timendres

It might be reasonable to offer to show some gold at the ceremony, IF and ONLY IF it will be returned to you after the ceremony.

I am sure the IMF has only altruistic intentions.....

In my case, my agent was inside the building and had my passport with her. I showed a photo of my passport that was on my phone, and that was accepted no problem. This was April 2021.

US citizen living here since 2010. May not be the best comparison, since I am fully integrated - living and working here with a live-in girlfriend, Thai friends, Thai staff, speak Thai, etc. As my son says, "You are functionally Thai". Fortunately, I got most of my fun in before the thugs pinched a lot of the character that made Thailand the joyful place to live that it was. Since then, I have not really noticed any serious impact on my life. COVID did more to F things up than the thugs did, and hopefully we are near the end of that nonsense. Much depends on what you like about Thailand. If you like the parties of the old Sukhumvit days, the debauchery of Pattaya, and the like, you will probably be disappointed for some time. If you enjoy more of the normal activities here, then things will be much better once the COVID insanity subsides. Even during the brief "openings" during the past 2 years, things started to recover quickly, only to be crushed again. In typical Thai fashion, even during the lockdowns, entertainment could be found if one was determined enough to find it. Thai people are hell bent on "living", unlike back home where people are more concerned about some fake "standard" of (non)living. I have a great deal of faith in the Thai people. If they are allowed to flourish once again, the fun will return. The problem is that the thugs and COVID have now set the stage for years to come, and those years are likely to be attenuated. Still a world better than the US, in my opinion. Seeing what is going on back there, Thailand, even in its current hobbled state, is a far better place to live. Will Thailand "sink into a Cambodian existence". I seriously doubt it. However, it does appear that its upward trajectory has stalled, and it is not likely to return anytime soon. That said, it is more like the other countries are catching up with Thailand, which is good for the region as a whole. Still, for health care, food, accommodations, infrastructure, cost of living, etc., I am not even considering moving any time soon.

This approach to resolving business disputes is far more entertaining than a room full of lawyers.

I would not recommend Warrior. In fact, I would not recommend any course that charges real money. Most of the information you seek is available for free and in quantity, and is simply regurgitated by these pay-for services. What you need to start with is what style of trading you are interested in - stochastic, trend following, mean reversion, etc. And what timeframes and markets you are interested in. Once you have some idea of what you are most interested in, simple Google searches and some sifting through the chaff will reveal many good sources of information. As intimated by @Yellowtail anyone with a working strategy will never reveal it to you. Even for money. Once a strategy is known by enough traders, they will pile on sufficiently to move the markets and kill the strategy. The firm I worked for years ago was running risk-arb pair trading on mergers and acquisitions. It was raining money, with spreads from 50 cents to a dollar. After about 4 years, many other firms piled on, and in the end they were trading for four TENTHS of a CENT spreads, until finally the spread dropped below their costs and they turned it off. Having coded many automated trading systems over the years, both personal and for trading firms, I can say, without much hesitation, that you will find it is not simple. Many people will present trading systems based on "signals" (macd, rsi, vwap, etc.) with backtesting showing 60% plus win rates. Don't believe it for a minute. I have personally taken dozens of these systems that "demonstrated" success with backtesting and proved that they simply do not work over a large enough dataset. Easy to cherry pick a time series and produce a backtest with positive results. But when you run over years, you will see they fall apart The problem is that all of these signals are "backward looking". They are never predictive. A number of very solid papers have shown that trading on these signals generally fails. In fact the only consistent approach appears to be price action analysis combined with support and resistance. Problem is, these are difficult things to program. I coded a pair trading system that was producing 35% annualized returns with live trading. It was great until it wasn't. Pair trading is complex, and even the risk-arb guys get toasted from time to time. It is difficult to succeed with this approach without significant resources and vey low costs. My most recent success has been with a momentum trading strategy using moving stops. It does quite well, but requires that I trade a narrow set of stocks that pass a specific filter. What I dislike is that the strategy requires holding positions overnight, which halves my potential margin, and exposes me to overnight risk. I prefer strategies that enter and exit within a single trading session. But the best of these tend to be stochastic algorithms that require very significant capital and margin, since you need to trade enough positions that the statistics play out as expected.

This is exactly what they told the girlfriend. That the parcel was sent with her ID, and she would be prosecuted if she did not clear things up. She is not savvy enough to recognize the scam. She knows only that the police here are to be feared.

Girlfriend got a direct call from someone claiming to be police. Same story about DHL and passports and visas and China, and how this was a big problem for her. Told her that 50,000 THB would "clear things up". When she finally told me about it, I saw it as a clear scam and told her to call that "cop" back so I could speak to him. Not two words came out of my mouth and they hung up, and would not answer again. If I could hunt them down, I would end them. Two days ago, I got the DHL recording call on my phone. Ignored it, as I have sent nothing DHL and expect nothing coming. This is happening a lot and people should be careful.

15 years ago, I needed a hernia operation in the US. The doctor recommended that I not do laparoscopic. I asked why. He said that the laparoscopic is more difficult for the doctor, has higher failure rates, and does not last as long. I opted for the traditional mesh, and it has lasted these 15 years without a problem. That said, I did have a dull pain in the area for many months, and it concerned me. Only then did I do some research and discovered that hernia operations have a relatively high incidence of chronic pain. My point being that, for an operation that is "sold" as simple and common, I would definitely pay a little more for a doctor that is very good. Had that pain never ceased (as it never does for many), I cannot imagine living with it permanently.

Calling someone who is 17 years old a "child" is complete nonsense.

For anyone who is a foreigner, under 18 is guaranteed jail time.

Google the headline. It happens all over the world. No need for Thai apologists, simply a recognition that there are people in this world whose selfish desires override human decency. Far too many of them, in fact. And they do not reside exclusively in Thailand.

Depravity and debauchery, my old friends... I have to say, many of my pursuits of the flesh have been very satisfying. I have always enjoyed teaching a young lass some of the satisfactions that can be achieved in pursuits of the flesh. That said, indeed, as age accumulates, one tends to find more enjoyment in the mind than in the flesh, and teaching can be a very rewarding activity. An activity which contributes to society. We all owe much to our teachers. They are generally undervalued, but stand tall throughout history.

"I don’t understand how he could manage." - 42 Million baht is quite a sufficient budget for handling "situations".

I did. Although my touch pad is feeling the pain of infinite swiping. ^_^

And I suspect very few of them would be interested in the LTR. The OP does not mention "high potential tourists". The concept is about "high potential foreigners" who wish to stay long term, and thus wish to have a more stable visa/extension of stay. It makes perfect sense to limit this to individuals seen as contributing more to the country during their stay. That said, I am in the camp that thinks that those who have resided in Thailand more than 5 years, or are married to a Thai national and/or support a family here, should also be provided with a more stable means of residing in the country.

What you provided to that dying man in his final moments was priceless. Your attempts to comfort him were not futile.

And 1,200 blank lines for a 1 line post. It is definitely a pattern... ^_^

When repayment is never going to happen, you may as well make it 1000% - it still amounts to nothing.

Murder rates do not represent confrontation. Thailand is #114, and well below the US. The countries doing better (in the list you provided, e.g., Canada, France, UK) have a culture that is much less violent that, say, the US. None of that regards "confrontation". There is plenty of confrontation in France, it just does not lead to extreme violence or murder. Ditto the UK. In fact, I believe reasonable confrontation is what prevents extreme violence, as issues get resolved. The issue with Thailand is that confrontation is avoided, which allows seething emotions to well up until they result in uncontrolled violence. That is the issue.

Not excusing the murderer in any sense of the word, but... When will people learn that confrontation like this is never a good choice. You can certainly stand your ground, but so many people approach this in the wrong way. I have had disagreements with Thai people on occasion, but it was always resolved peacefully because it was done in a proper way. Thai people dislike confrontation. But when you push someone's back against the wall, look out - fang jai can be dangerous.

In the US, you say nothing to the police, get your lawyer, and fight it out in court. In Thailand, if do not resolve the matter with the police, and you end up in court, you are likely screwed.

Maybe he prefers to get natural immunity over having to get a vaccine to board a flight?

Ditto

Cookies are actually required for any site that involves logging into an account. If you reject the cookies, then the site is forced to place the "session" information into the URL itself. Guess what? .... Right. Not sure why you would care that much. Frankly, the information being generated by your mobile is much "scarier" than any web browser tracking data.