IMA_FARANG

Kill the bastards now.,

Now the bastards now.

immobilre

2 minutes ago, Bobobirdiebuddy said:

What a surprise.  You'd think the murder of a fellow police officer would make this trivial requirement moot but as we have found out, often the death of a cop doesn't do much to those in the hierarchy of the police.  Just remember the Twenty Club incident.

You are following the 20th century club'

Thank god for that.

If this is a real force investigation this is a real message.

If it is not real then it is  not real

Only we will need to know the truth.

Quote

Those filthy crappy smokingrooms should be on more pictures, how can you put quality tourists in dirty stinkholes like that?

Smoking permitted rooms in the airport are voluntary.

No one is forced to go there unless they wish to have a cigarette.

As a non smoker I have never been in those closed off rooms in the airport

Overstay and failure to do 90 day reports are two different things.

Actual overstay is not leaving Thailand when your visa has expired and the fine for that can be 500 Baht per day, usually up to a 20K Baht maximum and a person may be banned from re-entering Thailand for actual overstay depending on how long the overstay is.

Not reporting for 90 day reports if required Is a different situation from actual overstay and may result in a fine of 200 Baht a day for non reporting, usually up to a 2000 Baht maximum but possibly a fine of 5000 Baht may be made if the failure to report is determined to be deliberate and repeated.

As far as I know, and I may be wrong, no one has ever been deported for failure to do required 90 day reporting.

That is the difference between actual overstay and failure to do 90 day reporting.

I did not answer this survey, because there was only a NO answer Thailand is not safe or a YES answer, Thailand is very safe.

Both of those answers are not completely correct.

In my case I first came to Thailand in 1977,  visiting it again at least once every year, and Thailand has been my chosen home for the last 5 years as a retirement home.

I am not blind, and I do know the dangers of living in Thailand.

But I also have made a home here and like it here.

I am a U.S. citizen, and have lived and worked all over the world in my time, and I will just say that Thailand is safer than some other countries I have lived in, but then perhaps not as safe to live in as some of the countries where I lived and worked in my time.

So that is my answer.

On ‎7‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 6:48 PM, darksidedog said:

I am yet to meet a local Government school teacher who can actually speak good English, or a non farang student from a Government school that can either. Lowering the criteria is not going to improve the situation. The best teachers of any language are of course native speakers, but schools here are not prepared to either pay for them, or give the work permits. Thailand is not investing properly in their children's future, unlike Cambodia, where the kids even at 10, speak English well.

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I understand what you say, especially about Government officials.

But that is not the only group that speaks English in Thailand.

3 months ago I had an accident and broke my left arm.

I was forced to hire a local nurse to help take care of me do the things I could not do as my broken arm was in a cast.

I later had to have an operation in a Thai hospital to reset my dislocated bone in my arm and needed to recuperate for 3 months after that operation.

The Thai woman I hired to take care of me supposedly spoke little English by the agency I hired her from.

In the 3 months she has been taking care of me her supposedly limited English skills have blossomed dramatically, sometimes she understands to well what I say in English.

One time I was typing something on my computer and made a mistake accidentally erasing some text.

I swore at the computer.

She heard me swear at the computer and  said to me in perfect English, "Why you  cuss your computer. Not your computer's mistake. You make mistake not your computer".

She was right, but until then I didn't even know she knew the English word cuss,  much less how to use it in a sentence properly.

Just so you know.

I live in Bangkok with a 3 month rental contract for which I pay roughly about 18K Thai baht monthly.

I have a monthly retirement/old age pension from the U.S.

I won't go into the actual details of the  rental contract but as I said I pay monthly and get a stamped receipt  for that monthly payment.

I have a rental flat in Bangkok with a cable television system. weekly maid and laundry service, a restaurant downstairs where I can get meals, and a small store where I can buy certain things I need including Booze if I want to.

I keep these monthly bills, and have used them at immigration when the question, "Where do you live, and how do you support yourself in Thailand?" is asked of me.

Let's just say I am a retiree from The U.S. and have a U.S. Social Security pension monthly from the U.S.

I won't bore you with the details, let's just say I have been living here for over a year since I found this place here in Bangkok.

Let's just say it is completely legal and accepted by immigration as I have an annual retirement visa that I renew yearly.

Just so you know, it IS possible and legal and CAN be done.

Every country in the world, long before digital computers were even imagined, has used some method of trying to influence the population of another country to do what the first country wanted the 2nd country to do.

Sometimes these attempts worked sometimes they didn't work.

These days it is just that the means to influence another country is automated through computer and "social networks" such as Facebook and Twitter.

I f you go back in history you will see the evidence of an ORGANIZED effort by the Nazi  propaganda machine to convince Britain  and the U.S. of the Jewish conspiracy directed against those two countries.

Nothing new, I can remember in the late 1950's a person telling me that the then Soviet Union was organizing a planned military invasion of the U.S.

He was a member of  the  "John Birch  Society".

Look it up on the internet if you don't know what I am talking about.

If you have the money in the bank in Thailand your passbook will show where the funds came from.

In Bangkok Bank the code FFT  or sometimes FTT indicates a Foreign Funds Transfer into Thailand.

This code is printed by the computer next to the bankbook date and amount of funds.

Many of the people working in immigration know that, which is why  they may ask to see your bank passbook and perhaps photocopy its pages to submit with your  initial retirement application.

I've had this done to me before.

No that is no longer true. at least for many nationalities.

It once was some years back, but the law has no been  changed

Not all airlines know that, however, and some will still tell you he old law still applies.

However, some of the nearby South East Asian countries do still have such a requirement, so You may find that going to one of them from Thailand cause problems.

This often comes op when  crossing a land border to one of those neighboring countries.

I was once told by a clerk at the check in booth for a flight to Malaysia that , although I was still only 7 month away from my passport expiration date and therefore I was still legal for a free Malaysian entry stamp.

But Malaysia required a 6 month passport for entry so  I was close to the limit.

So when I returned to Thailand from Malaysia I went to the U.S. embassy in Bangkok and applied for a new U.S. passport to avoid any problems in the future.

I basically quit drinking in 1977.

I was having some personal problems then and I was here in Bangkok.

I was walking down the street one morning after a night of boozing and I thought the sidewalk was tilted .

Then I suddenly realized it wasn't the sidewalk. it was me.

I was 31 years old then, and I decided if I wanted to live to an old age, I had better stop drinking so much.

I still will drink a beer, I think the last time was over a month ago, so I am not a total non drinker.

But as I said above I was 31 then when I quit drinking heavily, and I am coming up to my 71st birthday in two months.

Whatever.

This is old news from 2016.

This is mid 2017 now, and the Baht is , in my opinion, benefiting from the decline in the dollar especially Donald  Dumbo Trump in the U.S.

A year ago the U.S. dollar was up above 35 Baht to a dollar.

Just got my U.S. pension for July 2017 and the  Dollar/baht rate was down blow 34 baht to a Dollar. (33.83)

The markets hate uncertainty and Donald Dumbo Trump scares them.

Frankly, he scares me also.

Being a Thai musician is not a automatic good thing

I know for a fact as my Thai girlfriends son was a drummer and a good guitar player besides.

He appeared in the past with certain Thai groups, some of which were quite successful.

However when he reached his forties he was to old to appeal to the young Thai girls that follow Thai pop music.

He had some gigs with well known Thai pop groups but by his 45th year he was told that he was just to old to be popular with the young Thai female fans.

iI I told you the name of some of the groups he played with, and you knew Thai pop music you would be amazed.

The Thai music scene and groups even if successful are a young man's game and by your 40's you are getting to "old".

And it is worse for females, even a good and successful female singer can often not  hold on to her fans in her 40's.

It is definitely a young man "s or woman's game.

Been there, seen it, and collected the T-shirt as the saying goes.

I am living in a rented flat near Fortune Mall on DinDaerng  Asoke. Road

Just paid my monthly  bill  for June and it came to slightly over 20K.

That includes

• Rent and furniture
• Cable Television with flat screen and 60 channels
• Electricity (air conditioning and such)
• Laundry downstairs (40 pieces of Laundry free a month)
• Once weekly  maid room cleaning service free
• Small  store downstairs where you can buy snack items and Booze if you want it.
• Restaurant where you can get meals (local Thai, Chinese, and international breakfast)
• 24 hour internet (30 days for 430 baht monthly)
• Friendly people and staff
• Tuk Tuk service free to Fortune Mall and BTS/MRT

I am not complaining here.

Good friendly and clean place to live

There was an old law years ago that as a legal foreign retiree you were supposedly allowed to bring into country certain personal items "free from duty or Vat" if you retired into Thailand.

I head about this so-called "law" back in the late 1990s years ago.

That was back when I first started thinking about "retiring in Thailand" and I remember it being in my "planning" for retirement

However there have been at least two military  coups since that time and  new governments installed and I have never heard any more info on that subject.

As I said I heard back then that you might be allowed to bring in one shipment of personal household items as a retiree duty free when you came to Thailand to retire here.

But that was years ago and as far as I know that law has long gone since that time with the change in governments in Thailand.

I believe that is "old info" and now longer valid.

No I never suggested you could use a re-entry permit to avoid the required Thai exit stamps and the required other country entry stamps.

All I wanted to point out that if you already have a valid visa/extension in your passport you can return to Thailand and NOT lose your valid visa extension.

For example if I have a single entry tourist visa .(SETV) in my passport and a 30 day extension on that SETV the re-3ntry permit I buy can let me leave Thailand and still keep that SETV from being canceled automatically when I leave Thailand.

That is what the re-entry permit does, it keeps your current visa and extension valid when you exit Thailand  and want to return to Thailand after a short rip out of the country.

as an example if I get a SETV and enter Thailand with a 60 day entry stamp, I may then go to immigration and extend that 60 day entry stamp for 30 days more, giving me a total of 90 days (60 days entry stamp PLUS a added extension of 30 days)

Now if on day 80 of that 90 days I decide to take a short trip of 5 days to, for example Laos, the re-entry permit allows me to travel to Laos and return within that 90 day period.

I enter that reentry permit number on my entry card and the re-entry permit keeps the rest of that 90 day SETV visa and extension.

All I wanted to stress in my original posting is that a re-entry permit allows me to NOT automatically have my SETV cancelled when I leave Thailand. as long as I return within the period for which my re-entry permit is valid.

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear in my other posting, but the above is what I intended to say.

I have done this myself and I know it is quite possible and legal.

I would recommend however re-entering Thailand by AIR if you try this as the international airport immigrations has dealt with such things before and LAND borders are generally less experienced than international airport immigrations and therefore you are more likely to have problems with land border crossings.

Seriously, I have been there before an done it.

As has been said to re-enter Thailand you will need to show a arrival stamp/visa in the neighboring country in your passport.

On exiting Thailand , you will get a Thai exit stamp. entering another country such as Malaysia you will get an entrance stamp for that country.

When you leave that country you will get their exit stamp, and reentering Thailand you need to get a Thai entry stamp.

To be legal, you need to leave Thailand and enter another country, and leaving that country you need tor reverse the process.

The only exception to hat is if you have a current  extension to our visa AND you purchase  a re-entry permit to keep that extension valid.

It's not "rocket science:", you have to go out of the door legally, before you can come back in that same door.

It may have indeed happened.

However my monthly pension arrived on 4 July from the U.S.

I watched them run a wad of 1000 Baht bills through the Led counter and when they handed me the money they counted it out right in front of me.

I also saw the counting machine and was able to verify the count on the Led tally.

This was at Bangkok Bank at the branch in Fortune Mall,

The correct amount of "incoming foreign  funds" was printed in my bank passbook by the computer printout which I checked PRIOR to me leaving the teller's counter.

I understand their anger, but in the same week Thai people were killed by silly and thoughtless road accidents.

I love dogs to, but doesn't a human being also deserve sympathy?

Foolish and careless drivers kill innocent people every day on Thai roads.

Let us deal with  that problem first.

20 hours ago, Upnotover said:

1. get a police report.

2. get it translated.

3. apply for a new passport.

_____________________________

I now see you say you are a U.K. national.

As I said I am a U.S. national who "lost" my passport about 3 months ago.

However, except for the U.S. embassy  the information above is the same.

I as a U.S. citizen also was given a one year temporary passport from the U.S. embassy as my bank passbook was "lost" at the same time.

Not sure if that is possible for a U.K. passport or not.

For me it was a requirement  to let me access the money in my Bangkok Bank account

Needed that temporary passport to prove my identity to the bank.

Remember you will need access to any money you have in a Thai bank to pay for your new passport.

That is why when you apply they will give you a new one year temporary passport.

At least the U.S. embassy will.

However, when I filed a police report, for me there was no need of translation.

The U.S embassy accepted he signed and stamped police report and gave it to me free of charge.

Of course I had to pay the usual fee when applying for a new permanent passport.

In my case I picked the new passport up at the U.S. embassy in Bangkok only 7 days after my application was made.

That may not be the case for you, but it was a great relief to me at the time.

Good Morning indeed.

But wasn't something missing in this post?

Never mind, it has also happened to me before.

Nice to hear some good news about the U.K. and getting a Thai passport renewed.

Seems you knew what you wanted to do and got t done.

Good for you.

But more importantly is your visa to stay in Thailand still valid AFTER you are divorced from your wife or do you actually have a yearly extension of your current visa based upon your marriage to a Thai.

By which I mean, is your marriage visa still valid or is it really a yearly extension based on your  marriage to a Thai.

If your original visa has expired (is out of date) but it has been extended by reason of your marriage to a Thai each year you may be in for a rude shock if you divorce your wife as the reason for your yearly extension of that visa may end with your divorce.

You have to be very careful here  that you still have a legal reason to stay in Thailand, a valid current visa that allows you to stay in Thailand after your divorce is made final.

Ask your Thai lawyer abut this.

I am NOT an expert on this subject, ask some one  who is.