snake24

Honestly this thread would do much better with pictures to see the changes and if you are actually correct.

To the OP ... btwretail ... we get you.

But that Thais don't care. I'm not say they should ... or should not care ... it's irrelevant what I think ... and fairly much irrelevant what you think also.

That comes from a News item not so long ago here on Thai Visa ... hitler-fashion-statements-confuse-offend-tourists-in-thailand/ just recently.

Starting a one man crusade to try and educate Thais and Thailand on how you perceive the atrocities of a megalomaniac half the world away and from a different generation will do nothing but give you migraines.

Many before you have tried.

If you would like to read any of the 20 or 30 threads about the same subject here on Thai Visa ... just click this link and it takes you to all the people who have written about this in the past. https://www.google.com.au/search?q=nazi+swastika++http://www.thaivisa.com+site:www.thaivisa.com&biw=1024&bih=461

Yeah, I know deep down, it helps nothing and Thais do not care...

It is like corruption, rich people getting away with crime etc... I just forgot for a moment I was in Thailand and got overrun by my western moral standards and upbringing :-) Need to get back into zombie-mode ;-)

There's no need to appear in your whiny cry baby mode. Just think for a moment would your western world care about the sensitivites of say ppl from asia? You would think it ridiculous that someone from a foreign country like say china could dare say it out loud and find it nuts that you should be sensitive to them so it applies the same way too. If it gives you any comfort it applies in most countries and hitler and the nazis are banned or discouraged in many other countries worldwide like virtually every western nation including aussie and NZ and probably countries like singapore, malaysia maybe african and islamic nations too i don't know so thailand is one of the minority countries that don;t care.

Buy some BITCOINS, high risk/returns. Maybe a pleasant surprise next year. Look at the charts.

ROFL at bit coins do u know you can mine them too using high powered pcs with many gfx cards and you can buy some drugs from the internet silk road.

wow OP lived in thailand for so long. You aren't thai are you?

How visiting Thailand once a year and being concerned with miniscule fees makes me wonder just how much spending, withdrawing is taking place to even be bothered.

However when I started traveling and vacationing this too was a concern of mine and the research I turned up was HSBC. HSBC seems to have a location in every major country/city in the world. Therefore using an HSBC atm in Bangkok will not incur atm fees if your account was opened in a HSBC in another country.

International transaction fees/point of sale on credit/debit cards range from 1.-3.%

Escaping any fees these days is a difficult task but it can be done. Some banks in the USA refund up to $10 (THB300) a month on atm fees. My bank refunds me if I scan/email a copy of my atm receipt showing the atm charge merely because I've told my bank I have been "deployed" to Thailand. Amazing the respect and benefits you receive just by the choice of words you use. No verification or official documents required to prove such "deployment" and if ever questioned, my answer is, "I deployed myself, indefinitely".

Live and learn. The ethics, morals and values we all grew up with 30-40+ years ago don't seem to apply today. Honesty is not always the best policy. When you want results "NOW"

I admire penny-pinchers, cutting-corners, coupon clippers and such, doing so allows you the luxuries of buying that 150THB coffee at Starbucks

In my case it isn't being a penny pincher or being a cheapo charlie even though my current situation might look like this.

It is gaining more knowledge in the prepartion for future events.

Take that schwabb account. That will aid greatly if you travel to other countries in the future and need to withdraw for atms cos i am sure they will give you the best rates in another country say laos or maybe the ukraine for example.

Also u need to consider this. Most bank atms allow a maximum of 20k thb, some 25k and i think AEON allows 40k so let's say in some event u urgently need 100k thb. AEON atms are hard to locate and the most common one is siam bank i think and i think it only allows a max of 20k thb so that is 5 withdrawals, 150x 5 and 5x5 of charges on top of the bad exchange rate.

Would the offshore bank account be from the virgin islands or maybe some swiss bank?

you can bet your sweet butt that it would be neither!

by the way your 5USD is peanuts, I pay 150THb+ 8Euro+ exchangerate +++++

Well you are from the EU and the EU always charges for everything. Take the VAT charge in say making a phone call using skype. I see that ppl in the EU have to pay that VAT charge on top of the normal phone charges thank god we don't have that here.

One very good thing i like about EU is how strong the currency is and how the baht is weakening so you can get around 40thb for 1 eur which is almost an additional 20 thb compared to sgd.

Your Singapore account is good enough. Just withdraw 20,000 baht each time and you only pay the flat 150bht and S$5, what's the big deal?

Try a telegraphic transfer from your Singapore bank to a Thailand bank account and if you pay all the charges you will be paying more than S$75 per 20,000 bht in various bank charges.

The Shwab One account is an investment account first so expect to pay a broker for your share transactions and eliminate any ATM transaction benefits.

Dude you forgot to factor in the bad exchange rate cos the bank charges something like 2-3% so it's not 1sgd to 25THB but 1 sgd to 23.8THB i calculated that the last time i withdrew some money.

Waiting for someone to come in to say it's a budget flight and well yes that is it. That is why my check in luggage is made up of some tough material not those soft type of bags.

if this was in the ghetto in the US well i dunno try doing that to some black ppl probably have to fight with them with the cops coming in afterwards.

OP is your wife a thai? Yes she must be well is she trustworthy?

To OP.

Some of the things are really not worth complaining about. Take the flight time from the US i assume you are from there. Yup that's long it's long for ppl flying from asia over there too. BKK is quite dirty yes, and has tons of traffic and chaos BUT it's pretty much better than other cities around the region like say jakarta, manila, laos, cambodia but probably not as good as KL and definitely loses out to singapore but nobody really cares about that and besides it adds to the experience.

Anyway ppl go to BKK and in fact many ppl go to thailand for sex tourism. It's a fact and it aids both sides. Poor families with daughters use that to support themselves and to escape the cycle of poverty and men that go for them have a partner and sex. That's a fact and if ppl go to bkk to seek that out then the streets of bkk being filthy doesn't really matter. I do agree that the traffic and the chaos and the cluttered streets aren't a very welcome sight but that's just how it is and by and large the region of south east asia is like this. You could try manila or some indonesian city and it would be a lot worse and more dangerous.

On the thoughts of thailand not being cheap. Well firstly what were your expectations? Did u expect say a 100USD note to go very far? Anyway it's not too bad. In my country of singapore if you want good hotel accomdations mind you not just decent ones something like 250SGD and above per day would be expected and in USD it would be i think around 230USD and you can get very good rooms in thailand for a lot less than that. It's 1 USD to around 32thb so yes it's pretty high but it's not going to be tons and tons cheaper but it's still not too expensive overall i think you were expecting vietnam prices.

The taxis and all charge really high prices especially in tourist areas and yes the prices are tagged to the prices in the US i suppose. Like maybe a 40usd cab ride is really expensive and you wouldn't want to pay that in thailand which would cost i think around 1.1k baht.

Do you trade FX by any means?

I seen the spreads on the USDTHB pair and it's around like a 10-17 pip spread difference so selling it isn't a good idea and not to mention strong bullish retracements pushing up the USDTHB everyday.

No, not me...I'm not brave enough or smart enough to get involved in the FX casino game. I just use my dollars to get baht for my Thailand living expenses. In fact, got some within the hour at my nearby AEON ATM using one of my no foreign transaction fee debit cards. Good luck in your search to find a brokerage or bank account that also provides such a card....I too wouldn't be happy in paying both a flat fee and percentage fee to my bank every time I used my debit card....I know your bank appreciates your contributions to their business, but I expect you would prefer to keep that money in your pocket.

All right then but the usdthb pair looks really interesting and has a large spread cos the thb isn't one of the major currencies so it isn't so liquid yup.

My solution may or not fit what you want to do but it works for me, and I avoid the double whammy of fees when taking cash out of the ATM.

While in Thailand open a Paypal account that is from Thailand, it must be opened while you're in country or they won't let you do it. They didn't for me anyway.

Open a local savings account that offers a VISA ATM debit card. I chose Kasikorn and it works great for me, you may have to try a couple of branches as every branch seems to have their own rules.

When transferring funds I gift myself from one Paypal account to the other then transfer those funds to my savings account. The cost for $1000 and up is like $5 and I'm sure they're getting some profit when they convert the currencies. The first time I did this Paypal asked me to call and verify the transaction, no verifications have been needed since.

This process can take a week or two until the funds finally get to my savings but if you have the time the savings from not having ATM fees can be substantial.

I do have a 15 baht fee for foreign ATM's with my Kasikorn card when I use a different ATM from a different branch, but 15bt is nothing compared to what I was getting hosed for. Also some ATM's will allow a 30,000 baht withdrawal, and most will allow 20,000 baht with the Kasikorn VISA ATM card, which is nice.

Hope this helps,

Roger

paypal requires you to provide them with your particulars which would include your home address and everything after 7k in transactions are done and i have a paypal account that is fully verified. Well to open a new paypal account in a foreign country wouldn't really make sense and yes the exchange rates of paypal aren't too good. Suck if i might add. I think it's the same as those banks that charge 2-3% on top of the rates.

wow so it follows visa without any charges.

Yeap, or said another way, "They don't charge additional fees and absorb the 1% Visa fee." Remember, it's not Visa or MasterCard giving a person the shaft on exchange rates as their exchange rates are usually plus or minus a few stang of the Thai bank TT Buying Rate which is about the best exchange rate the common man can get when transferring funds to Thailand. The one giving your the shaft is your own home country bank/card company.

For example on exchange rates...from looking at the Visa, MC, and another website to determine rates at this point in time on 29Aug/Thursday morning/9:45am, the following rates apply

Average Thai bank TT Buying Rate: 32.07 Baht/USD

Visa Rate: 31.95

MasterCard Rate: 31.97

Note: since card exchange rates which are set "once" for an entire day vs Thai bank TT Buying Rates which respond much faster & change several times per day based on the FX market, card rates usually lag a day or two behind FX markets since the card companies only set "one rate for a 24 hr period" and apparently want to get a better average of what their 24 hr rate should be....probably not smart to base your 24 hr rate on say a FX rate occurring at a certain time during day if that certain FX rate was just a brief spike in the FX market...and of course vice-versa for a brief dip in FX rates. I have observed that when the FX market rates are fairly stable (not this highly variable baht to USD rate we've been seeing over the last few weeks) that the Visa rate is very, very close to the TT Buying Rate...within a few stang...or actually beats the TT Buying Rate. And when you consider with a no foreign transaction fee debit card and using an AEON ATM to get your money "immeidiately" in hand with absolutely no wire transfer fees such a deal is hard to beat. Will be interesting to see what the new Visa rate coming out in another hour is...since yesterday's and today's TT Buying Rates have been very close to each other and considering the day or two lag in card rates that today's Visa exchange rate for the next 24 hours will be something over 32 baht/USD and real close to the average TT Buying Rate of 32.07. We'll see in about another hour come 11am Thailand time, which is midnight U.S. East Coast Time when the rates update for the next 24 hours. I think the above MC rate carries through until around 11pm tonight Thailand time.

Do you trade FX by any means?

I seen the spreads on the USDTHB pair and it's around like a 10-17 pip spread difference so selling it isn't a good idea and not to mention strong bullish retracements pushing up the USDTHB everyday.

Easy fix for a stopped toilet here, thanks to the bum gun. Turn off the water to the bum gun. Then unscrew the head from the

hose. Then stick the hose into the toilet. With a bit of wiggling, it will easily go past the trap in the toilet. Then turn it on full

blast. It will instantly dislodge whatever is blocking the toilet. I have done this with great success. However this system counts

upon there being sufficient water pressure. If your bum has low water pressure it will not work.....

Regarding the original thread title, since there is no tomorrow in Thailand, and certainly no yesterday, it stands to

reason there should at least be a today...... :-)

Then the hose on your bum gum would be totally icky with shit water wouldn't it?

The advantages of having the bum gun over the japanese toilet bidet spray thing is i suppose the bum gun can double up as the bathroom floor washer too and not to mention other silly ways like yours here. Hopefully no one uses it to shower himself. Most thai bathrooms should have a drain but i do recall someone's freaking apartment toilet with no drain.

Thai like the various chinese dialects is a tonal language so a word has to be pronounced exactly as it is. When i was learning mandarin and hanyu pinyin we were taught the 4 tones in mandarin. Steady, rising, middle and falling. I think thai probably has more than 4 tones probably 5 or 6 while cantonese has 8. Also thais tend to pronounce words with Rs in them as Ls. Anyway for those of you that don't speak a tonal language like english for example how did you manage to pronounce the words correctly cos if you pronunce a word that sounds the same but in a different tone it could mean something totally different.

It also means 'off' or 'stale' or 'stagnant' or 'past its use-by date' which are all much more relevant

Now is a Thai word it means, "cold."

Sent from my GT-N7000B

Goddamnit it's "now" second tone in mandarin which is pretty different from how the word now is produced i wonder how you guys that don't speak a tonal language go about pronouncing words in languages that are tonal in nature you have to pronounce it exactly as it is and to pronounce now in the english way to mean cold in thai is way off.

to the OP do you mean in the US if you yelled like this loudly at the repairman NOW they would fix it immediately?

Mind you i have lived in the US too and there were times when things were done in a shoddy manner and american bathrooms. Lord god my bathroom in my apartment didn't have a drainage system so after mopping up the floor i had to flush it down the toilet and of course they don't have the bum gun thing so it's quite gross swiping sometimes. Worst thing is americans all think they are the best in the world so somehow there isn't any need to improve anything.

wow so it follows visa without any charges.

Since they charge such high fees already I would be greatly surprised if they offer a no foreign transaction fee card, except maybe for a premier type account that would probably require a gazillion dollars in deposits.

True do you have any knowledge of opening offshore account?

Seems you only hear what you want to hear.... so if you insist: The Schwab One International® account

Schwab One International seems to get high ratings...I think it requires a $10K USD opening deposit...but it does come with a no foreign transaction fee Visa debit card. I don't have such an international account since I'm able to have U.S. Schwab brokerage/bank account, but I've seen several posts of people who do have the Schwab International Account and they seem to like it.

I realised they don't give the rates if you decide to withdraw money from various countries.

Wow this account sounds cool. I am sure it works in many countries. (i have not read anything from the site)

Since they charge such high fees already I would be greatly surprised if they offer a no foreign transaction fee card, except maybe for a premier type account that would probably require a gazillion dollars in deposits.

True do you have any knowledge of opening offshore account?

Isn't there a bank that allows free withdrawals within the region(Singapore/Malaysia/Thailand)? Don't remember the name, but I saw one of the ATMs in Pattaya. Perhaps if you ask on the Pattaya Forum you can get the name. One ATM is near the corner on Pattaya Tai and Sai Song.

If it turns out to be the case, then perhaps you can open a corresponding account in Singapore(if that is from whence you hail).

Just pattaya?

I have no idea. The name of the bank is CIMB Thai. Take a look for yourself.

Regional ATM Service

We are pleased to announce our new cross-border ATM facility linking Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. Enjoy the convenience of our network of over 3,750 CIMB ATMs when you travel abroad to these four countries.

Now you can view your account balances and also withdraw your money from any CIMB Bank, CIMB Niaga and CIMB Thai ATM machine for FREE. Don't forget to activate your ATM card for overseas usage.

All customers holding CIMB ATM cards are eligible for this service.

From the looks of things i will need to open a bank account with that bank. Well then it isn't worth the problem. Probably take pibbs advice and call my bank and see if they have that type of debit card available.

Isn't there a bank that allows free withdrawals within the region(Singapore/Malaysia/Thailand)? Don't remember the name, but I saw one of the ATMs in Pattaya. Perhaps if you ask on the Pattaya Forum you can get the name. One ATM is near the corner on Pattaya Tai and Sai Song.

If it turns out to be the case, then perhaps you can open a corresponding account in Singapore(if that is from whence you hail).

Just pattaya?