ThomasThBKK

2 minutes ago, DrTuner said:

It needs a headshot anyway. The way Kobkarn the Destroyress of Thailand let the Chinese hordes in was the last nail. Massive overtourism resulted and took away all pleasure out of it. Demolish it all and start again with a sustainable governance system in place.

That's basically what my first comment was about, adapt or die.

The current model could have never worked out anyway, covid was just the nail that made the bubble explode sooner.

10 minutes ago, catch104 said:

You are talking non sense. The tourism business is not few huge companies sharing the cake but thousands of business, hundred of thousand of small business directly or indirectly involve, million of workers directly or indirectly involve that spend in the economy. It has absolutely no similarities with airlines

It will be a few huge businesses after this, no worries. 

Cheap assets for the rich, it will just no longer be owned by normal thais, blame the government, not me. 

Lets kill tourism a bit moaaaar. Stick a knife in tourisms back while it's already bleeding on the groundddddddd

galaxy brains...... governments are the worst

Right, they only take into account the same goods you purchase in the employes homecountry etc. 

Normal expats here with thai family just eat thai food, send their kids who have a thai passport to a thai school that isn't english only, get a house in a thai neighbourhood, use thai health insurance etc.

Pensioners and beach bums like me who don't have kids don't have any of the international school costs that is the biggest part of mercers index.... 

The weighting is just so completely different for most people that these indexes don't make any sense to look at. 

Paris is supposed to be cheaper than Bangkok according to them, yeah... not for normal people, no way. You can't drink enough red wine to make up for the rental property costs in paris alone. Not to mention many expats here live a tax free life as they earn money outside of Thailand...

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=France&city1=Paris&country2=Thailand&city2=Bangkok

Pick the numbers that are your biggest expense from a site like numbeo and compare yourself, for me that would be 

1) House/Rental costs

2) Food

3) Taxes

4) Utilities

5) Transportation/Taxis - i can totally life without a car here, taxis are dirt cheap... 

The rest is more or less irrelevant for my budget. 

42 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

Using a majority Thai company only to circumvent Thai law restricting foreign land ownership is illegal mate. 

 

So if it doesn't actually trade, i.e. have a turnover and pay taxes, then it is illegal as per Thai law. Filing the books and keeping a company legal in that respect is not trading. 

 

The fact that you are apparently soliciting 'advice' suggested to me that it doesn't trade at all and you are encouraging others to perform illegal acts to circumvent Thai land ownership laws. 

 

Apologies if I am wrong here.

Oh no <deleted> sherlock, not paying your taxes is breaking the law, that's why he doesn't do that. 

But no a company doesn't need to "trade", what absolute rubbish and having debt on your book isn't illegal either, no where in the world it is.

Fascinating what <deleted> thai expats belief...

10 minutes ago, geisha said:

It could be possible that the whole story is engineered by the guy scammer, and he’s frightening the girl to get the money for him. Using false bank letters. She should take all correspondance , téléphone etc to the police and lodge a complaint. You yourself should have nothing to do with it for your own sake. 

Unlikely, just the good ol money mule scam that ruined millions of peoples life: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2020/03/whats-money-mule-scam

can happen with cheques, wire transfers etc you name it. 

CompSci and Math, could easily use it here but can't be bothered with work permit nonsense.

So i just go to singapore and dubai for business and my money stays there too... up to them i guess...literally their loss. 

On 5/29/2020 at 10:00 AM, grumpy 4680 said:

      Whats the cost of 3000 digital thermometer's, as opposed to the 2.5 million baht, just to get them released ?

     All's fair in love and war, as China has ripped of the UK with its dodgy goods, and others.

https://shopee.co.th/product/52591873/1367291871 

2500 THB gets you the top of the line Braun Infrared Thermometer.....but he paid 8k THB just to get his out of customs???

Custom clearance here is easy, as long as you have a medical import license, it's just paperwork....

The whole story smells like BS.

44 minutes ago, Ayemanomad said:

It's all about control folks. Slowly everyone's freedoms are being eroded. I am not a smoker, but I do believe in freedom of choice.

 

When the current emergency measures are relaxed, we will not be able to go back to the old normal. Governments all over the world are intent on controlling more and more of their population. They are quick to take away our freedoms and once taken, they never give them all back to us. That is precisely what is happening now worldwide. 

Yup. Future looks bleak if you ask me...

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program - Milton Friedman

2 hours ago, Letseng said:

What did TUI do with the KFW loan they got? 180 million € apparently? 

They do refunds on flight tickets. I guess they do as EU law tells them to do. Thai hotels don't matter to them. Why does Thai govt. not deal with German govt. to get assistance? How embarassing for Germany.

Why would it be embarassing? It's a normal bankruptcy. What does the Thai gov or Germany have to do with private parties dealing with bankruptcy? If you or your business goes bankrupt it works the same. There's like 100+ other countries hotels with the same problem. 

This is a case of force majeur/act of god, like all the people hotels refused to refund, airlines refused to refund, cruiseships refused to refund, Thai schools stopped paying english teachers, Restaurants here fired their workers, millions lost their jobs world wide.

They are all doing the same right now, just this time it hits the hotel and not someone who booked there. Billions of people lost money due to covid, thai hotels aren't anywhere special. 

https://www.ft.com/content/1d384970-6478-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68

Greece, Spain all hit too, TUI is the biggest tour operator in the world, and their employers are also partially fired off...

The whole travel business depends on ongoing cashflow, the hotels would have never been full without TUI and co, that's why they agree to these contracts. 

1 hour ago, JackThompson said:

Exactly.  These are the same self-funded long-stayers they booted-out by "cracking down" on their use of repeat visa-exempts and serial tourist-visas.   How did they think those people could afford paying their bills here, plus paying for visa-run trips and tourist-visas before?  By competing with the Burmese and Cambodians for "under the table" illegal jobs? 

That "smart move" shuttered countless Thai businesses (entire sois boarded up), throwing thousands of Thais out of work.  Maybe this time, they can be smart about it, and keep more of that spending in-Thailand, by not forcing the continuous visa-runs.  Just to to immigration every 3 mo and shell out 5K - better yet, pay at 711 or online.

 

I've been competing for that award for awhile.  But at least I am cynical enough to keep myself real, about it.

No doubt the immigration "agent-money" clique and "elite-visa" beneficiaries will block TAT, again.  Tour groups can organize the required payoffs, and side-deals for the big-businesses where they take their hordes to shop.  It is not so simple to organize lucrative envelope-collection schemes for individuals and families. 

Watch for the phrase "National Security" to come up, like it did with the initial "bring your landlord" rule for covid-extensions. 

TAT OWNS Thai elite. That is the SOLE shareholder of Thai Elite.

They have zero interest in going against this. TAT also never had any issues with digital nomads and co, or tv stars making movies here or writers writing their books...

This was always an entirely different clique in the goverment...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/french-study-suggests-smokers-at-lower-risk-of-getting-coronavirus

Paris hospital are now testing nicotine plasters against Covie-19, this must <deleted> off some people who can't accept the narrative that nicotine is helpful in some cases.

Also here's a german article: 

Written by a german doctor in innsbruck who tested covid patients lungs for diving capacity. published in a german diving magazine - many of them failed, it looks like the ace2 receptors got destroyed, this is the long term damage one sees after covid infections - nicotine upregulates them tho

16 minutes ago, bluesofa said:

Are you saying that smokers breathe heavier or deeper than non-smokers? I have no idea.

Yes smokers are known to have the best lung capacity that's why all professional apnoe divers are heavy smokers.

PS: Post could contain sarcasm

9 hours ago, Moonlover said:

For every claim in this world there's bound to be a counter claim:

 

https://fortune.com/2020/02/19/coronavirus-china-smoking-rate-men/

yeah and now china has less deathrate than many other places...

So not sure what your claim is, if you have any scientific studies post them here. 

But a fortune.com article from february behind a paywall isn't science.

9 hours ago, rabas said:

I thought it was the other way around. Smoking increases the expression of ACE2 receptors (as does high blood pressure) so it can increase the virus's ability to attack lung cells.

 

Conclusions: ACE2 expression in lower airways is increased in patients with COPD and with current smoking. These data suggest that these two subgroups are at increased risk of serious COVID19 infection and highlight the importance of smoking cessation in reducing the risk.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.18.20038455v1

to quote this from a researchgate comment: https://www.researchgate.net/post/COVID-19_and_angiotensin-converting_enzyme_inhibitros

Quote

ACE2 expression could influence the course of COVID19 in 2 different ways: increased expression leads to increased mortality (by promoting viral entry) or increased expression leads to decreased mortality (due to ACE2 anti-inflammatory effects that could prevent ARDS development)

In other words, we have no fakking clue - hence every comment about smoking being bad or good is pulled out of our asses right now and should not be made AT ALL.

If you would have read the linked paper it states: 

Quote

However experimental data suggest that infection with SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 leads to down-regulation of ACE2, and this downregulation is detrimental due to uncontrolled ACE and angiotensin II activity.^6,7 It has been observed that decreased ACE2 availability contributes to lung injury and ARDS development.^8,9 Therefore, higher ACE2 expression, while seemingly paradoxical, may protect against acute lung injury caused by COVID-19.¹⁰

it literally says more ACE2 espression is good for covid.

https://www.qeios.com/read/article/561

There's a bunch of papers that suggest due to nicotine changing the ACE2 receptors that covid might have a harder time.

Not enough sample data, we don't know yet - but that also goes in the other direction, everyone who spouted that smokers have more risk just talked out of their ass.

4 minutes ago, Rookiescot said:

Channeling Chinese goods to circumvent the US trade restrictions?

Either that or they also sold their masks to the highest bidder

3 hours ago, orang37 said:

Vietnam, not Thailand. The Japanese have long experience with the years and yen outlay required to manufacture here reliably, and that's with industrial sectors like truck/auto involving more manual labor. Manufacturing smaller scale complex goods requiring much more limited tolerance for error to tight deadlines is a different arena.

 

~o:37;

 

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/05/coronavirus-apple-microsoft-google-look-to-move-production-away-from-china.html

Quote

Google has also asked a manufacturing partner in Thailand to prepare production lines for its so-called smart home products, such as voice assistant-enabled speakers, Nikkei said

Wrong, Thailand will also benefit. 

Thailand has been manufacturing electronics since forever, just remember how the worlds harddisk production was killed off when thailand was flooded... 

Vietnam alone can't take all of the production, it's not big enough. Everyone here will get a share of Companies bailing out of china.