sbf

5 hours ago, possum1931 said:

It seems plain enough to me. What job employs the most people in Thailand?

Anyone??

Farmers at 7.4 million households would be my guess

3 hours ago, LivingNThailand said:

Are both the provinces in the South?  I was told, several times, that the Southern region of Thailand is a different division for BKK bank.  Twice I was turned down in Phuket to get a new atm for my BKK account.   The first time I had to go to BKK anyway so I got one there.  The second time I was turned down I just took all my money out of that account and opened a new one in Phuket.   I don't think it has changed.

So if this guy wants a new ATM card for a Chang Mai branch from a branch in Phuket I think he is out of luck.   But I backtrack on what I said earlier.  I'm sure he can withdraw the money in Phuket. 

No my bank branch is in Isaan. I guess I have had to get 4-5 cards out of province over the last 4-5 years., most recently in March this year. 

8 hours ago, Mike Teavee said:

With Bangkok Bank all reports I have seen say that you need to go to your original branch to get a new/replacement debit card so might be easier to open a new account in Phuket.

 

 

This is not so in my experience with Bangkok Bank at all. I split my time between two different provinces and have on several occasions obtained a replacement card from Bangkok Bank in Phuket which is not the province where the my account branch is located. Just presented passport and bank book and a sorry tale of what happened to te bank card this time. 

It’s not just the cops, army and politicians - corruption is rife through many government departments and local authorities here. If you have dealings with some of these officials and you are observant you will see it in many places, often with exquisite and profitable execution. If only the energy and talent invested in the corruption were applied to the good of the country

4 hours ago, Isan Farang said:

Just checking how it would work for myself. My 1 year retirement is done in Ubon using my Ubon address. We also have a house in Chiang Rai, on both houses my wife is the owner. lets say online is not working and i am in CR when the 90 day report is due, would i need to go with my wife to the CR IO and make the report there and then when i return to Ubon go to the IO there and inform them i have returned.

I have a similar situation, house in two provinces, and flit between them. Online for 90 day reports is the best way to avoid having to be in your extension province area at the right time, but of course once a year you must be in the IO office province to complete your extension. 

Worked pretty well since they have stopped the ridiculous, stay away a night and you have to report to IO nonsense. That was until Covid lockdown, and I had to go through a change from my preferred address province to the other province as I was locked down there.

2 hours ago, London Lowf said:

Any weekend the Thais set up camp and barbecues at Layan beach inside the National Park - the dual pricing admission scares away most farangs! There are also a few food stalls.

 

In addition, the National Park at the south end of Nai Yang gets absolutely packed in the same way on public holidays.

Concur with this, Dream Beach at the northern end of Layan may be the same place as you are referring to in your post. Mostly Locals there. I have never been charged there but must admit haven’t ventured there for 8-9 months. No deckchairs but very popular with the locals and plenty of food stalls at the weekend. 
 

Nanyang before the town also has many food vendors. 
 

Our favorite at least in dry season is Naithon  In between the two above mentioned. Still no deck chairs, bring your own or a mat. Plenty of food vendors along the road at the back of the beach. More tourists usually on this beach though plenty of Thai families at the weekend and late afternoon. 

4 hours ago, beechbum said:

You can drive straight through the Sarasin checkpoint when leaving, no need to show a passport and no need to stop unless waved down.

Yes thanks for the input. I know that one can drive straight through by staying in either Lane 1 or 2 as largely the inspections of Thai citizens has stopped. In fact over the last month I have only seen one time when they were inspecting for Thai citizens, and that was the day the gunman went beserk down in the fish market in Phuket town. However road signs prior to the check point still indicate that foreigners must go through Lane 3, so does anyone know if we are still officially meant to stop and show our passport every time or not. I have seen nothing to say we do not. 

Are not all foreigners leaving Phuket supposed to present their passports for inspection at the check-point before leaving the island. If her van driver stopped and complied with this regulation why was this not picked up there by the Immigration officials, this is exactly why the check there which inconveniences many of us is there. If her van driver did not stop and comply will he also be hunted down and brought to justice for his or her complicity in this 'escape'

19 minutes ago, Broken Record said:

Any future misdemeanor I may have with the Police and they offer to let me be on my way for 200 Baht for going over the Speed limit for instance, I'll flash my ThaiVisa membership card at them and demand they take me to the station for full fine payment, I'll show em !!

 

 

All well and good, you have been caught speeding, you cop a small roadside payment or make it official and go pay a slightly larger one at the station, your choice. However what if you were being wrongfully accused of some driving misdemeanor and a much more substantial payment demanded say 50,000 as has happened to me here, would you still be happy to pay up? 

8 hours ago, Thunglom said:

 

The Thai test is pretty extensive now - much more than anyone took in the States in the 60s 70s or 80s. Testing is only a small part of g=ral road safety. Most drivers learn from experience. If you look at the comment here you'll see thither "experience" most drivers have is VERY misleading. What most countries do is have public education programs and road safety engineering the try to stop idiots doing what they want to do. This works but it leaves drivers think ing they ae "great drivers" when in actually fact it is the dri=ing environment that is preventing them from being fools.

The Thai test may be extensive, but that does not mean much in my recent experience. We have to drive quite a lot in our small business. The load was falling on myself as the only licensed driver so I decided to get two staff  members fully licensed at the companies expense and during work time. I chose two 30-40 year old employees, one male and one female. 

Firstly I had to really hunt around to find a driving instructor in our area. I eventually tracked one down, but it was only one and this was in a relatively large province with well over a million inhabitants. I decided to get one employee at a time through the process and started with the woman. She is in my estimate hard working, intelligent, thoughtful, good at planning ahead, and a patient person not given to outbursts of emotion. The instructor took the female employee for I guess 4-5 lessons at the rate of a couple a week. She complained about the instructor, saying he was far too bossy and pedantic. Eventually she said she wanted to change and her friend had told her about another instructor linked to the drivers license test facility. She made some arrangements and I duly took her to the test facility and left her there in the morning. That afternoon she called to say she was finished and asked that I go pick her up. She was fully licensed and from memory 1000 baht lighter.  Of course it was much harder to get the male staff member to follow the plan after that. He just went to the test center under the wing of the 'instructor' there and in less than a day was licensed. 

During my extensive driving here I get to see a Highway Patrol car out on patrol occasionally. To relieve the monotony of the long drives I will sometimes tuck in behind them and see how good the driving is. My record was 8 offenses by the Highway Patrol driver in around 10 km including overtaking on a solid yellow line, jumping a green light, driving in a defined motorcycle lane, changing lane without indicating and eventually speeding in restricted speed zone built up area.  

My point is until international standards are met for the issuance of driving licenses and the training of those tasked with keeping the driving standards up, there is little hope of reaching high standards of road safety in Thailand. Both these matters are the responsibility of the government. 

Further the personal responsibility of drivers and motorcyclists for their own and other road users safety as mentioned by many already in this and the never-ending threads on road safety in Thailand that we have had over the years, is dire and needs to improve dramatically. One only has to look at the proportions of people on motorcycles not wearing helmets (which in our area is around 70%) to see that fellow road users have little regard for their own safety. From memory it was about 1992 that crash helmets were compulsory by Thai law, so the fact that after 30 years rates of helmet use are still so low shows that the road safety policies of the various governments we have had are not working. I dare say the same is probably true for DUI and seat-belt wearing in cars, they are just not so observable.  

8 hours ago, TooMuchTime said:

The symptoms sound like something every kid has had growing up.  So she felt sick, had headaches, felt sore, and a cough.  How does that sound severe or something worthy of shutting down economies and closing off schools?  Basically just sounds like a bad hangover.  She isn't dead and isn't now disabled due to covid.

 

And of course, the general outcome is little to no symptoms and very rare death.  Taking one positive or negative experience doesn't change the expected outcome.

 

The worst thing she experienced was probably the quarantine and your paranoia probably wasn't good for her mind. 

 

 

I do feel very sorry for the kids and the interruption to their education. Also we can all see the disruption this virus has caused to economic activity. We as a family have suffered huge disruption to our business and have had the last two years without anything like our normal income, surviving really on our savings. However I think that you belittle the danger of this virus, in deference to the vast majority of the medical community and public health officials around the world. I gave my accurate and honest account of a young Covid patient from my direct recent experience. This was not the sniffles. A normally healthy child was pretty ill. Interestingly now that she is recovered the hospital have asked us to take her back in 3 months. Presumably to check for long Covid.

I also thought the quarantine would be traumatic for her. We got a roster of family - grandma's, aunties and uncles, older brothers and sisters etc involved to call her frequently. We delivered food every couple of days although we could not see her. But kids are quite resilient and apart from one moment just after we dropped her off, she remained cheerful throughout. She made friends of course as kids do, and her only complaint was the quarantine food was not very nice. 

I find your comment about "my paranoia" not being good for her mind somewhat offensive. On the basis of one anonymous posting you have diagnosed me as paranoid - interesting. 

My observations for Isaan are firstly many more small roadside stalls. I see this as a sign of many more people trying to make an income from these micro-businesses because alternate employment opportunities are just not there. My bank seems very quiet currently and has been for the last couple of months. A couple of years ago it was hard to get a seat - and that was before Covid spacing took half them away - often the queue meant any bank business took around an hour. These days waltz in get a ticket and almost always straight to the counter, out in 5 minutes.

I don't see many established businesses closing locally but without a doubt times are tough for many in speaking to business owners. 

The very low rice price is impacting farmers throughout the region and they are looking for alternatives to increase their income. Our business deals in contract growing of seed crops and we are almost overwhelmed with enquiries from new groups of farmers at the moment. Again a few years ago we had to work quite hard to build these up. 

Hiring workers is also very easy currently, which has not always been the case. Local labor rates have also fallen from a couple of years ago when most would not work for anything much below the minimum wage - 300 baht at that time. Now many employers are only paying 200 baht a day for agricultural laborers. There are tales of employees not paying their workers at all for months on end. I would add that we pay substantially more than minimum wage before I get flamed for being exploitative. 

17 hours ago, fdsa said:

may I know the name of even a single facility where Pfizer is freely available? I could even pay for it.

 

Here on Phuket it's "sorry no double Pfizer, only first Sinovac second Pfizer", and I'm not willing for anything that begins with Sino...

I couldn't get vaccinated in a timely manner on Phuket as my visa extension was issued in another province. I had to change my immigration address to Phuket and then wait out a 3 month period which would have seen me become eligible about now to apply for my first shot. Not wishing to delay vaccination for this period of time, I travelled to Bangkok - got two shots of Pfizer three weeks apart in September. The only problem was I could not return to Phuket until two weeks after the 1st shot under the rules as they were then. Luckily I had things to do in other provinces, so waited out of province until my second shot and returned to Phuket fully vaccinated.

Free at Medpark Hospital, Bangkok although I am not sure of they are currently operating this scheme. Check their website. I would happily have paid. None of the other apps - Expatvac etc came through for me. I am happy that I decided on this course. Our youngest tested positive after catching Covid at school last week, and is now in quarantine on Phuket. The rest of the household tested negative but we were all vaccinated. 

5 hours ago, Bkk Brian said:

Why does she need to go into quarantine hospital for 10 days instead of isolating at home, does she have her own bedroom at home? I'm assuming she is under 12 years? as all those above have now received the vaccine as far as I know

This is what the public health officials here have insisted on even though she is less than 12 years old. I am really furious about it as whilst she is a fairly strong independent child this is not something any child should have to go through. She could easily have isolated at home, she has her own bedroom and bathroom. If anything by the time they took her in she was on the improve, with headaches finished and just a bit of a cough. The rest of us have tested negative by ATK today and will get our PCR results tomorrow morning.

Within 5 minutes of leaving her at the quarantine she called in tears because she did not know where the toilet was and needed a pee. Very traumatic experience for the youngster. 

Getting back to the point of the article, all other family members have tested negative, the only place she has been in the last 10 days is home or at school, so perhaps the official needs to put a little more thought and a lot more science  into their statements. 

7 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

Social media is too great a force now, and opening without any nightlife, is a misplaced, misguided, and overly puritanical sentiment. ALL tourists want some nightlife. Expect 20,000 tourists in November, 30,000 in December, and 50,000 during what used to be known as "peak season".

 

It feels like willful sabotage. You cannot kill tourism more effectively, if you were doing it deliberately. Therefore, the verdict is in. They are trying to reduce the industry to ashes, and rebuild it in their own image. That of saints, sages and holy Buddhists. Put all the bars, nightclubs, go-go's, and related businesses out of business entirely. Then rebuild the industry as a Disneyworld, family type attraction. Pure as winter snow. 

 

Of course we all know this will be a dismal failure. I expect no more than 4-5 million tourists a year, 5-10 years from now, and for that trend of diminishing arrivals to continue, for the next 50 years. News bulletin! They killed the golden goose. 

 

It is time to admit that the tourism industry has been sabotaged to the point where it will never recover, to any meaningful extent. Ever. Decades from now it will be limping along, and thousands of large hotels will either be closed, or they will attempt to convert them into low priced condos. Eventually many will be razed to the ground. Trillions of dollars in tourism infrastructure down the toilet. Prayuth, Phiphat will go down in history as the men who destroyed the Thai economy, and set the nation on a scorched earth path toward a position of 80th in the world, in GDP, and a dramatic decline of the standard of living, for all but him, his cronies, and the very rich. 

I would argue that Thailand's fall down the educational tables, its rise up the corruption ladder, and the increasing concentration of wealth into the hands of a tiny portion of the population - all of which have become much more pronounced over the last decade and especially under the current administration - will ensure Thailands slide for years to come.  

If there is now a government policy of suppressing the sex industry that will only exacerbate the slide in the short term at least. Can't remember where I read it and it was a couple of years ago but flights arriving into Bangkok had the highest proportion of male to female passengers of almost any major arrival airport in the world. Anyway there are some pretty big minuses to having such a large sex industry as Thailand has, which seldom get debated and probably never will since there is no admission by authorities that the industry really exists. 

It depends what your budget is and what you are looking for in a neighborhood. The Pahklok tambol is in the quieter east side of the island towards the northern end. For us it has everything we are looking for although it is fairly quiet in a rural kind of way. You are close to international schools, shopping in Thalang, beaches 10 -15 minutes drive (Naithon / Naiyang), not far from the airport and the main road to Sarasin and Phang Nga ( 20 minutes drive). With tree covered hills as a backdrop, this area seems to be becoming increasingly attractive to expats. 

7 hours ago, Iron Tongue said:

Not that I don't enjoy cr*pping on Thailand like most people here, but the raise in prices includes inflation and increased costs of shipping due to fuel and even shipping container shortages.

In my experience shipping in to Thailand is very cheap at the moment. I have brought containers in from Australia and Europe over the last year. It is shipping out which has increased enormously - 400-500% from a year ago to almost any destination - we send 5-6 containers a month out to US, Europe, Australia etc.

Exchange rate changes will be impacting prices of imported goods more than shipping rates IMHO.

3 hours ago, Andycoops said:

Civil servants world wide never rush to do anything.

Not the case in my opinion and observation from various countries I have lived and worked in. Civil servants are often required by their departments and the law of the land to respond within certain time frames to the citizens of the nation. Many countries have strong, positive, responsive civil services, sadly I do not rank Thailand on my personal experience as one of those.   

6 hours ago, kiwikeith said:

Don't breath! that will stop spread 100% guaranteed, caution this may cause serious illness or death.

 

1 person caused NZ to go into it's latest Delta lockdown.

 

13 cases detected today. 19 in hospital, 4 in ICU nearly 1000 cases since the first detection (case 1)

 

1 death sadly a 99 yr old.

 

1 country in serious depression and economic hardship, they call this lockdown kiwi style.

 

Sadly the uncontrolled slave labor market has not been noted by Thai media as causing outbreaks of Delta.

1 thing is certain, it travels through the air, so if you can control breathing then you control Delta.

Not quite the full story, Auckland is still in level 4 full lockdown, the rest of the country only level 2 which is much less restrictive. Yes they did lock down at one case, but the total number of people infected is pretty close to 1,000 now. 

Great that they have controlled it enough to get back down to 13 new confirmed cases today. I hope it continues to reduce, as NZ is just about the least vaccinated population of the OECD countries.