MonkeySee1

Despite not even living in Thailand a friend helped me sort a thai bank account with a couple of term deposits, a current a/c with debit (atm) card and a credit card.

At the branch he wanted to know the whereabouts of someone who he knew to bank with that particular bank and who owed money money. The clerk opened her account details and swivelled the screen round so he could make a phone pic of the screen showing recent transactions whilst the clerk went off for a few moments.

I was more amused than surprised 

A nice change from the endlessly re-cycled taxi driver returns 100000000000000000000000000 billion baht PR stunt. 

Great to see some innovation in TAT PR.

Any activity that fails to line someone's pockets in Pattaya is always subject to police scrutiny. 

I'd imagine that relatively few of the tourists who rent apartments or villas would want to stay in a thai hotel. I'd just holiday in Bali rather than Phuket. There's little to choose between the two places.

The biggest impact will be on property investor confidence. Condos were sold (certainly in Pattaya) on the back of holiday rental incomes. Take that away and you're left with nothing more than an empty slave box. I wonder how many of the slum villa type moo bans will suffer - many of these units are rented out by on site management companies. How many have hotel licences?

Rent the unit to a thai nominee on long term agreement. Use nominee as owner for short let purposes

Any sane father would already have retained a Spanish lawyer to advise on this

The Thai legal system is pure kryptonite to any notion of justice. Never step foot inside Thailand with your son if you want to see him again

oh yeah, just kids that are begging on the street, we dont give a toss but if its making tourists stay away, get the dog catcher to take them away

Well it's progress. A few years ago these kids would have been tucked up in bed with visiting paedos.