jts-khorat

The interesting thing about humans is, that they are social animals with intelligence, so they can tailor their actions towards their needs by utilizing prediction and foreplanning. Therefore, without knowing a person intimately, it will be absolutely impossible to ascertain, if they are telling the truth, or telling you what you wanted to hear. I am very sorry to say, nothing about your story and this girl is in any way special; exactly the same story we have heard a thousand times, with only minute variations. This does not mean, that it is not true, of course. An advice you have received now many times, the only way to find out is spending much more time with her, best without conditioning yourself on a "quick" solution like marriage. Why is this even in the cards -- you are both mature people with good standing in their own current live, so there should be no reason for a sudden change? And a last point: none of us know you or this girl. How can we know better if she tells you the truth than you yourself? You need to follow your own instincts and then take responsibility for your acitons, eg. live with the consequences. Throw off your insecurity! In case this woman was geniune so far, there is no way more sure to make any woman -- but especially Thai ones -- think about gain if she gets the feeling that she can form you at her will. It is poison for any relationship!

Many air booking systems create one long name out of several first names. Thai Air Asia did it the last time I tried to book a ticket. This, of course, would make them "not matching up", the same when not using all of them.

You are by far not the only one noticing this. Language comprehension, if not the worst dialect, has never and is not a problem for me, but still I also now watch series only with subtitles on. An interesting explanation (and there are many more videos like this on Youtube, easy to find in any search): Here's Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult to Understand (And Three Ways to Fix It) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M-Yt4RpO90

Depending on your location, anemia due to iron deficiency is not rare in Thailand. Also, there have been studies in Thailand linking iron supplements to educational achievement: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0002916523436118 But why not ask your school? Surely the teacher of your daughter would be the person to give you the reason behind this?

What kind of reaction do you expect? Your girl lights up pretty much every red flag, it could not get more cliche: she is still married, in debt, of course she is a "good girl" and you are, for some reason, already thinking marriage after seeing her twice. Maybe you need to ask yourself (or her), if she really would be willing to go to a foreign country forever. Most all Thai women I have ever known want to come back at some stage in their life -- and her problems would then be waiting for her. Also it might make a very big difference to her motivation, what kind of debt it is. Was this a legitimate business debt to a bank, or are those millions in gambling debt to a loan shark? If I would be giving advice to a friend, I would tell him, to put his toe into the hot water slowly instead of jumping in head-first into this boiling mess. If you have the means to support her in the UK, you have the means to travel, so visit her an additional number of times, learn about her background (and the debt) and then you will have a much better picture if this is a true damsel in distress and if you want to share in her issues out of your own free will. This should not be decided in a hurry.

There have been numerous times where the beaches were cleared because they all belong to the crown and it is indeed, following the law to the letter, illegal to set up a bunsiness there. The beaches are by royal decree a public space. As Thailand is the land of compromise, and livelihood of Thais is to be protected, such was of course found (which is a good thing): for example, Patong in Phuket has now zones for chairs. As Thailand is also a land of corruption, it is completely unclear, to whom the beach vendors pay. In Patong it was definitely not the municipality -- but as the family fronting the mayor has now changed a number of times, this might have changed. It is my assumption, that the situation in Pattaya can only be similarily murky. Still: what an entitlement by a tourist to escalate such a non-winnable situation until getting carted off to the police station!

It will, of course be a giant scheme forcing all those small folks, who do not want to risk a police report being squashed only with the court case, to use brown envelopes. I would say, a win-win for all the important people involved, from politicians to police to the big business owners (who loose all small competition in one quick cut). A typical Thai solution...

*One* Thai thought this inappropriate. He talked to a monk, who appeased him, but then did not send out a layperson to talk to the tourists (so unnecessary conflict was prevented, the proper action by the monk both towards the Thai and the two tourists). If I would be wanting to nitpick and "dive deep" into Buddhism: did the two girls lay on the grass within or outside the Sema stones for Wat Chiang Man? A temple from the 13th century would have his boundary stones in all likelihood close around only the Ubhosot ordination hall, and the "temple grounds" within which the monks wield spiritual control is within this enclosure. I therefore still believe, the person who has acted the most inappropriate was the Thai tourist talking to the monk, but then not being happy with his de-conflicting non-action.

I also think this is blown way out of proportion. I have often been with larger groups of Thais visiting famous temples, and quite often they had blankets in their pickup and we then sat there to eat something on similar temple grounds. I am much more offended by tourists shouting in full disregard of their surroundings and shoving each other around nice photo spots than I would ever be of two tourists doing their own thing in comparable silence. Why should one not rest at a temple and soak in the peaceful feeling? Quite a different thing if they were -- on the suggestion of a monk -- asked by a layperson in white if they please could move. This would have been the *only* proper Thai way of dealing with this situation, but the story gives no hint of such. So I would suggest, that the Thais themselves did not behave appropriately here.

This is the true village life. Love it!

Exactly what we did in 1998, as the internet was still young in Thailand -- Phuket had only 2000 landline phones then, the big Thai hotel owners never had heard of or seen a website. It worked a charm until the big guys you mention came to Thailand and it was impossible to compete. But the wheel of time might really bring us back to the beginning...

In summer, as I was in Phuket, the shops for the big suppliers all already had seen the winds shift and had 'Medical Cannabis' signs in the window and a doctor at hand who could fill out the needed prescriptions. This, of course, will kill their smaller competition. I think this will be a lot less difficult than you imagine, as doctors with street clinics do not make their money with reimbursement from insurances as in the west, but with the direct payable fees for patient visits. A health certificate or prescription is nothing more than a service for a fee. The government might crack down on this over time, of course (as they did on doctors affiliated with shady online pharmacies in the early 2000s, then literally a money printing machine), but I think this "loop hole" is too obvious to not be intentional, as powerful interests are already making very, very good money through this.

Understood. No harm done :-) The biggest risk I see is, that future visa extensions that go over 180 days (and are already bound with a minimum income threshold) will necessitate a tax declaration. I would be interested to see a calculation, what tax there would be to pay on the THB 400,000 or the THB 800,000; this I guess, would be the automatic tax risk for all on long stay visas. With applicable deductions (before even thinking about double taxation treaties etc) this amount already cannot be very large, so it might put the mind of many to rest, if they would see that number -- I think in the long thread I saw a calculation, where a Thai shop owner earned THb 600,000 a year and the resulting tax burden was rather negligible. In the end, having some tax office doing this simple declaration might easily more expensive than the tax itself.

You are overthinking it. Mainly, because I would have to open a bank account and that is just too much hassle, the foreign currency has always been exchanged by (Thai) family members who already have their own bank accounts. I have a very, very large family, if amounts would be a problem. And nobody in my family has ever heard of a customs declaration, so I am not sure where you get that from. Of course, regulations might become more strict and what was easy before might not always be an option. Either way, I have no bone in this fight, as I do not stay more than 180 days a year in Thailand, I am just telling you what was hassle-free up to now.

That is not wrong. But showing ID is not the same than having to prove where the money came from. Whenever we come to Thailand to visit the family, we carry not small amounts of cash and exchanging it has never been a problem. Not all bank branches accept it, but the issue is rather crumpled or ripped bank notes, which are rejected according to the mood of the bank teller, not the exchange process itself. Obviously, we are not talking millions of Baht here, but what a tourist might carry for an extended holiday (meaning I could live on that money comfortably for months).

Quite impossible to track if the wife or any other family member exchanges it; if one bank branch does not want to do it, the next will, so no problem at all (at least in Udon Thani).

Indeed... I guess older Farang women in large numbers coming to Thailand to look for younger girls would be a much bigger issue

Good on them, it is not easy to find love in this world. So why not (presumably, the same scams and golddigging is directed at them). Of course, nothing about this is new, it was Kenya and Jamaica in the late 90s for white women, while Phuket was full of Japanese girls going for the local beach boys (a trade which has not recovered after the Japanese economy crashing).

How do you sound-proof open-air bars and restaurants? It is a tropical country, so that is the default setup in many places. And with regard to offended tourists: come on, you booked yourself into a party hot spot, do not complain now that people have a good time! There are many homestead bed and breakfast offers in Isaan, some quite nice -- no guarantee for quietitude of course, but at least the noise would be fully "culturally immersive" (eg. screaming roosters amd Morlam). For those who want a really quiet beach: the ones with the least noise I have ever been have been on the Maldives; so maybe proper destination research and selection would be thing to do?

Quite comparable to my pet peeve in Isaan, chicken. One rooster at 03:00 will wake the whole village including all the dogs. For chicken there is a simple solution, their number in their sleeping trees around our house decreases rather fast in step with my "voracious" (according to the wife) appetite when I am in the village. Not much filling the bones on a chihuahua, but if no other solution can be found...

Maybe just about the most discussed news item on this forum; do we need another thread about it? Yes, this story is true. No, the revenue department has not offered much detail on how this will be implemented, so there is endless guesswork (as usual). I guess whatever else might interest you is answered here, insofar as possible: https://aseannow.com/topic/1306896-thai-government-to-tax-all-income-from-abroad-for-tax-residents-starting-2024/page/188/

As I came to Thailand in the late 1990s -- at the height of Aids fear -- similar trafficking rings where quite common: besides the obvious pedophilia and the power play, having a virgin was seen as the only sure protection in certain Bangkok HiSo circles with the necessary affluency. I know of some people who were quite proud to be able to afford such regularly; incidentally all Thai-Chinese, but I am sure it was much wider spread. The condom remark really reminds of those times. As nowadays nobody seems to have any fear of HIV infection any more (seeing how condom use has really declined since then), it is surprising for me, that this is still going on.

It really depends, if the "business relationship" feeds into the right trough. Especially when the head of immigration changes, there might be "adjustment issues". Quite famously, a few years back the customers of an agent in Phuket got rounded up and blacklisted for having fake stamps, a practice that went on for many years before that without any issue. But then, from one day to the next, an example had to be made. So if you use an agent, use one that is clever enough to keep at least to the letter of the law. Else, if he goes down, you likely will too.

So it is really your wish to send a person with a clinical issue into a war zone instead of him getting help -- where he would not only be in serious danger for his own life, but might on top of that have the chance to kill Ukrainians. The mind boggles.

I hope all goes well and recovery is swift. Just to point out your sentence above; I guess, as you are 70, learning the language is not high on your list, but especially with medical issues, then it is eminently important that you have somebody on call or even right there in the hospital to translate for you. In this case, the experience was "harrowing", but at least you survived. Getting a serious medical issue handled in time when a shy nurse simply might not want to interact with you because of the language barrier is a bad reason to prematurely 'go'.