khunjeff

Glad to see they're focusing on only the most important crimes 🙄

Or to put it another way - no, it isn't, at all.

It took a special inspection to notice that 69 escalators and elevators were out of order?!?

The much-discussed tourist tax is not mentioned anywhere in the article - this appears to be a separate scheme. They're not. Even if you believed all the stories about non-paying tourists (mostly generated by one particular director of one particular hospital on one particular island), the unpaid cost would have averaged out to less than 10 baht per foreign arrival. The "solution" dreamed up to this problem was the 300 baht tourist tax mentioned above - I think we can all do the math on that. Yes, they could easily have done that. But they wanted only foreigners to pay, and the airlines told them there was no way to collect a charge that only applied to certain passengers. So, the whole plan has been (temporarily?) shelved.

So he didn't "fall", he intentionally climbed over the safety rail and jumped.

AOT is a for-profit public company, and posted a net profit of 8.8 billion baht in fiscal year 2023.

Yes the roughly 1.75 Euro increase in ticket prices will make a huge difference after not being adjusted for years. Grow up. Adding in small but irritating fees is, in fact, exactly what "nickel and diming" is. And this particular increase has nothing whatsoever to do with "adjusting" the passenger service charge for inflation. As the article explains, it's to pay for check-in equipment that in almost every other country would be installed and paid for by airlines as a means of saving on labor costs, not put in by airport management at the expense of passengers. So yes, we will now pay AOT for the privilege of doing the check-in ourselves instead of having professionals do it for us as part of our fare.

Your timeline is backwards. The Royal Decree instituting the tax exemption for LTR holders was introduced in May 2022, before the current PM was even in power. The Revenue Department order regarding overseas income was issued in September 2023.

If you're talking about US passports, there is no additional fee getting the larger passport book - and it's now given automatically if you apply abroad.

I think this will mostly be of use to people who don't normally use Grab and may not understand how to use the service. For regular users, you're correct that the current system works perfectly fine.

Remember this one from over a year ago? And whatever happened with it? Oh, right - nothing. https://aseannow.com/topic/1285260-chuwit-bombshell-claims-massive-organised-met-police-racket-nets-central-fund-324-mb-month-sky-arrives-in-bangkok/

Again, they are not saying that Fast Track doesn't exist, and are not saying that authorized passengers are being charged for the service. Fast Track obviously is real, and anyone in one of the permitted categories can use it for free. What they are claiming - absurdly - is that Fast Track service isn't being corruptly sold to unauthorized pax, even though exactly that type of sale is widely advertised and has been used by commenters on this thread.

Is this the same AOT that opened Suvarnabhumi with a system that would have required arriving passengers to take a bus to a remote transportation center in order to get a taxi, because they wanted to try to force people to use AOT's own "limousine" service? And that then had to hurriedly backtrack after the public outcry and set up taxi dispatchers at card tables on the pavement outside of the arrivals area? And the same AOT that installed giant rotating turnstiles at the departures level to prevent people from walking out to get into incoming taxis? Yeah, I thought so.

Here's what's advertised by the airport operator itself:

Thai Elite maybe No, there are other cart services that are not connected with Thai Privilege, and they are advertised all over with packages that include Fast Track immigration. Even AOT itself sells this kind of service through its "Sawasdee Pass" scheme. LTR, SMART Visa, Thai Elite, and a few others are specifically authorized to use Fast Track. The article isn't saying that Fast Track doesn't exist, just making the ludicrous claim that the privilege isn't being openly sold to pax who don't qualify to use it.

Those numbers seem way, way too low. That would mean fewer than two scam calls per phone number per year, and pretty much everyone I know or have read about receives far more than that number per week.

Kasikorn can produce a one year statement while you wait for the same 100 baht price as a shorter one, so you might as well get the longer version just to be on the safe side. And in my experience, it shouldn't matter whether you update the bank book before or after the letter is issued (since you're actually allowed to get the letter up to seven days before the appointment).

Entering the country as a tourist at the airport - which is what is under discussion here - does not involve any forms or signatures.

Other than the nonstop giant billboards everywhere showing the names and logos of the biggest beer companies - but oh, sorry, those are actually advertising "club soda" and "mineral water"...

Really? I last rode the ARL less than two months ago, and the empty, unusable baggage car was still on the train that I was on - and I've never seen an ex-Express train without it. (All the former Express passenger cars were converted to the City-style beech seating years ago.)

This was because your plane (EK 385) was continuing on to Dubai, and they wanted to be sure that no one was getting off at the wrong destination. It isn't a new requirement - they've done this for years for flights where BKK is only an intermediate stop and continuing passengers are required to remain on board. As others have noted, this is the standard procedure that the machine runs automatically. The officer can stop it after the first hand is scanned - if she sees that you already have prints on record, and the first hand matches those - but that doesn't always happen.

Big Joke and Torsak are both full (four-star) Police Generals, not (three-star) Lieutenant Generals! Even if someone didn't know this, they could see it clearly from BJ's shoulder board in the photo.

"But she and her four colleagues, who are all members of the [Lawyers'] council, have agreed that they cast the province in a negative light and that the message in the advertisement is degrading to women, as it likens them to food, which constitutes a libel" The billboards may be clever or stupid depending on your point of view, but how they could constitute "libel" is utterly beyond me.

Its "reach" is exactly the same now as it was in 2018 - there have been no extensions to the system since it opened. The ARL has had insufficient rolling stock since the day it opened, which is why the frequencies are so poor. Neither the SRT nor CP have shown any interest in spending money to buy more trains. Meanwhile, the stations are still gloomy and stifling, the guards still blow their whistles in passengers' ears, the seats are still narrow and uncomfortable, and the exteriors of the trains show no signs of ever having been washed. Very unlikely anytime in the foreseeable future. The express trains never made economic sense, and would still run mostly empty if they were brought back. That being the case, CP should finally convert the unused baggage cars on the former express trains to accommodate passengers - it's ridiculous that those trains run with one empty car, even years after the express service was discontinued.

So, downsizing by 700 personnel, or about 1/4 of 1% of total strength, and "saving" 34M baht, or about 1/6 of 1% of the budget - and this will take years to implement. Are we supposed to be impressed?