ColdSingha

still better than a 12 hour visa run

in other news banker predicts GDP to resume upward trend and crude to rebound sharply..

anyway maybe they can sue for defamation..

LOL

It is called freedom of the press, guess this is a foreign term to him

this will be the bit prayut left out when he said "ferang are different from thais.."

You being married to a Thai makes no difference regarding a work permit, other than that the registered capital and the ratio Thai- Foreigners is halved.

depends on where you live, hua hin said my wife would still need 4 employees if i wanted to work in her company

If you make money from inside your own home on line and you do nothing apart from pay for the connection, have no Thai's involved, sell nothing in Thailand, Buy nothing in Thailand, and the money is outland revenue, you are not in the same class as working in Thailand. You are working in cyber space. Petty and typical of Thailand to take this immature stance. Hopefully a court may look at this in a sympathetic way and realize that these people are not ticking all the prosecution boxes in the strict wording of the law for them to be convicted of any crime. Personal computers and what you do with them in the privacy of your own home financially should not classed as working as long as Thailand is in no way involved. I can put a classified add on Thai visa, sell a TV to a reader and make a few baht profit. Am i working illegally? This is actually worse than what these people have done because i have bought a product in Thailand and sold it in Thailand and made money.

technically writing the above (and this) post was providing content to a professional website. as Thailand does not differentiate between paid and non-paid "work" this would be no different to their guys writing articles for their tech site. Thaivisa then take your content and wrap it with adverts to make money

do you have a work permit for this???! or for posting to Facebook, Twitter or heaven forbid.. your own site?

thought not, laws can be silly when wrote so vague

I'm off to chiang mai tonight. Whoever said that my school had some students caught working was right (some Koreans in a Korean barbers) and the hammer is coming down hard on the whole school. Even to us clasd attending students. I noticed that numbers in my class were way down this week. I suspect a lot of people have been kicked out.

Chiang mai is dodgy but hey TIT. My concern is my next trip to BKK immigration when I have my new ED visa from Uni. If they scrutinize my passport and see a CM office stamp there. I guess I'll just say I lived up there for a few months. Sawat de jao....

you say numbers in class are down and suspect many students kicked out. are you saying class attending students kicked out? any idea why?

cant remove a demand problem by limiting supply

Till immigration relax and take it easy there will be a lot of problems.

seems to me that a good portion of the blame lies with the schools themselves allowing students to come and go as they please but marking them as full attendence. immigration are doing their job and the students will do what they can get away with if they are so inclined. maybe now would be a good time to take some responsibility and get your own houses in order?

I'm on my first ED visa & I'll apply for my first extension at Chaeng Wattana end of February. Although I attend my classes, after hearing all those horror stories I'm really worried.

Can experienced members please give examples of the questions they ask at immigration? I have more then a month, and I want to be prepared.

Also, should I learn how to write my name? We haven't learned a single letter at school yet, but if they are asking, I'll do my best trying to learn it.

Thanks

maybe you can ask school to help prepare you as well since you are paying them

these guys will not be happy until its a flat 500baht fare

getting some practise in before heading to Saudi

A 2:00am 'late drink' in Silom presumably means Patpong and in truth you kind of put yourself on offer hanging out there. Easy meat really for the RTP. Like other posters have said I think our man is making much more of this than it is worth.

a late night drink on a terrace bar in silom area is much more likely to be on the upmarkent young hiso soi. soi 4 i think

I think you mean the downmarket homo soi 4.

like i said not sure on the soi number, it was all late night roof terrace bars and ISB girls last time i was there

must have changed since then

so thats where all the tourists are, samui has been dead this week

A 2:00am 'late drink' in Silom presumably means Patpong and in truth you kind of put yourself on offer hanging out there. Easy meat really for the RTP. Like other posters have said I think our man is making much more of this than it is worth.

a late night drink on a terrace bar in silom area is much more likely to be on the upmarkent young hiso soi. soi 4 i think

all these arrests yet the carders are still like flys round honey. the risk must be a lot lower than is being portrayed in the media. i wonder how much they are really getting away with?

Language Express. No it's not "academically rigorous" like Chula or as time & money intensive like them. It's just a normal language school which seems to be ok for real students (not fake ED visa "students") who actually want to learn some Thai from decent Thai teachers. At least that's my opinion.

So why do you assume the school in question is a "visa mill"? Just because it is cheap? Language express is a single branch which charges a laughable amount for both Thai and English classes. Maybe the teachers are good (I have no clue). But its not like Language Express is really renowned for their Thai courses or anything (at least that I am aware of).

It's not like any school anywhere is renowned for their Thai courses....maybe except for the intensive at Chula.

Cheap & more importantly based on what "Kitsune" said: "I have been going every week to Sandee and NO your BF was not there. I was on my own with the teacher". Ok, not a visa mill school then but they only have 1 student in a group class. Guess they really need to do more marketing to attract students or they won't be able to cover costs & go bankrupt soon with only 1 student doing group lessons lol. Could it be they have a lot of "students" who don't actually turn up like the OP's boyfriend?

From my understanding, the vast majority of schools don't have students show up for the majority of classes. And considering these schools are indeed businesses, there is no way they will drop them from enrollment. They want students to keep paying year after year, regardless of whether or not they attend class. I am not saying this to start a debate about the merits of such practice..... But rather this simply being the reality of the situation.

maybe it should be the schools not the students clamped down on by immigration.

if they enforced the attendance record problem solved.

If the money isn't remitted in the year it's earned, blah blah you know the details.

Err one is possibly liable for tax in Thailand if one is in country for 180 days or more, you are resident for tax purposes that is the reality, when and how you bring your money in is the secondary consideration, one suspects the day will come in Thailand that they will start chasing long term farangs on this point

Don't hold your breath, when many of the locals are avoiding tax too.

Maybe so, but locals don't need long term visa's/extensions of stay do they ?

tax law is nothing to do with immigration it's a totally separate department

honestly i don't see what the fuss is about it's quite a common tax law these days. look up the UK's non-domicile status, now that really is a doozy.

seriously i've said it before and i'll say it again if you are paying taxes and not paying an accountant first you are throwing a lot of money away

thai tax law is very accommodative for both thai and worldwide income

It's difficult to believe they are will undo the recent tightening on visas for illegal workers so my guess is they'll only be issuing these in locations where they are fairly liberal about issuing visas already - namely faraway rich countries.

Or simply make this visa "issued only in the applicant's home country".

back in the days of granting non-o multiple entry (1 year) for "visiting friends" i knew a lot of people who were quite happy to fly home once a year.. normally at xmas

it is known that Savannakhet is reluctant to issue non-i 'O' to people older than 50, and will find any excuse to not do so.

You may have better luck in Vientane, or convert tourist visa in bangkok.

why would they not want to give non-o to over 50s paz?

i got from this:

you better get a full time coach (thai partner) if you want to pass the test

don't need to go to school

Russia supplies 1/3rd and they are going to reduce that by 60%. So that would leave Europe with 4/5ths of energy that they would normally have. It is going to have to be a real cold winter for Europe not to get by on 80% . Next year they can get natural gas from the USA to replace the Russian gas.

not for a while..

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/business/energy-environment/us-gas-tantalizes-europe-but-its-not-a-quick-fix.html?_r=0

HOUSTON — As congressional pressure builds on the Obama administration to quicken gas exports to Europe to reduce its dependence on Russia, it may be tempting to gaze upon a marshy, alligator-infested Louisiana inlet of the Gulf of Mexico.

There 3,000 workers are installing a huge set of turbines, pipelines and refrigeration units, building a terminal that will send American natural gas around the world by the end of next year. By 2017, the facility built by Houston-based Cheniere Energy could handle roughly a sixth the amount of gas that flows from Russia to Europe every day.