Lorry

Many Taiwanese are too scared to visit Thailand anyway. Too many have been kidnapped by the scam enterprises in SE Asia. Taiwanese scam workers are valuable because they can speak Chinese (mainland China is still the biggest market for online scams), they can speak English (the biggest emerging market for online scams is the US), and many have IT knowledge (scam bosses still don't want to pay the kind of salaries and perks their brethren in California pay)

You are right. But the easiest way to get help at the airport is ordering a wheelchair (free) if your age makes it plausible that you cannot walk those endless miles through the airports. You are right, again, that traveling to the UK only makes sense if he has someone and somewhere to go.

It's too early. Home governments may need years until they react. They just got notified in the end of last year.

Individual transfers are not reported, balances are reported. Whether or not you have a Thai TIN doesn't matter. Whether or not you stay more then 180 days should not matter, either

This will work IF he is still lucid enough not to cause problems. Just order a wheelchair and get a non-stop flight. If he is so demented that he does things like getting out of the wheelchair, refusing to board, unable to eat... whatever, he needs someone to travel with him. If he is incontinent, or cannot use the toilet on the plane, things get complicated.

I know him!

OMG Just for you: the second post was irony. I thought that was obvious. It explains why Thai police would say "they are all there by their own will". BTW the involvement of so many foreign embassies, since about a year ago, has disturbed the owners of the scam enterprises. So they have started to pay higher wages, to attract volunteers, and to rely less on kidnapping and torture. But it still happens a lot.

Very expensive

Good. Sleeping with earplugs, I cannot hear it at all. During the day, it doesn't disturb me. (I am very sensitive to noise. Xiaomi is quieter, BTW)

It is impossible being kidnapped in Bangkok and then being driven for many hours through all of Thailand across a border to the scam center, passing through many police and military checkpoints and crossing an international border. Thai police, military and immigration would notice. So, these people must all have traveled on their own will, with the proper visa. Agreed?

They kidnapped a lot more than 7000 people. Online scamming has become a global industry, bigger than the drug trade. It has taken over whole countries (eg Cambodia). It originated in China, but the scamming enterprises now need English speakers to serve the US market. Their employees usually come willingly to Bangkok (having been duped), but not many work willingly in a prison compound, complete with torture rooms, in warlord-held territory in Myanmar, or in the Lao part of the golden triangle. Required reading: https://www.usip.org/publications/2024/08/southeast-asia-web-scams-reach-us-setting-alarms-law-enforcement https://www.usip.org/publications/2024/05/transnational-crime-southeast-asia-growing-threat-global-peace-and-security https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2025-02-08 https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc

This is something i have read about 100 times in this thread, and many thousands of times on TV during the last 20 years. I never discuss the subject with farang - because in my experience, farang are awful drivers, especially when let loose in Thailand. Here farang feel free to do everything they wouldn't dare to do at home. BTW Thais admire many things in farang, farang are rich, farang have a good heart, are responsible and hard working... but I have never heard a Thai admire farang driving skills. Maybe farang don't drive the way Thais do, and thus don't fit in in Thai traffic (I am being polite here). But whatever farang lack in driving skills, they make up for it with their super-sized ego. Everybody is a Michael Schumacher. Having said all this, this thread is about road safety, and OP is absolutely right that the point is not whether Thais (or farang) are bad drivers. It's very refreshing to read about road safety in Thailand from a rational perspective, and not the usual racist rant you here from every barstool. Kudos to OP.

Best tax post for a long time. Smart poster and smart tax office. I should move to Samui to file my taxes there.

It doesn't only apply to pension income, but it doesn't apply to all of the various categories of assessable income listed in the RC. This is all listed quite explicitly in the RC and had been posted before by @chiang mai, e.g. on August 23.

Which is exactly why it's implemented

... then that tells you something about that county. (Just as the posts in this thread tell you something about that country)

From the abstract of the article OP linked on Wednesday: "The public blame drivers rather than the state" BTW a good introduction into the subject is the NYT article from 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/world/asia/thailand-inequality-road-fatalities.html Not as long and not scientific, but easy to read.

The leader of today's Economist. You get 1 free article, to get another one delete history. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/02/06/the-vast-and-sophisticated-global-enterprise-that-is-scam-inc https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2025/02/07/scam-inc-reveals-a-world-of-crime-even-worse-than-the-drug-trade https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/02/06/online-scams-may-already-be-as-big-a-scourge-as-illegal-drugs The Thai government is working very hard against the scammers, who kidnap their victims often in Thailand, ferry them unhindered through multiple police and military checkpoints to a neighboring country, where they force them to work as slaves in the scam center towns using Thai infrastructure (Thai electricity, Thai mobile networks).

The content is not so much outdated (the referenced studies are fairly recent) as debated. As for the usefulness of PSA, German guidelines discuss PSA on 10 pages, without any conclusive result. A bit too much for this forum. Sweden (and Norway) obviously recommends the Stockholm3 test, which is also used by the university hospital of Zurich.

Yes. Easy. But must go to their shop

The call center will tell you if it's your name or the name of your wife. They will also tell you if it's none of these two, and may help you to figure out which name you used (if, for example, it was your grandfather ). They will not tell you the name of a SIM card if the name is completely unrelated to you.

Are you kidding? Just as an example, the last time I drove in Iowa, I was supposed to mostly drive on the right-hand side of the road. I have done this in Thailand, too, but for some reason my TGF protested.

Nowadays, the orange Superrich (at least the main branch) gives you a real nice receipt with your name if you change money. About the green Superrich, I don't know. Vasu does it on request.

And for a scientific approach, I recommend reading the long post OP wrote 51 minutes ago.

From my anecdotal evidence, corroborated by many TV threads, farang in Thailand are disastrous drivers. First, they drive on the wrong side of the road (if they are Americans or Europeans). Second, most don't have a license, ie they don't have the license to drive the kind of vehicle they drive here. People who have never in their life operated a motorcycle do it here all of the time. In their home country, they wouldn't dare to do it without the proper license. Here, I have been asked whether one needs a license at all to drive. And they can't read Thai traffic signs. Then, farang in Thailand are usually old, slow, poor vision, sleepy reflexes, but stubborn. Many wouldn't be considered roadworthy in their home-country. And they are usually drunk. Finally, most farangs know that they are superior beings. They cannot even imagine that their driving is less than perfect. And they are always quick to blame "the Thais". From this not-so-scientific analysis clearly follows, aliens should be relegated to walking.