Chelseafan

4 hours ago, CharlieH said:

I use Halifax and yes they do, you can stipulate what you want, by default they will send Thai baht, I always send GBP and convert here, I find it a better rate.

Yes that's what I thought.

20 minutes ago, saengd said:

Yes agreed, except, it's always better to send Pounds from the UK, that way there is no UK based exchange rate issue, the rates at Thai banks are far superior.

You mean send Baht from a UK bank account ?  I don't think Halifax has that option, it only allows me to send pounds.

3 hours ago, saengd said:

With all due respect, you must factor in the effect of their fee on your exchange rate, they give with one hand and take away with the other, a common practice in exchange rate settings. You said it yourself, they (TW) is just a clearing house that is unable to obtain the inter-bank rate for themselves hence they clear funds that are supplied to them, presumably by banks who can obtain the inter-bank rate. But then the question becomes, do their banking clients, the ones for whom they clear, give them the inter-bank rate at cost or even below cost, of course not, the banks must be paid a fee also.

 

I agree that what is important is that customers are given the best possible exchange rate, the best possible would be the inter-bank rate, that can't be made better. If that's all their was to the picture we'd all say great, but there is more, there's the TW fee which offsets.

The difference is that UK banks typically give lower exchange rates rather than the mid-market rate so you are getting stung twice. Once on exchange rate and then again on the transfer charge

Halifax are charging £9.50 @ ex rate of 38.73. If I sent £1000 I would get 38,362 baht.

Transferwise are charging £7.00 at ex of 40.184. If I sent £1000. I would get 39,902 baht

A difference of 1540 baht.

The other thing to remember is that Transferwise fee is a % of what you send where as the bank is usually a flat fee so on lower transfer amounts TW easily comes out on top however, If you are sending seriously large amounts of money then the bank may be the better option

6 hours ago, Moonlover said:

Spot on. But at what cost? The last time I looked NBS charge 20 GBP per transfer, plus of course the receiving charge as you mentioned.

 

Mentioned above was TransferWise. More economical, better exchange rates and very efficient. I've used them for over a year now and would recommend that method,

 

But I disagree with @Worldplus above. 2 mins is a gross exaggeration! However, same day is normal. Go visit: https://transferwise.com and get your money moving @Speedo1968

 

 

It used to take me anywhere between a few hours and a few days but my last 5 or so transactions have arrived in minutes. Don't know if I have been lucky or if they have enhanced their systems.

I just learnt something. Antibac gels apparently are worthless againt this virus unless they contain alcohol.

You can thank me later.

On 2/27/2020 at 1:32 PM, sirineou said:

Isn't the flu a new stain every year? what makes this one special to warrant such response? 

and if we should not report non life threatening flu symptoms, how do they know the extent of the infection? 

From what I understand, the concerns about this are 1) It appears to have jumped from animal to human and 2) Scientists do not have an understanding of the genome. Noone knows what effect it is going to have socially and econimally hence the need to try and control the outbreak

17 minutes ago, emptypockets said:

You do realise BA is in reference to Bangkok Airways? Not British Airways.

You are not alone in this area of misconception. I've seen posters go off about the ' common market' as  the European/ British  thing used to be known when the actual thread was about the EEC, or the Thai Eastern Economic Corridor development area.

Ah, Read 1/2 the thread, serves me right but point still stands ????

1 hour ago, 30la said:

Ok, BA's policy in recent years has been to compensate for the loss of passengers with a significant increase in prices, let's expect a nice increase again.
Flying BKK-Samui has been a luxury for years ...

In real terms, adjusting for inflation, flying has never been cheaper. You also have to remember flights are only profitable if they are full which is not always the case. BA is run very tight unlike Thai which has an abundance of overpaid and underperforming salary men (and women). JMHO of course.

3 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

OK, so who IS lying, the tourist board or the people flying the tourists in ? I think we know, the Thai people know and the TAT continue to live in lala land

There are many other airlines flying into Thailand but in answer to your question, it's of course the TAT.

2 hours ago, crazykopite said:

I for one do not understand why Thailand have so few cases that alone concerns me when the Kingdom receives over a million Chinese Tourists every year . I would be interesting to know how many Chinese are currently in Thailand there are a few in the villa next to me who came for Chinese New Year I am assuming that due to the virus they cannot get a flight home.

Don't viruses die off in the heat? Well that's what Trump had said. ????

2 hours ago, holy cow cm said:

Nope incorrect. There is a section that covers this in the THAI Nationality act under: Loss of Thai Nationality. Actually pretty easy to be stripped of it if someone wants you stripped and gone. 

Wow OK. So can they do that to their own people ? If so what happens as I thought UN charters do not allow people to be stateless.

4 hours ago, holy cow cm said:

Now he better hope he doesn't get trumped up on a false charge or some bad luck mistake and have his Thai citizenship taken away. Then what will he do? Just because he can get it doesn't mean they can't take it away.

I didn't think a country could take away citizenship. The only exceptions I'm aware of is if you have dual nationality which this guy doesnt

49 minutes ago, lanng khao said:

Reports are no lawyers are involved, they said the case wasn't strong enough...

I see what you did there.....????

2 hours ago, BobBKK said:

So says an elderly, rich white guy  lol

(but actually it is obvious that equality is a human right)

Absolutely but we must all remember that some people are more equal than others ????

33 minutes ago, whiteman said:

Sack the lot of the old farts and put new young blood in also they should stop all ex employees getting free air travel for life what a rip off  

More of the same ? Hell no.

As I said before they need someone who knows what they are doing, someone like Emirates Tim Clark, he pretty much built the airline from scratch.

9 hours ago, androokery said:

The accident is caused not by the Jazz driving into the gas station area, but by the changing of lanes - also of course because the truck driver is trying to undertake the Jazz car. It doesn't matter if the Jazz driver intends to leave the road altogether. The most important question is if the Jazz driver indicates the intention to change lanes in time. 

It doesn't matter if she indicated or not, she shouldn't of moved lane without checking to see if it was safe to do so first. She is a moron for slowing down in the "fast" lane in the first place too. Maybe the truck driver saw beforehand (and before video starts) she was going too slow and moved into the center lane to undertake which is very common in Thailand.

She <deleted> up big time. The truck may have been speeding but there was no way he could anticipate that she was going to stop and cut him up.

2 hours ago, Chivas said:

If Kuwait have suspended only a matter of hours before Qatar Oman Etihad Gulf Emirates follow suit

This could be fun lol

No it won't. I'm booked for April.????

Strangely, I just tried to book a golf buggy via BFS to take me through immigration but the service isn't available due to Covid-2019

8 hours ago, Kenny202 said:

Just one other question. Everything still goes through your ISP right? What is the good of having a secure VPN with no records if your ISP has all your history? Or am I missing something?

Google is your friend my friend.

"While using a VPN, your ISP cannot decipher the contents of your internet traffic nor can it figure out where your traffic is traveling to or from. That means your ISP cannot see what sites you visit or anything you do while connected. It can only see that encrypted data is traveling to a server"

As an addition, if you are using a VPN make sure they are using 256 bit encryption, most do. This is considered military grade encryption as is incredibly hard to break. To give you an example, a brute force attack could take 300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years to break. Unless they get lucky of course ????

I use expressvpn

I am not in Germany but I have the VPN route all my activity through the server there. All I need to do is press that ol' orange button then all my traffic is encrypted. I have very mininmal loss of speed (around 1%)