15Peter20

In a land where the application of the law is widely understood to be patchy, it is hilarious to find foreigners going on incessantly about Thaksin not being brought to justice for something a hundred other politicians could be charged with, but aren't, and then bleating about ulterior motives when some other foreigners have been found to be breaking the law.

The moral high-horses are heading for the hills, it seems.

Apparently there will be a number of UK and EU economic reports coming out this week which may provide the odd spike. Far be it from me to offer advice given my 4 weeks of experience monitoring this currency pair, but at the moment I'm keeping the Tuk-Tuk warmed up and ready for a trip down to the bank at short notice.

lets see whats on offer today,close of play on fri.gbp.was hovering around 47-t.t.the euro was going forward,over the weekend the £ against the euro is under 1.15 its a long time since it was that low.we that live here will feel lucky if we are holding thai bht.having exchanged at around 49+.

Bangkok Bank just updated TT: 46.46

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Well guys, if you don't like her or the party she represents, vote her out in the next election.

I agree it's good to encourage people to discuss these matters with their Thai family, friends, and associates.

There are votes involved with those discussions.

Your efforts to get people effectively canvassing for the opposition (is that allowed on TV?) may be admirable in their tenacity but I fear that even the mobilization of the entire TV readership won't be enough to turn the tide of Thai public opinion, which appears to be that significantly more people don't mind this government than do mind it, and that significantly more people aren't concerned with Thaksin's influence than are concerned about it.

The Siam Pitak rally a short while ago was a clear sign of this. Poorly organized and attended in a supposedly anti-Thaksin heartland (BKK), with its leaders clearly targetting Thaksin as a source of many of this nation's ills.

Still, your work remains impressive on this site.

What will happen to all those providers of 'extra classes' outside of school whose job is to complete the homework from the students' day school? Job losses on the horizon in this sector....

On another note, I've been regularly checking the homework of my 6-year old boy from a private school in Chiang Mai. It usually takes him about 10 minutes. His last maths homework contained questions like 1+0= and 2+3= . I have been teaching him maths myself on average for 30 mins 2 or 3 times a week during term time for the last year or so. He can add and subtract 3-digit numbers and multiply 2 and 1 digit numbers. I'm not saying this to show off. I totally believe that all kids have the potential to do this at that age and that many Thai schools are letting their students down terribly by not recognizing their potential at all.

If you don't want to leave the degree of your child's aptitude to some chance genetic predisposition, and don't want to allow the Thai school system to let your child's brain - a pinnacle of thousands of years of human evolution - stagnate and never approach its true potential then I thoroughly recommend spending a bit of time teaching them basic maths and English in your own home at an early age.

The way homework is set and done is just a tiny part of what's wrong with education in Thai schools, but it shouldn't be done away with.

Thanks for the advice guys.

I thought about exchanging more but the bank had said previously that I'd need some proof of what it was for, which I didn't have as its just for general stuff. meatboy, how did you get around this requirement when you transferred the 100K?

wordchild, maybe it is one advantage of exchanging with a bank that there is a lag between the movement of their TT rate and the movement of the current trading rate. The baht was trading (live) for less than what I got, which was the same rate the bank was offering over the weekend so they hadn't updated the TT rate yet whilst the live trading rate had apparently moved onwards and downwards. Maybe this could be beneficial to someone else in the right circumstances.

Anyway, the rate has fallen another 0.4Bt since my exchange yesterday. good grief, where will this end? (rhetorical question, don't answer unless you are guessing).

I changed GBP to THB today at Bangkok Bank. TT rate was 46.92. I asked for 47.0 and they gave me 46.96. Do those of you who have experience in negotiating an improved rate think this is a fairly normal outcome, or are there ways of getting a higher rate and if so, what are they? The amount was 25K. Thanks for any insight.

Hi

I am a UK citizen but spend most of the year in Thailand. I'd like to find a website through which I can easily look at forex and gold prices, a wide variety of investment funds and Thai stocks, and be able to move my personal money in and out of them at any time.

I looked at etrade.com and it seems promising but I'm not sure if I can use it since I'm not resident in the UK/US. Does anyone else have experience of using this in Thailand, and what are the good/bad points about it? Or is there a better alternative?

And finally, how is tax handled with regard to the amount you have in the website's account?

Sorry for all the questions, but I'm new to this. Thanks a lot for any advice.

15Peter

Went last night having not seen a play for donkeys years. It was very well done, by people who are obviously well experienced and who care about their art. With the native-English-speaking population of Chiang Mai as large as it is, there should be shows like this being staged more often.

How about... No Amnesty for anyone, and everyone guilty of a crime pays the price?

Doesn't matter if your the Current-PM, Ex-PM, Fugitive-Ex-PM-In-Exile, MP, VIP, Farmer, Teacher or Candle-stick maker... all are to be equal in the eyes of the law.

Hows about that then? Sound fair to you?

It sounds completely unrealistic and hardly worth mentioning, given the context.

Went to this earlier this evening. Thailand lost 1-3 but it was a pretty good game. It must have been senior teams because Mikael Forssell (ex-Chelsea, remember him anyone?) was playing and scored two of their goals.

But something else happened during the match which I found quite unsettling, and I'd like to share it with you (nothing to do with football).

Prime Minister Yingluck was there, very dapper in her black suit. I was at about 40-50 meters away. Now, as previous visitors to evening games at 700 year stadium probably know the lights atop the stands attract all manner of insects and they in turn attract a number of bats looking for an evening feast. Not 30 meters directly in front of Yingluck - just above the long jump track - about 5 minutes into the game one of these bats suddenly started feverishly flapping its wings whilst plunging vertically downwards to the ground where it then lay completely motionless. Stone dead it seemed.

I wondered if anyone else saw it, and then started thinking that Yingluck could be the devil incarnate, able to induce cardiac arrest in any creature she gazed at with a weak heart. As the first half wore on, I kept glancing at the bat prone and motionless hoping to see some sign of life. Nothing. When Yingluck turned in my direction to chat with someone sat behind her, I averted my furtive gaze for fear of a pulmonary wrongfart. Then after 20 minutes, the she-Satan left just after Thailand went 2-0 down.

Half time arrived. Just as a group of Thai substitutes narrowly avoided unwittingly making bat pancake whilst walking towards the tunnel, the little fella fluttered into life, but only enough to move itself a couple of meters further down the side of the long jump track, where it again lay motionless for the rest of the match. It was with some relief that I realized Yingluck clearly didn't have the power to kill small animals with a glance, but just stun them for a while.

Anyway, later on during the half time break my attention is again drawn towards another bat, lit up bright in the floodlights, starting to seemingly struggle and lose altitude in a descending spiral. It too ended up still on the ground, nearer to us just at the foot of the stand. I didn't see this one move at all after that.

But Yingluck had already been gone about half an hour - surely she couldn't have....used some kind of telepathy? I guessed not, and that this latest casualty seemed to exonerate the Prime Minister from the accusation of being evil incarnate, with powers the like of which could only be bestowed by the Devil, bored farangs, or Hollywood itself. So all this gives rise to the question - what makes bats fall out of the air and seemingly die whilst feeding? If anyone knows the answer, please post and put leading Thai politicians in the clear once and for all.

I'm trapped in GBP with nowhere to go. Aaaargh!!! It's cold and lonely down here. Can anyone see any light at the end of the tunnel?

DisGraceful, unashamed and irresponsible advertising for that particular brand of religion.

If I were in the religious subscription market, this might push me further towards a different offering.

Am also told the PM of Thailand will be in attendance so the TV faithful should dust off their blunderbusses and get some target practice in beforehand.

The smiley is I hope sufficient to reflect that I am not actually advocating assassination attempts. It's a joke. Ha ha ha. See?

I have been told that there are two matches tomorrow (back to back starting at 4pm), one involving the Thai team. There will apparently also be matches every day this week culminating in the final on Saturday.

It's a competition between Thailand, N.Korea and a bunch of Scandinavian countries. The teams are all "under 24" teams. All of this is subject to being completely wrong... but it is what I have been told! If anyone has a better source of info please share.

Yes...you are totally wrong.....only thing is right is that first game starts 4pm...and that "bunch" is Finland and Sweden...

Okay, so when do you think the Thailand game will start - 6 or 7?

My missus says she heard that the Thai national footy team will be playing at the 700 Year Stadium tomorrow (wednesday) against 'Korea'.

That's all I got. Don't know if its the full/senior/'A' national squads, don't know the kickoff time or anything else. Can anyone help with this? Cheers.

Best wishes to you Vanessa.

20 months ago, I petitioned Thai athletic heads re; a similar plight.

I had met two American winter sportswomen who were best friends with each other. One was world-class slalom skier and the other a speed skater of more modest credentials. Both about 21, attractive, cute, without an ounce of fat. I had a bit of correspondence with someone high up in Thai athletics, but he couldn't/didn't grasp opportunity by the forelocks. I even wrote a few letters which were published in the Nation and the Post at that time, on that plight. The US girls were willing to compete for Thailand, if offered Thai passports. It's known that many countries do similar legal things when wanting a person from another country to compete on their side.

Were either of them Thai, or have any link to Thailand?

Sending letters of petition to people in authority is simply not good enough. What was needed were larger envelopes containing money.

Oh i see! the army decide on government policy do they !

Only on the most important issues.

This website gives exchange rates --notes and TT.

http://bankexchanger...et/default.aspx

Lefty

Excellent - thanks so much. Looks like Siam Commercial offers the best TT rate for GBP to THB.

You will normally get better Exchange rate with Cash and doing as you do now (especially if you use SuperRich opp Cetral World who consistently offer the best rates).

You can SWIFT the money to your Kasikorn account - I do it frequently. The Swift code is KASITHBK and you then just need you account number and account name - usually takes 2-3 days but recently mine have been next day.

The Kasikorn rate (Telex Transfer) are her http://www.kasikornb...gnExchange.aspx and the SuperRich rates http://www.superrich...ditor/rate.html

The only benefit of Swift is the security of not carrying cash :-)

changing 1,000 dollars each time the advantage won't pay for the taxi fare to Superrich and from Superrich to the bank where he wants to pile up his savings.

by the way, Siam Commercial offers better TT rates than Kasikorn.

Do you know by any chance how these TT rates compare to those of Bangkok Bank? That's who I'm with and I'm not sure I'm getting the best price. Cheers.

TT rate GBP THB below 47!

Maybe a sustained strengthening of the THB is just what is required to give the BOT that kick up the ass to satisfy the wet-dreamers and intervene. How's that for a bit of optimism on a Monday morning?

I can never understand why vehicles here are so expensive, compared to European cars they are more expensive and not as well specified,...

Not just cars. Most things that come out of a factory seem to cost more here than they would do in Europe. Even my regular supermarket shopping bill for locally-made or locally-produced items costs me more here than it would in Europe, and I dont include fancy imported items like cheese and wine.

To me all this just indicates that the Baht is way overvalued.

that the Baht is overvalued goes without saying. dozen of threads and a zillion postings of Thaivisa economic experts agree with you and forecast a big devalution of THB vs. all currencies.

p.s. that's what the resident experts are forecasting since six years.

I presume you're being sarcastic. Next week I think I'll just have to bite the bullet and change a sizeable chunk of GBP to TBH. Most seem to suggest that in a couple of years we may be dreaming about being able to get the rate as it is today, despite the losses we've seen over the past few weeks.

Sometimes my wife and I joke that if we were fluent in each others' language we'd have broken up long ago. We've known and loved each other for 20 years now.