nigelforbes

We've been doing the same for a couple of years, a reduction of about 600 baht per month during the rare times we actually use it.

Shocking, absolutely dreadful, I don't know how the poor expats get by.

I would have thought that an email from anywhere, offering you a 6% per month return on anything would be sufficient to make you delete the damned thing and instantly forget it. The average return on the S&P for the past 20 years is 8.9% PER YEAR, that's less than 1% per month return on blue chip equities belonging to the biggest companies on the planet. Over 5 years you might get lucky and double your money on the S&P, your email offers to do it in 18 months, what do you think!

That's a different solar system entirely.

Excuses such as those as par for the course here, similar things exist at all levels. I went to pay my annual health insurance bill at my bank last week but the cashier said, "sorry, this bank doesn't pay CIGNA any more". Years ago I might have got upset about something like that, my bank can't pay a 125k bill to a major company, wot! Instead I just smiled and told her I'd go to branch that did know how to pay the bill (the problem was that she didn't know but didn't want to lose face). At another branch the bill was paid, albeit they had to call head office which was no big deal. The point is, every day life in Thailand is littered with a myriad of these events, if you're going to live here you'll need to accept that and be prepared for them.

It was a joke, relax a little, life's too short.

Some years ago I bought insulation for my attic which cost around 30k or so. I also purchased an installation service for around 18k. The installation was a disaster, I suspect the installer had never seen insulation before let alone installed it in an attic. I called the famous name home DIY store who sent out two inspectors and a refund was promptly agreed, I said I would do the job myself. Back in the store the refund was processed but it took quite a while and involved many group huddles, eventually cash was returned. A couple of weeks later I made a largish purchase from the store and was asked for my membership number. I was surprised to see that my membership points balance was negative by a substantial amount, the combination of existing points plus those acquired from buying the insulation meant it should have been quite high. It turns out they had used the points to offset the cash refund, I scored them an A+ for creativity.

The OP's bad, why he doesn't know these basics of everyday life here? ????

You go home, as long as the amount of the fine is correct. The object of the exercise is to ensure that the police system is paid rather than the individual. I've only ever been find by a police check once in 20+ years and that was because my wife wasn't wearing a seat belt (I hadn't noticed and we were quite close to home). The cop wanted however much but we demanded a ticket which he reluctantly issued. Ten minutes later we were in the police station where the amount of the fine was promptly discounted by a friendly cop who realized I wasn't a farang tourist and the female is my wife.

Whoosh!

A few points, in order to keep perspective: Thailand's inflation rate as of Oct 22 was 6.41%, according to the IMF, that's hardly rampant by comparison. Tourism accounts for 18% of GDP but only about 11% of that is international tourism, the remainder is domestic tourism which largely still remains to a greater or lesser degree. Thai exports to CCP were USD 36.5 bill in 2021, the total value of Thai exports in the same year was USD 295 bill., about 12% of total exports went to CCP, not quite a heavy reliance. https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/THA https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate?continent=world https://tradingeconomics.com/thailand/exports/china https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/THA/thailand/exports#:~:text=Thailand exports for 2021 was,a 20.41% decline from 2019.

How?

She's your wife, of course you do.

It didn't USD weakened on the back of smaller rate increases.....but the net effect is similar, the THB/USD exchange strengthened.

"If a rice cooker uses, say 627 watts during cooking, that is 0.627 kilowatts. The operational cost in this instance is 13 hundredths of one cent (per minute) which is $0.0013. The cost per hour is then $0.07 cents. If you leave the rice cooker on warm after the cooking is completed, for no more than an hour, then your cost per day is $0.14. That would mean it costs you potentially around $4-5 to run per month". https://kitchensnitches.com/how-much-electricity-do-rice-cookers-consume/

BOT and Finance will have determined the optimum level for THB, given the current economic circumstances both nationally and globally. 34/35 seems reasonable to me. A Baht that is too strong means exports become expensive and unattractive, too weak and imports such as oil become expensive plus inflation risks increase. That's what he means, it's not that he's incompetent, it just means you don't understand what was said or why.

Yes, surging means to increase suddenly and powerfully. It doesn't mean to increase by huge amounts.

"If not how do they justify offering a different rate from their advertised rate"? You seem to think that banks in Thailand owe the population a duty of care and consistency in their advertising across their branches. In overly developed countries such as the UK that's true but people here are required to think a little bit. If you understood how FOREX and exchange rates work and that rates change every second, you'd realize that by the time an employee had put a rate on the board at one branch, it would be wrong. Pondering whether or not two boards at two different branches miles apart were identically wrong, at the same moment in time, is on par with navel gazing. Musing about the appropriateness of that wrong is a sign of a highly underdeveloped mind.

I can answer your question but I can't understand it for you!

FOREX rates change every second, it's impossible for any bank or currency exchange booth to have realistic and accurate current exchange rates ever, unless they use streaming rates. If the banks web site shows real time rates, they will apply at that second, everywhere because all the branches use the same system. Sign boards showing current rates are come ons, nothing more than advertising and indicative of what the rate was at some point in the past.

So either they are not registered or they are registered under a different name.....the plot thickens.

I found it! That 750% was in fact almost 800% and represents total US debt. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-states/total-debt--of-gdp BTW I'm still working on a like for like comparison.

Flooding in September (historically) during some years but only for a few days, almost never at any other time.

Paint your roof white, insulate and ventilate your roof space......we did both those things and we hardly use A/C more than a couple of weeks per year or so, even then only in dehumidify mode.

The weather up North in Chiang Mai has been brilliant for a couple of weeks now. Nice and cool overnight, cool in the morning and pleasant evenings. Too hot in the sun during the day but that's siesta time anyway. As for the rain, I'm super happy to see it because it keeps the smog down plus too much rain is far preferable than the opposite