rwdrwdrwd

I'm OK thanks, I'll stick to my plan. I recommend you investigate logos though.

No, if someone "sticks" to something, it relates to their present outlook.  Logically I could have visited in the past, made a decision not to return, and then opted to stick to that decision for the future. Which in the case of Pattaya is definitely the case.

Saying "I'll stick to beer" doesn't mean I've never drank wine.

6 minutes ago, giddyup said:

I thought you said you'd visited neither. You are a tad confused on many fronts I fear.

More logic issues.

"I'll stick to visiting neither" does not equate to "I've never visited either".

22 minutes ago, Wake Up said:

Lagos can’t be as dreadful as Pattaya and you are arguing about logic skills. Please keep us all laughing. LMAO. 

It's awesome, I'm sure, if you're a sex tourist. But personally, I thought it utterly dreadful, primarily due to Chang vest sporting fat pervert westerners.

I realise I'm probably in a minority on ThaiVisa. Each to their own. However I genuinely find a few black guys peddling drugs less distasteful than reams of leering overweight perverts roaming the streets.

1 hour ago, giddyup said:

 Perhaps put Lagos on your places to visit.

Logic ain't your strong point is it :D I said 'happier' not 'happy'.

Though Lagos surely can't be as dreadful as Pattaya, I'll stick to visiting neither.

2 minutes ago, Bluespunk said:

As ye sow, so shall ye reap...

Well, quite. Which is a far cry from "what a scumbag family", and ruling out the possibility that there's an agenda.

3 minutes ago, scorecard said:

 

"He created one of the most successful telecoms companies in the country."

 

Yep, he made a lot of money when he was handed an exclusive telcoms licence from a scaly general during a time when the general was a key player in mowing down/ murdering 200 unarmed protesting Thai people and when it was state policy that all telecoms activity had to be within state organizations. And he charged outrageous fees / call costs etc., and there was no competition.

 

Then when it suited him he changed ownership laws to be able to take advantage of selling a large part of his telecoms stuff to an offshore entity to become very rich.

 

Such a nice guy.

 

 

 

 

I'm didn't claim he was a nice guy.

I'm expressing sarcasm at the complete denial that his extended family is being targeted.

54 minutes ago, BangkokNicky said:

Back to Soi NANA please .. still loads hanging around there .. people come for asian woman not blac.k <deleted>

I'm happier seeing and hearing them than manky embarrasing sex tourists to be honest.

15 minutes ago, epicstuff said:

Wasnt it obvious enough for you that the family was on the take?  Even if the stories about his rise to ridiculous wealth from a policemen isn't true, the sheer greed of trying to evade his tax should give a pretty clear measure of their ethics.

He created one of the most successful telecoms companies in the country.

What's the salary of a senior army official these days - they seem to do pretty well on it.

If we're taking tax evasion by rich Thais into account then I think we're going to run out of internet if we properly delve into whether or not this particular family are being abnormally targeted.

11 minutes ago, Cuchulainn said:

What a scumbag family.

Pfft yeah, cos there's definitely no agenda against them at all, is there.

I got rebuffed on reason C by Citibank, but after I argued, they admitted they were wrong and allowed it.

What seemed to clinch it was when I highlighted that Thailand was not on this list (which is referenced by the document itself) http://www.oecd.org/tax/automatic-exchange/crs-implementation-and-assistance/crs-by-jurisdiction/#T because they have not yet implemented CRS. Therefore Thailand could not possibly 'Require that the TIN' is disclosed under CRS legislation.

Fantastic that we now have a forum rep everyone can ping when the 90 day report site is having issues :D where do I file issues, first one is that there's a perfect storm with the autocomplete where the autocomplete response handler often throws a 500 and the callee just retries, which leads to an infinite loop and browser lockup - easily fixed with a one liner in the js.

Out of interest, and feel free to tell me to keep my nose out. Do you qualify for the same pension Thai govt employees do, and is the pay any good (I believe "any good" in software dev in Thailand is 80 - 120k)? The pension is pegged to between 70 and 85% of final salary I believe, so if you get one in combination with a decently paid role it's a very nice bonus.

35 minutes ago, jimster said:

Must be a very localized thing because although yesterday was quite a rainy day, most of eastern Bangkok though showing signs of rain having fallen earlier (I had just come back from a road trip to the eastern seaboard) was absolutely ordinary - there have been many periods in the last few weeks with much heavier rain and flooding than yesterday. So probably it was the city center that received the heavy rain while other parts of the city just received a little.

 

Same thing with overnight rain - wasn't heavy at all, if it was I'd be able to hear it over my air-conditioner. So i guess the flooding this morning must have been localized to the downtown area.

It absolutely threw it down last night where I am in Ekamai - was so heavy you could not see more than 20 metres. Was constant at that intensity for about 3 hours and it flooded very, very quickly, then it reduced to a less intense rain for a few more hours.

It must have hit a foot in our yard since it's risen enough to breach a few of our outdoor buildings and my office which has a door a foot from ground level.

8 minutes ago, pigeonjake said:

well i can only go by my wages,

in 1980 i was fresh out my time as a fully coded pipe welder, ( a good one) worked on most power stations in the uk, and oil refineries, off shore, on shore, getting 500 pounds a week

 

now 2017 im a certified welding inspector with a diploma in managing welding operations on 450 pound a day and thats in the uk.

when i go abroad its more,

 

Firstly you have a load more experience now, so you'll earn more - it's not an especially fair comparison. It would be more relevant to compare what someone at the level of experience you were in 1980 earns these days against that 500/week you used to.

Secondly that is a 4.5x increase, not a 10x like the house price, which is what my point was :-)

On 9/26/2017 at 2:01 PM, pigeonjake said:

a great post, you talk about buying your first house for 29k but that was relative to your earning then

He said it was 29k in 290k now, the average wage these days is 27k.

I was alive in the early 80s and I don't remember the average wage being 2.7k, so there's a lot more to this huge difference than 'relative to earnings'.

The graph here is interesting - http://blogs.thisismoney.co.uk/2010/04/house-prices-vs-average-earnings.html

On 9/21/2017 at 10:31 AM, smew said:

Ice and ecstasy is heavy drugs that drive drugged up crazy kid to beat up on gas station attendants because of spilled gas on the fuel tank

Ice, perhaps. Though alcohol just as likely.

Ecstasy? No chance. They might hug someone to death, or bore them to death, but it does not induce physical violence.

9 hours ago, alex8912 said:

Oh not a bit aggressive or cheeky  filming them  eh?  I would never support your post .  No one should 

Not aggressive or cheeky in the slightest, it's extremely sensible.

9 hours ago, connda said:

This story only gets better.  My wife sent the camera, a Dengo - 'Black Eyes' Dual 2 Dash Cam, back to Dengo.  This is suppose to be 1080 DPI max, 140 degree angle front camera and a rear mounted 90 degree angle camera in the back.  

I just got the replacement dash cam back.  It's a 720 DPI max, 90 degree front-only camera.

So she's on the phone and we'll obviously be sending this back too.  In the meantime, one question: 
Is there government office of Consumer Complaints regarding retail products sold in Thailand?  I seriously want to file a consumer complaint.  The original product was not the advertised quality, and they sent me back a sub-standard model to replace the sub-standard camera we originally purchased. 

Dengo - Buyer beware!  
I'm one unhappy camper.  This organization has some serious issues.  And I have photos, videos, and documentation to back that statement up. 

My wife bought a couple of Dengo cameras at 1k each as well. They are indeed, crap. One of them even has random blue text printed diagonally over the screen, I suspect it's the result of using a reject from a QC process.

Really cruddy and cheap build quality in general. Would have returned them but we bought them for an imminent road trip and they were better than nothing.

On 9/11/2017 at 10:10 PM, sanemax said:

Some people need to live and work in the City, and would like a clean environment and not have the inconvenience of noise and drunks at night

Some people wish to get on the first BTS after an all night bender without having to navigate around normies, but we can't all get what we want, can we.

Seriously though, if you live close enough to a thoroughfare in central BKK that you can hear stuff from the street outside, as I do, then the most annoying thing at night and early in the morning is the noise of traffic, not the occasional drunk person. I'm sure it differs if you live right in the center of entertainment areas, however that would just be a stupid place to choose to live - there are plenty of non entertainment areas with residential accommodation that are central.

I once ended up with a few thousand dollars worth of amazon gift cards. Got the cash out by listing a few washing machines (lowest amazon fees) under a fresh account at extortionate prices and then buying them myself :D - then just withdrew cash to the bank.

Probably breaks their terms, but meh.

18 hours ago, craigt3365 said:

Horrible thing to post. Crazy scenario and never happen.

"Horrible thing to post"? Sorry for disturbing your sensitive demeanour.

"Crazy scenario"? Hardly "crazy", given it has occurred over and over again around the world - often (not always) with the US being the foreign funder of armed organisations. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/us/politics/cia-study-says-arming-rebels-seldom-works.html mentions a few of these instances. William Blum (https://www.amazon.co.uk/William-Blum/e/B000APW3VO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0) has written a number of very interesting books on on this topic.

"Never happen"? In the US - indeed highly unlikely, given their strength. Unfortunate for all the other countries around the world that do not want to fall in line with the agenda of more powerful nations, ones that are willing to fund armed opposition in other, less powerful, nations.

2 hours ago, djjamie said:

Finally the Shinawatra trait kicked in. Run away from accountability as fast as you possible can. 

Yeah, or having great stitch-up goggles.

Ha, brilliant.

Quote

Since the 1950s, the United States has secretly struck up alliances with the Brotherhood or its offshoots on issues as diverse as fighting communism and calming tensions among European Muslims. And if we look to history, we can see a familiar pattern: each time, US leaders have decided that the Brotherhood could be useful and tried to bend it to America’s goals, and each time, maybe not surprisingly, the only party that clearly has benefited has been the Brotherhood.

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/02/05/washingtons-secret-history-muslim-brotherhood/

The author Ian Johnson is a pulitzer prize winning author, previously of the WSJ, that has delivered testimony to Congress - just to pre-empt any claim of 'questionable sources'.

My point here is to highlight that the US is often involved in covert (and overt) destabilisation of other countries - in terms of the current trouble in Syria it is not a simple case of saying 'it started with the Arab spring', the roots of the spring itself need to be considered, and who was funding and supporting it. The reason why they were doing so also needs to be called into question.

I'm quite certain that the US would not hesitate to bomb its own cities were they taken over for a period of years by foreign funded armed organisations intent on destroying its existing political structure.