stratocaster

The condo opposite me in Bangkok still has 6 brand new units available from the initial release in 2017 at 2017 prices.

Thai REIC have announced the vacant land price index for first quarter of 2023. Inner Bangkok has seen a 13.2% increase from first quarter 2022. Land prices in the Bangkok suburbs have risen by between 25% and 65% due to low base starting prices from the same period. Future development will concentrate on the suburbs due to reduced land costs.

The Thai REIC have just announced their building cost index for the first quarter of 2023. The costs are based on a two story detached house with 160 sq. mts. including VAT but excluding all land costs, labour costs and taxes. Overall costs are up 3.5% after being flat for the whole of 2022. Sanitary ware prices increased 13.2%, wood increased by 13% and tiles are up by 10%. All other rises were less than 10%. Rebar and concrete were up by 7% and 4.3% respectively. Using the base line house, concrete accounts for 4.4% and rebar is 5.8% of total construction costs.

Thai property developers publish a monthly index on prices. I have no idea how the figures are calculated but in 2000 the index for Bangkok condos was 52, last month it was 63. Figures are published in a Thai business paper. Another handy site is below. https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Asia/Thailand/Price-History

The first thing you need to understand is the appointment system for KL. The appointment system works 14 days in advance so if you had logged in yesterday the only day available was the 16 May. If you login today the only day available is the 17 May. If you check on Saturday or Sunday the available day will be the first Monday after 14 days. That is why there are never any times available by 0600 on Monday. Tuesday times are normally gone by 0800 There are only 6 times available. To get your passport back requires 4 working days and must be pre booked, only two times per day available. To get your passport back the same week requires applying on a Monday or Tuesday. Applying on a Wednesday will get your passport returned on the following Tuesday afternoon due to the weekend plus 4 working days. From this you can see why there are normally application slots available on Wed. Thurs and Friday. There have been numerous reports that they are strictly following the visa guidelines as below. 1. Original Passport with at least 6-month validity and 2 blank visa pages 2. A completed visa application form with a passport size photo 3. A copy of passport (ID page) 4. A copy of reservation/confirmation of transport tickets to and from Thailand 5. The applicant’s bank statement or bank book showing the account’s name and number, balance and history of transactions for the last 3 months 6. Proof of payment for accommodation for the whole period of stay in Thailand (the receipt must state the tax payer number of the relevant hotel/accommodation)

Would be interested in knowing what car you want to export from Thailand.

After a gap of 7 years the thing that staggered me in my home town was the number of pubs that have disappeared. Pubs that in my youth I queued outside for 30 minutes in the freezing rain to gain access are now ethnic restaurants and takeaways. There is even a Persian restaurant.

According to a visa run company to which uses Savannakhet for SETV the consulate have changed their policy very recently regarding issuing visas. Basically if you have Covid, ed, volunteer or long border run history in your passport you will be refused a SETV. They now have a disclaimer that no refunds are given for visa refusal. I can confirm that a couple of months ago I met with a visa runner refused for the 90 days in 180 days "rule".

My friend in the UK has just imported a car from Japan to the UK. Shipping cost with insurance was 4,400 pounds, port to port and Ro-Ro.

You have posted a link to a commercial website that clearly states and I quote. "However, as you read this article, most, if not all will be closed due to the ongoing COVID 19 pandemic and subsequent travel restrictions." "Another thing to mention is that the days of the “border bounce”, i.e. just going across the border and coming almost immediately to obtain a new visa-exempt entry are well and truly over. Once a very common and easy practice, now the Thai immigration officials see this as an abuse of the visa rules and will almost certainly refuse entry".

If it's for an internal wall why not go for a vinyl wrap. Available in brick, stone, tile and wood effect. The expensive ones look pretty good. If you get bored with it you can peel it off.

If you check the KL embassy website there is a notice at the top of the page that visa applications need 14 days notice. Going to the appointment page and all days before and after are greyed out apart from the day 14 days ahead which Is the 3rd May. Clicking on that date brings up the message. "No free slots available for the moment for the selected date. Also please note that advanced appointment period of each service is limited as follows - Visa, Legalisation: 14 days in advance. Thai ID, Passport: 60 days in advance."

Who would have believed it. "At the time the Ford Capri RS3100 was launched the cards were stacked against it being a marketing success as the new MK2 Capri was waiting in the wings, there was an oil crisis and it was very expensive at nearly £2,500, the car proved very difficult to sell, this led to 50 cars being exported to Australia in June/July 1974. There were also 22 cars registered by Ford for the use of their Area Sales Managers to try and push sales most of the time at heavily discounted prices". One of the Australian cars has been imported back to the UK. Year of manufacture 1974, 40083 genuine mileage, a snip at 53,999 pounds. There is also a one owner car registered to the Ford Motor Company for sale. Price on Application.

To give the OP an idea of how the columns are incorporated to the floor plan design. The small boxes with the cross inside.

Basically what you have designed is a Thai standard 3 bed one story house. the difference is most houses have all the bedrooms and one bathroom along the right side and the living area on the left side with a toilet and hard standing at rear for a kitchen. The right hand bathroom normally has a door from each side bedroom to make it two en suit bedrooms. The size would be 10 meters wide and 16 meters long. Span width is 4x2x4 meters. Your house as sketched has from the rear of the wardrobe to the rear wall is 12 meters assuming 2 meter bathroom 4 meter bedroom and 2 meter wardrobe. This 12 meter span would require 2 columns sticking up from the floor in the living area assuming using the 4x4 meter system. If you make the bathroom 4meters the bedroom 6 meters then you could lose one column. Or as someone said move a bedroom from right side to left side. You can build any size rooms and span widths that your heart desires but remember that the two factors involved are builders skill level and cost constrains. To build a beam and post frame from 4x4 modules is 30% cheaper than using 5x4 modules. My last house had a column-less living room 15meters by 20 meters spanned using a cantilevered steel system. It did not cost an arm and a leg, it cost two arms and two legs.

Out of curiosity I looked at the countries where the UK state pension annual rises are given. I wonder why The Philippines is on the list but Canada, Australia and New Zealand are not.

If you are building using the normal Thai style of the concrete column and beam construction you have omitted where your columns will be situated, which dictates internal plan. For cheapness and ease of construction most Thai builders construct on a 4 meters by 4 meters grid. Length wise at 20 meters is easy that's 4 internal posts span. Width wise at 14 meters is awkward. Do you go for 2 x 7 meter span (which would have the row of columns right in the center of the house) or two 4 meter spans and one 6 meter. Or 3 x 4.6 m spans. Or are you going to choose a different construction method that eliminates internal columns altogether. Then you have to figure what roof material you use as that dictates the load the walls have to take if columns omitted.

Was reading a UK forum and the topic accident insurance in Thailand caught my eye. Someone posted the fine print on their policy. "Policy covers treatment in state run hospitals only. No private treatment covered." "Aerial transport only covered on journeys to and from government registered airports." I assume that means hot air ballooning and skydiving is not covered. Maybe the insurance company could stretch that to bungee jumping and zip lining.

First was a news interview with a member of the management team at the Port of Dover. When asked what was the main reason for delays he went into his pocket and showed a blue passport to the camera. A travel adviser guru was asked what compensation was available for delayed UK passport holders. He showed a blue passport and said, "This is your compensation".

I was in Savannakhet a couple of weeks ago, nothing to do with visas, but I met a visa runner in the hotel who had been refused a SETV. His history was first entry SETV extended for total 90 days. Then border bounce with 75 day stay. The reason given for refusal was more than 90 continuous days spent in Thailand. I thought that can't be correct as he did a border hop, but of course he had left Thailand and re-entered the same day, so stamp-wise it's continuous. Maybe if he had stayed out 1 day he would have broken the chain. He tried to argue about calendar year to no avail. PS This guy was very obnoxious. Perhaps that had a bearing on his refusal.

According to the Thai customs website you have to deposit a bond in either cash or a bank guarantee. Did you have to do this and if so how was it calculated.

The last nail in the coffin. In 2004 the remnants of the original BMC were called MG Rover. At the time the must have car was a supermini, unfortunately Rover had no such car. Management decided that the best course of action was to do a marketing deal with an existing car. The car chosen was the Indian made Tatra Indica which had already been in production for 5 years. This was re-badged as a Cityrover. It was priced at 7000 pounds when a Peugeot 104, the market leader at the time was retailing for 5777 pounds. The build quality was so bad that dealers refused to sell them due to warranty claims, so MG Rover sold them direct to the public. When the company went bankrupt in 2005 the CEO, COO, head of marketing and head of finance were given a tax payer funded golden handshake of one million pounds each. The work force received 3000 pounds in redundancy payments. PS. The Cityrover is rated one place above the Reliant Robin in the worst cars ever built list.

Talk is cheap. Who will be supervising the clean up projects? The police? The probation service? Maybe hire some pensioners to get them back into the job market, which this government seems to think is the way to UK prosperity. The probation service have 14,670 vacancies in the youth justice division as of yesterday. And before you hear an MP gaslighting that the government has increased probation officers in 2022 by 7000, this is officers who were transferred from the private sector but government funded division. So no overall increase.

What day did you apply that had massive queues. I assume Monday as that is the Visa runners day.

There has been a lot of chatter on this forum regarding the million job vacancies in the UK. I just read an article that there are 6,000 vacancies at Heathrow. I found a job agent that lists 1200 of those jobs. There are basically no jobs paying over 21,000 per year or 10.80 per hour. Harrods and Gucci shops pay their shop assistants 10.80 pounds per hour. Remember this is to live in London. Supermarket "managment" assistants are 11 pounds per hour outside London. 12 pounds inside. The job that surprised me was the building site carpenter at 15 pounds per hour. I checked with a German job agency, first building site carpenter job I found pays 30 Euros per hour plus housing allowance plus travel benefits.