JamesPhuket10

I never have any problems when I go out and about daily. Even on my daily walk around the reservoir, 90% of the people there are Thai, the rest of us farangs including Russian, we have no problem, no horrible unfriendly people as you seem to meet, people smile and say hello to each other. But if people go around in such a negative and unfriendly way then there is no surprise they get the same reactions back, stay away we do not want skint people with such poor attitudes here.

As is the case in London sometimes. What does help in London is the fact that extremely polluting cars are not allowed inside the M25, all cars, trucks, etc have annual checks on their emissions, Thailand has zero suck checks, and even public transport buses belch out black smoke. Many buses in London are now electric with more and more conventional busses being replaced over the next few years.

The question you should be asking is which idiots believe it exists. 😄

If it did help it would mean Bangkok was less polluted than London as it rains twice the amount in Bangkok per year compared to London.

Wow magic, I didn't know they had cameras in 13th Century England. It was the name of the streets during that period to denote where prostitution took place. That and all the other steets with that name were renamed a long time ago but of course, many people believe anything on sites such as this and still think it exists.

Still a thousand times better than the MOT test in Thailand, yet you said nothing about the low level of the MOT there.

I have a leasehold apartment in the UK, it is currently rented out as part of my pension pot and it has 994 years remaining (true, I am not kidding), I am wondering what I will do when it expires. 😃

I have a PM2.5 monitor in my house in Phuket, I live a few hundred meters away from the main road, and the roads in my area are private so barely any traffic, the measurement on the monitor in my room is never above 10, normally around 6. The problem with big cities here is as you say the cars and pollution. In the UK a car MOT takes 1.5 hours normally, important tests are regarding the car's emissions. I take my car for an "MOT" test here every year, the front wheels are put on a set of rollers, the front brake is applied, and the same thing is done to the rear wheels, total mot time is four minutes, passed, OK for the next year. I have my car serviced every year by Toyota and it is good for emissions etc but I wonder how many millions of cars on the roads do not have such service levels.

It is probably not a fact but a perception. Food in Thailand is cheap so the average Joe living here can afford to go and eat out almost every day, a high number of visits means more chance of a dodgy meal being served. The same people could not afford to eat out every day in their own country due to the cost hence less chance of a dodgy meal. That is one explanation. I for one hardly ever go to restaurants in Thailand, because I have seen the kitchens, many of them would be closed down in places like the UK. Another is I had a 200-seat Thai restaurant in England for 27 years (I did not work in it as it was a side business) so restaurants are not appealing to me. But I prefer to have my meals cooked at home with meat from NZ or Australia, with local vegetables, etc, that way I know I am getting quality food and know it is clean and healthy food. Plus I will never have the "I drank three beers but had to pay for four beers catastrophe as I don't think I could ever survive one of those". 😃

That would be a problem for me as I am almost 69 now and if I take a 30 lease out now where will I be able to live when it expires?

It can happen, I paid for my petrol and was given the change which was 300 baht, I then remembered I had a members card so I gave it to the petrol lady and she went off and processed it and then came back and gave me 300 baht change. I drove a hundred yards or more out of the petrol station and stopped, I thought hang on, did she give me the change twice, I checked my wallet and I saw in the 100 baht section I had 300 baht more than I should have, so I went back and gave her the money back. She looked relieved. Another time I was in 7/11 and in a hurry, my bill was 280 baht so I gave the female assistant what I thought was 300 baht, but she handed one back to back to me, it was a 1000 baht bill, I tried to reward her but she would not take it. I had a Thai restaurant in the UK for 27 years, the staff sometimes make mistakes seeing as they are human, not everyone in Thailand is a crook as some people on this site seem to suggest. I often wonder why many are still in Thailand if it is so bad.

My local "All Days" (previously called Family Mart) has narrow tables running along the walls in a separate room with seats, they also sell cold beer, so maybe I can have a 'party' in there with the girlies. 😄

I wonder where all of these people, are, I have been here for over two years and I have not seen this type of person. Dirty? Where is it dirty? The facilities are fantastic, the massive shopping centers in Kathu for example, I do see some Russians shopping there (your reference to Slavics), they are well-dressed, they are normally in couples, many with children, none of the males have bar girls hanging onto their arms, they are the ones buying the 2000 dollar handbags and other expensive items from Louis Vuitton, etc. Maybe there is some crap place in Phuket where the low-life hang around bars with other low-lives as happens everywhere in the world, it is not compulsory to go there. Phuket is 1/3 the size of Greater London, a big area and if people come here and only visit the crap places then that is up to them, but it says more about them than it does about Phuket as a whole. Take my area for instance, about 350 detached houses in a gated area, no traffic at all as the roads are private, most of the owners of the houses are Thai, and I think there is one Russian family with children. The streets are spotless, the community has a private park for the kids of the area to play in. I am ten minutes away from Central Shopping Center, ten minutes away from other large shopping areas, you can not compare the traffic here to crap places like Patong. I had to go to the immigration office in Phuket town which is about seven miles away, it took me a whole 22 minutes to drive there. But I do suppose outside of Phuket there are lots of places in the sticks that are cheap to live in and not at all busy, the problem with that is I would die of boredom after a week living there, and the reason they are not busy is because hardly anyone wants to go there. But Phuket is reassuringly expensive as it keeps most of the riffraff away, the ones who come, can not afford to be here and so have to make negative things up about their visit just to save face.

It seems he is providing a service, he gave you for instance something to write about (I am not being sarcastic). For me, as I stated before, I spend hours a day working on my computer writing/testing my iPhone apps and so I take a few minutes break now and then to do something simple like reading the comments here, I find it funny when people react angrily to Bob's comments as for me they are just funny comments. I know someone who genuinely does have around three hundred million pounds in assets from his numerous nursing homes and other property in the UK, he likes to tell everyone about his wealth all the time and he is genuinely a multi-millionaire so it does take all sorts of people.

Thanks for the info, I went to the drive-through today, only one car in front of me two minutes later I was served. I got out of the car and went to the window as my last 90-day report receipt was "due" on the 10th of December 2024 so I knew I would have to explain why. The officer looked at the 90-day receipt and made a sigh, I then pointed to the stamp in my passport which showed I had been out of the country for a month and back in on the 3rd of December 2025, hence my 90 reports were in order. Two minutes later I had the latest report given to me, so easy, so later on in the year when I have to do this again I now know what to do.

Or maybe he is just taking the piss.😃 I spend many hours a day on my computer writing iPhone apps, I take a break now and then and so I look on this site just to do something simple for a few minutes, Bob's comments make me laugh and the people who take him seriously and end up 'fighting' with him make me laugh even more.

If you can not read the letters then you press the circular arrow symbol and you will get another set of letters, keep on pressing it until you get one you can read.

Luckily for those old blokes, they do not need to be billionaires to get a 20-year-old bird, I have no idea what the price is but it is probably not that much. 😄 But I suppose they can not be that well off if they can only afford to live in Pattaya.

Many of us older guys have a wallet with lots of money in it, we could all have lots of 20-year-old girlfriends if we wished, after all, we are in Thailand.

Are you trying to make this forum any more boring, at least Bob is a good laugh with his piss takes. 🙂

Thanks, I stand corrected.

A good reply, but Bob is a laugh, he must be doing it to take the piss and see how many people react seriously to his serial comments.😃

I know it is great, long live inflation in the UK, the rent is only a Swift payment away each time.

It is not a pot, if so we could take it out as cash as is the case with a private pension, it is a tax, and we have to pay it when working, or if a person is on the dole they get free NI credits so even if someone does not work they still get free NI credits. You do not need 44 years to get a pension, you need to have paid ten years to get some pension and 39 for a full pension. But if that is the only pension you have and it is not full it is topped up to a full pension payment every four weeks. "if what I paid in NICs hade been paid into an ISA or a pension I am sure I would be much better off." The sensible thing would have been to have done both like most people did.

I agree it was easy to apply for my non-O visa online in the UK, it was then posted to me in the UK and when the 90 days had expired I had it extended three times, a year at a time, and it took one hour each time. But it is a lot easier for people to move and live in the UK. You get on a boat in France, land on the beach at Dover, say the word "asylum" and a taxi will arrive and whisk you away to a nice hotel for the next year or two all expenses paid. 😃