n8sail

15 hours ago, Lacessit said:

Perhaps I should have said the 2022 MG EV has V2L capability.

Indeed they do!   Not sure if the Thai version will have it, but in UK they do.

It's a bit useless though, not exactly going to fire up the power grid in your local area with only 2200 watts of maximum output.   I suppose your girlfriend could dry her hair as long as she just has a cheap hair dryer from Big-C or something similar.   It would run a small refrigerator.  It would not run even a very small house air conditioner, though.

https://www.mgevs.com/threads/vehicle-to-load-v2l-any-information-or-first-hand-experiences.4810/

20 minutes ago, Lacessit said:

That's already happened in Australia, a Polestar EV was driven across the Nullarbor, accompanied by a truck with a diesel generator on board for recharging. But don't worry, the fuel for the two diesels was environmentally sustainable - recycled oil from fish and chip shops in Perth.

A good mate of mine here manages the building of the electric passenger ferries that are being made for Bangkok's canals and rivers and also for other places around the planet.  All of these 'electric' ferries have 'range extenders' in them.    Otherwise known as a diesel generator  ????

There are other jokes we make about 'range extenders' for use in other purposes, but they aren't clean enough for this forum. ????

1 hour ago, Lacessit said:

Some EV's have the capacity, IIRC it's called V2L. Effectively, the car can act as a storage battery for a home, just like a Tesla PowerWall, but on wheels. I think the MG EV has the required kit for transfer.

Yes V2L or Vehicle to Load is the correct terminology.

Unfortunately, the MG EP EV cannot do this, nor can the ZS EV as far as I know.   I have had an MG EP for 1.5 years now with 42,000km already on it, great car so far.

The 7.5kw charger included with the car would normally be around 20k baht from my research.  It is a relatively 'stupid' smart charger.  You can't even limit it to stop at 80% charge level, which can allow a Lithium Ion battery to last much longer if you don't need the full range every day.  I have to physically go out and unplug the car.  No mobile phone app to control this car, either.   The charger does not have a feature to charge after hours only should Thailand ever implement discounts for charging at off-peak times.  (They don't where I live and work at least)

Well worth it for the money, though.  1/3 the cost of operation of my Ford Ranger so far, and WAY faster and more fun to drive.

Also from Reuters:

"The shooter came in around lunch time and shot four or five officials at the childcare centre first," said Jidapa, adding that among them was a teacher who was eight months pregnant.

GF says that BMW or other high-end 'Police' vehicles are usually purchased privately by the officer who then adds the livery himself.  Of course these officers are on the take, otherwise how could someone on 15k baht a month afford a 2+ million baht car...

If this is the 2 liter turbodiesel engine, likely the plastic timing chain tensioner/guide cracked.   Huge problem with these cars.  I really wanted one when I first got here as I've always wanted a BMW and this tidy little efficient engine was never offered in the USA.  Then found out about this issue.  BMW has never really addressed the problem that I've heard, but I could stand corrected if someone else knows more.   It is easily many tens of thousands of baht to have the tensioner replaced, I believe it's engine-out job.   If you don't change it, the interference valves will smash into the cylinders and then you need a full head re-build, which I would guess could be done here for about 100k baht, so maybe that's what happened to this vehicle.

14 hours ago, Kalorymetr said:

It's so sad this country treats working people that contribute to economy same as tourists, no rights here. Thanks for the reply, I was hoping that maybe, there was some exemption for BOI work permits or some salary threshold to reach.

 

I actually have funds to buy the condo with cash, but I rather buy in one of the EU countries instead. I wanted to leverage my working here to get a cheap loan.

I have BOI 2 year work permits and Non-B Visas, on my 5th one now.  I have yet to see any benefit for having this type of work permit other than that I have to renew half as often as normal work permits.  2x 900k+ Baht car loans, couple million baht in taxes paid and....  nothing.  Still have to pay tourist prices at a national park!

There are the new 'LTR'  Long Term Resident Visas, which may eventually allow the holder to buy 1 rai of land with very significant investment in Thailand.  You may eventually qualify for the #4 "Skilled Professional" type they will offer.  Something worth considering as you gain more experience and salary in your field of expertise.   I would qualify but unfortunately my industry does not fall under one of the approved "Targeted Industries" for this type of Visa.    Thanks, Thailand!

https://ltr.boi.go.th/index.html#pri

6 hours ago, eia310e said:

The first one was many years ago, it was East Asian bank (or something like that), but they were taken over I think, at least they don't exist today.  The second mortgage was from Bank Ayudhya, also many years ago.  In both cases I was on work permit from BOI promoted company.  I remember that was a key point.  Sorry I don't have a more recent experience to refer to.

Sounds like in your original post you had help of a Thai National as well as they were on the title, so that was also probably a key point.  At any rate, still good information.

I suspect for the OP and certainly for me, I'd like to keep Thais, even trustworthy ones that I know well, out of my finances.  Nothing against Thai people, I'd do the same in my home country.  Certainly something against the Thai government, though!

2 hours ago, Peterw42 said:

Try these guys

https://www.mbkg.co.th/en/home

Thanks for the link.

Technically, provided the condo is in or near Bangkok, these guys would work.

Not a cheap loan, though.    MLR + 2.4%, so right around 7% right now, actually not ridiculous compared to at least USA loans right now.  But the fees are pretty steep, and only up to 50% of the valuation of the condo, so you'd still need a chunk of change to make the purchase.

Maybe someone can correct me, but as I understand it, in order for the land department to put the condo in a foreigner's name, the capital must be shown to have come from outside Thailand.  There is a special form used to show this when the money is transferred into Thailand before the purchase can go through.

I am also purchasing a condo in the next few weeks (waiting to see if baht will actually break 40/1 for USD, looking very likely now).  I have been here 9+ years, paid some salary by Thai company, the balance outside of Thailand.  Near as I can tell, even with salary much higher than OP's 200k/month, without involving a Thai national it is basically impossible to get a mortgage here.

For foreign purchases of real property, cash is king.  Save up, then buy.  You don't need millions and millions of baht to buy a reasonable small condo here.  I would also suggest don't buy anything more than you can comfortably lose should the proverbial feces hit the fan here some day.

INRE buying house over a condo, sure that would be great.  I don't love condos, but I am not willing to jump through the illegal hoops necessary to own land/house here.  With coming regime change, who knows what will happen.  It's extremely unlikely that they'll clean up that situation, but there is still a chance.  However, it is VERY unlikely that they'll ever change the foreigner condo-ownership rules as they depend too much on Chinese investments to build such condos.

All this at an airport that has been shuttered for the last nearly 3 years.

In 10 years of flying out of Utapao many dozens of time, I have NEVER been on a full flight from there.  75% full is max I've ever seen.

So where will the demand for this 'Airport City' come from?

However, seeings that it's only a 15 minute drive down the nearly empty Highway 7 extension from me, I am very interested in this "sales 24-hour 'recreational activities'" portion of the plan.  What sort of 'sales' are we talking about here?  :D :D

I checked the junk pile this morning at Ocean Marina, there is another old Laser there.   Not sure who owns it, but it REALLY needs work.  Some of the surgery has been done already, just awaiting your fiberglass skills.  A guy at the shop next to it said ask the marina manager, Scott Finsten, in the office about it.  It was not that guy's boat.

It is located here:   https://goo.gl/maps/GWTR3h7XRyq5XdBAA

No trailer obviously, and I'm sure no rig, sail, blades or running rigging either.

There was an old one in a stack of rubbish that was probably salvageable at Ocean Marina next to Seacats Boatbuilder.  However a couple weeks ago it disappeared, while the rest of the junk is still there.  Would probably have been ideal for you if you fancy of fiberglass work.

Check at Sattahip Navy Sailing Club as well.  Members of the public can go inside, just ask anyone you see around the grounds.  There are dozens of older boats of many different classes there rotting away.  Some probably can't be sold due to Thai bureaucracy, but some are definitely privately owned and worth asking about.   https://goo.gl/maps/wR7vxvMzYN3mDDBt8

Baht-Sold sometimes has boats listed as well, good idea to check that once a week or so.

The ones at Varuna are very likely to be quite expensive, but it is worth checking.

Alternatively, ILCA Masters Worlds is coming up at Varuna in early 2023, so there will likely be a pile of ILCA boats for sale after that, but same thing, likely very nice boats and very expensive.

On 7/26/2022 at 11:52 PM, BigStar said:

Exactly, nothing to worry about.

Main worry for the old fossils here is a phishing email with an offer for curing erectile dysfunction, BPH, or growing dementia. Or, say, a fake demand from facebook, gmail, or a bank that they change their passwords and info at a fake site.

 

Get an earlier version. But then, being ultra cautious, you'll want to be sure you ignore this warning from Kapersky that came in today, obviously a plot by the Russians:

 

A report from Kaspersky today provides technical details about CosmicStrand, from the infected UEFI component to deploying a kernel-level implant into a Windows system at every boot.

The entire process consists of setting up hooks to modify the operating system loader and take control of the entire execution flow to launch the shellcode that fetches the payload from the command and control server.

     --CosmicStrand UEFI malware found in Gigabyte, ASUS motherboards

 

And UEFI was supposed to be the 'very difficult to compromise' fix for BIOS!

Luckily the affected motherboards from the article are all older 2015-2016 models and certainly wouldn't be purchased 2nd hand by anyone around here  ????

A comment on the article says that more than 40 new UEFI Rootkits have been discovered so far in 2022 alone, so it appears that this could be a growing concern.

18 hours ago, Bruno123 said:

 

I doubt that you have ever encountered a 'BIOS virus' in your whole life, let alone encountered one on a second hand device. Windows 98 anyone?

 

People seem to just take the opportunity to post the most ridiculous things they can think of that they have read and then put them in writing here.

 

Unless you are an activist or some such, forget about any such scenario. If you want to be sure, Kaspersky offers a Firmware Scanner.

 

rrrr...  my best mate in the USA gets paid large sums of money to do penetration testing on various devices.  Have they infected me directly?  No, I'm pretty careful with my devices.   Have I seen them, and what they can do?  Absolutely.  The nonsense he was able to get even a simple cable TV box to do was insane!

Above statement aside, the likely reason no one on here has experienced it is the same reason I have not experienced it:  We are small-fry, no real returns on attacking us.

I recommend giving this a listen if you like IT security subject matter.  Insane how good some 'hackers' are nowadays (and this is from 2016!)  https://radiolab.org/episodes/ceremony

Oh, and here's some up-to-date info on your Kaspersky recommendation.  They have always been very good, but Ukraine situation changes that quite a bit:

https://cybernews.com/best-antivirus-software/kaspersky-antivirus-review/

Rayong.    "downtown" street called 'sailang', loads of pubs, they are starting to fill up once again.

Map Ta Phut, if you like sketchy karaoke shacks, there's at least three different areas of them and they are all going strong once again.   Some of my best nights ever...

You better speak Thai though!

I'm also 46-47, and indeed it's a challenge finding footwear here.  If you ever get down to Pattaya, the Outlet Mall at Sukhumvit / Thepprasit junction has a couple shoe stores in it.  Nike/Addidas and a couple others I believe.  The SportsStadium store sometimes has 46 sizes in stock as well on the corner of the mall.  There was a store located in basement under the SportsStadium also has larger sizes sometimes.

The downside to buying shoes at this place is they are always shoes from 1-2 years ago that have been sitting in storage, likely very hot storage.  I have found that the glues on these shoes fail more quickly than shoes I buy at home that are current production.  You can try re-gluing, but that only lasts so long as well.

Only real down-side to second hand machines these days is the risk of BIOS Virus or Rootkit.  So even if you completely wipe the hard disk, write zeros to it and then re-format and install OS of your choice, you will still have the virus.  Running Linux reduces that chance as most of the Viruses will only infect Windoze machines, but there is still a risk.

These are primarily 'ransomeware' viruses.

For a simple web-browsing computer as the OP seems to be looking for, it's okay.  Personally I would avoid doing online banking or similar on a 2nd hand machine that who-knows-what cracked illegal software was on beforehand, which is one of the top vectors for Virus infection.

1 hour ago, damen said:

Actually, in my experience, a private seller is the one who always sells much higher compared to the market price. But maybe it could be my location. I stayed in Phuket and usually I buy most of my cars in Bangkok.

And won't want to touch EV cars in Thailand. Hybrid Lexus or Toyota car (big yes) but not EV. Charging in a Public Thai station is a nightmare.

I have an EV here and I don't find charging to be that big of a problem.  However, I charge 99% of the time either at Condo or at my work.   The couple dozen times I've needed to charge elsewhere, it was only annoying one time as the charger didn't work until after 10pm (EA Anywhere Network), so I had to wait 10 minutes before starting.

The EV costs 1/3 to drive right now compared to my Ranger 2.2l XLT truck.   No oil changes.  I do 35k+ kilometers a year so it adds up.

Problem is actually FINDING an EV right now.  The MG EP that I have has an 8 month waitlist right now!

I have had loans with TISCO and also Kasikorn bank.  I'm on Non-B Visas.  Both companies required 25% downpayment from me, but others on here, as mentioned above, have found loans that required less downpayment.

Beware 2nd hand cars if you don't know anything about cars...  Seen a few people get really screwed here by unscrupulous dealers.   That happens in every country though.

27 minutes ago, DrJack54 said:

Good that you are close to immigration so in person certainly an option.

Obviously you would be aware of mail in option and with CW (not sure about Rayong) the office returns all your photocopies and new TM47. 

Very simple for organized people. 

Yes aware of it.   Never tried though, for above stated reasons.  It would take more time than simply driving over there.

Thanks for the poke at 'organized people' such as myself  ????

6 minutes ago, Kenny202 said:

Now that makes (Thai) sense. No duty on Chinese cars into one of the largest Asian car manufacturing countries with a huge domestic car market 

There's some good reasons for it, and there is one company (the actual owners of Thailand, Inc?  ???? ) :  CP!

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/CP-Group-rides-China-Dream-with-cars-telecom-development

Indeed some of us do have better/more important things to do, like work for instance.  Online system has never worked for me, likely because I'm on a BOI Non-B visa.  Seems the systems are different.  I've missed my 90 Days a few times over the last 9 years.  Leaving the country does indeed reset it, and I've never had issue getting back in.

A couple times I wasn't able to leave and return.  One time was 3 days and they did nothing.  Another was about 3 weeks, and I got the 2k baht fine, a 45 minute 'lecture' from the woman in charge at Rayong immigration (which consisted of her saying in terrible English, over and over again "You must do 90 day report!"  I think that was the only English she knew)  and they put a stamp in the endorsements section of my passport showing that I failed to do 90 day report and that I had paid the 2k baht fine.

I guess if you got enough of those stamps it could cause you issue on renewing visa, or visa exempt entry etc.

Correction:  It was on a normal Visa page in the passport, not the endorsements section.  It is a large stamp that takes up more than a quarter of a page.

6 minutes ago, Peabody said:

Sleek looking machine. Anybody know what it is?

Macgregor 65.

Not particularly well-built boats.  They were the poor man's sailing 'mega yacht' of the 1980s.

They were pretty quick though, long waterline length and narrow waterline beam.

Ditto on sailing to safety.  Only an idiot would go out in these conditions and not be able to actually sail to safety.

This past Saturday we were out racing when the huge storm came through Jomtien.  Dropped main and jib, was making 5+ knots under bare poles.  Luckily plenty of sea-room, but of course had the anchor ready if we got too close to shore.  Sailed right back into the dock with jib only when wind dropped below 20 knots.  Never even bothered with the engine.  Another yacht out racing said his anemometer was reading 38 knots steady!

The magazine would get a lot more interest if they simply added an 'S' to the front of the name...

IMHO she needs to hit the gym.   Wonder how tall she is?   It's always a bummer when you see a 'stunner' here, then she stands up and she's 146cm tall!