ronnie50

Any idea what the 2025 US CPI and COLA will be this month (this week actually)? I'm guessing around 3% but could a bit less.

Doesn't look Chinese to me. However old Mitch McConnell said the tariffs are stupid too and will just cost ordinary Americans more to buy things. Emily Ley - Simplified https://ssl-static.libsyn.com/p/assets/d/9/3/2/d932fba3586cae7f/v2_-_Simplified_Podcast_thumbnail_1400_x_1400.jpg

Yes, thanks. OK must be nationwide legal clarification then. They need to go after the fake company nominees next - I doubt they will though, or maybe they will ask for 'tea money' to ignore each home 'owner' .

I know. I mean is the Phuket ruling/clarfication country-wide? Or could some developer try to say 'oh, that was just phuket.'?

You gotta empathize with people who leased thinking they'd be able to pass on the lease when they passed themselves, and at least they didn't try to form a company with Thai nominees to purchase a house with land. I wonder what effect this ruling in Phuket will have on the rest of the country? Does it need to be challenged in each province?

I read the article. It said the court couldn't find any 'precedence' for forcing the freeholders to renew the leases. Here's my question - when did Thailand's judiciary ever refer to precedence? It doesn't follow English Common Law's rules of precedence (the system used by UK, US (yes US has always followed the system of English Common Law), Canada and various other countries. Of course this isn't a 'criminal' case - it's a civil case. A Thai lawyer can better explain this - but my understanding is Thailand's judiciary can rule any way they want, regardless of previous similar rulings. Maybe in civil cases too? In any case, it was always a naive notion to believe the 30/30/30 system was lawful.

Should be at least 38-40 THB to the dollar. It's being artificially propped up and doesn't move in sync with other currencies. At some point they will be forced to let the baht float without interventions. And given the fact they will soon lose more manufacturing sales to the US, that means they will not be getting as much foreign/hard currency to add to the reserves. Tourism can only provide so much... but it's not enough.

Hmm, there were 5,500 reports of damage (varying degrees), yet in a matter of a couple of days some 29,000 existing buildings were supposedly inspected and cleared. But it could take months to find out why this one building collapsed. Is Anutin smoking the merchandise he lobbied for?

That's frustrating/worrying. I guess you must book you flight before the visa application (or after submitted)? After makes more sense of course. This nonsense about where one is staying is silly too. If you are going for 2-3 weeks, you're not likely to stay in the same place for more than a few nights. Do they expect you to list all the reservations and dates, or just the first one? So if we wanted to fly from Bangkok to Da Nang how far in advance should we plan?

So you mean peviously they weren't doing anything with the TM6 cards then. No research by manually inputing details like country, age, duration of stay? Of course they were. This just makes it easier for them and more work for the traveler.

Thanks. But I thought only certain nationalities can apply for the e-visa (e.g. British and EU), other nationalities need a visa from the embassy (and the stupid invitation letter - from an agency I guess), isn't that right?

Yeah, I've seen that one. Or how about this one: 'speak English in are country'

"Greatest country on earth" - In a word - No. But that's obvious to most and not worthy of a further reply as I'm sure it's been well-covered by others (and I'm not reading it all - again).

That's what I think too. It's just another creep, creep, toward us doing all the work - while paying for the air travel and the entry fee with no human service. In Japan, they made me do it all. No check in desks. Nice ANA ladies around at the self serve kiosks, but that's not the point. Like many (not just Japan), I had to self-check-in, scan my passport, print my boarding passes, print my baggage tags, glue them to my bags, then take my bags to the self-loading belts (hoof them up yourself of course). Before you know it, we'll be loading them directly into the belly of the aircraft ourselves with a loudspeaker playing on a loop saying 'keep moving, place the bags in the last possible spot in the rear of the aircraft'. They'll replace the flight attendants with 'safety robots'. A meal? Make it yourself in the galley's microwaves.

There is a bewildering array of websites claiming to be 'official' tourist visa sites for Vietnam. Many URL's ending with 'V.......gov.vn' (how they manage to get that domain extension, who knows). But trying to do the visa yourself is equally confusing. Unlike most ASEAN countries, the Vietnam Embassy here in Bangkok (and I guess everywhere) still wants an 'invitation' letter from a Vietnamese source. Anyone successfully done this themselves with the embassy here in Bangkok (without an agency) and what was your experience? How long, where did you get the invitation, etc.? Cheers.

No names of the condemned structures and anyway, the whole thing will disappear from the news by Songkran.

Thai baht is still way over-valued. BOT must be propping it up

Have four filters under the sink - and new - bought the new filters last year. Cooking with it is ok. But I tried washing fresh peeled fruit with it and had a weird stomach afterwards. So I'm only drinking store-purchased bottled water. As the tree huggers say, I'm paying mpre for the bottle than the water. So be it. My stomach thanks me for it.

Will I stay or will I go!....

Won't affect me, whatever reciprocal actions the Thais take against the US. I'm already boycotting US franchises here in Thailand including, but not limited to, McDougals, Starbucks, Burger King, Oscar Meyer products, US beef (Aus instead), McCormick products, Tim Hortons (US owned for many years), Coke, Sprite, Pepsi product. No US booze (beer is weak anyway, and Kentuky whisk(e)y tastes like rotten socks) nor other US junk food at Villa and Big C/Tops. European booze and wine is far superior anyway. I don't order from Amazon anymore. People in other countries (EU) for example are doing this too. I never take a US airline. And then of course Canada kicked all this off (credit where due) with air passenger traffic down 70% to the US as of last count. The Trump supporters will try to joke and minimize this - but here's the thing: once this takes hold, getting those customers back, if at all, could take a generation. That means tens if not hundreds of millions of non-US consumers that previously bought US goods and service - gone with all that money.

You just gotta wonder if Trump and his gang had issued puts through a complex series of proxies in advance of this (unexpected more widespread tariff action) to short the market.. Would you be surprised? I wouldn't be surprised. But we'll never know (most likely).

Here's some info in the link below on WISE from Forbes (UK edition). It also does a very basic/brief comparison with TOR-FX, XE.Com, and WISE. Both WISE and TOR-FX appear to be British operations (WISE HQ in London; TOR in Penzance). XE.com is Canadian (at least its HQ is in the Toronto area). I wonder if moving Sterling via WISE might be easier than with other currencies (and what if you don't use Kasikorn in Thailand, does that make any difference?) https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/money-transfer/wise-review/

Aside from the human tragedy, the 5,500 damaged buildings is the 5,500 pound gorilla in the room. Everything else is a distraction at this point. Names of condo and office buildings to be condemned/closed/demolished are not mentioned, even though they have already identified several. Can they not be mentioned due to media libel chill?

That was similar to my experience. As I only do it once a year or so, and as the traditional method worked well before and was actually less than Wise, I'll stick to traditional I guess. If I need to start doing regular transfers, Wise might be more convenient/logical. But I also see their reputation is starting to suffer. Might be just a few odd snafus, dunno, but anyway.. (edited to correct the name)