khunjeff

Thanks for the informative report. Did they ask for any proof of residence/address? I've never been asked before, but I've read recent reports from people who said they had to submit copies of their lease and the landlord's ID/house registration. (Of course, some people just bring those things and hand them over without being asked, so it's not always clear whether they were really required or not.) I'll need to do my extension within the next few weeks, so I'm curious.

6 hours ago, webfact said:

A vinyl board during the presentation by immigration chief Lt-Gen Sompong Chingduang yesterday also indicated the involvement of the Saensuk (Bang Saen) police in Chonburi.

Actually, it looks like the vinyl boards have been replaced by a fancy LCD display.

12 minutes ago, spidermike007 said:

Sounds like this kind of thing would have been completely legal, had he been licensed to do so. So, all that was missing was the revenue paid to the appropriate persons or agency? Or, am I missing something here? How is this considered human trafficking, when all parties are consenting?

 

I think this entire story is deflection. Thailand wants desperately to appear to be doing something about trafficking and slavery. And they are doing nothing, thanks to an administration that does not have any interest in pursuing convictions against anyone who is in power, the police, the army, very wealthy or connected. So, they pursue a lowly individual for doing what, exactly? This does not sound like trafficking, at all. Not on any level. 

I agree that it's a big, big stretch to call it human trafficking - that label is probably just applied so they can hold it up to the US and EU in an effort to avoid watch lists - but surrogacy and fertility treatments for foreigners really are illegal under Thai law:

"Thailand bans commercial surrogacy for foreigners - BBC News"

Thai police arrest man smuggling semen into Laos - BBC News

Thanks for the "clarification"...

6 hours ago, webfact said:

the doctor, whose name is being withheld

Of course, if the accused were a foreigner we would have his full name and a photo of his passport bio page.

2 hours ago, GuyFawkes said:

I went to Big C in Khon Kaen yesterday and was unable to locate this beef.  Is it on display under the name of Bangkok Bob or do I have to ask for said beef?

 

Thanks

Here's what it looks like.

On 5/23/2020 at 3:54 PM, tlock said:

Foodland is good about bagging, they usually have an extra bagger at each checkout.

Villa Market as well.

5 hours ago, Moonlover said:

 

Nonsense. The measure was announced by the PM on the 2nd Apr and the incident whereby returning Thais rebelled at Suvarnabhumi airport and refused to go into compulsory quarantine took place on the 3rd Apr. 

 

All returnees since then have been placed into 14 day quarantine, including the 'Swampy rebels'.

You are quite right - my sense of time passing has been distorted by never leaving the house, and I totally misremembered the dates.

5 hours ago, webfact said:

Kanit explained that “the MRO project will proceed as planned as it is a part of government’s mega-project to develop the Eastern Economic Corridor".

Oh, it's part of the project, so therefore it will proceed even if the company that was supposed to be the key partner has declined to participate. Got it.

4 hours ago, webfact said:

a permission document for travelling in curfew time will be issued by the Royal Thai Armed Forces Headquarters.

Wouldn't it be simpler just to run the buses during the day instead?

19 hours ago, webfact said:

Aswin told operators of trains, boats and buses they must boost the number of vehicles in the system as each phase of lockdown would increase the number of commuters needing transport.

Where are these magical extra trains going to come from?

1 hour ago, Huckenfell said:

I too am having trouble with Air Asia in getting anything out of two flights which they cancelled.

My Air Asia flight from Saigon back to Bangkok on March 18 was cancelled, and they haven't flown to or from Saigon since that day. Both the Air Asia rep at the airport and the airline's website said that I would get either a refund or a credit, but that I would have to claim it through the online travel agent I had used.

The agent's automated system wouldn't let me do that because I had a nonrefundable ticket (obviously irrelevant if there's not actually a plane to fly on), but after multiple replies on my part of "no, this issue is NOT resolved", they let me do it manually. A couple of weeks later, I received an email stating - falsely - that my claim did not meet the airline's requirements for a refund, and that I had cancelled the flight myself. At that point, I disputed the charge with my credit card company and they refunded my money.

(I bought a new ticket on THAI and flew back the next day.)

32 minutes ago, Moonlover said:

They have been doing so with all returnees from the very start.

Except that "the very start" in this case was May, whereas Vietnam began mandatory quarantine of all International arrivals in mid-March.

The problem is that none of these facilities (shopping streets, markets, stores, public transportation) were built with social distancing in mind. Distancing worked fairly well when most people were staying at home, but it's not going to work when the number of pedestrians/shoppers/passengers returns to normal levels. These places were crowded before the crisis - how will those crowds magically become sparse and well separated with the same number of people in the same limited space?

They can order people around and install Thai Chana everywhere, but all that will do is either create a crowd of people waiting to get in or register, or, at best, create queues of appropriately distanced people stretching down the street until they run into the queues waiting to get into the next place. It's a nice idea, but the authorities will eventually have to realize that it's not physically possible to implement, and look for other solutions.

This article is somewhat incoherent, whether due to bad reporting or a briefer who didn't fully understand what he was talking about.

It says that all returnees are currently being placed in government facilities, which isn't true - every recent news report on Thais repatriated from abroad has specified that they were taken to hotels (the hotels were named).

It says that this fantastic new option is available to foreigners on work permits, when in fact such people have not been allowed into Thailand for weeks.

It says that the category of foreigners with work permits includes diplomats, when diplomats do not actually have work permits, and have not been subject to government quarantine (their embassies were responsible for ensuring that they self-quarantined at home or in embassy facilities).

So, is there any actual useful or accurate information being provided here?

22 minutes ago, Jonathan Swift said:

But this takes place according to Thai law and Thai courts, right? 

They also intend to file for bankruptcy in the US, in order to get protection from foreign creditors. That's been publicly announced, and mentioned in other articles.

1 hour ago, shinawhat said:

Thai airways was banned from flying to North America a few years ago because of massive safety violations. 

That isn't correct. The FAA downgraded Thailand, not TG:

https://simpleflying.com/thailand-faa-rating-failure/

"The FAA safety rating is issued as part of the agency’s International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) program. This program assesses “a country’s ability, not the ability of individual air carriers, to adhere to international aviation safety standards and recommended practices”  established by ICAO."

On 5/16/2020 at 1:02 PM, SaamBaht said:

The brand is Bangkok Bob. I don't know if they are in Bangkok but I assume.

I've seen them at least a few Big C branches in Bangkok (and of course you can also get delivery directly from the Bangkok Bob shop). I've never tried Bob's food, though I've been curious.

For beef, I always buy from Thai-French Butchery (behind Villa Market on Sukhumvit, near Phromphong), which is generally quite good and reasonably priced - and they'll cut or grind to order whatever you want.

1 hour ago, SAFETY FIRST said:

It's in the top 10 for me

 

1. Affordable beer prices

2. Cheap parking

3. Easy to get around

4. Local 7 eleven / Family Mart

5. Very sexy ladies working there

 

 

Family Mart left the airport a while ago when their contract ended (maybe December 2019?), and was replaced by - what else? - King Power.

20 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

Suvarnabumi is a good airport, its just very busy.

 

It could be that one of the main deciding factors of those rating airports is the length of time it takes to get through the airport (i.e. through Immigration), this point alone damns Thailand's airports to the bottom of the list. People complain, there is outrage on social media, yet those in positions of decision making power seem not to care beyond making the odd media announcement.

Even leaving aside the unpredictable and often slow entry and exit procedures, BKK is poorly laid out, dim, loud, and generally off-putting (far too much exposed concrete). The post-Customs arrivals area is also cramped and strangely designed, with no way for arriving passengers to see whoever is waiting for them, and vice versa.

What's strange is that none of this should have been a mystery - there were multiple large airports built around the same time as BKK (KLIA, HKIA, Incheon, etc), and they all got it mostly right. At least the new satellite concourse looks as though it has copied the features of those other airports rather than sticking with the design of the BKK main terminal.

Over the years I've been approached at least half a dozen times on the street by farangs who start out by saying hello, or asking if I speak English, or asking for directions, and then immediately segue into "I lost my wallet and..." - at which point I say "sorry, no" and walk away (many of them then become abusive and start shouting curses as I leave).

A few of these guys (they're all men) clearly made a regular business of it, since I would spot the same person on the same block multiple times over a period of months.

And yes, I've been hit by the Indian "you have a lucky face" thing a number of times - most recently just before the virus crisis - but I always turn and walk away as soon as those words are spoken.

Serious question: how did they carry out 20,000 inspections in one day? That's an astounding number. Who are the inspectors, and how long do they spend at each place? I'm genuinely curious.

Unfortunately, these procedures only work if the passenger numbers are small, in which case they're probably not needed. If there's a normal pre-virus rush hour crowd, this process would result in tail-backs of waiting commuters stretching for blocks from the station entrances. If the trains, platforms, and concourses were full to overflowing before, there just isn't any way to magically introduce 1.5m of space between people just because they would like it to exist. All of the train systems have avoided buying extra cars (bogies, in Thai parlance) for years in order to save money, and so there is zero ability to expand capacity to reduce crowding.

1 hour ago, garygooner said:

You are kidding right. Pretty much everyone knows you can buy animals there sadly, in hot crowded cages, including dogs, cats, rabbits & exotic animals like birds, turtles, snakes and monkeys. 

Yes, but they're sold as pets, not for eating (other than the white mice that are sold as food for snakes).