rak sa_ngop

Did anybody check to see if the police IDs were fake or genuine?

15 hours ago, abab said:

 

The guy in Udon is a farang owner and he seems not better than any Thai.

 

Thank you, but foodland where ? Never seen insects at foodland except in the kitchen !

 

 

Definitely sold in Foodland Silom (Patpong 2). Of course you have bend down to cockroach level to see them because they are on the bottom shelves of the dried food section.

Relax, it could have been worse. Russians like picking forest mushrooms in which case he would have got 5 years in the slammer!

So bus stations have metal detectors????

I have never seen one at Ekkamai.

Or maybe there is one just for the drivers?

Foodland sells them in packets, not cans. (I assume you are referring to cans of edible insects).  If you don't have a Foodland in Udonthani try other large food retailers. They are being distributed by someone.

I am not sure about " rewiring" of the brain but my experience of learning (trying to learn) Thai, Vietnamese Burmese and Laos proved to me how the brain can reprocess what it hears and makes you hear a different sound to the real sound.

When you start learning for example Vietnamese, you soon start to find yourself arguing with the teacher that the sound you are hearing is different to the sound the teacher hears. The brain will not recognise some of the Vietnamese word sounds and will reprocess them to sound like English word sounds. As your learning progresses you will start to recognise these VN word sounds and wonder why you had such trouble recognising them before.

This reprocessing of sounds I think is why you can have a telephone conversation over a very bad line with maybe 50pc of the conversation missing. The brain can reprocess and fill in the gaps if it is familiar with the language. For a poorly understood language you have no hope of doing this.

9 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

I'm paying about 1300 baht for 14 each 20 mg Crestor in BKK.  More from the hospital.

 

I have been told Crestor isn't off patent yet so no generics are available.  Have I been lied to?  I'm at $300 USD per month on the 2 statins prescribed by my doc.  Okay now with 100% employer health insurance, but I dread the expense when I retire.

I have been buying Rosuvastatin Sandoz produced by Sandoz. I cant remember the exact price but about 900 baht for 28 x 20 mg.

Crestor is Rosuvastatin and previously I was paying 1650 baht for 28 x 20 mg

Cut in half to make 10 mg to save money

Actually the gemstone trading area around The Holiday Inn on Silom road is very interesting. Go to the Jewellery Trade Centre adjacent to the H Inn or wander around some of the small sois off Charoenkrung road.

Bangkok is one of the major gemstone and jewellery centres of the world.

Enjoy (and generally you can buy with confidence in many of these shops).

Just don't ask a tuk-tuk to take you!!!!

I want to fly Bangkok to Singapore in a bit of style for my birthday.

Checking prices I see that Singapore Airlines business class is pretty expensive close to 28K and Thai is only a little bit cheaper at 25K.

I don't really want to fly Malaysian (about 18k) as would have to transit through their dry business class lounge in KL.

One option is Cathay Pacific which (unless I have missed some extra charges) comes in at an incredibly cheap 12K. Only one flight a day but timing is OK.

Does anybody have any experiences with Cathay to Singapore. How are the lounges and service on board?

What about the low cost carriers?  Do any of them offer a premier service that can compete with a national carrier.

Welcome any comments (especially the sensible ones)..

Just google " Ten reasons to never drink soya milk"

There's your advice.

So none of you guys ever messed around with fireworks as kids?

I certainly remember making gunpowder from the contents of my 'toy' chemistry set as a kid. Saltpeter, sulphur and charcoal.

Still have all my fingers though.

There is a resort type hotel just opposite the railway station. Swimming pool and OK cabin accommodation. Check it out on booking,com.  Getting in and out of town is easy with the tuk-tuks at the station. The only downside was that there were NO English satellite channels. Maybe that has changed now.

Don't bother with the big hotel on the highway in town. It's turning into a dump.

One bit of advice I can offer is to closely scrutinize the website. I once checked out a website for a friend of a fund based in the Caymen Islands. At the bottom of the website it gave the name of the web designers and their location; Pattaya.

It was a red warning flag to me. Unfortunately not to my friend who paid the price.

There is a major problem with arsenic occurring naturally in Bangladesh groundwater. Maybe this is an explanation for the problem with Bangladeshi rice (I did not watch the programme).

On 08/02/2017 at 4:42 PM, Seismic said:

Not to sound too picky but the latin is Anti meridiem and Post Meridiem.

Methinks you picked away too much.

• Anti-meridian a meridian at 180° from another, or
• Ante meridiem normally abbreviated a.m. for morning

From Wiky.

15 hours ago, NanLaew said:

Maybe their regular Bangkok NGV station wasn't available for some reason so they need to refuel en-route?

 

A first for me yesterday morning after dropping my lad at school, I headed down Sukhumvit to get some diesel and a cup of coffee at PTT. No pumps available, all lanes coned off and I noted there was no go-juice of any ilk being pumped at all as I circled and left. Didn't even stop for a coffee. Maybe the power was out but it was a first for me. I have seen huge tailbacks at some provincial NGV stations which I assume is something to do with supply and demand where maybe only one station has stock?

I suspect it is something to do with the recent gas price hikes, which usually leads to hoarding and opportunism by suppliers.

I am glad they did not award anything to that monstrous, toothed, gapped, eye-sore of a building going up near Silom Sathorm.

The Mahanakon building, the tallest and most offensive looking building in Thailand.

But my friends from the UK liked it!

19 hours ago, champers said:

If it is a recent phenomenon that more busses are stopping for gas and comfort breaks then I would say that is a good thing. Drivers nodding off at the wheel is a major cause of accidents here and stopping for 20 minutes or so will reduce such accidents. Better late than never.

Yes, but pity they stop just 10 mins short of the final destination.

Another option (especially for a smaller UK pension) maybe to transfer to a SIPP and then do a yearly drawdown using your UK tax relief threshold.

But there a downsides to this as well.

I see that you have meetings set up already, but if you want to discuss with a UK-based financial advice company that has offices in Hong Kong and Singapore and deals with high-worth individuals (as well as low-worth ones like me) and are pension experts, PM me for details.

2 minutes ago, chiang mai said:

The purpose of that request was to prove your tax residency, not to set you up to be taxed etc.

Yes, but that information supplied to the UK can now be shared around the world.

And anybody residing in Thailand for more than 6 months a year is considered to be 'a tax resident'.

Who knows what will happen in the future in LOS with respect to foreign income (profits, interest and dividends).

I am happy in my decision.

Think carefully before going ahead with a tax rebate.

Call me ultra-cautionary but I have decided to forgo a 3,000 baht withholding tax claim just to stay under the radar.

One of my UK investment companies asked me for my tax number in 'the country of my residence' and I replied 'none, as I have no taxable income in Thailand'.

So far so good!

That's probably the best reason not to pat cats or dogs in Asia. The risk of rabies if bitten is extremely small but the cost and hassle of undergoing a course of rabies vaccinations is a real pain.

I did it once. Never again.

Just to satisfy my curiosity can any one explain why the bus I caught to Pattaya from Ekamai last Saturday mornig stopped off just before Pattaya to gas up at the NGV gas station?

This is the first time it has happened to me in over 10 years of catching the bus. And there were 3 other buses from the same company gassing up as well.

A bit irritating as it added 20 min to the trip. Takes a long time to fill those tanks.

Is this something we can expect more of, or maybe it has something to do with the recent gas price hike?

I bought from iHerb before Xmas with a UK Mastercard and a Thailand address.

Arrived Xmas day OK.

(Previous to this the few times I tried buying in the US from other people the card never worked)

So what will happen when they sign off on the touted 10 year immigration visa deal which requires a large bank deposit (2 or 3 million, I can't remember)? This money has to remain banked for 1?? year after which time you can withdraw it.

Sounds a lot cheaper than paying up front 1 or 2 million baht for 20 years. The 1 million baht package  gives you no airport pick--up, no golf and spa package and no annual check-up. Big Deal.