Ketyo

China should wonder why no-one wants to be Chinese and everyone wants to get out....  it might learn something useful

As Trump gets squeezed tighter he will get more and more crazy. It will be great to watch. He might  do something so irrational it will seal his downfall. Equivalent of directing a break-in at the Watergate. That would be great.

Are hight ATM fees really a decision criteria when people choose their holiday destination? I never chose a country based on its ATM fees.

And are ATM fees in Thailand so much higher than other countries. It seems that they have been going up rapidly in most countries recently.

There is no mention of the UK in this list of potential export markets. Doesn't Thailand realise that the UK is desperate?

I understood Trump gave the green light to Erdogan because of his real estate interests in Istanbul.

And that all those escaped ISIS prisoners are going to cause a lot of trouble and more violence in a lot of countries, including US NATO allies and Russia.

To Trump his job as president is a vehicle for furthering his family's wealth and power. No obligations to protect Americans' security in that.

I would like to suggest that hardly anybody likes China. Not even the Chinese diaspora who are not going back. In the free market of ideas and ways to live who would choose China? There are 1.3bn Chinese that are bursting to spill out of China like spores in a putrid cyst. And they will spill out as soon as they have enough money. And that won't be far away. 

This government doesn't give two hoots about the people especially the poor people. It views the people as a threat. A source of unruliness. In the military mind, the people are something to be controlled, not something to be supported and helped.

For 70 years, China has had authoritarian governments that has squeezed Chineseness and community out of their country and their people. If you want to see Chinese culture you will find more on the back streets of Hong Kong than in most Chinese cities that have been subject to slash and burn top-down central planning. 

Prayut is doing the same with Thainess in an effort to control the people. 

Prayut should remember that now he has been elected by the people, as an all democratic countries, he is not the boss of the people. He is a representative of the people.  The people are the boss of him.

This is good news.

Those capital controls were put in place after the Asian Financial crisis in 1997. They are there to fix that problem. When people rushed to get their money out of Thailand.

22 years later he world and Thailand is a very different place. People can invest in Thailand but its a real problem to get your money out. So money is building up and the Baht is strengthening artificially to the extent that it is throttling exports and risking sustainable economic development.

22 years later the BOT have recognised this as a problem. BTW global financial institutions don't like capital controls because they cause market distortions like this. They only support them for short term emergencies.

22 years of capital controls later. The BOT have recognised this as a problem.

Well done.

While they are busy removing capital controls they can also remove those import tariffs that also keep the Baht artificially high, imports costs of products (that don't even have competitor producers in Thailand) artificially high and slow down the domestic economy.

If the Baht gets to 15 to the pound you should have left already. 

If a pint (half liter) of draft beer is 150B in Bangkok (excluding happy hours) then one pint would cost ten pounds, which is too much. Of course if you live in the boondongles you might get a pint for 90B. In which case that would be 6 pounds which is also too much.

If there was a right wing populist who was likeable, competent and honest...... or...?

"The foreign reserves, due to inflow of hot (black) chinese money is together with a high interest rate the only reason for the overvalued baht."

What exactly are these inflows of hot (black) Chinese money that has been talked about for years. Is it just Chinese getting money out of China and parking it in Thai government bonds or condos? And why is it "hot" or "black" money? Because its over the 50k annual limit for the Chinese?

TAT really needs to be targeting tourist receipts NOT tourist numbers.  When they do that they will see that targeting more Chinese doesn't move the dial that much on tourism receipts. What is does however, is degrade the tourism venues.

These three just mean "must do better"...  what are they going to do except work more efficiently... and why were they working so inefficiently before?

1. Coping with pressing problems and crises more efficiently;

2. Tackling with pollution at the source;

3. Boosting management efficiency.”

Will there be enough space inside the cars for more people?

Not much sympathy for idiots who have accidents when acting like <deleted>. These young chinamen are causing disorder all over SEA now. And it means the governments have to crack down and ban all sorts of stuff that used to be fine because people didn't act like such <deleted> before.

From the miserable comments to this thread, my guess is that more than half of Thai Visa readers are miserable old men who may be at risk of suicide.. we should report them to that man in the photo...  if we cared..

Great... well done immos... though you are behind backwards countries like Afghanistan in biometrics by about 10 years you are certainly making progress...

Doesn't Boris deserve to surrender bill for abuse of power and concocting Brexit an unprecentented witch-hunt to deflect attention and pressure Ukraine in his role as prosecutor general and not obey the law and privy councillors? 

How do you get a job as a food vendor on a foreign passport? Or are they in Thailand taking menial jobs illegally? If so, wouldn't it be easier for those Chinese to get jobs legally as food vendors in China, and less likely to have to steal?