ThLT
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Posts posted by ThLT
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1 hour ago, sandyf said:
It is a 2 year probationary license, not a full licence
Yeah, I know. That's what I'm saying.
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14 hours ago, KhunBENQ said:
Just checked a Thai website and they say since April 1, 2022 you can renew 6 months early. Don't hold me responsible (I doubt it applies for 2yr to 5yr).
With three months you are on the safe side.Thanks.
14 hours ago, KhunBENQ said:Found two sources that say it's only 2 months for 2 yr to 5 yr.
What are the two sources? Are they from after April 2022?
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14 hours ago, Polar Bear said:
About this time last year, I was told at Bang Chak that I could request changing from 2 to 5 after 1 year if I could show that I needed an international driving permit, but that it would only be a request and they would decide whether to allow it. I didn't bother in the end, so I don't know what the chances are of them agreeing.
Oh, so maybe that would mean with the 2y temporary license you can't get an IDP, but instead you need the 5y license.
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Apparently, you need to be on a Non-Immigrant visa to go from the 2y temporary license to the 5y license. You'll get another 2y temporary license if on a tourist visa. I'm on a Non-Immigrant right now, but won't be when my license expires.
Some say you can 6 months before the 2y license expires, some 3 months. I've read one person on the forum say that, if on a Non-Immigrant visa, you can change to the 5y license after 1y of having the temporary license.
Is that true? How early can you change to a 5y license? What would you recommend to get the 5y license?
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1 hour ago, LaosLover said:
I moved to the Nimman area 90 days ago. I love it to death; probably the densest and best collection of mid-priced restaurants in the world. Tons of amenities like yoga, massage, etc. .
My rent in a very lux condo is $600, which is a deal to be in so central a location. So much so that I'll just write off the smokey 3 months and head back to the states. A lot of people agree with me; any condo rental gets booked in a single day on the market in my building. Very hard to get a lease less than a year.
Tourist-wise, it packs out on the weekends with Bangkok partiers here for the ganga scene and a smattering of snowbirds and backpackers. There are urgent signs in my lobby urging me to turn Air B+B-ers in. They're about 80% of the the people I see in the elevator. They're the only people who use the pool.
I like being in a place with lots of diff kinds of people, and that's usually a party kind of place (see also: French Quarter, Soho, Greenwich Village). The snowbirds I see on my morning cappuccino run are respectful Thai-maniacs like myself.
4 minutes away from my cappuccino, there's a tin roof place selling 40 baht Khao Soi noodles among big banana trees. Even down by the night market, you can easily find side soi's with a sole proprietor papaya pounding station that feels like you're far away from modernity -even within any given 100 meters in the well-visited Old City. Compare CM to a place like Florence and it feels much more alive.
As to crossing Nimman Road on foot, I hate it but can offer the following advice: wait for a break in the traffic on your side and cross to the middle. Now you're the problem of the other oncoming traffic lane.
Remember the cold, Darwinian Thai pedestrian logic: the bigger and more lethal the vehicle coming towards you, the less likely they are to stop for you. Play chicken with a Honda, but not with a songthew. Particularly not with a songthew.
Sounds like you're genuinely enjoying it here (not just just trying to milk the place). Have a great time. Happy New Year.
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10 minutes ago, BigStar said:
Oh, but you are.
Chiang Mai, on the other hand, is somewhat inundated by tourists in specific parts of the city (in many cases leading to gentrification).
There is no going into these areas without seeing digital nomads in every coffee shop, drinking only one or two cups of coffee, and typing away at their laptop for almost the whole day. . . .
Causing deaths!
There are also tourists jaywalking everywhere . . . .
And even more, some don't even wear a helmet.
Many tourists walk like they own the place, because they paid for a plane ticket and they have a few tourist dollars to hand out to locals. . . .
hordes of Chinese tourists . . . .
And so, not liking tourists in general, scapegoating the supposedly unlicensed tourists driving motorbikes as the raison d'etre.
Actually, you dunno how many are driving w/o licenses or, more importantly, are totally incompetent to drive. You been complaining about unlicensed Thais? Are there any of those?????
In general, I find farang poorer drivers of both cars and bikes than Thais in relation to their percentage of the population. I tend to move away from them in traffic if possible.
However, if you have a big influx of tourists or drivers into an area, more accidents or near accidents will of course happen. In Pattaya, same thing during holiday weekends when hordes of Thais flood in.
And the major cause isn't lack of a driver's license. You're attaching way too much importance to that paper. It's excessive speed and drinking. All our ace ANF Driving Instructors and Traffic Accident Investigators know this and always carefully point it out while sneering at any finger pointing. They love to look for a lack of a helmet, just as you do.
Still, most accidents are Thai-on-Thai. You don't complain at all about those not being reported, specifically, with names. And anyone who does a cursory google will see that Thailand's traffic accident rate is the highest in the world.
All those tourists you don't like, that is, the non-servile, do indeed account for most of the revenue. Your Approved Tourists™
have mostly run out of pesos and aren't coming in large numbers.
Oh, were you? But ANF has a lot of readers abroad.
The details of a tourist's driving skill in his own country would only be known to his friends and relatives back home, and only of interest, if at all, to a very local community. If discussing it in an article begging for money, they of course will blame Thais and Thailand to portray their beloved as a victim.
And on this forum, even when the farang is clearly at fault, the members will still attempt to blame the Thai and Thailand, esp. if he's one of our Brit "lads."
And we also have sufficient cases reported of expats and skilled motorbike riders (one not too long ago) causing accidents or simply crashing. You don't mention any of those; why's that? ????
Pattaya's waitin' for you. Now what you'd surely find gratifying is to sit at a bar near the police checkpoint at Beach Rd. & Soi 9 and watch the BIB stopping tourists and checking their papers--and sending them into the station to pay fines.
Wow, you really have time to waste. You wrote a reply to my comment as long as my OP. With a picture on top of that.
Didn't read past the first paragraph.
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9 hours ago, BigStar said:
'Course, without the tourist industry, those Thais might not have tuition, jobs, or motorbikes. They can move if they wish. They don't need to you to engage in phony hand wringing in their behalf.
I'm not talking about tourists in general. lol I'm talking about tourists illegally renting a motorbike without a license. What does that account to Chiang Mai's tourist revenue, 0.00000000000000000000000000000001%? ????????
9 hours ago, BigStar said:Nonsense. Notice is definitely taken of the Thai. And accidents are reported in the Thai press you don't read on ANF. You reading the Thai news?
I'm talking about how motorbike deaths are reported and discussed abroad. Cause of the accident is always "Thai roads are dangerous," not "he barely rode a motorcycle before going to Thailand and crashed and killed a Thai local."
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4 hours ago, BritManToo said:
Once I settled down here I hardly ever go to places where there are tourists.
Get out of the Moat/Huay Keow area and there are no tourists.
The view from my house ............
Beautiful view. Must be peaceful. Thanks for that.
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1 hour ago, seedy said:
Best solution - have all the Whiners and Snivelers who profess to hate CNX leave.
And take your AQI reader with you.
Every year the same 'ol same 'ol -
"Oh the traffic ! Oh the air ! Oh the tourists !
Don't like it here - don't stay. Pull up your Granny panties and shove off.
The good ol' "just leave if you don't like it," from someone who is unwell with criticism. ????
So you're complaining about people complaining?
Wouldn't that be complaining, but on top of that also being hypocritical?
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2 minutes ago, brommers said:
Pack your bags. To live in a "foreign place" requires flexibility, acceptance of differences, realisation that change happens and an embracing of inevitability. You seem to find it difficult to find that what you thought was reality is in fact not the case, because it was never the case. Perhaps you should return to your place of origin and embrace it once again. Chiang Mai over the past years has remained a home to me because it is vibrantly changing for the better, not fossilised.
What part of Chiang Mai do you live in?
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5 minutes ago, stoner said:
you mad bro ?
Username checks out. ????
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This is part rant/opinion-piece, part looking for advice. I moved here to Chiang Mai some years ago, when there were fewer tourists, so I'd say my reaction is likely more pronounced. However, I think these are things many probably go through after some years of living here. This will also probably be others' reaction, once millions more post-pandemic tourists arrive, so this discussion might benefit a number of members here.
After nearly half a decade in Chiang Mai, the colorful veil of what I thought Chiang Mai to be has I believe partially been lifted. Not necessarily Chiang Mai in itself, but the many things surrounding it. I thought I was going to call Chiang Mai my home. However, in the past month, for example, with the influx of tourists, I've almost been in a head-on collision with a tourist on a rented motorbike turning into the wrong lane (my lane), and a bit after, having to turn into the grass because a tourist in front of me decided to suddenly brake and park in a curb of a highway exit (yes, actually park in a highway exit). I've seen others almost crash into locals, and another with his legs on the ground extensively shaking, probably because he barely ever rode a motorcycle before, and couldn't manage to keep the bike upright at slow speeds. Basically, a collision with someone else just waiting to happen.
Seriously, f*** tourists without a license and experience on rented motorbikes. Thai people live and work here, university students go to school to study and earn a living. There is a large percentage of parents without the financial capacity to buy a car who take their children to and from school almost every single day on a motorbike. Many tourists want to have the basically fabricated "Thailand experience," that is sold by and to people abroad on social media and blogs, but then many come here without a motorcycle license, and for such people, putting the lives of others at risk is not even an afterthought. When a tourist dies on Thai roads, which also involves the death of a local, notice that almost never is it mentioned that a Thai person also died in the accident. The sole cause of the accident was not the tourist without a license/experience, no, it's always how dangerous Thai roads are. How self-centered can someone be, to cause another to die, yet simply blame the country the person was in? There are so many unwritten rules and ways about driving a motorbike that is specific to Thailand, that take months to know through actually driving. And even more, some don't even wear a helmet. Many here on Facebook have seen GoFundMe pages of tourists not having medical insurance, and then begging for money to pay for their hospital bill. Yeah, no, not giving a single cent.
This is the worst part, mainly because in some cases it involves people actually dying. There are also tourists jaywalking everywhere, sometimes even diagonally, holding up their arm as if they are Robert Downey Jr. and that their hand will stop a car that hasn't seen them. That, or just slowly taking their time while twenty cars and motorbikes are waiting for them to casually cross the road. They think pedestrians have utmost priority here, exactly like in their home country, you know, because that's how every country is, or should be.
It's also the attitude. It feels like Chiang Mai is an international tourist attraction to them. Smiling locals with tasty food and alcohol, having no significance past that, being part of that attraction. A jungle zoo, with cheap booze, coffee and now legal cannabis. Many tourists walk like they own the place, because they paid for a plane ticket and they have a few tourist dollars to hand out to locals. People live and have families here. People have lived here for almost a thousand years.
I've now come to the realization that Chiang Mai, for multiple months per year, is basically a semi-tourist city. In some ways like Paris, but not all year-round, and everything is cheaper instead of being more expensive. Compared to Bangkok, where tourists are rather drowned by nearly 10 million locals, and barely noticed outside the BTS or MRT, Chiang Mai, on the other hand, is somewhat inundated by tourists in specific parts of the city (in many cases leading to gentrification). There is no going into these areas without seeing digital nomads in every coffee shop, drinking only one or two cups of coffee, and typing away at their laptop for almost the whole day. This is even the case with this supposedly Facebook expat groups, with half the posts being tourist-related, and probably 1/3 of the members being tourists.
A great man once tried to pass on the way of thinking of "being a visitor of a country, and not a tourist" (rest in peace, Anthony Bourdain, your knowledge was heard by many, but sadly not by all).
China has recently announced that it will be lifting its COVID-zero policy on January 8 (and actually just before the January 22 Chinese New Year), which barred Chinese citizens from travelling outside the country, for over three years. Having been shut in for such a long time, and subjugated to severe governmental pressures, hordes of Chinese tourists will likely be even larger and much worse than before the pandemic. I'm having a difficult time with the current numbers of tourists, but triple or even quadruple that, and I don't know how I'll be able to manage or still like living in Chiang Mai.
I currently work here and signed a 1.5-year contract, so I'll be here for some time.
For those who have lived in Chiang Mai for many years, how did you get through such a phase? How do you manage to get past these kinds of things?-
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If they can't even get the simple part of visa-on-arrival right, I'd change tour group company.
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9 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:
You do have to actually enter Malaysia. Can't just get stamped out and back in again.
Why not stay for a couple days and have a look around? That's what I did- in Penang.You can. I posted and explained it just a few post above yours. Obviously, you have to enter Malaysia if you leave and get stamped out of Thailand.
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I did the border run at Padang Besar.
You need to stop at Padang Besar in Malaysia, not at Padang Besar in Thailand (there are two cities with the same name, but different countries, for some reason). You get stamped out in Padang Besar, Malaysia, get stamped in, then you buy a train ticket, and get stamped into Thailand. You get on the train and head back into Thailand. The train waits for everyone to go through immigration, so it can be even 1 hour late.
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Google Translate is notoriously bad for Thai. Although the text-to-audio is fairly accurate.
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Hi @ubonjoe, would you know if a stay in Malaysia for one night is required or not, at the Padang Besar border point?
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Paiboon Publishing's Talking Thai-English Dictionary app (iOS and Android). Phrasebook and dictionary combined in one app. Created by Benjawan Poomsan Becker, who is a certified translator, with decades of experience (she even was a translator at the UN). There is audio recording for every single word and phrase in the app, recorded by Benjawan herself. Paid app, but worth every single dollar and more.
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20 minutes ago, visabouncer said:
I suggest the requirements(and admin fees) are not the same for those who want to make a visa exempt entry and for those why already have a multi visa.
Visa exemption.
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Is it possible? For visa exemption.
Is a one night stay in Malaysia needed?
(Could those who have recently done this border run share their experiences?)
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11 minutes ago, proton said:
Not all just 90%, most leave their dogs in the yard barking all day while they are at work, or put them in cages. The idea of taking them for a walk is seen as some crazy foreign notion. too many just want a dog to show off with. Almost the first thing they will tell you is how much their dirty, drooling barking pest cost. IMO all dog owners have some sort of personality disorder, Thais are just a bit worse.
Wow, with that statistic, I'm assuming you've gone to every single household in the country of 67 million people? Seems you have low-quality friends you surround yourself with.
Similar as with almost all countries. Dogs left in cages for weeks with almost no food. Not being walked. Beating them. Not much new.-
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The implied belief that all Thais are incapable of caring for a pet, being kind of a racist prejudice/generalization to begin with—of which the OP considers literally killing his dog with his own bare hands being a better option, is seriously off-putting.
Also probably illegal.
Like another member has said, there are adoption groups on FB, where experienced pet owners are actively looking for a dog to adopt.
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And probably when things will be back to normal in a year or a few years... and fuel will be back to normal prices... almost all companies won't reduce prices to reflect fuel prices.
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How early can you change to a 5 year license?
in Thailand Motor Discussion
Posted · Edited by ThLT
Thanks. I'll probably go to the DLT and give an update here. If it changed to 6 month on April 2022, that would be good news.