patricev

I had trouble with the peripheral as well ... the girl said "take off your glasses, it will be easier" .. she was correct. The glasses actually get in the way ... so better without even if blurred!

Renewed mine about a week before expiration. Had to do the test, but no video. Also had a change of passport number, so I brought along the old passport, but they never questioned that and put the new number on the new license. The only papers I brought with me was old license, both passports, work permit and two photos for the international "permit" (only good for one year, need to get a new one every year).

Painless but it did take about 4 hours total with the waiting time along the various steps.

Try another agency and compare. That one may not have access to the type of staff you need, so they need offer more to attract some candidates. They are all somewhat specialized in one area or another.

On the other hand, I would be suspicious of a candidate willing to take same money to change job, not a good sign. The candidates you want are the hardest ones to get because ... they are good!

They are here to make money and there is no work permit category for what they do, that's for sure. But walking between the Sofitel and Soi 11 and listen, I found that I mostly hear French with accents from Ivory Coast and Senegal. That is why their English is not so good, most Nigerian speak English fluently although they use words and expressions not common elsewhere in the world. From the language, I think the Nigerians hang out further up toward Soi 4. And I think they specialize more in the scam industry because of their language advantage.

As for them working as "promoters" for Soi 11 clubs, this has to be the joke of the year.

It's getting tough for them to make good money in Europe so, like the tourists, they seek new destinations where life is ... easier!

"...a special type of life vests ..."

Wonder how much more they cost than the regular ones ... in Thailand that is?

Perhaps it would help to move away from the bickering and look at the actual reasons for this kind of pricing strategy, which has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with pragmatic business sense. How does a business set it's prices to maximise profit? You've probably heard the advice to "charge what the market will bear". In simplistic terms, this makes sense - to charge the maximum that your customers are prepared to pay for your product. However, in the real world things are more complicated. The market is made up of different individuals, in different financial circumstances, with therefore different abilities to pay. A one-size fits all pricing strategy will not extract the maximum profit. In an ideal world, you would charge a different price for each customer in order to extract the maximum profit - but its easy to see why this would be impractical, as you can hardly research the financial affairs of each customer who visits an attraction like this. What you can do, though, is apply a strategy of price segmentation - identifying segments of your market where it is easy and practical to do so, and charging a different price to each segment according to their ability to pay. One common example of this is student discounts. These are not applied out of benevolence towards students, but because they are an easily identified and differentiated group with broadly similar financial means. Obviously, this model does not accurately fit everyone in each segment, but it's good enough to extract more profit than a single price. In countries like Thailand, foreigners represent another such group - they're easy to identify and generally have a higher ability to pay than locals. Applying a different price point to this segment is nothing to do with racism - it's just sound business sense.

Two-tier pricing is common in many places, east or west, but is usually presented as a discount to locals not as a different price. If they would simply say "resident discount" that would ease some sensitivities.

You could just as well turn the argument the other way and wonder why the locals should pay more because tourists can afford it.

The locals' price is still a day's wages for most of them, but only an hour or two to most tourists.

If you have a problem with double pricing and go to Orlando, Florida, make sure to skip all the major attractions as they all have "Florida Resident" discounts. When I lived there, I always paid less than the snowbirds.

FYI: Tourism worldwide was up 5% in 2013, Asia at 6%.

Current UNWTO forecast is 4.5% for world, and 6% for Asia.

The slower world growth is mainly due to the Middle East crisis. Asia is unchanged with the strong growth in Korea and Japan making up for losses elsewhere in the region.

.. note that the only Asian country experiencing a decline is, as would be expected, Thailand.

It does not matter exactly how many tourists we lost, we lost enough of them to affect hotel prices and airfares. The real concern is the declining value of the median spending per tourist, that is going down even faster. Note that the only region showing an increase is Eastern Europe, but that is in percentage term, in actual numbers it is insignificant. It is the lowest disposable income sub-region of Europe. More are coming because the price of Thailand has come down to their range of affordability. We keep getting fewer Chinese tourists while Korea and Japan are getting more because the ones coming to Thailand are the lowest income, the former zero-cost tours, while Korea and China is getting the middle-class who is spending some real shopping money. Not talking about the media non-sense about Chinese buying luxury watches by the dozen, just regular younger Chinese buying cosmetics in Korea and trendy fashion in Japan.

We are getting far fewer affluent tourists and our average take per tourist keeps declining. That's the real concern. It takes 8 Chinese tourists on a low-cost tour to make up for one average Western European or American tourist (who stay much longer), 4 or 5 to make up for a Korean or Japanese (because their stay is shorter than that of westerners).

Not only the Russians do shop, eat and drink more so than others, they do it in more places, with more smaller businesses benefiting. They are more individualistic than say Chinese tourists, so many more small merchants are affected. Most are indistinguishable from other western tourists, you don't notice them until they speak. The few hoodlums get noticed because they sure know how to turn up a town.

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I understand the anger over this Dolphin show/prison, depending on what way one looks at it, but the picture at the bottom is a disgusting use of sensationalism. Really lowers the credibility of the people running the campaign to stop the establishment from opening.

That was my point at the beginning of this thread. It would be taken more seriously if they had simply pointed out the deficiencies compared to similar attractions elsewhere in the world and suggested improvements.

And for the record, I do not know any of the people involved in this project. (as someone earlier implied that I did)

There is a good dolphin show in Subic PI but the whole thing is set up in the ocean. This kiddie pool scenario is horrendous, and atrocious, human cruelty to our animal friends.

The only people who want this are the tour operators.

Pointing out the ethical difference between the good and the bad instead of playing on morality with gory images would greatly boost credibility.

Following that logic, then zoo should also be shut down.

"In 2013, SeaWorld Orlando hosted an estimated 5.1 million guests, ranking it the tenth most visited amusement park in the United States and nineteenth worldwide."

Lots of stats here: http://www.teaconnect.org/pdf/TEAAECOM2013.pdf

Obviously, tourists like them.

Thais are severely hampered by the nationalistic nonsense they are brainwashed with. I have seen several articles trumpeting how Thailand 'will show' the West a lesson and fight back by not selling them their prawns or rice or whatever. A typical response from (supposedly) educated people who write this tosh that mirrors the thinking of your average Thai 'man in the street'

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Sent from my iPad using ThaiVisa app

Whoaa! Quite a master piece. Nothing to disagree with other than to wonder: Did you really type all this on a iPad?

A similar situation with AIr Asia - I tried to purchase a ticket online within Inodnesia for USD 50.00; however, due to security safeguards on their website - my U.S. credit card kept getting denied. So, I was meeting a friend the next day at DMK - I arrived a little early and went to the AIr Asia desk and wanted to purchase the ticket; however, the reservation was held for only 1 hour and had been cancelled. The Air Asia ticket agent said she could rebook it - but that she would have to charge me USD 100 for the same flight. I took out my smartphone and booked a new reservation and got the same USD50 fare and the same CC denied message. However, once I gave her the confirmation number - she sold me the ticket for USD 50.00.

I understand that hotels and airlines want to direct booking traffic to the webstite; however, if you have a customer in fron of you with cash or CC, then you should be able to offer them the same fare rather than creating the extra step of having them book online directly in front of the company sales agent.

Now you can pay for your AirAsia booking, in cash, at any 7-11 in Thailand. You have one hour to do that after you make the booking.

This is valid only for bookings that originate in Thailand - I was buying a ticket within Indonesia so this was not an option.

You are right, it would take more than an hour to get to a 7-11 in Thailand from Indonesia

A similar situation with AIr Asia - I tried to purchase a ticket online within Inodnesia for USD 50.00; however, due to security safeguards on their website - my U.S. credit card kept getting denied. So, I was meeting a friend the next day at DMK - I arrived a little early and went to the AIr Asia desk and wanted to purchase the ticket; however, the reservation was held for only 1 hour and had been cancelled. The Air Asia ticket agent said she could rebook it - but that she would have to charge me USD 100 for the same flight. I took out my smartphone and booked a new reservation and got the same USD50 fare and the same CC denied message. However, once I gave her the confirmation number - she sold me the ticket for USD 50.00.

I understand that hotels and airlines want to direct booking traffic to the webstite; however, if you have a customer in fron of you with cash or CC, then you should be able to offer them the same fare rather than creating the extra step of having them book online directly in front of the company sales agent.

Now you can pay for your AirAsia booking, in cash, at any 7-11 in Thailand. You have one hour to do that after you make the booking.

The 6-month validity rule apply to a long list of countries, see:

http://www.uspassporthelpguide.com/six-months-validity-rule/

The root of the problem is with the OTA who force hotels to abide to parity rules, meaning that they cannot offer rooms for less than the OTA, including walk-ins. But that monopolistic practice is coming to an end with the German, the Swiss and now other countries investigating these practices as they are restraints of trade and anti-consumer. The OTA have been able to get away with it because of their sheer size, hotels cannot live without them these days but they sure would love to stop paying upward to 25% commission while the transaction cost on their own site is less than 5%.

In Thailand, it is actually easier to negotiate a better rate than it may be in western countries because ... well ... this is Thailand and there is always a way

Quick before you close the doors! I'll be there +1

Thanks