Kerryd

Interesting.
Some "Canadian" drug dealers were also recently killed in Mexico (on 22 Jan).
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/hotel-shooting-victims-criminal-activities/

Apparently members of (or connected to) Vietnamese drug gangs in Canada.

And it's not hard to travel on a fake passport. Or one that was "stolen" but never reported as such.

It used to be common in Thailand for people to sell their passports when they ran out of money, then claim they'd been "stolen" from their hotel room (or while they were on the beach, etc, etc). They'd then have more money to extend their holiday and get "emergency travel documents" to get home with later on.
Two Iranians on the missing Malaysian MH370 flight were apparently travelling on (Austrian and Italian) passports that had been reported as "stolen".

Michael Karas was out on probation (after serving time for a string of armed robberies) when he travelled to Thailand on a passport he supposedly "stole" from someone, who never reported it stolen for over a year as Karas used the same passport to return to Canada after murdering the Thai woman he'd been living with for a year.

The mother and the sister of Omar Khadr (the 15 year old terrorist who spent time in Guantanamo) were both placed on a "restricted" list for (Canadian) passports due to them both claiming to have "lost" their passports a few times too many.

They would use their Canadian passports to get to (wherever) and then give them to their terrorist friends to use, then after awhile would claim to have lost them and apply for new ones. Something they apparently did often enough that it raised flags and ended up getting them on the restricted list. (But not because the father and 3 brothers were all involved in terrorist activities that the mother and sister supported.)

We've had (in Canada) people who've been deported (usually to India it seems) and caught (in Canada) again months later, deported (again) and caught (again) barely a year later. (Makes you wonder why they keep going back and how they can keep getting new passports.)

Most IOs see so many faces everyday they rely mostly on the computer to tell them if there's a problem with the passport. So long as your skin colour and hair look similar to the passport photo, they don't really look that closely at you so it's easy to get by on someone else's passport (assuming they haven't reported it or are wanted themselves of course).

Biometric scanners (fingerprint scanners like they use at Suvarnabhumi, retinal scanners used in other places like Sharjah in the UAE) will put a crimp in the ability of some, but many countries do not have that level of tech and even countries that do, may not use it at all border crossings, so a certain element will still be able to travel around far too easily.
 

There is stuff in that article that may apply to you that wasn't included in the bit snipped/pasted in the OP.

Stuff like:
"In the last week, changes first introduced on October 1st last by the Ministry of Public Health in respect of enhanced requirements for any foreigner applying for an O/A Retirement visa were highlighted by Thai officials and international embassies.
 

This means that those applying for this retirement visa type, which should be differentiated from the normal O Non-Immigrant Retirement visa, must show hospital inpatient insurance of $100,000 or ฿3.4 million, an increase from the previous requirement of ฿400,000.
 

Higher medical coverage requirements for O-A retirement visa option but now Immigration Bureau will also accept self-insurance for those with assets

However, the Thai Immigration Bureau has, at the same time, provided an option for applicants to self insure provided that they have adequate capital and income available.
 

New health insurance regime for retirees living in Thailand means foreign firms can provide cover

The critical requirement for this option is to show ฿3 million in available assets including cash in the bank, available financial assets or ownership of property.
 

It is also understood that Immigration Bureau officers are authorised to accept evidence to show that any hospital bills will be paid for by sources from abroad.

This would apply to insurance provided to foreign retirees by their national governments or services in their home country.
 

The evidence requirement will mean that written documentation must be provided and certified by the foreigner’s embassy in Thailand.
 

New regulations do not yet impact the more popular Non-Immigrant O visas for marriage and retirement

These new arrangements do not impact current requirements for non Immigrant O visas or extensions either for marriage or retirement visas for now but may signal future intentions by the government which have also been regularly aired publicly by senior officials.

(So - rich Chinese in, old (white) retirees out. (Kind of like the "good guys in, bad guys out" motto of Immigration eh ?)

People think because they've read the article in English that means that it's all about them. 
You are reading an English translation of a Thai news article ! 

Guaranteed that they are not thinking about you when they plan schemes like this. They are thinking about their masters in China and the boat loads of wealthy Chinese that Beijing wants to transplant into other countries to spread their influence.

The ones who will help China's ambitions by promoting things like high speed rail lines and "exclusive" resorts (and new airports and so on, just like they are doing, or have done, in places like Cambodia).

They don't give a toss about the geriatric Westerners scrapping by on their meagre pensions (yeah yeah I know, you all are bringing in and spending well over 65k a month, blah blah blah).
They also don't give a toss about the "digital nomads" who contribute little more than the odd Yelp review while their income goes to their home banks and they spend their time moving from the cheapest dive hotel they can find to the next cheapest.

Yeah, those "digital nomads" are not all (insert big tech company here) millionaires living the "free" life. They are mostly the ones doing the "Top 10 signs your cat want's to kill you" type garbage or whatever piecemeal work they can get to pay next month's rent with.
 

Watching the video closely a few times. When the Mercedes enters the intersection he starts moving to his right to go behind the Honda but appears to go into a skid. About halfway through the intersection it looks like he's "turned into the skid" (like you're supposed to) and his momentum carries him into the Honda which is basically sitting still in the middle of the road like a deer in the head lights.

As a result, the Mercedes hits the Honda almost smack in the middle it seems, instead of slamming into the front-left corner like it seems he would have if he'd kept going straight. 
Watching the video, the Mercedes is on the right side of the middle lane before getting to the intersection. As he enters the intersection it is clear he is trying to move into the left lane to go behind the Honda.
However, the Honda enters the intersection and stops just before crossing into the middle lane, thus blocking the left lane. 

The Honda hesitated in the intersection. An experienced driver would expect the oncoming traffic to figure out that he (she) was going to cross in front of them and they would go behind them rather than try to cut in front of them.

Had the Honda driver continued to cross the intersection, the Mercedes would have passed behind it probably without incident.
Obviously the Mercedes was going too fast and the driver was possibly distracted, or at the very least was expecting the Honda to cross the intersection, not stop in the middle of it. Probably by the time he realized the Honda was stopped he didn't have enough time to react (because he was going too fast) and jerked the wheel to the right to try and go behind the Honda, only to end up going into a skid.

I'm not sure where the lights are but I'm guessing the Honda started to turn because the lights had changed and it had the green "right turn" light.
(Which would mean the Mercedes would have had a red light, which he apparently ignored for whatever reason.)

Happens so often and because there is pretty much ZERO police enforcement of traffic laws, people get it in their heads that it's a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

So many times I've been at a red, waited until it turned green, let off the brakes and ZOOM ! Someone goes flying through the intersection at high speed and you know full well they had plenty of time to stop. Especially as many of the intersections have a couple second delay between one light turning red and the other turning green (which probably is why many of them decide it's OK to just blow through the red anyways).

Other times I've been approaching an intersection, saw the green flashing, knew I couldn't make the light, slowed down and stopped just as it went red, only to have some car/truck/SUV blow past me and through the intersection.

They do it because they know there is pretty much zero chance that there will be any cops anywhere in the area so the chances of getting pulled over and ticketed are pretty much non-existent.

3 hours ago, phetphet said:

And why do the police have a parachute and wings on their uniform? Do they do parachute training? Serious question.

"Mile High Club" member badge ?

Seriously, you see the same (or similar) badge on almost every uniform worn by a gov't employee. Teachers, politicians, police, ect.
I've seen more "wings" here in a couple of years than I did in the 22 years I was in the (Canadian) army !

People forget the "real" reason this tax was brought in. Supposedly "foreigners" were leaving the country without paying their hospital bills and that was costing the Healthcare system a little over 300 million baht per year.

So the gov't decided to add a tax to airfare, on top of the "Airport Departure Tax" they already had. (When I was here in 1993, it was 250 baht flying out of Don Mueang. When Swampy opened I think it was at 700. They had switched from collecting it at the check in counters to simply adding it to the airfare. That way it is hidden and most people never see when it is increased or by how much.)

Considering they were getting nearly 40 million arrivals per year (before covid), a tax of just 10 baht would have more than paid for all those evil foreigners who skipped on their bills. (At one point I think they even tried to suggest it was "expats" who were responsible in an attempt to blame "white" people for the problem. That was when they also added that ridiculous health insurance requirement onto anyone with an O(A) visa.)

A 10 baht tax would have earned nearly 400 million per year but no, they decided to make it a 300 baht tax. A thirtyfold increase designed to bring in 12 billion baht a year with the excess (assuming they covered those unpaid hospital bills at all) going who knows where.

Sure, 300 baht isn't much to the average person. 300 baht times 40 million though is a lot even to a rich gov't minister just waiting to get his hands on it.

And you can bet that not a penny of that money will actually end up going to cover those unpaid hospital bills.

The "non-commissioned" part was probably either a translation error or a "civvy" error (i.e. a civvie being someone with no knowledge of the military or how it works and just throws out words and phrases they've picked up from movies).

Generally speaking, all officers are "commissioned" and would hold what is called a "commissioning scroll" that they receive when they are promoted from cadet to 2nd Lieutenant (or equivalent).

"Non-Commissioned Officers" - better known as "NCOs" are everyone who isn't a commissioned officer. Basically everyone from Private to Chief Warrant Officer.

In Canada, Junior NCOs are Privates, Corporals and Master Corporals while Senior NCOs are Sergeants and Warrant Officers/Master Warrant Officers/Chief Warrant Officers. 

In the American military they have Officers, Warrant Officers (who hold a "Warrant" or a "Warrant's Commission"), Junior and Senior NCOs. Senior NCOs are those holding Sergeant ranks (Sergeant, Staff/1st Class/Master/Top Sergeant or equivalent).

Everyone starts out as a cadet (officer school) or recruit (everyone else) and then gets promoted (or not) up the "chain". 
In some (rare) cases, an NCO may get "commissioned" and become an Officer. In my 22 years of service I knew of 3 who did that.

The article was probably written by someone who doesn't know the difference between "Commissioned" officer and "Non-Commissioned Officer". A colonel would definitely be a "commissioned" officer.

I thought they'd decided against going after the "low income" tourists and were going to go back to trying to get the people who actually spend money to come back again ?

Typical gov't "doublespeak".

On one hand they are saying the "Test and Go" program is "very popular" and on the other hand (one paragraph above) they are saying that 87% of tourists are rejecting their "Sandbox" schemes.

Good thing they don't mention how "popular" their various "let's only try and attract the richest people in the world to come here and stay in their hotel for 2 weeks before going home again" schemes. 
Might look bad to admit that they are probably being rejected by 99.9% of the people they were hoping to attract.

They had high spending "value" tourists arriving by the planeloads - from Europe and North America - and then the gov't decided there were too many "white faces" around and shifted their tourism focus to India and China.

That resulted in years of low (or "no") spending tourists arriving, which made the "arrivals" numbers look good but did squat for the economy as hotels, restaurants and bars suffered.
It wasn't hard to look around the shopping malls and other places and see who was spending and who wasn't even in the building.

But the gov't was too busy kissing up to the "big red one" and turned a blind eye to it, hoping that increased "volume" would make up for the loss of "value". 

And they've shown the same attitude with all their schemes to get tourists back after the shut down, by making visas designed for the tiny percentage of tourists that generally travel in "luxury" class, in the hopes that they will turn things around while ignoring the masses that, literally, spend money like drunken sailors every time they come here. (Giving berth to the term "2 week millionaires", something I highly doubt anyone ever calls the Chinese or Indian tourists.)

Seems the gov't would rather have 20 tourists spending less than 500/day each (10,000/day total) on hotels/food/shopping/entertainment than 5 tourists spending 5,000 a day each (25,000/day total). 

You know, like it was back in the 80s/90s/00s and early 2010s. 

We'll see what happens after the next election (assuming the junta even allows another election that is). I think the current gov't wore out their welcome a long time ago and haven't done themselves any favours recently. 
Maybe a new gov't will have better business sense.

3 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

And the response was ? 

Especially if it means that the bars in Pattaya can open as well. Which is what Prayut is trying to prevent.

In 2019 there was something like 39 million "arrivals" and, before covid, they expected to hit 40 mil the next year. That equals a little over 106,000 arrivals - per day.

50,000 arrivals in 2 weeks equals a little under 3,600 per day. (I wonder if they still face the same line-ups at the Immigration queues despite being over 100,000 fewer people arriving each day ?)

I have friends who cancelled their trips because of issues with the "eVisa" system. I have friends who've tried, three times (so far) and haven't been able to get the "Thailand Pass" thing to work.

I'm sure that there are 10s of thousands of others with the same issues (but the authorities won't record or report those numbers of course). And hundreds of thousands who just can't be bothered to do it in the first place.

Especially when they are told about the alcohol restrictions (or bans).

Funny how adamant they are about not letting Pattaya businesses sell alcohol. Like they think that any businesses that haven't shut (for good) might close (for good) if they have to wait another 2 months before being (possibly) allowed to sell booze again.

If they really think that they will be able to kill Pattaya's entertainment business by continuing a moronic alcohol ban, they are going to be in for a surprise.

A lot of locals are not too happy with the gov't at the moment. More so than were already PO'd before this. They're going to have a hard time winning another rigged election I think.

45 minutes ago, Karma80 said:

Who could have possibly known? Everyone + science.

But, where you can you get an additional mRNA vaccine in Thailand? Nowhere.

Surprisingly, a friend of mine posted a photo of one of his relatives getting his first shot of Moderna a couple days ago. Remember that a bunch of Moderna was donated to Thailand but there was a lot of controversy about who was going to get allocated how much and how much would be set aside for those who already paid for it.
(Not surprisingly, I'm registered at 2 different hospitals and haven't heard a peep from either one about when they think they will get the vaccine.)

Anutin has had his nose up China's *** ever since he joined Prayut's gov't (probably long before that). Remember early on in the crisis when he was spouting off about the "dirty farangs" compared to the "clean Chinese" (despite the fact that, at that time, all of the corona cases in Thailand were caused by people coming from China) ?

The whole gov't is an excuse away from joining Cambodia and Burma both in their authoritarian gov'ts and subservience to China.