Dogmatix

The article says prostitution is illegal in Thailand but is not really true. The 1996 Prevention and Suppression of Prostitution Act only makes prostitution illegal in certain circumstances. Soliciting in public so as to cause a nuisance is prohibited. Operating or managing a prostitution business is illegal. Profiting from the prostitution of others (e.g., pimping, brothel-keeping) is a criminal offense. The VN hookers may well be bothering people in the street which is clearly illegal but It is a hassle for cops to get good enough for that. Passers by will not give evidence. So the cops have to do it. In the past to prove the girls (East Europeans in those days) were really soliciting for sexual services, cops actually had sex with them, arested the girls when they had finished and knotted up the used condoms to present as evidence. (I think there was a queue of cops at Lumpini police station volunteering for this dangerous mission confronting violent criminals.) There was a big outcry from Thai women's groups arguing the cops had created the crimes themselves as agents provocateurs. There was also an outcry from the wives of the arresting officers who were named in the media. Ha ha. So the cops were forced to abandon these fun crime busting missions. Nowadays, if they take action against foreign hookers at all, it is most likely to be for visa violations. The cops don't like to admit prostitution is not really illegal in any meaningful sense the same way as they pretend smoking weed in public is specifically illegal. It is not but smoking anything in public is illegal under the Public Health Act, if it causes a nuisance and someone complains. So it is actually a fairly similar concept of illegality that makes it hard to get convictions. So cops don't usually try in either case.

I remember visiting Pnom Penh many years ago and hundreds of VN hookers had moved in the years following Wun Sen's takeover at the head of a VN army.

My question too. For public safety the article should be specific about areas and bars VN prostitutes are operating, so we can avoid falling prey to their siren calls.

Exactly. Charlotte Leek came back to England from a trip to Thailand then flew back saying she had been offered a job in Thailand with flight and expenses paid. The job involved flying off again a few days later carrying 46kg of weed to Sri Lanka, presumably on route to the UK or somewhere else in Europe, since weed is widely cultivated in Sri Lanka and must be a lot cheaper there than in Thailand. So she set off with an extra two suitcases packed by someone else and was given cash to pay for the excess baggage at Suvarnabhumi. Pretty obvious that she knew she was smuggling something illegal but thought the money was worth it. She had been an air hostess for TUI and was a part time beautician in nail bar. So probably not very bright but, even so, it must have been obvious that something was wrong, even if she didn't look inside the suitcase. Weed is fairly bulky and has a strong aroma which sniffer dogs can't miss. The other English girl in Georgia is only 18 and pregnant. She was going to start a nursing course but that will have to wait for for a decade or more probably now. Not sure of the details of her case but it sounds like she had 14kg of dope and may well have known what it was. The extra bags may have been a red flag to Sri Lanka customs but what these kids don't understand is that the drug networks often grass on some of their own mules as part of a deal with authorities to let most through. Also very young travellers with odd itineraries are often a red flag. Doing two trips to Thailand in quick succession and flying to Sir Lanka or Georgia afterwards, particularly, if full fare, may look suspicious. Years ago two English girls were busted smuggling heroin out of Thailand. Thai cops said they were alerted by British cops who had seen their itinerary flying full fare from Bangkok to West Africa to the UK as odd and tipped off Thai police. The British cops checked their profiles and found they were unemployed which further heightened suspicions. Having pleaded they were set up they got Royal pardons on account of their young ages and went back to England to tell the tabloids they knew all along what they were smuggling.

I assumed it was just lost in translation in the Post but looking at all the Thai media that ran the story they all just ran the same press release translated by the Post. It really does say "Thai people". It seems unlikely that it would not refer to Thailand tax residents regardless of nationality like the rest of the Revenue Code but nothing is impossible with these clowns. It sounds like turning the old regulations on their head after trying a ridiculous tweak that obviously didn't work. Doesn't seem very likely this will work either. There always tell the same old lie that whatever change they are making is dictated by OECD which they fantasise about one day being allowed to join in spite of protectionist laws that are anathema to OECD. Next stop scrap the forthcoming Royal decree and introduce global taxation, again pretending that is required by OECD.

Restricted on govt land because the seller has to sell the freehold to the government and the lease to the foreigner. A very bad idea.

More measures from the ideas bankrupt Thaksin government that will fail to move the needle like his "signature" cash handouts in the first two years which even PT know acknowledges was a failure as they plan to divert the cash prepared for the third round to some other use. There are already 10 year visas introduced by the Prayut military government and Elite cards introduced by Thaksin himself. So what difference will the Thaksin govt's own visa scheme make. Land ownership has never been a driving factor for large scale foreign direct investment. Foreign companies are driven by return on investment and compare returns with other countries they can invest in. That means they they prefer to rent land in industrial estates, if they are manufacturers, and the keep the high cost of land which can more than double the investment cost out of the equation. The only exception in property developers but foreigners are banned from that business anyway and only a very few are willing to invest with a Thai controlling partner. Most of the foreigners who want to buy land are small guys who want a residential plot and want move the needle. If you have a Thai wife, you will still buy freehold in her name rather than take a 99 year lease with limited leaseholder rights on land that reverts to the government at the end of the lease and becomes unmorgageable when only 50 years left, as in the UK. Some foreigners without Thai spouses will take the 99 year option, if offered, but it is not going to make any difference to the economy. Meanwhile Thais will protest and developers won't like it, if they have to transfer the land to the government, rather than keep it as an assets on their own balance sheets that will become more valuable as the lease runs down. This government told Thais that having Thaksin, a businessman, as leader, oops adviser, meant they will be able to fire up the economy. So far it looks like Prayut did a better job. Thaksin recruited some thinkers with clever ideas over 20 years ago has nothing left to offer except questionable casino projects and cosy oil and gas deals with Hun Sen. The thinkers abandoned him long ago and all he has left are his own crummy ideas and a Tik Tok savvy daughter.

Funny pic of a teacher wearing a plastic welder type mask that would do mothing to keep out COVID.

Not the way to reduce the trade deficit. Send it back to Mar a Lago.

Never tried magic mushrooms and no interest to either but I know that magic mushrooms cause lots bad problems for newbie tourists who take them in Amsterdam and end up in the emergency room. No one knows what is in the dosages sold and what effects to expect. It is the same with ingesting cannabis but much worse. Throw the book at this creep and the Thai government should consider tougher visa rules for Israelis to make it harder for them to hang out in Thailand for months on end doing illegal businesses. Visa rules for Thais going to Israel are quite strict for similar reasons of working illegally. Introducing reciprocal visa rules for Israelis and they can't complain, if they are unwilling to relax visa rules for Thais.

A lot of individuals at high risk of committing crimes are to be found in the cabinet office and the parliament.

Holding bullion yourself or in storage is theoretically the safest way to hold it but storage of large quantities at home is not that safe and external safe storage not that cheap. ETFs are another alternative. Many people know GLD and SLV traded in NY but not so many people know there is also a gold ETF, also GLD, on the Thai stock market for those who have Thai baht onshore. The Thai GLD is free of capital gains tax but gains on gold bullion held in Thailand are theoretically taxable. In North America Sprott in Canada has some offerings of interest and some are available on the Toronto Stock Exchange traded in USD and CAD as well as in NY. Sprott's PHYS is a gold alternative to the US GLD that claims a closer tie to the underlying gold held as collateral and charges just a smidgeon more than GLD. I like Sprott's SLVR ETF because it combines a holding in the silver ETF as well as silver mining stocks and is not too heavy n the largest silver mining stock, First Majestic, which has a lot of problems in my opinion. For gold mining stocks GDX provides exposure to the largest ones and GDXJ to the juniors. A favorite gold ETF of mine is GOAU which is an EFT of gold royalty companies. These companies buy royalty streams from mining companies on sure fire projects which is a great way for the miners to secure upfront finance to complete mining projects and for the royalties to get income from gold mining without the costs and hassles of mining themselves. Gold royalties are a great bridge between own bullion that doesn't pay any dividends and gold mining stocks, as they pay dividends and get more of the upside when gold goes up but not as much of the downside as the miners. GOAU owns all the large gold royalties companies and some smaller ones, diversifying the risk. One reason that non-Americans concerned about estate planning for their families might chose to prefer Canadian or other non-American listings is Federal Estate Tax. While Americans and US residents get an exemption of $13 million from this iniquitous tax, non-residents only get an exemption of $60,000 and a blanket rate is charged on all US situs assets above that, even US listed stocks held in a brokerage account outside the US. When a non-US client dies, the broker will freeze all their US assets until the executor can convince them that US estate tax has been paid and this may take a long time. Brokers don't tell non-US clients about this because they don't want to scare them away from investing the largest stock markets in the world. The only proven way to avoid US Federal Estate Tax is by having an account in the name of a company. BTW the UK does the same thing by charging IHT on UK stocks held non-residents. Bitcoin and other crypto ETFs abound for those who want to diversify into crypto but don't want the hassle of dealing with crypto exchanges and hardware wallets. The biggest and most liquid are of course in the US but there are also plenty of crypto ETFs in Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and Europe that avoid the issue of US estate tax. My favorites are the Hong Kong listed ETFs. For those who want listed ETFs or ETPs in alt coins other than Etherium which has large ETFs in the US, Europe is the place to go. Swiss company 21 Shares has issued ETPs on Solana and a number of other alt coins listed in Swiss and other Euro exchanges and so has Van Eck. Good luck and DYODD (do your own due diligence).

Just like the attempt to purchase F-35s the Thai navy and government has known all along there was no possibility that the Germans could supply the engines for use in Chinese subs on anything military of that type to a country that is so close to the Chinese. This has just been a charade.

We can count on it that Ung Ing is a person of the utmost integrity who would tell us immediately, if she suspected for a moment that her dad was not at death's door for every minute of his stay in the PGH.

Does that mean that Telegram and LINE are no more secure than Signal that is used by the US government for discussing war plans with journalists?

Panama uses the USD and the Caymans have a the Caymans dollar that has been pegged to the USD since 1974. But you can hold other currencies in those places. I think he meant that he doesn't want to invest in the US or in the USD though.

I have gold, silver, bitcoin, etherium, mining stocks in precious metals and uranium and general stocks. Definitely worth having gold and silver in my opinion but diversify. Then when one asset class is correcting, you will have another one that is pumping. I made a fair bit of cash in palladium a few years back when it went higher than gold and platinum but it is finished now as its main use is in catalytic converters which are in decline due to electric vehicles. I still own a small amount of platinum which is facing a similar fate on the catalytic converters but has some other use cases. Silver is half investment metal and half industrial metal with main industrial use case being solar panels. However, the solar industry keeps finding ways to use less silver in solar cells. Every now and again silver has a crazy rally. Now about $32/oz but it has hit $50 twice - in 1979 and aboout 2007, both for a brief moment. It is overdue for another of these big rallies. Central banks made record purchases of gold in 2024 and the Bank for International Settlements BIS made allocated physical gold (identifiable gold bars with serial numbers) a tier 1 asset with effect from July 2015. The only other tier 1 asset that banks can hold to reach their capital adequacy ratios is cash or government bonds. Much of he gold traded today is paper gold or unallocated physical gold which doesn't actually exist, as it is a just a ledger entry, not a deliverable. As distrust for the US and the USD grows, so does the demand for deliverable physical gold. The US claims 6,000 tonnes of gold reserves but probably has much less, as a full audit has not been done since the 50s and some of the gold is probably fake, like the gold plated tungsten ingots found in the Bank of England, or leased out. China claims to have only 2,000 tonnes but probably has 20,000 and another 20,000 in private hands which could be confiscated, if needed. Unlike the US Comex futures market and the London Bullion Market Association which mainly do either cash settlement or in the case of the LBMA settle with non-existent unallocated ledger entry gold Shanghai Futures Exchange and the Shanghai Gold Exchange allow only physical delivery. China and other BRICS see gold as a way to reduce their dependency on the dollar but we will have to wait and see how this process unfolds. It could be a trade currency partly backed by gold. Given the unsustainable level of US government debt that can only be effectively reduced as percentage of GDP by inflation, it seems likely that the dollar will decline over time. There seem to be a number of factors above that support the idea of having some portion of your assets in gold and silver and gold and silver mining stocks.

A general comment is that prices at Thai private hospitals have risen exponentially in recent years, so there is no longer the rational for medical tourism. Meanwhile the quality of healthcare and the skills of the medical workers, including knowledge of English, have not risen in line with prices, although you still get lots more nurses taking care of you than in the West which presumably means that nursing salaries are still much lower than in the West despite the sharp uptick in prices. I have had 3 moderately serious conditions, one of which caused severe pain, that were totally misdiagnosed by Thai doctors in top tier private hospitals, even after exhaustive and expensive tests with state of the art equipment. In each case the problem was correctly diagnosed by private consultant level guys in London using lower level equipment. Two issues needed surgery and were fixed in London at a private hospital promptly and efficiently.

Doctor and nurse have never been reserved occupation. My understanding is that foreign doctors and nurses can work in Thailand, if they have graduated from a medical school recognized by the Thai Medical Council but they have to pass Thai licensing exams with no exemptions which means that very few foreigners attempt this. Most of the medical professionals who go this route are in fact Thais who did their professional education and training overseas. That being the case, I think the way is open for the OP's missus to work as a nurse, if she is willing to sit the Thai licensing exam. Otherwise she could work in another capacity. English skills are much in demand at private hospitals. I frequently encounter nurses and technicians at Samitivej who can hardly speak English and ask if I can speak Thai instead. Bangkok Nursing Home used to have farang doctors and the matron was always a farang but most of them started work in Thailand before the Thai language requirement was introduced and were grandfathered in. I met one of the last doctors or this era, Dr Patrick, who died recently. I also knew the last farang matron, a formidable Scottish lady, who died several years ago. I came across a younger English doctor in the modern BNH hospital about 20 years ago, who must have passed the Thai licensing exam but I didn't ask him.

He claimed he had had a WP before and perhaps could have operated it legally with a WP but he chose to operate an unregistered business and not pay any tax and maybe had no insurance for the bikes and rented them to tourists without licenses in addition to allegedly overcharging tourists. He knew this was all illegal. Throw the book at him. Then blacklist him for life when all is done. Ripping off tourists and operating businesses that are a danger to customers and other road users is a reserved occupation that can easily be done by Thais. Go and rent out motor bikes in Gaza or the West Bank.

More to blame is the corrupt, centralised education ministry. Local autonomy and accountability would work wonders. Get rid of the fat cats in Bangkok dictating to folk in the provinces. The ministry has the largest budget of all the ministries but achieves pitiful results compared to neighbouring countries

I agree that non-smokers in general should not be troubled by weed or any other smoke.

The law is the Public Health Act which makes it a not terribly serious offence to smoke tobacco, weeds, herbs or anything else in public, if it causes a nuisance and someone complains. It is also illegal for restaurants to allow patrons to smoke anywhere that food is served whether inside or outside. The authorities try to make out there is a specific law against smoking weed in public to intimidate people and to satisfy the haters and non-partaking Chinese and Singaporean tourists but the truth it that they have not got around to passing any legislation specific to smoking cannabis in public.

A Darwin award for getting caught smuggling nearly half a kilo of cannabis into Thailand. He probably would have sold it at a loss and, if all that stuff had burst in his gut, he would have gone to the happy hunting grounds.

Anyway Thai government departments and courts can interpret things in ways they feel like and that are inconsistent from case to case. But on the face of it there is nothing to specify that a gift can only be made from income that has already been taxed in Thailand and, even, if it was made from after Thai tax income, it will still be taxable as a gift, if the gift to a spouse is over 20 million. Another thing you could look at is the device used by Ung Ing to avoid paying gift tax on transferring shares well over the gift tax limits to her family members. The transfers were not structured as gifts which would have been taxable over the limits but structured as sales of assets. The purchases were paid for using open ended promissory notes, callable at any time. Ung Ing got the DG of the RD to testify in parliament that that the transfers will only be deemed as taxable events when the promissory notes are cashed which will, of course, never happen. When Ung Ing's time in politics comes to an end the shares will be transferred back to her, either as foreclosures on the repayment of defaulted promissory notes or some other tax avoidance scheme will be set up. The unpaid promissory note tax avoidance scam has the advantage that the DG of the RD has testified in parliament that it is rock solid. However, that doesn't stop the RD or the Tax Court making a completely different ruling on the same scheme presented by a mere mortal. Nothing is rock solid apart from just declaring the transfers as income and pay Thai tax on them which will be gratefully received, even if the income was not strictly speaking assessable, or leaving the country, as your friend did. But IMHO, the gift to spouse window is fairly solid, although I would expect to see the limits reduced at some point. Parliamentarians would not want to see it eliminated completely because it is a handy way for them and their wealthy sponsors pass on chunks of their ill gotten gains to wife and kids whilst still alive tax free. I should add that the gifts I have made to the missus are from income earned overseas prior to 2024. So they wouldn't be taxable, even if I gifted them to myself. Eventually I hope this whole thing will become clearer and then I might gift income earned after 2024. Mrs Dog also has income and assets of her own which makes it more difficult to conclude I had benefit from the gifts.