khunjeff

If the whole world seems to know about his arrival in Norway using a false name and passport, why wasn't he immediately arrested for that by Norwegian authorities? Even leaving aside the murder charge, flying around under a false identity or with forged documents isn't something that's taken lightly by any government. Or are the articles somehow suggesting that the Norwegian embassy in Hanoi knowingly issued the bogus passport to him?

As long as they're tilting at non-existent windmills, they might as well also announce that they firmly oppose any plan to establish American unicorn breeding farms ????

It's a great relief to know that from now on I'll only be victimized by Thai criminals, not foreign ones. Thanks!!

They approved the tax with no idea of exactly who would pay it, how it would be collected, or what it would be used for - how shocking that its implementation has been rocky ????

"Police arrested the Vietnamese vendor under suspicion of, “acting in a way to increase the weight of the scales used to trade and sell goods beyond the margin of error exploiting customers”" ...which is an occupation reserved for Thais.

If there's really a law requiring them to waste time holding hearings on a tax that hasn't been levied in over 30 years - in order to "assess its effectiveness" - that would truly raise the bar for bureaucratic inanity.

The first article is wildly inaccurate. The proposed tax would apply only to Thai citizens and permanent residents, not to tourists and others. And contrary to what they claim, there is no "existing outbound levy for tourists" - there is a Passenger Service Charge (PSC) for people departing by air, which is an airport user fee - not a tax - and which applies to all outbound air passengers, not just tourists. There is no charge or tax of any kind for people leaving the country by rail, road, or on foot.

"A public health researcher said in an interview that he supports a competitive market but he is concerned that more consumption could lead to increased problems in society and for the health of consumers, such as accidents, domestic violence and so on." It's really stretching credulity to suggest that having more brands and producers will lead to more consumption, and to go from there to make the wild claim that microbrews will cause domestic violence! In fact, it's hard to believe that consumption would increase at all. More likely, drinkers would just substitute good beer for the bad beer that they currently buy.

I can never quite understand why AoT makes announcements like this. These ideas are all well and good, but in other countries it's normally the airlines themselves that decide what their check-in hours will be, whether they use electronic kiosks, etc. - not the airport authority.

Ok! Well, nothing to worry about then! ????

Problem: Chinese citizens are being kidnapped and murdered in Thailand Solution: re-criminalize cannabis Makes sense to me!

I live in an apartment building rather than a condo, so I always just added the room number after the building name, like "Peacock Court Apt. 5A" (since there's no dedicated field on the form for room number). That didn't stop CW from randomly rejecting one of my submissions, and telling me when I appeared in person "you have to give the room number". When I showed them that I HAD provided the room number, they kind of harrumphed and mumbled, "well, try again next time". The example you provided seems to be for a condo, where each unit is given a separate street address rather than a room or apartment number per se, so I'm not sure how much clearer you can be than you already were. Many people seem to succeed just by submitting the exact same form several times until it's finally accepted, so you could try that if you have time. Good luck!

There is no requirement for 800k in the bank at any point in the LTR process - not at the time of application, and not at the five year point.

No. The instructions state specifically that if you're on a retirement extension, the cancellation will be done at the immigration office connected with BoI on the day of application - it does not have to be done in advance at the issuing office.

Yes, you would think the fact that the word "Resident" is in the name of the visa itself would make this pretty clear, but I don't think the people who dreamt up this fee actually have any idea what categories of foreigners exist in Thailand.

Decades of overcharging westerners with no concern, but overcharging Chinese? OH MY GOD!!

The Chinese company Tencent has owned a large minority stake in Shopee for years, but is gradually reducing its ownership percentage. Shopee's Singaporean parent company continues to maintain voting and ownership control of the company.

I'm not aware of any pool at Benjakitti, but there are pools at Benjasiri and Lumpini parks.

For whatever it's worth, he says in a video that the story was misreported, and that the time was actually between 11:30 and 11:45pm.

Sorry, I didn't see this follow up question until just now. I'm sure it's too late to help you, but yes, the parking entrance is on Ratchawithi and is well marked (though the path to the garage entrance once you're inside the compound is oddly convoluted). I hope your visit and vaccination went well.

Wow! This astounding news must have been uncovered by their top investigative reporters... ????

I've stayed at Ko Kradan. It's nice enough, but is hardly the best beach in Thailand, let alone the world.

The processing times mentioned in the OP are for domestic applications. Ever since passports began being printed in the US for overseas applications - over 20 years ago now - the State Department has always recognized that Americans in other countries have an urgent need to have a valid passport at all times, and have therefore expedited processing of applications from abroad, even when there were terrible domestic backlogs. Normally, that has meant that the embassy or consulate submits all of the application information (including photo) electronically on the day of application, and the passport is printed at a US passport center and sent back to the embassy by DHL or FedEx the same day (which is possible due to the time zone difference). The passport is received by the embassy within a few days, checked for errors, matched with the applicant's mailing envelope, and sent out, for a total processing time which is typically about two weeks. @ProbPossConf mentions above having already waited nearly a month for the new passport, which is very unusual. It's certainly possible that overseas applications have slowed a bit, but they will never take nearly as long as the domestic applications that you read about in (accurate) media horror stories.

I was there a couple of weeks ago for the bivalent booster, and they have parking inside the building - you can take the elevator directly from the garage up to floor 12A for the vaccination. With the parking stamp from the vaccine center, the parking fee is 20 baht.

True, but Chuwit also said (after this extortion incident) that this was part of a systemic moneymaking scheme, complete with quotas, set up and supervised by a very senior policeman. Even though he actually identified that senior policeman by name and position, the accusation was immediately "forgotten" and does not appear to have ever been followed up on.