keestha

Lomsak you are completely right. There are many farangs taking good care of children resulting from a previous relationship their wife/girlfriend had. They are fathering them and paying their way through school/university, bless them.

At a homestay in the real sense of the word you should be staying with a Thai family and participate in their daily life, like working at the field and going to the market.

But many nondescript lodgings nowadays adopt terms like "homestay" or "boutique hotel" or "spa" in an attempt to do some marketing.

Old thread related to this topic might be of some help.

Yes of course. Reminds me of am incident a long time ago when I went to get my papers back from an "accountant" who obviously didn't do anything but charge. I was lucky, when I went there that morning there was only a girl working who looked like she was sixteen, she gave me my papers instantly. Hope she didn't get fired for doing this without calling the boss first.

OP be assertive, especially if you don't owe this guy anything you have the fullest right to require your papers being given back.

I have heard that the ferries to Phi Phi have been cancelled.

That was 29/3. Calling to enquire today 30/3 I was told the ferry from Phuket to Phi Phi is operating today, can anybody confirm?

Oh well, forecast is saying tomorrow the wheather will be better anyway, even no 100% cloud cover anymore.

From where did you mail?

Just got a phone call from somebody who is in Ao Thalene (Krabi mainland, north of Ao Nang and Klong Meuang). The area is flooded, there have been landslides and there is no public transport to get out of there. Because of the flooding, the guy cannot go back to the hotel where he stays, but fortunately locals offered him to spend the night in a house which is built on stilts.

When I was in the US, I liked their tipping system! On the maybe two occasions I was very unhappy about both the food and the service, I left without tipping, afterwards feeling very satisfied about having clearly expressed myself without having to do any talking.

"April 17 is expected to be the hottest day of the year, as the sun will be directly overhead."

Do I misunderstand, I always thought in the northern hemisphere the sun reaches its highest point at July 21?

Here in Khao Lak the TOT connection also has been far worse than usual the last few weeks. It is slow and often gets interrupted.

The road from Ranong to Chumporn was closed this morning, probably still is, and somebody just called me from Ranong telling me the road from Ranong to Takua Pa is also closed, because of a bridge being washed away.

Just to give you some pointers: the business would have to be on the name of a company limited, or a limited partnership, or a natural Thai person. I assume you are a US citizen, so you might be able to use provisions as laid down in the Amity Treaty.

You would need a work permit, and also you would need licences to sell alcoholic beverages (seperately for Thai produced and imported), food, and maybe cigarettes.

Be aware that your lease for business premises will always be for only a limited period, usually just three years.

If you are planning to sell the unhealthy but oh so tasty greasy spoon type of American fast food, I will certainly drop by when I am in Bangkok.

Trying to figure out the VAT/groceries situation, be aware that some items like non-flavoured yoghurt and milk don't have VAT.

Maybe Villa added import duties?

Ping: very high on the list of things that piss me off is restaurants adding VAT and service charge to the bill for my pizza or whatever.

The problem might not necessarily be with TOT, but with the local telephone line. Last year a friend of mine who is living 200 meters down the road from me often was offline with her TOT connection, whilst I had no problem.

Sure there is excellent money to be made with forex....just start a brokerage firm. When the trader loses, the broker wins. The transactions of these traders never reach the capital market. When the guy loses, it will be deducted from his margin, and when he wins, it will be added to it.

Everybody is bound to lose in the long run. The broker will give the option to put in a stop loss, but if the rate flashes down instantly because of a drastic event in the real world, the stop loss cannot be executed because the rate at which the stop loss is put was never reached. When this happens, there is no limit to the loss that can occur.

Forex threads on this forum always attract a lot of views and posts, because there are a lot of people out there looking for a source of income. Not easy to find a job or start a profitable business in Thailand. But don’t fall into the forex trap, it’s a dead end street.

Also think of this: for any type of work, you need to have a work permit in Thailand, and you won’t get it for forex trading. Suppose you are at one point making good money with this and you talk about it, somebody being jaleous or having for some reason a grudge against you, could report you, and you would be in big trouble.

Oh well, nevertheless I wish you traders all the best, may all the pips go your way.

There have been a lot of threads about forex on this forum. Forex is highly risky, there are so many factors influencing the movements of currencies, that the prediction you base your transaction on will always be hardly better then a pot luck shot.

Anybody contemplating to try his luck with this, I suggest finding a thread dating a few years back, and send off a few PM's to posters who claimed back then to be successfull traders, and ask them if they are still doing it.

Try for instance Bang Saphan Yai at the Pacific coast in the south of Prachuabkhirikhan province. It is a small beach resort which attracts mainly Thai people from Bangkok, who are there only during the weekends. Nightlife is restricted to the Thai flavour: pubs with live music, and karaoke parlours.

Hua Hin might also fit your bill: it is an international beach resort which also gets a lot of Thai tourists, and besides nightlife geared for foreigners there is also plenty of local style nightlife. Patong only exists thanks to tourism, but Hua Hin is in essence still a normal Thai middle sized town.

Wherever you go, have a pleasant stay.

Some logical thinking: I am always very sure I take the full bundle of cash the ATM dispenses. If indeed the ATM would initially shortchange me 1000 Baht, only to spew out one 1000 Baht bill later, I would be very sure this would be a mechanical problem of this ATM, and not a problem with my account.

Lots of little surprises when you go back to your native country after a long time:

Like going to The Netherland and using the Euro currency for the first time, it had been introduced like two years ago. Not familiar with the many sorts of coins yet, initially I skipped the problem by just paying with bills. But soon my purse was bursting out of its seams, and trying to pay with coins it invariably took me a really long time to sort out the exact amount. Doing this I always felt people looking at me and thinking " what a moron, did he still not figure it out yet?"

For a while during the early nineties, I took the train from Bangkok to Hua Hin almost every weekend. Every time in Phetchaburi a girl selling sweets boarded the train, wearing a T shirt with the text "I would rather have a nice ass than big tits". Most likely she didn't have the vaguest idea what the T shirt was saying, but any man being able to read it would be more likely to look down her body then when the shirt would have had a text like "Church of England".

In a small town somewhere in Central Africa, I was amazed to spot somebody wearing a shirt saying "Utrechtse heuvelrug", which is a little known national park in the Netherlands close to where I grew up.

True there are quite a few beaches in Thailand which are very filthy. Often local authorities don't care playing a very active role, and then it depends on owners of beach/beachfront businesses getting themselves organized yes or no.

Lately I got mailed a few times by a new Phuket magazine appearing on friday, it is called Phuket News. Today I opened their mail, and of course jumped on their offer for a free listing in the yellow pages. I live in Khao Lak and most likely won't go to Phuket before May, did anybody see this magazine and what is it like?

Thanks for your report, there should be more posts of this type.

You mention sandflies, I would like to add that this problem comes and goes, depending on changing weather and sea currents: can be that a sand fly infested beach is free of them the next year, and the other way around.

Trying to book using a French Mastercard, Air Asia's website didn't let me fill in the last 3 digits of the card number, and then told me the card number was too short. I booked with them often enough though, using customers' credit cards, seems like it is hit and miss.

Would very strongly recommand to buy and not to lease the land, if doable. Investment on rented land is thin air: your lease would be max 30 years, and for selling the resort after having run it a long time, you would be fully dependant on the landlord being willing to give the buyer a new long lease.