grain

The social media in Australia has been running hot, it's quite a nasty divisive election actually, possibly the most divisive I've seen since the Whitlam era. In this election we have two very uninteresting and uninspiring leaders. Albo is a boring fart who has spent too much time flying around the world with his girlfriend; and Dutton is a meathead ex QLD copper with zero charisma. It's interesting with Dutton because up until very recently the image projected by him was tough and stern, no nonesense, there were tough things ahead and he was the tough man to deal with them. But they may have overdone it and put people off because the past couple of weeks they're now presenting a softer, warm smiling Dutton, holding hands with his handsome son, and walking around smiling with the Indian community pretending he's not a racist. There's nothing but bad news ahead for Australia regardless of who wins. If ALP then more of the same from them, some of which has been pretty good, and a lot not so good. Dutton will be a disaster in my opinion, he doesn't give a rat's ass about afforable health care, education or arts, if he gets in he'll put as much funding as he can into police, border force, defence, they are the areas he cares about. Control the people, lock up the borders, bring in bigger fines, heavier penalties, more mandatory sentencing, the full force of the law. Once a fascist QLD pig, always a fascist QLD pig. However as we stand today it seems most likely that not only will the unpopular Dutton lose this election, he'll probably lose his seat as well, as there is a swing against him in his electorate, and he only hold his seat by 3000.

sure, I'm not passing any judgement on it, just saying it's pretty common here and I've seen quite a few Thais do it.

It's a common thing here, over the years I've seen quite a few Thais do this, I've seen Thai teens do this to their GFs when they tried to get away from them, I've seen Thai cops do this when someone tries to flee from police checks.

OK, thanks for the tip.

It's certainly on my list, as I said earlier we have a car, I checked some resort prices and much cheaper than elsewhere on Phuket, I guess due to the isolation. I had a walk around the place with Goggle maps and there are a few little Thai seafood restaurants, so this beach could be what we're after.

OK thanks, I wasn't familiar with this beach so just checked it out online, it certainly looks promising.

Yep. we're in Korat, we've had a few hot days but nothing like past years, and most days have been pleasant and mild. We're now halfway through April, so lets hope it continues.

Exactly, my fighting days are over but back in my younger days I learned to read body language and to size someone up, never saw any sense in getting into a scrap if I was going to get minced. If the odds looked stacked against me I backed away.

When the security guys first started circling around him like sharks in dirty water if he had a brain the size of a pea he would have read the landscape and backed off, but instead he wanted his few moments of fame. I bet it didn't seem such a good idea when he woke up this morning all sore and aching. 😂

Great idea, you old American retirees should check out Phuket and Pattaya, you can enjoy lovely evenings in the Walking Street and Soi 6, or Soi Bangla, sipping cocktails while watching ladyboys stomp the bejesus out of drunken shirtless yobos.

He shouldn't be getting anything, not a brass razoo, he shouldn't even be called "prince" any more.

So much tourist behavior really is going from bad to worse all over the country in recent months. Seems like Thailand is becoming the budget sh!thole of Asia.

Aussie pension is ok to live on in Oz provided you own your home, but if paying rent you're screwed. If you take to pension to Thailand or elsewhere in SEA then can live well on it provided you don't get crook and end up in hospital, then you're screwed again. Guess it's all of matter of how's the health and how good one is at managing money.

You would intervene??? Not a smart thing to do, if any farang tried to intervene in a fight between Thais, then the farang would get stomped senseless. Best thing is stand well back and watch and enjoy.

Same with me, I'm actually flying to Oz on May 7, and returning around end of June, so the TDAC (if it's still going, which I think it will be) would have been in service for best part of 2 months, so I reckon they would have sorted out the issues by then.

How you been following this thread Andrew? The topic of this thread starts on May 1, every foreign person entering Thailand from May 1 has to do the TDAC. I sure wouldn't want to be anywhere near Swampy on May 1. 😂

Because they are the earliest dates, it starts May 1, so the biggest issues will happen on those first few days, after May 3 or 4 they might well dump the whole idea, or at least solve some of the initial problems.

you can fill it in online while you're sitting in the departure lounge waiting for your flight. At the present time you don't have to fill it in ahead of time at all, you can wait until you arrive and do it then, but I suspect that'll mean waiting in line with about ten thousand Chinese arrivals, so best do it online before arriving.

I'd hate to be flying into Swampy or DM on May 1,2,3. It's gonna be pandemonium, not everybody lives online and has heard about the TDAC, plus there are all those Chinese, Koreans, Russians and so forth who can't read or write English, so it stands to reason they'll be thousands of such arrivals who haven't done their TDAC online and not knowing what's going on and what to do. How can the Thais have sufficient numbers of staff ready to assist all these incoming travelers? Any AN members planning on flying in early May make sure you have this damn thing done online so you can get outta the airports fast. It's going to be fun seeing the vids people will post online of their arrivals in Thailand around May 1,2,3.

every time you enter Thailand

Remember this TDAC is just stage 1, stage 2 comes in a couple months later, and that's the introduction of the 300THB foreigner arrival tax, which we'll pay online at the same time as we do the TDAC online. Anyone thinking they'll just ignore the online option and do it at the airport (or at the border) on arrival bear in mind that the people who have done everything online ahead of time will have the QR code on their phones and they'll be officials waiting to scan the code and off you go to immigration. The ones without the codes will have to line up and fill in the TDAC at the airport or border (and pay the 300THB fee in a couple months from now) and that'll mean an extra hour or two before you get out the airport. So complying online makes heaps of sense.

As usual this headline is misleading, all the misunderstood points have been sorted out. You cannot submit the TDAC prior to 3 days before but it doesn't have to be done 3 day before, you can do the day you depart, or you don't have to do it beforehand at all, you can do it at the airport after you arrive, but obviously if you do it in advance it will speed up the time it takes to get out of the airport. And all foreign PP holders have to do this, regardless of which visa you hold. Even foreigners with PR have to do this as they travel on their foreign PPs. Only foreigners who hold Thai citizenship and have Thai PPs don't need to do a TDAC.

Looks great LA, thanks again you've been very helpful.

That's the beauty of having own car as we can move around easily and check things out. Seems like Kamala and Nai Harn will suit us best. We plan on spending 3 nights at Phuket, one day I'll take my wife for a tour of the main attractions, and possible we could do a PP trip the next day.