dave111223

Pretty fantastic house, especially for that price. Not really my style, but i'm sure it would be someone's prefect house; especially if you enjoy gardening. Nice pictures on the website; good to see someone doing their property justice with the camera.

I wonder if the price includes all the furniture and design nic-nacs? I can imagine the house would look quite different with all that stuff stripped out.

I've love to live on Koh Chang, especially over on the quieter side, so you can take your motorbike in town if you want some entertainment, or stay at home and relax. I'd be cautious about buying "beach front" land though as i've heard a lot of the deeds are questionable, plus any kind of sea level rise/land erosion and there goes your land...

[...]you must forward that with all the other documents to Hong Kong YOURSELF. The Embassy will not act as a post-box.

I applied for both the birth certificate and passport for my son at the embassy last week. I paid the fee for both at the counter and the embassy sent all the documents to Hong Kong for me.

Note this may only be for the case if you go to the embassy in person, not sure about if you were to mail the stuff to them in Bangkok.

And all we have to do is mail you $500 to Nigeria to cover the transfer fees?

Hi alll,

What can you say about land. I am not sure who said :

If you have to ask, how much something is you can't afford it.

Whats it good for, what kind of question is that?

Whats land relief . what in the name of God is that.

Views yes. Soil yes. Water yes. Electricity yes.

Phone Mobile. Climate Wet & Sunny.

if i am been treated like a fool i might as well act the fool too

NewbePat :jap:

Good luck selling your land...

Not really sure how one would expect "privacy" in a hospital just after having a baby? The nurses have to be in constantly to check on the mothers wellbeing, change pad etc... and come to get her to feed the baby frequently (in the day and night).

We used the same hospital to throughout the pregnancy and had visited the delivery room, nursery and rooms several times and spoken with the nurses in each section before the birth in order to familiarize ourselves with how things worked and what to expect.

We went to Vibhavadi hospital and i was very happy with it.

My only pet peeve was that one of the nurses (possibly head nurse) seemed to think it a good idea to bring her kid to work every day (i'd guess about 5 years old) and he was an absolute brat running round the reception area, knocking stuff over, screaming etc... really needed a good spanking.

I would suggest downloading the paperwork from the embassy website and filling it out before your appointment. Make sure you have certified translations of the documents (Married paper, birth certificate etc..)

Pretty easy process, cost about 6,500THB for the US birth registration and passport i think?

I had to register my son at the UK embassy also, and that cost 13,400 (consider yourself lucky)!

Did not have any issue with getting him 3 citizenships...

I hate totally misleading articles like this.

So in reality there is a commercial dispute over marketing fees paid to a company who were advertising a property development.

This is too boring so somehow they spin it into "Rich bloke skips out on his hotel bill"...

As long as they claim to be earning less than 1.8M in sales per year then there is not much you can do.

If the case is really blatant (ie line of customers out the door and obviously making a killing) then i guess you could report them and tax department might send someone to do an audit and estimate actual sales based on physical customers. But it would have to be a situation where it's really obvious they are making more than 1.8M (or if they've got 25 unregistered employees or something)

Agreed that "land reclamation" seem overpriced.

I'm in the process of having a bit of land filled in Bangkok. Land size 200wah (800 sq.meters) requiring a total of 2 meters of dirt all over. Total cost: 340,000THB.

The 5.8% is variable

Variable based on what? MLR-0.575 for the life of the loan? Then that's a good deal. If it just "5.8% for the first year, then MLR" then that's a pretty standard/poor option compared to most Thai banks.

You can get 2.25% from Bankok bank...that's only for the first year though: http://www.bangkokbank.com/Bangkok%20Bank/Personal%20Banking/Loans/Home%20Loans/Interest%20Rates/Pages/Default.aspx

I think it would be misleading to say "You can get a 2.25% loan"

It's not like Tesco will start selling their eggs individually and having to bring up them to the weighing counter for price/packaging.

Maybe it's time for people to stop buying their eggs off the back of an "egg truck"

We ended up renting a taxi (car) instead of a van, for 3000 per way including gas.

How about renting a 2nd car only about 1000 Baht/day. That's if you've got someone to drive it.

I'd be interested to know which car rental company? I was looking at the Thaivisa Car Rental page and on there it was quoting me at least 12,000 for 6 days. And once you figure in gas (probably 1000-1500THB each way it's pretty expensive)

I'm driving to Koh Chang on Jan 2nd for holiday, but we have 3 people who won't fit in the car and trying to find transportation for them.

We have called several van drivers and they all want at least 5,500THB per way (total 11,000THB) including gas. Which seems to me a total rip off (maybe because its only being divided by 3 people, if it was 9 people or so it wouldn't seem to bad).

Anyone have any other suggestions and what the prices should be? They would prefer not to take the bus, but at 11,000THB it seems tempting.

EDIT: I'm traveling from Bangkok

I have a US and UK passport. My 1 year type-O Thai visa is in my US passport.

I will soon be visiting the UK, and i assume i need to enter the UK using my UK passport? So if i leave Thailand on my US passport and then return to Thailand without any additional stamps (because i did not enter UK on my US passport) is it going to be problem to re-enter and continue existing visa (with re-entry permit obviously)?

I don't want to lose the 1 year visa and have to go through starting that whole process again..(getting 3 month first from another country etc..)

Or should i just enter UK on US passport to avoid this problem? (But not sure if i'll get in trouble on UK side?)

there are ALOT of places in bangkok where the height is negative in respect to sea level.

example: parts of Ratchadapisek Road by -9 Meters

LOL! Ratchadapisek is 9 meters below sea level?? What are you using for a "GPS Device", are twigs and a bits of string involved?

I got married twice.. and never got married again .. just live with them is the really the best way.. If you have money why throw it away on someone or something you will normally lose on? I just cannot see the logic behind any Thai/farang marriage unless it is just for business deals. 99% of all the women here will burn all westerners.. it has been proven the course of their actions for over 100 years. We all love the "fruits" of living here as do most.. but to marry and then slowly give it all away.. You guys who do this are nuts.. So many women are willing to give us what we want and what we need... why spoil it with a marriage?? I never go look for a bar girl.. just good clean women who want a falong as a boyfriend..

When they speak of marriage and kids.. then that is a different story if you are young and want that.. but older guys really only need a good housekeeper/maid to keep their homes clean for 200 to 500 a day and at occasional squeeze for the evenings." Rent a wife" for a day of two and get it out of your system.. then come and get a new puppy from me and I bet you will be much happier with the dog and he will cost far less than that wife.. Again this is only an opinion and not the way for all.. but is sure works for me..

Wow, what an inappropriate response to a real estate question..

To the OP, changing name at your local Amphur is easy and i think she can even change "Mrs" to "Miss" if she wants (while still being married). You'd better go along with her though; if you don't they will probably say you are needed to sign papers (when you do go they will probably not require you to sign any paper as they just love to waste peoples time)

The building has to get built, so would you prefer they work 7 days a week for 7 weeks, or 6 days a week for 8 weeks?

I don't really see the difference.

I assume you are staying in a building which at some point had to get built? When it was built i'm assuming some noise was made, at which point someone else was annoyed...we all get a turn on both sides.

I've been to some newer estates where the security is pretty hardcore (some of the new Q-House projects). 3 meter metal automated gate, massive security house, about 4 guards on duty, ton of cameras, required sign in and leaving ID card.

However you've probably got to spend at least 10MB on your house before you get that kind of real security.

Otherwise it's pretty much a token novelty.

OP:

So we have now applied for financing to both Kasikorn and UOB and are awaiting reply although its only been a couple days so far. Today we went to Bangkok Bank where the manager is a friend of an acquaintance, so hopefully that will help. The weird part was that Bangkok Bank requires 2500 baht to begin the application process. This fee is not refundable whether they approve the loan or not. They claim that it covers the cost of visiting the building site, visiting the wifes business, and checking the land value with the gov't etc. They also claim that all banks charge this fee, although so far no other bank has asked yet. Maybe Kasikorn and UOB will ask for this fee once they get to the next step, or is Bangkok Bank actually the only one charging this? They are also the only one requesting my passport. We need to bring back my passport and one more document "any time" so we can pay the fee to get it rolling at that point. So has anyone else paid this to any banks?

I also had to pay this fee when applying at Bangkok Bank upfront. Other banks do charge valuation fees (for the guys who come to survey the property), but the other banks review your case and setup survey before charging the fee. Also i had to give passport at Bangkok Bank (although i was not a co-signer on the loan).

It's also not uncommon to pay the surveyors a "bung" to make sure they value the property "fairly", it cost us a few pairs of football boots to insure the valuation was higher than the actual purchase price.

Go to the next condo committee meeting. Explain the problem. Suggest that a new "littering" fine be instituted against anyone seen leaving trash (say 500THB per time).

Have these fines be automatically added to the service bill each month.

As soon as the unit owner gets his monthly service bill and there is an additional XXXX baht worth of littering fines on it the problem will soon be resolved.

The fines may not hold up in court (ie if the unit owner decided to take it to court that the building office had no right to impose these fines)...but money is not really the point is it. The point is making the unit owner realize that he has problem tenants and his life is going to get more difficult as a result.

Is it now ok to ship to US ?

Thanks ?

Yes, post office is now accepting packages to the US

I decided to buy a PS3 from MBK,

Cost:

- PS3 (Thai version): 12,000 (Hong Kong version was 10,400 but apparently takes a long time to send for repairs if broken)

- 500GB Harddrive with 50 games: 3500

- Used real PS3 game: 700

The latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari now block the history sniffing attacks the computer scientists monitored. Internet Explorer, however, does not currently defend against history sniffing. In addition, anyone using anything but the latest versions of the patched browsers is also vulnerable.

Big surprise.

My wife got an 80% loan from Krung Thai.

SCB sucks for mortgages. We had several million in cash with them and had been using them for years, when it came time to get a mortgage we figure SCB would be a sure thing...WRONG! They basically told us that being customers for years and have large balances counted for sh*t and they were only interested in current salary.

They would only give us max 70% with a mortgage length of 5 years (5 years for a mortgage?? LOL) and the interest rate was something ridiculous (more like a credit card rate).

Every other bank we went to were more helpful (Krung Thai, Bangkok Bank, Kasikorn, Krung Sri).

We didn't even have an account with Krung Thai.

Try another bank.