oztaurus

On 6/17/2017 at 1:49 PM, klauskunkel said:

brake failure?

... and the driver ran away

Thanks to all for the answers, this exactly solves my problem too - I ended up only getting a single entry non-imm B last time because I didn't have 8 months left on my WP - now I have left the company so I can still remain until my "Admitted Until" date on my TM6. Good news indeed

We had heavy rains and flooding on the ring-road in Samui as late as last week.

Not even if everyone else in South-East Asia dies of ebola!

Here the fix cost 5000 Baht in Farangistan it would cost 5000 Euro

Someone want to pay 20 % VAT and 55% income tax+state insurance on top of it?

Nah in Farangistan UK they would all be underground , zero maintenance, you see in the "long run" it is cheaper, no one dies when it rains and its not going off often.

Last time I was in Australia, there was a van which regularly came around in the dead of night and exchanged compressed air cylinders in the telecom pit outside the house. Apparently the pipes in which the underground phone cables were laid is not waterproof and the cheapest solution is to add positive air pressure to keep them from getting wet. The guy and 4 of his family had contracts covering about 1/3 of Sydney .... and did quite nicely out of those contracts too!

I went back to Australia in 2009 after 7 years away, got wiped out in the "Global Financial Crisis" and had to borrow my airfare back. My son was happy to see me and put me up for over a year, initially as a charity case sleeping on an airbed in the loungeroom, then I began to get back on my feet and we got a 2 bedroom place .... but after 15 months he tactfully suggested that it was time for me to leave. At leaset we stayed friends.

I also noticed that, of the people I left behind, those who stayed where they were and did what they did - got where they were going. They had the cars, the houses, the spouses, the businesses ... ad in once case the millions ... leaving me a little jealous. But do you know what/ They all said to me "Gee, I wish I had been brave enough to leave it all behind and just go, you must have had some amazing adventures"

As I worked back up to my current state (which is still far from ideal, but at least I have been back in LOS for 2 years now) I made a different bunch of friends - with whom I still keep in contact, whereas most of the group from the first 40 years of my life now no longer have any relevance or point of congruence with the way i think and act now.

Home is now wherever I define it to be.

Another consideration, which i personally ran foul of recently, is that if the director does not yet have a work permit, then foreign staff cannot apply for a work permit.

If you are a one man band that may not be a problem, but if you employ foreign staff, even if you have the stated market capitalisation, they are stymied until you have your WP

and of course "the developer, who is on a business trip to Hong Kong" is going to come home and face the music like a good little boy, isn't he ......

These tourists you all speak of have a lot of quality.

It is all low, but they have a lot of it.

The monorail around central Sydney was a failure and has been torn down

The pink route follows Chaeng Wattana Road which is extremely busy. It will pass the Government Complex Buildings, several shopping Malls, large hospitals, and hotels. It will cross the future extensions to the northern Red, Green and inter airport lines and connects to the almost completed Purple line.

So I would have thought it would justify light rail instead of Monorail.

2020 BKK.jpg

The monorail around Sydney was a failure because it didn't connect well with other forms of transport, car parking, shopping or entertainment precincts.

Light rail - heaven forbid. My comment on that last time I was in Sydney was "some bureaucrat looked at the tangle of buses, taxis, delivery trucks and private cars jostling for space on geaorge street and said 'I know! Let's put a train down the middle of that!"

Light Rail on Chaeng Wattana would just kill lots more people - remember that Thais can't handle a level crossing when they know that they are crossing a railway track - can you imagine what they would do with a light rail coming down on top of them????

No! No! No! - put it up above the mess, or underground never on street level.

Oh no, Thailand, don't build a design which is compatible or interchangeable with one of the existing designs, don't save money through economies of scale. And be sure to create a completely new payment card system, so everyone can have three (or more) cards to load...

Monorail, schmonorail...will they ever learn?

I agree 100%, BTS system is tried and tested - use what you know works, give yourself flexibility to swap rolling stock across lines to cater for varying passenger loads, save money on inventory repairs and maintenance (Oooops, sorry, TIT - budget for repairs and maintenance goes to "other places..."), save money on staff training, allow flexibility of labour movement for trained staff to float between lines to cover leave and sickness entitlements, I could go on - but unless "The General" is reading it is just a waste of my internet bandwidth and time ...

Chatchai market hasn't catered for tourists since Market Village opened - which would be the real reason that sales in the rest of the downtown area have fallen (apart from the present downturn in tourist numbers generally). Chatchai has also become quite expensive even for the fresh produce the Thai buy. As others have said - there isn't anywhere to add parking in Huahin except for blocking off traffic lanes, knocking down half the town, constructing a new multi-storey carpark over the top of the shopping district or constructing a new "shopping heart" for the town - eg Market Village and BluPort.

perhaps "family of rape victim receive 8.5m Baht from SRT" would have been a better sentence structure, I don't really believe that the SRT paid 8.5m so that they could rape the family of the victim - oh the English language can be so complicated .....

In 2000 a friend of mine who worked in a travel agency won a competition for most air miles with British Airways sold in her agency in 3 months. The prize was free flights to Thailand. She rang me and said "do you want to go to Thailand?" i said sure - when are we going? she said "next Wednesday" .... fine - how long are we going for? ...... she said "oh, just 5 days - I have to be back at work the following Tuesday"

We ended up in Huahin, in one of those grungy finger wharf guesthouses (which were even grungier then), eight months later I moved to LOS and have spent 9 of the past 15 years here.

Not quite as spontaneous as nipping out for a pint and ending up in Phuket -but pretty close.

so - hypothetically, how would immigration (in any country) handle someone on a yacht who leaves the country, sails around for a while without actually entering the territorial waters of another country, then sails back to the previous country of departure?

"PM vows to uphold democracy, with Thai features"

so it will be more of a "Thai-mock-crazy" then ........

Another tip for the Lao visa on arrival, if you can get USD (fee varies by nationality) to pay for the visa you will save about 30% on the exchange rate they charge for Thai baht.

The Visa on Arrival office at the Lao border wasn't manned last time I went. there was a phone number taped to the door, call that and someone will come down to handle your application.

If you had the the statutory declaration from the Oz embassy they might of done it.

Savannakhet is not a good place to go for a non-o for being 50 or over for retirement. They have turned people away with 800k baht in a Thai bank.

Vientiane is a better location.

had the stat dec with details as stated - I got the impression that if I had gotten a different officer on the day they might have allowed it, just that this guy wasn't going to allow it. Will see what happens in 6 months when the TRx2 runs out - will try Vientiane then or maybe go Thai elite card instead .... or call it quits and go to Nicaragua!

Reporting my experience from Tuesday 10th March 2015. Basic facts:

Aussie male, 56 yo, been in Thailand 9 out of past 15 years on various visa options.

Went to Savannakhet via Aussie Embassy hoping for a non-imm O based on retirement

From the embassy I had a signed, witnessed statutory declaration stating:

• Name =
• Occupation = retired
• Address =
• Age and date of birth (verifying over 50 status)
• Passport details
• that I have retired from work in Australia effective 2 years ago
• that I do not intend to work in Thailand
• that I have independent income from investments in Australia (giving an AUD figure and conversion to Thai baht) well in excess of the minimum 65,000 requirement. - though I didn't bring copies of my Aussie or Singapore trading accounts or Thai bank statements because I don't actually transfer very much money into Thailand at the moment.

I handed in the document and when the officer hesitated I translated it into Thai for him.

He said that I needed the account from my Embassy showing where my pension was being paid. I explained (all in reasonably good, very polite Thai) that I did not get a pension, I had independent investment income. He wouldn't have a bar of that, wanted the account from my embassy (which of course is nonsense, the Embassy cannot do such a thing).

I tried a different tack and said I was sorry, I thought that I only had to provide that for the extensions in Thailand, that for the visa all that was necessary was the letter which I had given him - I thought that might give him a soft way out to save face and give me the visa. No go. All he would offer was a tourist visa, though when I asked him for a double entry he was happy to do that.

At least it has delayed the hassle for another 6 months.

Other observations of Savannakhet new consulate:

They use a paper card queue system, if it is your first time into the consulate you may not notice the little wire basket with the tickets near the window.

The officer calls out the ticket numbers, only in Lao accented Thai, there is no display system. If you don't know Thai numbers then you may miss your turn.

There appears to be only one shop outside "helping" people with documents, copies, photos etc, not the dozen or so who were at the old place. When I was there it was pretty quiet but I am guessing that on a busy day they will be swamped - bring everything from home (including pen, scissors, glue if necessary) and either download the application form or go up to the window of the consulate and get one for free rather than paying the shop 10 baht.

In the rainy season, be sure to take an umbrella, there is nowhere near enough shelter for the masses.

I was actually pleasantly surprised with the efficiency of the way the consular staff handled the workload on the days I was there.

now if they only had a high speed train to catch, it would all have ended differently ......

Since you are not a visa exempt entry now you should have no problem getting a visa exempt entry. If you are from a G7 country you will get 30 days instead of 15 days.

If it was possible to get the work permit application done and an approval letter for it you could get another non-b visa at a nearby embassy or consulate.

Hi Joe,

Not G7, Aussie, so only 15 days. The company director isn't going to get his act together soon enough to get his WP done before April, so therefore employees can't get one before him - so I am stuck marking time, good to know that Ranong will still do the 15 days though.

Thanks, as always, for your advice and knowledge - much appreciated.

I know that at other borders using USD for the fee gives a much better rate (eg Ranong USD10 vs THB500; Laos USD30 - for an aussie vs. THB1,500) any updates on the Kan border policy on USD?

Entering by air will be no problem. Entering by land can be a problem, depending on your history over the last 6 months and the border you will use.

Hi Mario,

I am just scanning back through posts for current info regarding "depending on your history over the last 6 months and the border you will use."

My history:

I went from a tourist visa to a non-imm B (which expires on 6th March) - can't get a work permit until the boss gets his one set up, have an extension of stay until 13th .... but nothing will be sorted out by then either (I know that I can't a WP on an extension of stay anyway) and it will be inconvenient for me to go out for a new visa until the end of March.

My plan was to detour via Ranong on a trip driving between Phuket and Samui on 13th to pick up a 15 day entry permit. I won't hold you accountable for the answer, but what do you think of the chances of getting the extra 15 days?

Oh you have your left indicator on and you are slowing down and there is a street on the left and you are beginning to turn into it - well there is plenty of time for my motor scooter with myself and 3 friends on it to squeeze through, you should get out of my way.

Sometimes I find that it sounds like my gf is saying "khap" (but not "khrap") to me, and many Thai, male and female will omit "r" from their words wherever possible anyway .... in the end I figured that she was just saying "ka" and then as she closed her mouth it tended to finish the sound with an almost unvoiced "p" ..... sounding like khap

Not sure if that is relevant to OP's situation