ukrules

An interesting sidenote: Thais are apparently the biggest tippers in Asia (see, for example, http://www.travelandleisureasia.com/travel_news/1511158/thais_are_asias_top_tippers.html). My gf will even leave some baht in the room when we check out for the hotel staff... I always thought that was a nice touch that never occurred to me in my pre-Thailand days.

I've noticed my girlfried doing the exact same thing - when we're about to check out just before we leave the room she goes back into the bedroom to leave a tip under the pillow for the cleaner. She said she puts it under the pillow so the cleaner will find it instead of the guy who checks the room / minibar during the checkout process.

From talking to Thais and from what I have read the service charge at all restaurants that is automatically added to your

bill goes to the restaurant owner and not the staff. Well, he may use it to pay the staff but it is not over and above there

wages. So I would suspect it is the same for the pizza delivery guys. The money may be used to fund there salaries but

not over and above there hourly wage and mileage.

Service charge is not a delivery charge.

Thank you. Anyone that does not want to pay for delivery, can run down and pick up it up.

I doubt the delivery charge is a big profit center for Pizza Co. They have to pay the salary of the delivery guy, cost of fuel and equipment (whether they own it or not) and take the hit for anything delivered late. Why should they not charge extra for delivery? Also, why should they give it to the driver? They already pay the driver whatever the driver agreed to work for.

People that don't want to tip do not have to tip, but they do have to pay for delivery, what's wrong with that?

My girlfriend will often tip people or give/offer them a bottle of water if someone's doing some work for us or helping us out in some way.

Speaking of which I just ordered a pizza from the Pizza Company about 10 minutes ago, it should be here soon.

The way the American system turned out is exactly what you would expect from a culture based on extreme greed and entitlement, it's not like that in the rest of the world.

Has she been married before ?

China is too much hassle, I won't even bother with getting a tourist visa. Until theu have Visa free travel to China I won't be going there again apart from maybe Hong Kong which of course isn't the same.

There does appear to be a direct train from Bangkok to Pranburi http://www.railway.co.th/checktime/checktime.asp?lenguage=Eng

Departs Bangkok at 15:35 arrives in Parnburi 20:34 (or in my experience within a couple of hours of this time)

If you are that worried, pack up the wheelchair and go have a holiday in some neighboring country. A month will only set you lot back 30k+ and while you are there you can contemplate your future in this unstable country that you moved to for whatever dubious reasons in the first place.

If it is me you are replying to I have no intention to do so. This is my second country and I know it will come through as it has in the past. On the other hand it never hurts to take some precautions whether the problem is floods, bushfires, sunburn or civil unrest. Electricity is a fragile product. A few will remember the power failures that shut off all of Bangkock some 35 years ago lasting several days. Lifts did not work, pumps did not work, sewerage did not and backed up and food went rotten in freezers.

Similar things have happened in Canada and in New Zealand.

Time to drag the generator out again ? My little generator got me through a 2 day power cut a few months ago. All frozen food intact, TV, computer and internet access 24/7.

I always go to Immigration in the afternoon, even in Bangkok.

Everyone else seems to go there at 8 or 9 am in the morning, or even earlier before they open, presumably so they can be first in line. By the time the afternoon comes around the place is normally empty.

Generally I'm In and out in about 10-20 minutes, even less in Hua Hin. I've been doing this for years and it's never failed me so far. I generally aim to get there about 1 hour before they close.

Same situation with driving licenses, arrive 1 hour before closing, empty office. In and out - 15 minutes.

I've seen the same herd mentality with flights too, everyone turns up between 2/3 hours before the flight is due to take off so they can stand in a massive line with hundreds of people.

Supplies don't come from Bangkok,they are delivered to Bangkok from outside. We saw this during the floods a while back. Things like bottled water come into Bangkok froum outside and there were shortages everywhere. I nearly ran out.

Bangkok -> Samut Sakhon -> Samut Songkhram -> Petchaburi -> Cha-Am -> Hua Hin -> Pranburi

Are you driving ? If so then there's really only one way.

Head out of Bangkok onto the '35' road, continue past Samut Sakhon and Samun Songkhram then turn left onto the Phetkasem road at the big junction and head south. This road takes you through or through Petchaburi, Cha-Am and Hua Hin on the way to Pranburi which is not far past Hua Hin.

Check out google maps - there's not many big national roads so the chances of getting lost are quite limited once you're pointed in the right direction.

This is interesting, what type of visa were you on and approximately how long were you in Thailand for ?

Has anyone else found these fines are discretionary or waived for more than a single day overstay in the past ?

Thanks for the replies! Sitting in the Thai lounge now, passed through immigration without any questions or fines, that was unexpected, but welcome. Just a little extra time before my flight...... Take care of the place while I'm gone, eh!

I am surprised there was no charge. I flew out a few weeks ago with a one day overstay which they don't charge for (you're allowed one day grace as far as I know), I told the guy I had a one day overstay and he called the supervisor over, I don't know what they said but as is expected he then proceeded to stamp me out.

Did the immigration officer call the supervisor over at all or just stamp you out as normal ?

I ask because they change the rules all the time and who knows, maybe they might have increased the 1 day grace period.

More like 10 minutes

The surprise came more from the fact that they went to the effort to dub the entire movie into Thai without at least disguising the fact that it's a screener.

So they put a lot of effort into dubbing it but zero effort into finding something that at least looked legitimate.

I was sitting in the living room last night reading something on my tablet when I noticed something on the screen of the hollywood movie playing on the TV which was dubbed into Thai.

It was a copyright notice from a DVD screener !

In case anyone doesn't know what a screener is - it's s preview copy sent out by the studios for review purposes before it's normal release.

This was an older movie but it's kind of hard to believe they shown a screener with the 'dvd screener for review purposes' / copyright warning and 'not for public display' intact and on TV through the cable network.

This is Thailand I guess !

Realy nice information.But what about the look ?

I wouldn't worry about how they look. I've got a full sized vaping machine (itaste 134) and take it out into the bars when I go out.

People ask me about it all the time and many want to try it, it's quite a conversational piece being nearly the same size as a bottle of beer but slimmer.

Those who have tried it wanted to know more, where to buy one, etc.

I was smoking it in Bangkok last month while talking to an off duty policeman who was having a few beers, I complained to him about the nicotine juices being illegal while smoking it. Needless to say he didn't care about the e-cig or the juice.

Customs will confiscate nicotine juices if they find them in the mail and I heard a few shops selling them have been raided and had their stocks of juice confiscated.

C) "GoogleCoin"...people are not gullable enough to believe that an entity is always going to have enough money to magically buy back the currency at a fixed rate if shit goes bad. Individuals, companies, counties, states, countries have all gone bankrupt; what makes Google (or any other entity) immune to this?

Any 'coin' like the above mentioned GoogleCoin could work. It would be a digital representation of fiat issued by a trusted central authority. This kind of system could work well alongside the likes of Bitcoin and could even be used as a way to buy into the crypto currency ecosystem.

This would just make it a digital token and the value would be fixed. It would be like a bank issuing digital dollars, if they keep selling them for the same amount and make their money off the transaction fees I suspect it would be viable.

I'm pretty sure banks will start doing this, if they tie it into a p2p system which is the transaction network and the issuer co-signs each transaction it could be p2p, centralised and a cash equivalent. My bet is there are a few banks working on such systems right now.

A Bitcoin methodology of relaying transactions via a peer 2 peer network could be used so people can transact with each other, central approval of each transaction would then follow after the issuer has verified the transaction against its records so it would be like Bitcoin but not need any 'miners'. This could be side stepped and completely centralised removing the need for a p2p network completely.

Anyone who does this should really operate on a full reserve basis so any money going in stays put in an account to cover the value of all the coins issued. I think the banks themselves only have issues as they get greedy and issue toxic debt using the fractional reserve system, this is where a lot of the problems in the current system appear to originate from. There would never be an issue with a 'bank run' on a properly managed full reserve bank.

I wonder if we will we see a re-emergence of full reserve banking for transaction based digital curencies in the future...

There are a number of problems with this concept.

1) As you mentioned it only works if the bank is full reserve, meaning that there is exact number of dollars or gold etc...held in a vault somewhere to "back" each digital token. That itself has a lot of problems:

a) Who is going to guarantee that the full reserve is actually there?

b ) What happens if the reserve is not actually there through any of the following possibilities:

- Theft / Embezzlement

- Natural Disaster (ie a big fire burns up all the money)

- Government seize (if government decides the reserve holder was going something wrong)

2) If the reserve is fiat, then it's can be debased/devalued by the fiat issuer (ie central bank) by printing more. So your reserve is becoming worth less over time at an unknown and unpredictable rate; so is your digital tokens.

3) Government will want full control over the entire process. And they have laws on the books to prevent it if they wish. For example in the US has laws to prevent anyone issuing there own money; 18 U.S.C. § 485 18 U.S.C. § 2, 18 U.S.C. § 486 18 U.S.C. § 2, 18 U.S.C. § 371 and these have been previously used to convict people who tried to issue their own money.

So at any point the issuer of your digital currency could be charged and all reserves seized and all of a sudden your digital currency is worth nothing.

Well it's a trusted third party for a reason, they need to be trusted and there are no guarantees in life. Any existing bank could in theory go bust at any time.

As these systems are cashless I really doubt it would burn in a fire.

The kind of organisation which would issue these digital tokens would ideally be a fully regulated bank working under full reserve in a friendly environment.

Of course this could not be done in the US, it would need to be done in a country with more reasonable laws.

I agree there are issues but they are not insurmountable.

If any large existing bank operated a system like this people would use it regardless of the risks. Full reserve would be optional but in my opinion preferred.

There are also many schemes out there already which closely resemble centralised digital token systems. Loyalty points, airmiles, etc.

In addition to the reward style systems there are already 'digital credit' schemes which operate on mobile phone networks in different countries around the world, the Barclays Pingit system in the UK and closer to home the Rabbit card system in Thailand.

This kind of thing is coming. It's just a way of storing and moving digital cash in an easy to use manner utilising existing technology and I think it will become much more prevelant in the coming years.

From what I read if she has been married before and has kids you should not have to pay anything.

This, pay nothing to nobody.

C) "GoogleCoin"...people are not gullable enough to believe that an entity is always going to have enough money to magically buy back the currency at a fixed rate if shit goes bad. Individuals, companies, counties, states, countries have all gone bankrupt; what makes Google (or any other entity) immune to this?

Any 'coin' like the above mentioned GoogleCoin could work. It would be a digital representation of fiat issued by a trusted central authority. This kind of system could work well alongside the likes of Bitcoin and could even be used as a way to buy into the crypto currency ecosystem.

This would just make it a digital token and the value would be fixed. It would be like a bank issuing digital dollars, if they keep selling them for the same amount and make their money off the transaction fees I suspect it would be viable.

I'm pretty sure banks will start doing this, if they tie it into a p2p system which is the transaction network and the issuer co-signs each transaction it could be p2p, centralised and a cash equivalent. My bet is there are a few banks working on such systems right now.

A Bitcoin methodology of relaying transactions via a peer 2 peer network could be used so people can transact with each other, central approval of each transaction would then follow after the issuer has verified the transaction against its records so it would be like Bitcoin but not need any 'miners'. This could be side stepped and completely centralised removing the need for a p2p network completely.

Anyone who does this should really operate on a full reserve basis so any money going in stays put in an account to cover the value of all the coins issued. I think the banks themselves only have issues as they get greedy and issue toxic debt using the fractional reserve system, this is where a lot of the problems in the current system appear to originate from. There would never be an issue with a 'bank run' on a properly managed full reserve bank.

I wonder if we will we see a re-emergence of full reserve banking for transaction based digital curencies in the future...

They stupidly banned over the counter cold medication containing pseudoephedrine here in Thailand.

It makes no sense at all as the people who were distributing this to illegal drug manufacturers were people in charge of bulk supplies, not pharmacists.

I believe despite this internal ban there will be no issue bringing some into the country for your own personal use. I know I'm bringing a load back from the UK the next time I go.

I believe they're called 'stamps'

A residency certificate is 100% required to register a new vehicle so you will need to get that - it's for the government department that issues the license plates for the vehicle.

Edit : It's the same residency certificate you need for getting a driving license and it's also available much cheaper at 500 Baht from Immigration

One day he'll do that to the wrong person and someone will wind down the window and shoot him. Apparently it happens all the time.

Edit : He probably had no idea you were a foreigner due to tinted windows assuming you have them like everyone else.

history repeats itself. bitcoins = new tulips (a sucker is born every minute)

Plenty of these 'suckers' have made millions of dollars in recent months.

Need I remind you that the tulip industry is still to this day a billion dollar a year industry in the Netherlands ?