ukrules

With the most voting MPs they have a lot of votes to derail any business before the parliament.

I wonder if the video clip was made by a Thai or a foreigner, I had assumed it was a Thai until just now.

How can it be defamation if they're doing their job correctly? ????????

It's about time someone taught them some manners, please do keep us informed with your progress.

Yes, for me too it was 30 days when I applied for my last 2 memberships. This 7 day thing seems to be very new which is why I mentioned it as it may be helpful to others.

I contacted Thailand Elite about upgrading my 5 year membership to the 20 year membership for 500k Baht (I joined before the price increase) and this is a small snippet of the PDF that came back. Note that according to this text which is on the upgrade application form payment must be made within 7 days or the upgrade approval is revoked : It may be that the conditions are different for different members, the form I received also specifically mentioned the 500k upgrade fee so it might be a completely different set of terms and conditions for those more recent members who want to upgrade from their 600k memberships. Maybe this information will be of use to someone. Based on what I've heard it doesn't take 2 months for approval, people are reporting 1 month approval times, I renewed my 5 year membership once already and the approval time for that took about 2 or 3 days - that's right - it seemed almost immediate. For this reason I will do the international bank transfer into my Thai account before submitting my application just to make sure I have enough cash on hand to make the transfer immediately on approval.

El Nino is in full effect

It's an abuse of their power to request this information from a 30 day tourist, what if you were staying in a hotel like the Four Seasons, who's ID card are they going to require then. It's absolute nonsense that they ask for this.

He's going to have a hotel suite with servants and a butler isn't he?

Well I'm upgrading mine from Easy Access 5 year membership which currently expires in 2025 to get the extra 15 years of hassle free visas so my membership will end in 2040 instead. When I got my most recent membership it cost 500k per 5 years which was before the price increase. That's 15 years for 500k Baht = 33.3k Baht per year - pretty reasonable really. Especially when you consider that before they announced you could upgrade which wasn't always the case at all I planned on buying the 1 Million baht version for the full 20 years. For those who paid 600k for their 5 year visa the upgrade cost is only 400k Baht which is 26.6k Baht per year for the upgrade. So I'm taking advantage of this offer while it lasts......nothing lasts forever. Regarding the timing I was previously informed that I must upgrade before the final year of my 5 year membership so this is something I planned on doing in early 2024, this brings it forward by about 6 months which is slightly inconvenient but not massively so.

I heard the master lease for the entire place was rented by a motorcycle club some time back, one of the clubs on the recently published list. However it likely changed hands a long time ago as they moved on for one reason or another. People were complaining about ourlaws mc stickers appearing all over the place at the time.

I'm comparing it to more than 10 years ago.

Wow, so if you apply for a single entry tourist visa they now want to see your bank statement?

Well that's changed at some point during the last 2 or 3 years if it's accurate. Previously you had to prove you had 5000 pounds in the bank for at least 6 months without going below that balance. It was essentially a bank account audit of your wealth - for a holiday visa - something that's so pathetic I hope it cost them millions of tourist months every year it was in operation.

What is it with the Chinese and Rolls Royce cars lately? ????

Here we have a foreigner in the news, based on what I've read over the last 15 years or so while I've been here in Thailand this will lead to some kind of government scrutiny, she had better have all her finances in order and taxes paid going back to the day she arrived or they're going to come for her.

Mine is also capped at 5,000,000, but I went and purchased additional insurance on top of the mandatory

Yeah, I doubt that very much and if it is then it's going to be the 'super luxury package' which hardly anyone goes for these days, the one that costs 2 million Baht with a 20k a year fee. In my opinion the reason Thailand Elite became very popular is the cheaper 5 year 'Easy Access' plans and the 'new' 20 year membership package. I expect every level to have new packages including the 5 year and cheaper 20 year packages along with a more expensive 20 year package as well. For me, I'm going to 'upgrade renew' at some point this month, I was planning on doing this anyway - but not until early next year - then they moved the goalposts so I guess I'll do it now. There was now way at all that I would be strong armed into acting on impulse inside a stupid 2 week deadline. The only time I've ever heard things like 'special prices but you must apply urgently, right now within a very short time frame' was when it involved a scam of some sort. It's the hard sell - and that I do not like and never go for it. Now they opened it back up I'll bite.

You would think that supercar owners have access to additional insurance that covers them for accidents regardless of who's fault it is. Because they know for sure that the average driver is going to have a very low payout insurance policy throughout the entire country. This woman should have phoned her insurance company and left it to them, they will then negotiate with the responsible parties insurance company and if it's deemed necessary they will cover any and all damage and then go into recovery mode where they file lawsuits for any costs they can't recover - or write it off which I suspect is what happens. There's no way she's going to be left with a broken car and out of pocket.

You email them, it's the same procedure as when you first apply for a TE membership outside of the country. Once they know your flight number they meet you at the gate and take you to a special immigration waiting area next to the place where airline crew have to sign some kind of register before they pass through immigration - they insert your visa and you then proceed through one of the fast track / flight crew lanes which is right next to it. I did this for the insertion of my second visa, I left the country and came back, getting the new TE visa inserted on arrival - one of the few times I've left the country in many years.

It's a great option for those under 50 who want to live in Thailand. I've been using it for years. No real problems. My one gripe is that you need to go to Bangkok to get a new visa inserted when they expire as the maximum visa length is either your passport expiry date or 5 years, whichever is shorter. So for a 20 year visa that's 4 trips to Bangkok unless you take a trip abroad where you can get it inserted on re-entry but that would require the trip to coincide with your visa expiry. Personally I don't travel much, I think I've left the country twice in the last 8 or 9 years.

Well that escalated quickly, how much third party insurance cover does he have? I often wondered what would happen if I was to accidentally write off one of those supercars with normal first class insurance on my run of the mill Toyota and the accident was my fault.

Interesting, I don't have this same upgrade clause (they changed it) as I purchased my 5 year membership a few years back, the Elite Superiority Extension did not exist back then. So instead my clause 5.3 says this and offers the upgrade only to the 2 million baht membership : This is from a time before the 20 year superiority extension existed for just 1 million baht, I suspect they will offer the same to all Easy Access members but will need to confirm this with them. I'm not interested in upgrading to the 1.5 million Baht option but I will go for the 500k option if it's available until September, otherwise I won't bother upgrading at all and will allow it to lapse. Interestingly it doesn't mention anything like I have read before about renewing before the last 3 months or before the last year of membership which is another one I heard of. I'll email them at some point soon I guess.

Yes, I got it via email too. It's worth reading this bit again : It does specifically mention that old OR new membership types can be used when upgrading but I wonder if that was their intent to still be issuing the old style 20 year 'Superiority Extension' in several years from now, perhaps it is. Maybe someone should confirm this with them. Previously when reading an email from them I had understood that renewals of existing memberships would resume January 2024 well after the new memberships have launched and it would only be to the new memberships. I wonder what happened there today for this to be the end result. It's quite a change.

I expected them to backpedal when the new program failed but not before it even launched. Amazing.