dave s

Even worse is that many SSA web pages say "Oh, just sign on to your myssa account" to do some task, and provide no other way to do it. And if you call the SSA help line, no one there can provide an alternative procedure, either.

5 hours ago, jimgilly said:

I'm a bit confused on "a minimum of 200 baht and a maximum of $5 here".  At 30 baht to the US dollar 200 baht is around $6.67 which I get but could you explain what the maximum of $5 is?

The commercial Bangkok Bank office in New York accepts a US $ amount from the retail USA bank branch where you have your USA account. It subtracts either US$5 or US$10 from that amount, as a sending fee, and moves the remaining money to Thailand.  Bangkok Bank converts the US $ amount to a Thai baht amount (usually at a reasonable exchange rate, this month B30.11 to US$1), and subtracts 0.25% of that Thai baht amount as a receiving fee. But if the receiving fee is less than B200, they charge the minimum fee of B200. Similarly, if the calculated receiving fee is more than B500 (not US$5!!!),  they only charge the B500 maximum receiving fee.  The remaining Thai baht amount is deposited into your local Bangkok Bank savings account, and hopefully marked "FFT" for immigration. The total cost of the transfer depends on all these different numbers. The cost to send through Transferwise depends on a whole different set of numbers. And so on, for SWIFT transfers, for Western Union transfers, etc. To accurately compare methods, you must work out the exact calculation for each transfer method. The result can vary a lot, and the input numbers to this calculation can change over time. Pib regularly posts spreadsheet output with example calculations, and the "break point" amounts where one method becomes better than another. Search for items on this subject and look through his responses. For example, searching Google for "thaivisa forum pib compare money transfer costs" brings up, among others:

Bangkok Bank has 2 kinds of SMS alerts you can sign up for: local activity (too "noisy" for me), and all the numbers of a foreign transfer (this month, the SMS said "SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTR has transferred THB... ([email protected] minus THB200) from abroad into account number ...").

8 hours ago, ubonjoe said:

That is not correct. Only Thais and those with permanent residency can be  registered in a blue house book.

I am an American citizen on a non-O retirement extension of stay. I had been renting a condo from a Thai citizen. When I needed a TM30 his rental agent (also Thai) in the condo office provided the blue book and some other stuff that we took down to immigration, and then returned to the agent. But the Thaiowner has just sold the condo I live in to a German foreigner on a non-O retirement extension of stay. Will the new German owner have a yellow book or a blue book for the condo where I live? Can I get a yellow book now, and therefore a pink card? If the German owner has a yellow book already, can there then be 2 yellow books? Does it matter if he changes his non-O from retirement to marrriage with a Thai wife?

Alternatively, my best friend, who lives down the street, offered to list me in the blue book for his house. Would that be legitimate? Does not sound like it, from your response above.  Could I get the yellow book preceding pink card that way?

The only call sign I know of back home that is this short is KA9Q, Phil Karn. I learned Internet internals by reading his NOS code, on an IBM PC with an Ethernet adapter that must have been much better than sliced bread, because it was much bigger than a loaf thereof. ????

XZ2A? Very short call sign. Did you get your license about the time deForest invented the triode vacuum tube? ????

On 11/25/2019 at 6:57 PM, Speedo1968 said:

Thanks for the planet info.
Perhaps I cannot see it's earlier position in the sky but it doesn't seem to move towards the north west, it is moving down below south of the setting sun.
Have checked rough positions with a compass.

If I am not seeing the ISS + it's companion what am I seeing ?

Yesterday, Sunday, the objects positions were the almost the same as Saturday.

Today, Monday, the positions have changed with the smaller object to the right ( 2metres ! ) and slightly below the bigger brighter object.
I have seen the larger object for 2 - 3 years now, in early Winter they are to the East South East and lower in the sky, passing overhead within a few hours.   

Really puzzled as to what they are.

 

NASA has 2 useful "Spot the Station" toys.

1) Sign up for official alerts from NASA of good ISS sighting times. At:
    https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/signup.cfm
Drag the map background around to Thailand. Click on the box with 3 horizontal lines in the upper left corner of the map and select Thailand as the country, Bangkok as the city (closest to Khon Kaen). Click on the square with the left pointing arrow. Choose e-mail (best for Thailand) or SMS text alerts, enter the rest of the information, SUBMIT.

2) Where is the ISS right now?
    https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/tracking_map.cfm

Get an app for your cellphone, if you have one. For Android:
    https://www.space.com/32387-satellite-space-station-skywatching-mobile-apps.html
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.runar.issdetector&hl=en

Unfortunately, I have no Apple toys, so cannot advise about them. ????

Download and install Stellarium. 0.19.2 is the current Windows version.
    https://stellarium.org/
    https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/releases/download/v0.19.2/stellarium-0.19.2-win64.exe
Launch plain "Stellarium" from the start menu, unless you have an odd graphics card. May be slow starting, the first launch. Defaults to full screen mode, but you can play with the controls and browse the manual. Run the cursor against the left middle edge of the screen, and click on the "Location Window" icon. Scroll down to "Khon Kaen, Thailand" in the list, and click on it, it will stay set from then on. Move the cursor to the bottom center edge, and click on the rightmost icon to exit he program. The fifth icon on the bottom edge turns on "Azimuthal grid". Second icon on the left edge lets you set a particular date and time. Drag the mouse on the background, to change the view direction. In response #40 you say that on Sunday, November 24 about 18:00 you saw the object to the south of the sun, which was setting in the west. The first screenshot of the program is set to this: about 15 degrees up, on the 240 degree line, the column of grid squares after the "SW" direction mark, you can see Jupiter and Venus almost on top of each other. Saturn is just past 30 degrees up, along the 230 degree line. If I have interpreted your response #40 correctly, you are seeing 2 planets, not the ISS. Mystery solved and verified.

"Satellite hints" are turned on by default. The last line of ISS sightings in response #32 is for Wednesday, November 20 from 18:11 to 18:14. The bigger an item is shown on the screen, the brighter it is in the sky. In the second screenshot, notice the bright star Vega at 40 degrees up, 310 degrees over: this will help you locate the correct part of the sky, when you are outside on the lane. The fat white object at 20 degrees up, 280 degrees is the ISS. Sit and watch the screen until 18:14, and you will see the ISS move in real time to 20 degrees up, 335 degrees over, as in the third screenshot. Click on the ISS object, and all the information text appears: the ISS is magnitude -1.77, Vega is only magnitude 0 (it's a logarithmic scale, the smaller the number, the brighter the object). Right click on an object to hide all the text again. Venus is magnitude -3.86, Jupiter is magnitude -1.85 and Saturn is dim, only 0.59 in the Sunday screenshot. Sirius (the "soi dog" star, as it's called in Thailand) is the brightest stellar object, at -1.45 magnitude. The moon was -12.12 at that time.

18:00 Friday, December 6, as in response #53: in the last screenshot, again we see Venus and Jupiter, not the ISS.

Have fun!

from the above Thaiwebsites reference in response #8:

                       China    Europe  Americas Oceania   #2+#3+#4
tourist arrivals
by region (2017)   9,847,000 6,322,000 1,449,000  948,000 8,719,000
average length of
stay (days, 2017)       8.08     17.22     15.06    13.88
total expenditure
by region (million
us dollar), 2017   15,342.44 13,659.49  3,215.62 2,177.62 19,052.73

Arrivals from China not that much more than from the three "western" regions.

"[All data as numbers provided by Department of Tourism, Thailand]"

"There may be more and more Chinese and Indian visitors, but still, Europeans, Australians and Americans spend at least 50 to 60% more per visitor, mainly because they stay longer."

"Data provided by , Ministry of Tourism and Sports, Thailand. In our experience you have to be able to peruse the data in the Thai language version, to get the latest updates."

by comparison, under arrivals in "Tourism in Thailand" @ Wikipedia:

          to Oct 2019 2019/10*12       2018      2017 2019/10*12/2017
                                                      + or - 4 to 39%
China       9,344,423 11,213,308 10,535,955 9,805,753 1.14

India       1,633,179  1,959,815  1,596,772 1,411,942 1.39

Russia      1,077,389  1,292,867  1,472,949 1,346,219 0.96
U.S.A.        915,391  1,098,469  1,123,248 1,056,124 1.04
Australia     642,619    771,143    801,637   817,091 0.94

The second numeric column prorates the 10 months of 2019 to 12 months.

The 2017 arrivals for China from Thaiwebsites and Wikipedia are close.

The 2017 arrivals for U.S.A. from Wikipedia are about 73% of the arrivals for Americas from Thaiwebsites. The 2017 arrivals for Australia from Wikipedia are about 86% of the arrivals from Oceania from Taiwebsites. The Europe/Americas/Oceania US$19,052.73m reduced by 27% of US$3,215.62m and reduced by 14% of US$2,177.62m gives an adjusted Europe/USA/Australia estimate of US$17,879.65m. Compare that with the US$15,342.44m Chinese total expenditure.

4 hours ago, Just Weird said:

Which bank is it that charges for replacement ATM cards?

An SCB ATM outside the Central Festival office ripped a strip of plastic out of my fairly new ATM card (old mag stripe card replaced with a chipped card). Their security guard said it had been doing that for days. They demanded B200 to replace it.

I sent you a "private message" or "PM". At the upper right of your web page is a green bell icon and a green envelope icon. Do not post any personal data here on the discussion item, nor send it to anyone here on TVF.

I don't have an iPhone, so I can't check this myself. But be warned that 17 reviewers think this app is really bad. ????

Clicking on the blue "ดูเพิ่มเติม" or "see more" text link takes you to

    https://apps.apple.com/th/app/section38/id1451853492?l=th

which tells you about the app, but in Thai. Change "l=th" in the URL to "l=en" and you get the English language web page

    https://apps.apple.com/th/app/section38/id1451853492?l=en

except the middle of the 3 reviews is still in Thai, probably because that user typed it in that way. If you did this on your cellphone rather than me on my laptop, it should offer installation to you. With the app installed, you could then make your own TM30 after traveling rather than bother your landlord. If your extension of stay requires 90 day reports, install the second app and you should be able to do that hassle online also.

If you go to

    https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/

and put "section38" in the search box, it told me "0 results found" on the web page

    https://www.apple.com/us/search/section38?src=globalnav

But if I change "/us/" in that URL to "/th/" I get the web page

    https://www.apple.com/th/search/section38?src=globalnav

which has 2 search result icons on it, one for TM30 and the second row for 90 day report. I assume this corresponds to changing the settings on your iPhone from USA to Thailand. But then the web page is in Thai. ???? Google translate renders these as

    Section38

You want to install this application:

    <a http="https://apps.apple.com/th/app/section38/id1451853492?l=th">‎

    Section38 บน App Store</a><br>

on your iPhone and then use it to file the report online (also note the "eTM6" app to do a TM6, and the "IMM eSERVICE" app to do a 90 day report, second line of icons from the bottom of this web page)? Rather than, say, opening Safari on your Mac desktop or cellphone and doing it from this web page?

    <a http="https://extranet.immigration.go.th/fn24online/">

    Login For FN Hotel</a><br>

no luck on lazada or alibaba, but amazon may actually try shipping to thailand (despite the best efforts of thai customs)

the breville unit has four 4-inch cavities, claims 8 minute baking time, $130 used, $300 new

https://www.amazon.com/Breville-BPI640XL-Personal-Pie-Maker/dp/B004RF7QFQ#sp_detail_feedbackForm

also sold online from oz, nz and uk

makes fruit or meat pies

seven more pages of listings starting here, for 4 or 6 pies at at time, and regular 9-inch full size pies, from sunbeam, masterchef, wolfgang puck, emerille, quest

recipes and reviews  https://www.minipiemaker.com/

service http://www.brevilleusasupport.com/bpi640xl/

The green plastic Sprite bottle has a gray cap or a white cap, depending on if it is diet or sugar. Lazada has soft drinks in its grocery section of LazMall, and if your local Tesco doesn't stock it on the shelf you could try having it delivered.

https://shoponline.tescolotus.com/groceries/en-GB/products/6168116360

https://shoponline.tescolotus.com/groceries/en-GB/products/6017556686

https://www.lazada.co.th/products/325-6-i306314562-s532414262.html?spm=a2o4m.searchlistcategory.list.23.4fb876ccYjRTvK&search=1

https://www.lazada.co.th/products/15-12-i306304732-s532396775.html?spm=a2o4m.searchlistcategory.list.3.4fb876ccYjRTvK&search=1

https://www.lazada.co.th/products/500-24-i306308651-s532404440.html?spm=a2o4m.searchlistcategory.list.7.4fb876ccYjRTvK&search=1
The only convenience store in my (Phuket) neighborhood is a Family Mart, and I don't go there any more because a vicious soi dog now lives inside the store (and sleeps on the food shelves), but a few weeks ago they had the small bottles for about 18 baht, although they regularly ran out later in the day. I have bought cans of Schweppes ginger ale in 7-11s near where I used to live.

"Sprite No Sugar is the perfect drink for people who want same the great taste of Sprite but no sugar"

28 minutes ago, wgdanson said:

Then why have a bread machine?

If you are not making a loaf: let the motor do the work of kneading, form the dough into small rolls or the base of a pizza, then bake. Also: if your machine has a timer, dump in the ingredients before you go to bed, set the timer, and be awakened by the scent of raisins and cinnamon filling the house, all ready to pig out on: immediate breakfast. No brain required. Bathrobe and bunny slippers suggested. ????

Guy: if the box your machine came in had a manual, and if the manual is in a language you can read, and if the machine has flat vertical mixing blades, the manual may tell you that you can easily and safely pop them out after the mixing cycle, if you are nearby and awake at that time. Then the bottom of the loaf should be flat after baking. If you do not care that the loaf has two slots underneath, don't bother to take the blades out. A recipe with a weak crumb texture may tear apart and be difficult to slice around the two bottom slots. Try lots of recipes, it's part of the fun.

I got my first passport by turning in the paperwork at my local post office in USA in 2002. The Bangkok embassy used to do "outreach" sessions a couple times a year to Phuket and other Thai cities; in 2012 I applied for a new passport by turning in the forms (again including photograph) at a hotel in Patong, and got the new passport by registered mail. A couple years from now I will probably need to go to the embassy in Bangkok and be fingerprinted (and whatever else?). Question is, then what happens? How does the data get encrypted at two levels and then burned into a chip for my new passport? Would a digitized photo and fingerprints be sent to Washington, which would make an encrypted passport deep in some basement in Langley and ship it to Bangkok? If the Bangkok embassy had what's necessary to make a passport, wouldn't that be a great terrorist target: bust in, steal what Bangkok has, now all passports ever made in Bangkok, or maybe even all passports, are suspect.

6 minutes ago, sillyfool said:

isn't it nid noi ? 

The Thai is "นิดหน่อย ". n, short i over the n, d, consonant class changer (also called "h"), n, tone mark, o, y. BUT while there are many INITIAL consonant sounds in Thai, everything collapses to one of 7 TERMINAL sounds at the end of a syllable. So a terminal d always becomes a t. Hence "neet noy". (This is a westernized view of what happens; only 1 of my Thai students ever expressed it that way, and he had rich Thai-Chinese parents who sent him to a British-international school).

38 minutes ago, glennb6 said:

hahahaha... when originally getting O-A visa in ussa a couple yrs ago I took the seemingly simple medical letter (printed off thai consulate website) to a number of clinics. It asked a) leprosy? b) elephantiasis? c) syphilus? d) TB?

 

Figured this would be simple and easy, like who has elephantiasis or leprosy in the states this century??? the clinics looked at the letter like I just flew in from Mars and wanted them to guarantee their life savings and first born with a signature that I was OK. 5 clinics in all, "oh no, we can't sign that! we don't have a test for leprosy..." Finally got a dr that I got it done with.

https://www.pattayamail.com/thailandnews/recognizes-thailands-success-eradicating-elephantiasis-201147 "Bangkok – The World Health Organization has praised Thailand for its achievement in eliminating elephantiasis, a human disease caused by parasitic worms. On behalf of Thailand, Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha received a plaque of honor from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus after the nation was declared an elephantiasis-free society."

As is well known, all foreigners ... oops, I mean space "aliens" ... in Thailand are infected with syphilis, elephantiasis, leprosy and so on, just like all crime is committed by aliens, never by Thai nationals. The assembled Thai doctors now all point in unison to the huge plastic wall chart, just like the Thai police do at a news conference.

Be sure and file your TM30 within 24 hours of when your space ship lands from Mars.

19 hours ago, Sheryl said:

The SS system is solid. As long as your payments are uninterrupted you are secure. It is enshrined in law under the Social Security Act and millions of Thai employees come under it.

 

 

 

 

Sent from my SM-J701F using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

 

 

8 hours ago, TerryLH said:

I think the fee is still 432 baht per month.

Terry

 

Be very careful because this is Thailand. Government regulations and the law are too often irrelevant compared to the whims and fantasies of pompous government officials, who in a normal country would enforce that law, especially IOs. In the province where I live, the person at the local Thai social security office insists that a foreigner cannot continue paying the monthly fee himself to maintain coverage unless he has a Thai wife and also owns a corporation with at least 3 million baht of capital, and that because she is a government official she cannot possibly be wrong about this (no, she refuses to even glance at the applicable law). TIT.

Your monthly payment is based on a percentage of your salary, capped at both the lower and upper end. If you are retired, you have no income, so you would pay B432 a month, the minimum cap. If you are working and earn at or above the maximum salary subject to social security tax, you would pay B750 per month, the percentage for the maximum cap (and your employer would also pay monthly another amount for you).

I'm not familiar with the Windows 3.1 version of Oracle or MS SQL Server they must use at immigration, but it seems like someone with the proper access could create a temporary table with all the passports from the 90 day system, then create a second temporary table with the passports from the regular immigration system "EXCEPT WHERE" the passport appears in the first temporary table, then add the second temporary table to the 90 day system, and the problem would vanish, without even changing the program at all, and that this would only be a couple minutes of typing SQL commands. But it hasn't been done, so a bunch of people suffer needlessly. TIT.