SbuxPlease

She's playing you - she knows the police will do nothing but you might be uncertain enough to give her some money. She has nothing to lose either way. The police don't waste their time with bargirls like this - they know about these games too.

At some of these bars it is better to act just a few notches up from a bum - no money, nothing to extort. Mention that your thai wife doesn't know you're here tonight. When you pay use a wad of mashed up 20s from your pocket and no thousands.

The perceived lack of free cash flow and the fear of a worthy equally deranged opponent (the virtual thai wife) will keep them off your back.

Nobody goes there anymore, the place is too crowded

In the beginning of my Thailand life I was a bit like this TikTokker. This problem annoyed me in ways that is impolite to say.

• "But it's the law to use the meter!"
• "He should get in trouble for this, he HAS to use the meter and can't decline my ride!"
• "I'm going to complain! This kind of scam hurts tourism and hurts the country. Somebody should take action against this ScAmmEr!!1!"

Finally, two crucial "aha" moments hit me and I've been chill about it ever since:

1) Many of these taxi drivers and service workers are, using the kindest words I can muster, not yet educated and appear to operate with what we would consider to be "13 year old brain" in my home country. You just cannot expect any more from someone who's coming from this position and that's why they only make a few bucks an hour on their best days.

2) It's just $10. I'll blow that amount on my first drink at the bar when I get there. I have serious things to stress about in my life, and this just ain't worth the heartache. I get to choose what I allow to bother me and what I don't, and that choice directly impacts my happiness.

I appreciate that some people will say "no s**t sherlock" about my aha moment, but I'd like to think that I came here to grow and learn, and that's what I'm trying to do.

My first year in Thailand: 8

Second Year: 5

Third Year: 2

Fourth Year: 6

Fifth Year until now: 7

The initial fascination with the place wore off fast once it stopped being new. I started a business which hastened my discontent and went through a stage where I felt like I couldn't shake the stress. Every time some new senseless red tape popped up (which as we know can be pretty often), it was like one more nail in the coffin of my personal hellish insanity.

Since that difficult period I decided to either a) leave or b) figure out how to accept what it is - without trying to change all of Thailand to match my ideas of what's best. ????

I've leaned hard into option B and found that after I started getting to the beach more often, better delegating tasks to people who are equipped to deal with bull-splat, and just stop worrying about everything. I also really leaned into building a good social circle of others who are also happy. Now I've found the enjoyment again.

Home country, USA: 6.5-7.5. I do miss my friends and family, and honestly sh*t just works pretty well in my city and it's gorgeous in the summer time. But I don't miss how hard I hard to work just to keep pace with the next unhappy guy when I lived there.

My condo was built in the 80s. Either they were aware of their own engineering limitations and tripled up on concrete and beam sizes, or we'll be the first to go.

>Pattaya police reminded gogo and nightclub owners to immediately call police if a customer refuses to pay a bill to avoid a further confrontation and to never, ever, under any circumstances, physically attack a customer.<

Phew, good thing.

This article, posted here, is like throwing a filet mignon into the lion's den.

A lot of landlords don't even know (or care) to do TM30. It's very likely they'll take your signature and your money and that's it.

I live in lower Sukhumvit and totally gave up on all public taxis. They park and clog the throat of this Soi waiting for tourists who don't know better to pay outrageous fixed prices. Anyone else who tries to park there is verbally attacked by these taxi gangsters and they use orange cones to try and reserve their spots.

At night they sit there drinking beer with the policeman who hangs out on the soi as well. I hope they sleep it off before taking the next fare but I doubt it.

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.

2 hours ago, VinnieK said:

Ever thought of moving away, to more idyllic locations?

Like ,100s of miles away?

Recently thinking about it every day????

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.

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. ????