khunjeff

"See, this is why we need to buy a new frigate from China."

The renovated canal area looks nice, but I've never seen more than about one block of the walkway in active use - the rest is always deserted. Part of the problem is that it's impossible to move from one section to the next without going up some stairs and running across a busy road, with no light or crosswalk at the natural crossing point.

So they don't intend to actually enforce any of this, other than by maybe sending a ticket through the mail at some future date. And how exactly will that move traffic along today? Also, I don't know anyone who would characterize license plate readers, CCTV cameras, and 3-minute timers as an "AI system". Yes, the problem isn't too many vehicles on the roads, it's tourists using the wrong vehicles. Uh huh. And signs have proven to be so effective...

Is the "ombudsman" looking after the interests of the police, or the public? Reasonable people can disagree about what the cutoff in the number of pills should be, but Vichai's argument seems to be "drugs are bad, therefore we should keep exactly the same enforcement regime that we've always had" (and which has done such a great job in reducing crime and abuse 🙄 ). And his "fear[] that corrupt police may exploit the regulation, accepting bribes to ignore the quantity of drugs in possession" kind of ignores the fact that if you assume police will accept bribes, then no enforcement mechanism will work...

I'm not sure why this wasn't already prohibited, but the bigger question is whether there will actually be any enforcement. (And given that the indented area in the photo has no sign saying "no parking" or "official vehicles only", it's not surprising that people were "misusing" it.)

I too used Santa Fe from Saigon to Bangkok, and also got a recent quotation from them for a local move within the city (they now have a subsidiary called Sanelo for non-corporate moves). They offer insurance at a price of 1.5% of the declared value of the items, which is the same rate offered by JWD/JVK and Asian Tigers. All three of these companies provide excellent, professional service, but will likely be more expensive than local firms.

So he went to a meeting aimed at preventing young women from having babies and proposed that the government urge young women to have babies?

How can he speak for how other airlines might price their flights? I'm sure they haven't colluded, since that would of course be illegal 🙄

"All deposits at federally insured credit unions are protected by the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, with deposits insured up to at least $250,000 per individual depositor." https://ncua.gov/newsroom/press-release/2020/deposits-are-safe-federally-insured-credit-unions

They replaced all of the baggage scanning equipment last year. The vast majority of countries in the world have exit immigration - the US and the UK are rare exceptions.

Obviously the manager of an individual branch can make up whatever absurd rules he or she likes, but no, this is not an "all Thai banks" policy and is not even the rule of any Thai bank. What they don't understand is that they're stuck with the paperwork whether they like it or not. The Bank of Thailand signed an agreement with the US Treasury Department a number of years ago obliging all Thai banks to comply with FATCA, so no bank - and certainly no branch - can opt out of that, no matter what the manager wants; they must make every new customer fill out the US paperwork to determine whether they meet the definition of a "US person". They also misunderstand what's involved in having "US persons" as customers - the reporting is all done electronically at the HQ level, with essentially no work required by the branch.

That seems to be the case: "When travelling abroad and using credit cards for purchases at international stores, individuals will be presented with the option of paying in the local currency of the country or baht. If the user chooses to pay in baht, an additional 1% fee will be charged." Of course, choosing to pay in baht overseas via DCC is already a terrible idea, since it will be quite a bit more expensive than opting for local currency. And no, this is not a way for Thai banks to cover currency conversion costs. If you choose DCC overseas, the bank in that country will do the conversion. If you choose local currency, conversion will be done by Visa or Mastercard. In neither case will the Thai bank do any conversion or bear any exchange rate risk - the transaction will be submitted to them in baht. https://www.nationthailand.com/blogs/thailand/economy/40036058

That's true if you take out cash using your debit card. You will not pay a fee if you use the cardless withdrawal option on the ATM.

It's adorable that the health minister seems to believe he has the power to enact legislation - his proposal hasn't even been discussed or voted on, so it's a bit rich to say "Thailand plans..."

The name of the person making the announcement is Phantana, not Thanana (his name is even shown in the photo), and he's a Major General, not a Colonel. Itthipol is a Lieutenant General, not a Major General. And Big Joke Surachet is a full General, not a Lieutenant Colonel. This isn't hard.

The head of AOT keeps giving the same speech again and again in response to every crisis: we're bringing on 200, 400, 800 extra staff to guide people through the procedures!! Guess what? Passengers know where to go, that's why they're in the queues - the problem is the number and speed of security and immigration stations, not people getting lost on the way there. And the bizarre repetition of how great the electronic check-in kiosks are...which the airlines didn't ask for, which WE are paying for through an increase in the airport fee, and which will NOT ...since every airline still needs to examine travel documents, weigh bags, etc. This is really getting tiresome.

Does the airport currently have any scheduled flights at all?

And yet these crackdowns never seem to target overcharging and law breaking by registered taxis, which affect the well-being of tourists far more than these illegal private cars that are so vexatious to the authorities.

What is complex about a prison brawl? 🤔

Oh my god, the brilliant detective work involved here! I guess African men standing along the street asking, "want drugs?" might have been the first clue? Luckily it only took 25 years to pierce the veil of this well-hidden enterprise.

He made the statements in 2015, more than eight years ago - what "additional evidence" can possibly be uncovered at this point by "further investigation"?

As usual, this is either poor reporting or just nonsense. How can AOT - an airport management company - bring on immigration officers, who belong to the police? Are we talking about actual officers at the counters, or just more officious teenage queue managers in red vests? Immigration has told us repeatedly, every time there's a negative news story about long queues, that all 119 counters are staffed, and that the problem is those pesky flights that just keep landing. So where is the "30% shortage"? Or is AOT finally admitting that the previous claims were nonsense? Or are they only talking about "queue managers"? So are these the same 200 new staff mentioned above (in which case they won't be manning the counters, just waving their arms and shouting), or 200 support staff in addition to 200 more officers? Pro tip: if there aren't enough actual officers to process everyone in a timely fashion, no extra number of facilitators will speed up the process.

Yes, the problem isn't massive overcharging, refusal to abide by regulations, grossly inflated fares, or mafia thuggery, it's...private cars. Glad they have their priorities straight.

Nothing clandestine about it - they're sold openly everywhere...

We do indeed have the same friend. It's definitely possible that they've relaxed the rule on VND export, or they just don't care. It's pretty clear that their main interest is in folks taking out lots of foreign currency.