Drumbuie

If the transfer is made by Citibank to a receiving bank with whom you don't have an account, who automatically send it to your Bangkok Bank account, your bank should be able to write you a letter for each transaction, certifying that the funds came from overseas. Mine did; I had helped them by printing out my own copy of the statement ( easily done from the phone app) and highlighting each of the transactions that needed a letter. So then they had the information they needed to access the records easily without having to trawl through all the entries.

Did you not notice he was a farang teaching in an *international* school ?

Because it's stable. So do most UK banks because upgrading is expensive and not without risk, if not done carefully. RBS systems meltdown in 2012 was because they outsourced IT to India - where they had no idea how to handle the three 1960s mainframes on which the whole system was built. My experience of Thai banks apps is that they're miles ahead of the UK's, even if Starling which is entirely an online bank. And before you start complaining about your bank branch here, be thankful you have a branch. UK banks are closing most of theirs - worst of both worlds.

Until there's an emoji for " eyeroll" we have to make do with "confused"....

Bless you, are you unaware of the amount of money the fossil fuel Industry has spent spreading disinformation about climate change and the role their emissions play in it? The car manufacturers - whether petrol, diesel or EV) are probably not far behind. A rational response would be to invest the money in better public transport and encouraging people to use bicycles again or their own two feet (walking, guys , it's good for you) and not only would the air be cleaner, everyone would be fitter, healthier, and happier. Probably a bit slimmer, too.. Heavens, some of the grumpy old guys on here might even cheer up!

The Palestinians were also in that land thousands of years ago. In your Bible ( if it's in English) their name, translated from the Latin, translated from the Greek, translated from the Hebrew, translated from Aramaic scrolls ( which documented an oral history) is the word " Philistines". Remember that it also relates in your Bible that Abraham emigrated to Israel from "Ur of the Chaldees" - he and his family were migrants. Beware of using any kind of ancient history to support a claim.

Sore throat combined with diarrhoea/vomiting are symptoms of one of the newer COVID variants.

How many people do you know whose cold has been so bad they've had to be put on a ventilator in a hospital ?

Electric cars don't have tailpipe emissions of any kind.

As in the UK and elsewhere. There would be even more fraud than there is now if this were not the case. Death has to be finally and officially recognised before any wishes stated in a Will can be carried out and bequests paid out (or, as the legal term has it "executed" - hence the people who administer the Will, carry out the deceased's wishes and pay out the bequests are called "executors").

Count backwards nine months from your passport expiry date in April 2025 to sometime in July 2024. If you're planning a UK trip during those nine months, renew your passport during that trip (you can do a lot of the process online) using the one week Fast Track service. It costs £155 whereas renewing from Thailand costs £127.51. But it's one week, not four (or more) of waiting. And yes, you'll lose a few months of passport validity - but you won't lose any sleep worrying about whether your passport will be returned on time. The older I get, the more I realise that peace of mind is *priceless*. Carry your old passport with your new one. When you get back to Thailand, go to Immigration and apply for them to transfer the visa and extension stamps from your old passport to your new passport (form TM22). Just to be on the safe side, even though I'd had the stamps transferred, I continued to carry my old passport with me till the new extension and re-entry permits were stamped into it.

For as long as there has been a State of Israel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Palestine

Your new passport will be linked on their system to your old passport. Immigration now digitise all their records so every officer at immigration can pull your record up onto the screen and look at it. If they are - which I would do, in their position - digitising their old paper records at the same time, your full ten year history could eventually be visible. Most tourists do not enter the same country more than once or twice a year. It's very easy to write a quick routine that flags up records which do not follow that pattern.

Recreational alcohol causes accidents, deaths and domestic violence every day. Alcohol is an addictive substance, although not as addictive or as deadly as nicotine. (Both, unlike cannabis sativa, have an actual Lethal Dose rating). Both alcohol and nicotine are still legal. It's always about the *money*, it's not about the drug itself.

I can see that some people might need more than one SIM card, but five? And according to @Georgealbert 's post, 30,000 people own more than 30 SIM cards , and several thousand own more than 100 - why on earth would anybody need that many SIMs? I can't think of any legitimate purpose. I

Despite transferring money from Wise to Bangkok Bank in exactly the same way, tagged as "Funds for Long Term Stay In Thailand", not all the transfers showed up as FTT. I went into my branch with a printed statement of the account, highlighting the transfers that weren't marked as FTT, with a separate list of the dates and amounts, and asked for a letter confirming that these were foreign transfers. The bank gave me a separate letter for each incorrectly labelled transfer which I handed to the immigration officer with the rest of the paperwork for my visa extension application ( due to retirement in my case).

I can't imagine that the high pollution levels in Chiang Mai are good for animals, any more than they are for humans.

I've just renewed my visa extension due to retirement at CW. There was no mention of tax returns, because that's the Revenue Deparment's responsibility, not theirs. I made an online appointment for 1030am - the place was packed, not a chair to sit on when I got upstairs after doing the photo/bank letter/bank book update/photocopying stuff. My online number was in the 1100s, the queue's numbers were in the 3000s, which was a little confusing so I asked an official who said, courteously, that the online numbers were just slotted in so not to worry, just to wait. At around 1045 my number was called to Desk 35. There was a trainee as well as the usual officer. I handed over :- Completed Form TM7 with photo Passport Copies of the passport including all visas, extensions, entry stamps (I renewed the passport last June) Bank book Bank letter Copies of the bank book pages since last extension Copy of latest 90 day report A printed Google map with my home marked on it I signed everything in front of her, plus the extra forms (guarantor, acknowledgment of penalties, etc) and paid the 1900 baht. It really was busy - I've never seen so many different nationalities in the L section - and it took nearly an hour to return my passport. Perhaps showing the trainee the ropes was slowing things down? Anyway, by the time I had had a copy made of the new stamp in order to apply for a multiple re-entry permit - and done some scanning and copying for other essential but non-visa purposes - it was lunch break time and too late to get a ticket for C2. After the lunch break, it took a little over 30 minutes from entering the C2 area to having my passport returned with the re-entry permit added. To return to the topic of tax, I've just calculated potential tax liability for the calendar year 2023. I brought just under 1 million baht into Thailand ( in addition to the THB800,000 needed for a retirement extension, which was provably from capital). I shall be seeking advice from a Thai accountant, but my guesstimate after spending a few hours on the Revenue Department website and the helpful guide posted elsewhere in these forums, is that it'll be around THB25000 - just over 2.5% on the entire remittance. Not a lot to pay for peace of mind and a clean report sheet..

Which is going to get considerably more problematic now that Immigration has a database and its officers are really learning how to use it. I obtained my original visa extension on the grounds of retirement myself and am about to renew it. It has been a steep learning curve but I know exactly where I stand. A friend who lives in a Bangkok condo ( which she owns) used an agent and whatever he did, when she tried to renew it herself CW threw it out because he'd applied using an address outside Bangkok ( I didn't memorise the details but that was the gist), now she's stuck with using and paying the same agent.

https://www.gov.uk/tax-uk-income-live-abroad UK citizens with state pensions may find this useful. Particularly "Non-residents do not usually pay UK tax on: the State Pension interest from UK government securities (‘gilts’). "

These forums are not really the best place for research, as the advice you'll get will range from 0-100% accuracy, with sporadic outbreaks of sarcasm, random insults and outright lunacy.

Why don't you open a second account for everyday transactions? I keep my 800k in Bangkok Bank, with a few thousand baht surplus for buying stuff on Lazada, topped up once a month so there's always some activity on the account, and have a KBank account for Grab and the rest of my spending.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague It used to be part of the History syllabus because it led to the Thirty Years War ( which changed Europe forever) and, once read, is a word that is hard to forget.

My brother went to a very small primary school in the Scottish Highlands; one teacher, less than a dozen pupils. No curriculum in those days. They spent a lot of time gardening in the summer months while basically chatting about whatever they wanted to talk about ( no internet in those days, not much TV either). They all did extremely well at secondary school and apart from one, who had to start running the family farm, went on to university. But the idea that 'small is good' ( let alone 'smaller is better') is absolutely anathema to modern economists. Centralise and control is their motto.

Mistletoe and whine....