khunjeff

No, it doesn't - it underlines that certain officials have no understanding of what the city's soul is, but want to show off their own power. Please remind me how "comply[ing] with income assessments and taxation" makes the environment more "orderly and hygienic"? And while it's theoretically true that everyone should pay the taxes that they owe, exactly how much will be collected from vendors making less than 25k per month? And whenever this subject comes up, some official will start yapping about how they want to make Bangkok "more like Singapore". Leaving aside the question of whether that's even a desirable goal, do they know that Singapore built its hawker centers and THEN moved the vendors off the street, rather than kicking them out today with a vague promise of an indoor selling area to appear (magically) at some indeterminate point in the future?

This kind of "cooperation" (US detects criminals operating in Thailand and asks the Thais to bust them) has been going on for decades, long before animosity with China heated up.

I've read this a few times before, but I still don't understand it. I'm not British, so I have no background other than what I've seen in the media. So, could someone explain this idea to me like I was five years old? Why would a payment which comes entirely from the UK government, and is based on contributions to the UK pension system made while working in the UK, have any "reciprocity" angle at all? Why would any foreign country have to sign off on UK citizens getting increased payments from the UK? What exactly is "reciprocal" here?

You are absolutely correct. The airlines flatly stated that they had no way of adding a fee to tickets if it only applied to certain passengers and not others.

No mention of "Non" or "Non-immigrant" at all.

So are the companies "bogus", or are they actually being "operated"? Is this about doing business illegally, or about opening shell companies that don't do business at all?

Sure. But for working illegally or running an unlicensed business, not for operating a fraudulent scheme (as the first article implies he was doing).

"Thaiembassy.com" is not a Thai government website, and routinely contains inaccurate information.

This is at least the 10th time this proposal has been "announced", and usually it's presented as though it's a done deal (like all "proposals" from this government).

He wasn't "posing" as a tour guide and running a "scheme", he was an actual tour guide, running tours. He was violating employment laws, but it doesn't sound like he was defrauding his customers.

Another article I read specified that it was net of expenses.

I think the issue was that TG was taken to task by the government after passengers filed complaints that they had bought business class tickets on these old Thai Smile planes and were only given economy with a blocked middle seat ("Euro-business"). TG was required to post a warning about this on their booking engine, and finally ended up rebranding those seats as "premium economy" rather than business. Refitting the planes in question will allow them to market a short haul business class product once again. That's just my guess.

So maybe they told you and you didn't understand what they were saying?

Ditto. This is a non-existent issue.

Let me see if I have this straight. A man starts an underground swingers' club, and is perfectly fine with members having sex with his wife, as long as he's allowed to watch. But now one of these hand-picked members starts getting a bit too friendly with the wife, and sometimes the founder is just too busy to watch their couplings (who has time? Am I right?). So now that the vibe of the swinging club has been totally messed up, he takes the only logical next step: he complains to the member's boss. Yes, complains that the member wasn't, well, using his member in a nice way. Because that's what you do when you run an underground sex club 🤔 I thought the first rule of Swing Club is that you don't talk about Swing Club?

Only one charge remaining - the statute of limitations on the other charges has already been allowed to run its course.

And then a hopeful feeling again - Maybe I'll wait to see the new LTR requirements 🙂 "Long Stay" has always been used by MFA to refer to the O-A and O-X categories - LTR is a totally different animal, and there's no indication here that they intend to make any changes to that program.

If that's how he treats his "friend", I'd hate to be his enemy.

I think they meant "anti-anti-corruption".

I guess it's now time for the usual 50 or so "cash is king" posts that appear like clockwork each time this issue comes up... And I must say, it continues to astonish me that the mythical "five minutes to pay by scanning" slowpokes only stand in queues ahead of people who detest mobile payments, and are otherwise never seen in nature. 🤔

Counties don't vote for anything. People do, and there happen to be a lot of them in the places you mentioned.

Now he has a new outfit to add to his cosplay cabinet.

Technically correct, but absolutely everyone referred to the coffee shop as "Thermae" as well. In any case, that original building was torn down decades ago.

These days, most of these burgers are designed to look good on Instagram, not to be easily eaten. I've found that all of the fancy burger places in Bangkok are pretty good, but at 300-500 baht, they should be!

A friend of mine has both a Thai LTR visa and a Cambodian retirement visa, and has never had any problems or questions entering or exiting either country.