SbuxPlease

This is a sophisticated crime if true, most people wouldn't know how to pull it off. So many white collar crimes go unpunished, I'm impressed the FBI bothered to track this guy down in Thailand.

At 2am on lower Sukhumvit the drinks just flow on the streets and keep going at the little bars that get set up for the world to see. Who's to say what timezone their body is accustomed to. Your 4am may be their 4pm. God knows there are precious few other activities in this city. Not to mention the local groups who station at the 7-11 steps getting wasted on Sangsom until the wee hours. A rule change to allow the bars to stay open would at least keep them inside and out of view. Not sure a 2am rule has or will ever solve any known problem except to breed corruption. Just like the 1pm to 5pm hours when you aren't allowed to buy alcohol during the day.

I was into BTC quite early, 2011. I loved it for the ease of sending money outside the obnoxious banking network. I still love it for sending money to international suppliers and colleagues who universally hate Paypal and all the controls around bank wires. The volatility made me a lot of money over the years. Had I never sold my first purchase, I'd buy an island somewhere and then a second island so I could take vacations from my first island. But alas I sold along the way thinking I'd already hit the jackpot. Oh well. I still love BTC as an irreversible transfer method. But I no longer see it as any kind of investment that's worth the time. If you buy and hold, you're gambling. The future of BTC is as a payment mechanism. Regrettably, bank cards, credit cards, QR codes bank transfers, and cash are pretty freaking good and BTC doesn't really beat them yet for the vast majority of daily transactions, and it's still way too complicated for the average person. So BTC will remain niche indefinitely.

What I read into this is that there's at least 1 guy in immigration who thinks all this hoopla could be done online and save everybody a lot of time. I hope he's successful and the old guard doesn't block the path.

Recently thinking about it every day????

With the tourists back, my Soi along Sukhumvit has gone from idyllic to absolutely bonkers. I'm worried somebody is going to die because a racing car or motorcycle can't be bothered to slow in the congested area. I'm worried that a 9 year old kid will get clipped by a side mirror or an unsuspecting tourist will get creamed by Grab bike with no muffler. The biggest problem is these so called taxis that just park and wait for a customer who will pay their unmetered rate. You know the kind that have a vinyl banner hanging on the car for a floating market, wat pho, etc? They are blocking the lane for hundreds of meters, causing pedestrians and any vehicle to fight each other for the remaining part of a lane to get around. What are our chances of convincing the nearest boys in brown to come and get rid of the grifter taxis and slow down the vehicles that are going to hurt people? I've lived here long enough that I could get together perhaps a dozen business owners and residents who'd agree.

We use didww for Thailand sip trunking. Previously used CAT. Ours is for business, but you can easily buy one number. Then you can terminate into any VoIP system you like and even pay with an international credit card

This topic comes up here periodically and the general consensus is the Thai laws do not help the foreign parent much, but in cases where the Thai parent/mother is harmful to the child (drugs, alcohol, abuse, etc.), there is a pathway available. Expect to spend a million baht or more with a top notch law firm and a year or two to gain custody. There was a thread a while back on Thaivisa about an American using Tilleke & Gibbons law firm whom I believe has a divorce/custody niche. A more favorable pathway is, as another poster mention, play the long game. If it's not working out, just accept this and think about the ways you can incentivize the mother to want to stay in Bangkok. Can you rent her a condo nearby? Can you give a weekly budget that she has to pick up from you in cash? All this may be a whole lot cheaper than the alternatives if you can swallow your ego. You know her best, and might have some idea about what to do. It's tempting to go nuclear at this stage, but those stories are always so ugly.

A bit of proper marking on the road would go a long way in lower Sukhumvit where I see the bikes on the sidewalks constantly. A lot of traffic jams are started and propagated by just one or two vehicles doing something stupid. Like cars stopping in the left lane, which makes hundreds of cars behind change lanes to get through. Or cars getting jammed up at the U turn areas. If there was a protected turn-only lane, then when somebody misses his turn he can't block another lane trying to get into queue. Yeah. None of this will ever happen I think.

The cost to buy is just the start. Then you need to maintain. Which, sorry Thailand, you cannot afford.

My Thai colleagues get it too - they see the waste and inefficiency, but also think it's "normal" and "no one could ever change it", and "not my problem". When you can get a day off work just to visit the DLT, it's suddenly not so bad (if you hate your job and work for "the man"). So, like us farangs, they complain a bit but accept it as an unchangeable system. The only thing that could really change this is enough of the population traveling around the world and seeing various other ways of doing things and deciding that it matters. But, you have to understand that the ones who can travel like and "get it" will move to live in another country anyways.

The dual pricing irks me because it feels like a type of racist discrimination - something many people have a moral objection to in my home country because of some various beliefs and rights that the country (tries) to stand on. If we put up a gatekeeper outside Times Square who charged $150 after judging a visitor's citizenship/ethnicity and deciding they are the wrong one - even if you've lived in the US for 10 years - (everyone else no charge) they might feel a bit hacked off too. In any case, the other benefits still outweigh this particular thing so I'm still here.

Isn't this kind of best case scenario for the RTP? I mean, now they don't need to investigate anything, nor solve any crimes. The dead guy is a foreigner. The criminals are now outside Thailand. It's someone else's problem now, as they say.

My previously "pro government" friends are now talking about their annoyance with this stuff openly, unlike a few years back. They seem angry at the condition of things and would say they believe their government let the people down when they could have helped. This is a pretty significant movement for the "middle" of Thai politics, at least as I can understand it. I think the woke Thais who have connections outside the country are pretty fed up and sophisticated/wealthy enough to enact some movement now, and wouldn't be surprised to see more start to happen.

Don't forget the security problems at launch of the vaccine registration system! When it first went live, there was a major security breach that leaked a lot of medical data combined with personal ID. I'm not sure if they tested much before launching this system (seems no), but maybe waiting a couple weeks is worth it. ????