Foxx

I received one 3-4 days ago. Business as usual.

My situation: have no close living relatives, have lived with my partner of many years. In the event that I die, I understand that the Embassy will contact a relative in the UK before my body can be released for disposal. Given that I don't even know the names of any of my distant relatives, let alone how to contact them, can I nominate my Thai partner to be contacted instead? If so, how? I really don't like the idea of my body lying unclaimed in a hospital for weeks or months.

Just to let people know what happened: No problem. Required documents: - Print out of my last 90 day report - Print out of my TM.30 record - Photocopy of the personal information, last extension, and last entry stamp pages from my passport - Application form - 200 baht. My only grip is that it took so long. Last time I needed a residence certificate was at Mueang Thong Thani. There were separate queues for residence certificates and 90 day reporting. Now that it's back at Chaengwattana there's one queue. At MTT it took me five minutes. At CW I was waiting an hour and a half to be seen. (And whilst people doing 90 day reporting can book an appointment in advance, that's not possible for residence certificates.) Of course, in a more developed country there'd be no need physically to make a four hour round trip for such an application when an email would suffice. But this is Thailand. I did have to point out a couple of times that I'd only recently reentered the country, but that wasn't a big deal.

I'm now a bit concerned. I'm planning on going to Chaengwattana to get a residence certificate tomorrow. I've been doing 90 day reporting at the same address for something like 15 years. However, late last year I made a brief trip abroad, and it's not been 90 days since I re-entered Thailand, so it's now over 90 days since I last did a 90 day report. Am I going to have a problem? (I did do the TM30 reporting upon my return here.) This is really critical for me since I have a driving licence renewal appointment coming up next month.

Hmmm. Deposit 10 million with a bank when deposit protection is only one million in order to get a card? Count me out. https://www.kasikornbank.com/en/personal/the-wisdom/Pages/conditions.aspx

What kind of meat is it (pork, beef, chicken, &c.) that is eating dinosaur footprints? It's important to know.

Indeed. April 24th last year it was reported that "Test runs for the Pink and Yellow Lines will get underway in September before they enter commercial operation in December". I rather suspect that that December was supposed to be December 5th to honour the late King. I'd posit December 5th this year is the new target date.

I presume that's meant as tongue-in-cheek. I seem to recall that Islamic Bank of Thailand (which is government owned) ran into terrible financial difficulties and had to be restructured/refinanced just a few years ago.

Perhaps you could share your source for that information? My understanding is that there is an "assumption" that government-owned banks will be bailed out by the government in the event of crisis. However, it doesn't amount to a "guarantee". Incidentally a bank can't "100% guarantee your deposit". If it goes bankrupt, your deposit goes with it. A third party guarantor is needed.

Of course, banks only go bankrupt once. Maybe you've just been lucky.

Wrong. Only certain banks are covered by the Deposit Protection Agency. They are listed on its website at https://www.dpa.or.th/en/articles/view/list-of-insured-financial-institutions Neither of these is covered by the DPA. In fact, none of the 100% government owned banks is covered. (Krung Thai, which is majority owned by the government, is covered.)