khunjeff

I can't speak for the others, but the US absolutely does not have any such law.

That would be the system that allows registered taxis to overcharge passengers with impunity and threaten competitors with violence? Sorry, no sympathy...

The remittance tax at any level is stupid and pointless, but American citizen senders were exempted in all versions of the bill so far. "There is an exception to the excise tax if the sender is a U.S. citizen or national who uses a qualified remittance transfer provider (QRTP). A QRTP is an RTP that enters into a written agreement with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and agrees to verify that the sender is a U.S. citizen or national." Another Surprise in the One Big Beautiful Bill: Excise Tax on Remittances | Insights | Holland & Knight https://share.google/UpiRI4T2qy1A85m7S

Ah, yes, the "true focus". So then they can just cut the casino part out from the bill, and concentrate on the all-important "exhibitions and events", right? Right...?? Yeah, I didn't think so.

That may reflect poor or incompetent leadership, but I'm not seeing how it qualifies as "corruption".

Yes, I suspect that most of the older members who behave like that have been that way their entire lives...it's just who they are.

Same for me, sending from my US credit union to Kasikorn. And when I used Wise this week to send Vietnam Dong to a friend's VN bank account for the first time, that also took less than ten seconds. There's no obvious pattern, but people sending funds to Bangkok Bank seem to experience more delays than those remitting to Kasikorn.

These sales are all to large Thai corporations or developers. No "doners" are involved.

It's unfortunate, but it wouldn't be the first such sale, and won't be the last. Governments see how much they can make by selling their land in city centers and moving to office buildings, and they never really consider the intangible benefits of keeping a visible presence in the middle of town. If I recall, didn't the Dutch previously sell part of their land on Wireless in the late 80s? And the Spanish sold their property just up the road in the early 90s, and of course the UK sold the front of its embassy, and then the rest. Sad.

It would be nice if they could tell us exactly what this scam was.

The only "concerns" are from taxi drivers who are offended that their long-standing free rein to cheat passengers has been infringed upon. How about "engaging" the traditional taxis to comply with the laws about using the meter and not refusing fares? ...which traditional taxis do not do. Is that "fair"?

Hitachi's safety system, not Suvarnabhumi's, but a good outcome in any case.

Over the past 30 or so years, the city has purchased and deployed at least two different computerized traffic control systems, at a cost of millions of dollars. Both were turned off after the police complained that they could do a better job, so we went back to a guy in a booth playing with the lights at every intersection. Let's hope this new system will be given a fair chance.

I guess that's better than their usual strategy, which is to sue the people questioning Thailand's safety for defamation...

Based on this report, that is in fact all they're doing - there appears to have been virtually no tangible progress on any of these grand projects. And no, "nearing completion of bidding documents" and "ha[ving] several high-profile projects awaiting cabinet approval" doesn't count as "progress" for projects that have been talked about for years, and sometimes decades.