Drumbuie

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....

Would you like to share any examples, or evidence, you have for people with depression (with or withou inverted commas) being "often highly manipulative and vindictive, basically angry with everyone"?

The former leader of the free world ..

The problem is the Red Sea. To export to Europe in winter, it's the shortest and thus cheapest route. If Israel continues it's Palestinian genocide, the Houthis will continue to retaliate by firing on ships passing through the Red Sea. That is already slowing down Asian/European trade in both directions and thus reducing the number of containers available anywhere at any time*, because international trade/capitalism avoids having spare capacity - it's run by accountants not strategists. * Because a percentage are now stuck at one end of the Red Sea or the other.

Are you sure they aren't? There seems to be an increasingly steady stream of " caught overstayer(s) in the reports here as immigration gets to grips with the possibilities of using databases to cross check entry and exit data.

Drool Britannia ..

Nah. Nobody in Scotland is called ' Martin'.

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. Everyone else generally takes a lunch break..

Careful, guys, you can easily OD on schadenfreude...you need to mix it with a little empathy.

Those legs belonged to a fellow human being, someone who died, probably unpleasantly, possibly violently.

No mention of the amount of particulates that come from car and lorry tyres. Recent research shows little difference in pollution between EVs and petrol/ diesel fuelled cars - turns out its the tread on the tyres wearing off grain by grain that does the real damage...

You've never been to the US, then where Immigration is legendarily unpleasant....or Sri Lanka. We arrived in Colombo yesterday, SL Airways cabin crew didn't hand put any landing cards like they used to and there were no signs in the airport mentioning them.but yes, you still need to fill one in. The queues, as a result, were interminable as each foreign visitor got to the front of the queue, was shouted at and sent off to fill one in.

My dad used to play the pipes and make us listen to pibroch for hours. Despite that I still love listening to pipe music of all kinds (so stfu, you barbarian Sassenachs....) In answer to the OPs question, there are regular pipe band practice sessions at the British Club in Bangkok, so you could email the address in this link and ask if he knows any pipers in Pattaya. https://www.britishclubbangkok.org/sports-n-activities/pipe-drum-band/

Looks like the sort of standard McMansion property developers love to build in the UK, crammed together as tightly as possible while still qualifying as "detached".

Look at the map of Israel when it was established after WW2, then look at it today's it has encroached again and again, with violence, into Palestinian territory. The IDF destroys the olive trees that the Palestinians depend on. A huge number of Israelis are as horrified by their government's behaviour as any one watching from beyond their borders - as one of them said to me in August, the trouble with our protesters is they're too well behaved. Hamas would not exist if Israel had behaved decently.

My oldest friends had three successful and highly rated restaurants in London; let me assure you that getting a star in the Michelin Guide involves reaching a very high standard, no matter where you are in the world. The inspectors take it very seriously indeed. It's one of the few things left. that just can't be bought.

AQI over swathes of Thailand, urban and rural, has been in the red for several days. Your natural nasal filters can't filter out the ultrafine particles that cause long term lung damage (which is why miners, flour millers, woodworkers, quarrymen, anyone working in dusty atmospheres used to die young of lung disease). Why wouldn't you wear a mask? Even if you think COVID is a hoax, 'flu isn't, nor is COPD.