John Drake

The author is Imogen West-Knights. British, although she did appear to spend slightly over one year as the head of the Stockholm Feminist Film Festival.

Fake dollars being sold for Thai baht. Now we know why the baht has strengthened of late. How much more fake currency out there?

Funny story. So the developer thought out of revenge the designer might install your ceiling fans but not the wiring!!! BTW, back in the US, I had ceiling fans in just about every room and had the thermostat set at 79/80 F. It was fine. What I really miss from my youth is the house we had with a giant attic fan, which would suck in the air through the screen window so hard that anything fragile might get knocked down and broken. Tall ceilings, attic fans, and ceiling fans. There are better ways to deal with the heat than setting the aircon to a bone chilling 24 degrees.

Similar. I try to live without aircon as much as possible in order to acclimatize and live comfortably in Thailand. Just got my last electric bill two days ago. Only used 217 units.

Some of the big malls need to set their aircon to 27 or 28.

Here come Tofu construction standards.

Thought they put in prohibitions against proxies back in 2015.

What did they lose?

Then, maybe Singaporean English will evolve into its own language, just as the dialects of Latin in Gaul evolved into French.

He would need to be a giraffe to do that.

Looks to me like the US has made Thailand look foolish in extraditing an arms dealer who was working for the US itself. The GW Bush administration, again. Bush was the worst president in US history. No one else even close. https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4400141&page=1

Seemed suspect to me as well, because I've spent some time in Laos. Also as regards official numbers associated with immigration, I think they are the most inaccurate statistics in the world.

Your evidence confirms my suspicions. If the Germans are doing it, imagine what is going on with the other "less bureaucratically minded" countries.

If you do, then maybe you would at least agree with me that there should be one standard. Every person applying for a retirement extension must meet one standard: 800K in a Thai bank or 65K coming through to Thai bank every month. Everybody. All nationalities. And absolutely no discretionary waiver of this standard on the part of immigration officials. No ifs, ands, or buts. Just one clean standard that puts all expatriate retirees on the same level playing field and which would curtail corruption immensely.

Well, it's not the Americans, British, or Australians who are the subject of this topic's article, is it? The fact is that the vast, vast majority of Americans, British, and Australians follow the rules. None of them is being investigated for 200K to 300K payoffs to immigration for visas. None of them is threatening to snatch up every piece of property along Sukhumvit and Ratchadaphisek roads, as Chuwit says the triads will do. Retirees from those three countries mostly follow the rules and those staying here now meet more stringent tests for qualifying for extensions than any other nationality.

Don't care. Do the Russian and Chinese embassies do that? Do they issue letters? How trustworthy are any of these "affidavits" coming from foreign sources? There is a simple answer: one standard for everyone; prove you have 800K in the bank or 65K monthly coming in through documentation issued by a Thai bank. Cut the embassies out of the picture entirely. Treat everybody equally.

Maybe it needs to "spread" to everyone using letters from their embassy. If Americans, UKers, and Australians need to provide Thai bank sources to prove their eligibility for visas and extensions, shouldn't everyone else? Wonder what those letters are worth coming from the Russian and Chinese embassies?

Several years ago, I read that some 800,000 Chinese had moved into Laos. They simply came in and started to live there like they owned the place. That, in a country of 7 million people. I can't find the article now and I see that Wikipedia says the Chinese in Laos only amount to one or two percent of the population, although they dominate 100 percent of business, finance, and commerce. So who knows the real numbers. I do know that it is a distinct source of trouble to share a border with China or border a small country that does and serves as a transit corridor.

You're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

The schools are just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the main article is highly detailed and describes an operation active at all levels of society and the economy.

FWIW, a lot of Thais are worried about Chinese infiltration and annexation. https://www.khaosodenglish.com/opinion/2022/12/04/opinion-growing-anxiety-about-the-rise-of-china-in-thailand/

But it helps a lot when you're buying soccer teams, mansions in the UK and US, and buying out foreign businesses. And those are the only people that matter.

You can use google authenticator on your Thai phone. You don't need an American phone number.

The last tracking info I received on both the Thai Post website and USPS is that my mail left Jamaica NY on 24 July. I've not received a second notice. I suppose this is the best we can expect from an inefficient, indifferent, incompetent mail system. And I do not mean Thai Post.

There are a lot of crossover athletes in the US, even at the professional level. Bo Jackson did NFL and MLB. Michael Jordan going from basketball to football. The Dallas Cowboys made all stars out of Bob Hayes coming from track and Cornell Green from basketball, while Ed Too Tall Jones went into boxing. I don't follow soccer enough to know if its players crossover into other sports. The only exception I remember is soccer players becoming placekickers in the NFL back in the late 60s and early 70s, such as Toni Fritsch and, I think, Jan Stenerud.