grain

BINGO! 😁 They been talking about this 300Bt fee for ages now, but they didn't know how to apply it. If they charged every foreigner upon arrival it'll be a total nightmare with arrivals lined up for hours paying in cash, offering foreign currencies, using expired CCs. They could just tag it onto the airfares, but then Thais would get hit with it too, and what about the land arrivals? So they finally solved the problem with this TDAC. And that's why you can't be a foreigner and select Thailand as your country of residence. After the payment comes in they'll probably make it mandatory to have paid and received the QR code before departing, and no QR code, no boarding flight. The airlines will have to go along with it or else they'll be responsible for any passengers refused entry.

I guess it depends where one lives and what shopping is available nearby, in our case we live about 50km from Korat imm, and we're out in the boonies, nothing much around us or nearby, just small M&P shops, so every 3 months I need to do a 90 day, we're happy for an excuse to drive into Korat City, it takes me 5 minutes to do the report then we're at Makro, Lotus's, and other big shopping centers to stock up on all the goodies that aren't available near us. But of course is we had a big shopping center close to home then driving 50km to do a report would be a pain in the butt.

Thanks for this write up, very informative. I also have driven into Cambodia many times over the years, but not since the covid pandemic. I'm planning on again this coming August with my Thai GF. Naturally my car is owned by me and registered in my name. We live in Korat and want to go to Siem Reap, so the most convenient entry & exit point for us is Chong Chom/O'Smach. As I just mentioned we'll be returning to Thailand the same way, so no hassles there regarding wanting to exit via a different customs office. Are there currently any fees/charges at all at Chong Chom/O'Smach? I recall last time we drove in and out the Thais never charged us anything, but the Cambodians managed to squeeze a few $USD from me. And how long do you think the whole entry thing will take until we're off down the road heading for Siem Reap? In the past it was generally about one hour.

That's why I always do it in person, just don't trust their IT system, and if there's any error or slipup at their end they'll never admit fault, it'll always be the foreigner's fault.

Thailand was the flavour of the month for a long long time, but it was inevitable that another SEA country would rise up become the new flavour of the month.

Laem Chabang's Romeo & Juliet

the 300Bt arrival tax for foreigners has officially been announced as coming in before end of this year, it's stage 2 of the TDAC. Stage 1 is getting the online form and QR code set up and running, then a few months later stage 2 bringing in the 300Bt fee which we'll need to pay online before getting the QR code. It's no trolling rumour. It's coming.

Probably a good idea to change that now to your name, or your account could get automatically locked. Not worth risking the inconvenience.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least, I've kinda been expecting a hike up in the financial requirements for a few years now, but if it went to 2million THB it'll be the straw that breaks the camel's back for me.

Same with me, I actually have dual DTAC sims, only one of them I use for banking and official matters (the other is data) and the official sim was in tirak's name. 5 minutes at the DTAC counter and it was changed to my name, then I went to my banks, I have 2 accounts (SCB and the yellow bank) and we went through and updated all my info (one account still had an old address for 5 years ago) So everything is all correct and up to date now.

Well that batwoman from the Wuhan lab was going out to the remote mountains and catching bats, bringing them back to the lab, and they were tweaking the viruses, gain of function study, obviously there was a lab leak. As soon a covid 19 broke out in Wuhan the officials knew exactly what they were dealing with, they locked down Wuhan, and cleared all the computer data, did a wonderful clean up at the Wuhan seafood market, where the lab staff went for after work dinners. The biggest villian is the story is that clown Tedros from the WHO.

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.