nigelforbes

According to at least one thread below, there are some 150,000 expats in Thailand, including 75,000 retirees. Assuming those figures are correct, even three overseas trips per year by every single one of them, would have almost no effect on TAT's tourist arrival figures, nor on the TOT passenger arrival figures for a full and normal tourist year. Over and OUT.

Sorry for my late edit to my previous post, not trying to be devious, just forgot that's all. The pizza in question my lud was a take away pizza from the Dukes which we scarfed whilst driving because were both hunger and late. I rest my case.

That occasion, 2017. No wait, last week, a neighbor is a cop, we had lunch with him two days ago.

You know, round, flat, has cheese and stuff on top, surely you must have seen it before...if not, you need to get out more. :))

Sorry, yes, my mis-interpretation of what was said....I'll go whip myself.

Sure, but you have to admit it was an entertaining yarn. And they could have demanded something but didn't, because they knew to a man that I would have stood my ground, I just threw in the pizza as a nice diversion.

I am in a foreign country and I have been stopped my police. We were stopped whilst driving from Chiang Mai to Sukhothai and a hoard of police swarmed my car and inspected our lugage. They found nothing, they planted nothing, an officer supervised and was very professional, we even split some pizza with me whilst the work was underway!

If the sole basis for the bet was that nothing even remotely similar had ever happened to me in 20 years, I might give it a punt. Mind you, if I was a younger female and minor celebrity who was trying to get my name out there in print and to attract attention, my experience might have been different.

The story makes no sense. She showed her visa passport so she had no basis to pay anything, for any reason, she should have stood her ground.

Chartchai’s column makes interesting reading this morning because he discusses many of the things I’ve mentioned here. He confirms that foreign currency from tourism plays only a very small role in changing the value of the Baht, a point I tried to make earlier. So no matter how many tourists arrive, their direct impact on Baht value wont make much difference. He does however make the connection between foreign currency income from tourism (est. USD2.4 bill) and a much larger than expected increase in the Foreign Currency Reserves during January (USD 5 bill.). Why the increase? He suggest that the increase might be FDI, specifically, USD trying to escape Dollar depreciation which is likely to be only temporary (the DI is down from 115 to 102). Higher than forecast interest rates in the US this year (6% not 5.5%), plus the higher than expected cost of oil, should see that flow of hot money reverse, at some point. All those things combined means that USD could strengthen because of the interest rate premium and to pay for the higher oil cost, all very logical. But he is as uncertain as anyone else about the future direction of the Baht, which given the above hypothesis should mean the Baht weakens. There are only so many factors that can influence Baht value and they are all well known, current account deficit/surplus, exports versus imports, tourism levels and FDI flows are the main ones. Exports is the biggest factor but that depends almost entirely on economic conditions outside Thailand so they can’t be controlled, only influenced by Baht weakness which pretty much relies on a strong Dollar. You see the dichotomy here, we need USD to strengthen so that the Baht will weaken, which will mean greater export sales which will cause the Baht to strengthen! The sooner the Baht/USD is replaced with a better alternative, the better. Anyway, read Chartchai’s column today, it’s excellent.

So your father never gave your momma any money....really?

Here ya go TR, because you're my favorite person in the whole world, the number of tourists arriving in Thailand: Linked below is the AOT Air Transport Statistics for 2021 and 2022, click on 2022 and download the report/spreadsheet. Table 6 shows Total Passengers by month and year, embarked, disembarked and transited. The difference between embarked and disembarked, over the longer term, indicates Thai nationals who remained in Thailand hence it might be sensible to use embarked, minus transit to determine the number of people visiting Thailand who might be classed as tourists. The numbers are so close that you may even wish to use Totals because the argument is easily won whichever way you do it. https://investor.airportthai.co.th/transport.html The report only refers to people arriving by air, at AOT airports. If you want to get sensibly close to the true number of tourists you have to factor in the non-AOT airports in Thailand that also handle international flights and these are shown in the link below. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airports_of_Thailand Finally, in respect of total tourist visiting Thailand, one really should include tourists entering by land borders because there will be some. But the number is so hard to determine I decided to exclude them completely from all calculations and do the calculation based on passengers arriving by air only. I’m pretty certain that if you add up those numbers for any given period that you’ll be able to reconcile pretty closely to any TAT published numbers. I think that because that is how TAT arrives at the number of arriving tourists that we see published in the media, despite some people thinking they pull the numbers out of their ar *e. Lastly I will be disappointed if you don’t argue that included in the arrivals numbers are returning expats who aren’t really tourists. Feel free to deduct some percentage of the 250k expats who reside here and adjust the number of arrivals downwards.

Whoosh went the point! The AOT numbers alone will meet the target number put out by TAT, you don't need the border crossing stats. I'm not certain but I don't believe they are even published.

They are seeing the bookings, the reservations, not the tours.

Here's the AOT passenger movements reports, you'll find 2021 in there. Perhaps you can check and see how the number look and get back to us with a revised answer.. https://www.airportthai.co.th/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/ANNUAL-REPORT-2021.pdf

Shocking.

Whether they are or are not is not relevant, they always count the same way so the numbers compare apples with apples.

Building and Contents, includes 3 rd party, is about 6,500 baht. Take a look at Mr Prakan, his comparisons are pretty good and informative. https://misterprakan.com/th/main?lg=en

The Thai workforce is about 32 million people, even if you receive a couple of dozen actual salaries from AN members they will of course be anecdotal because you will have missed the rest! But, up to you as they say.

What about a Grecian urn, any use? If you google, "average salaries Thailand" you'll find pages and pages of sites offering the data you seek, anything you get here will be purely anecdotal.

House insurance should be based on the rebuild value of the house, not the value of the house and the land. Even if the house was destroyed, the land still has value. Rebuild value of the house is likely to be under 2 million, or thereabouts, even if you do have an offer of 5 million for the whole thing. As for the risk of burning down neighbouring properties, that's a 3 rd party liability issue that is unrelated to your house insurance. We have AXA home insurance which covers 2 mill. rebuild cost and 5 mill. 3rd party liability. You can build a lot of house for 2 mill.

A Thai will must be written in or translated into Thai for Probate purposes but it must be signed when it is written in the Will holders native language. Will holders cannot be expected to understand and approve the contents of a document written in another language hence the will can be challenged on that basis.

Some people are into uniforms......it was never my thing.

I agree, except no other country came even close!

Spend 6,000 baht and have a Thai lawyer prepare your will, that way there wont be any questions and you can sleep well at night.