whether her brother has such a bad handwriting???

BTW: My Thai friend by now really regrets how she voted in July...

The government said it has set up special mental health units across various provinces and dispatched teams of psychiatrists and psychologists to help almost 100,000 people thought to be suffering from flood-related stress.

Psychiatrists and psychologists??? Those stupid id__ts should rather have hundreds of medical health unists ready to deal with the infectious diseases like cholera that are most likely to occur when the water starts going down...

When you rent a car in Europe, liability insurance is normally included in the rate. Fire and theft insurance may also be included, but it's always a good idea to ask.

What typically isn't included is insurance against collision damage. To protect yourself against having to pay for car repairs (or even a brand-new car) in the event of an accident, you need a Collision Damage Waiver or "CDW." This is available from three sources:

Rental agencies

The rental agent will offer you a Collision Damage Waiver when you pick up your car. In a few countries, such as Italy, you may be required to take the CDW. The cost isn't cheap--typically 10 to 25 euros or U.S. dollars per day--but buying it from the rental-car firm is simple and offers peace of mind. You may also want to inquire about theft insurance, (LDW), which is usually mandatory with Italian car rentals but is optional in most countries.

Credit-card companies

Some credit-card companies provide free collision insurance for rentals charged on their Gold or Platinum cards. Unfortunately, the coverage isn't always as good as it seems, and many card issuers no longer protect overseas travelers or limit their protection to cheaper cars.

Additionally, some credit-card companies limit their CDW coverage to certain car rental agencies with which they have contracts. So you might or might not be able to pay CDW through your credit card as the rental agency does not need to accept your card for coverage.

To make matters worse, you may be required to authorize a deposit on your credit card up to the replacement cost of the vehicle, which isn't very practical if the car's value is more than your credit-card limit. If you get into an accident, you'll normally have to settle up with the rental firm, then seek reimbursement from the credit-card company after you get home. And to add even more to this, on long-term rentals (i.e. more than 10 days), rental agencies know that the credit-card companies will delete the authorized deposit after that period, just to enable their card customer to continue spending and not block his card by the deposit which might never be used.

So if people voted on every post, you would be happy with the answer?

Take a look at best burger/pizza topics: see a trend?

Everybody has different likes. Just because a majority voted for pizza brand A, doesn't mean I have to like it.

You could try doing a poll.

A poll you have to have a number of answers, but maybe you don't know the answers to poll which is exactly why your asking a question. Let's say you asked what language school is good around the ekamai area. how many eroneous answers would you get? Sure the answer with the school that got voted to the top might not be the one you like but you can certainly vote another answer and have it go up. It's about community concensus. Someone who didn't know anything would prefer to go with something that the majority of the community agree with.

I dunno, forget about it.

Your idea might be working with "simple" Q&A threads, where people can agree with the best pizza shop or school or they might not... but it will not work with discussion threads as we see a majority i.e. about politics.

And specially, if you would give the OP the chance to delete posts he does not like, it would be the end of real discussions...