ukrules

I don't see the need to ever get married. It's just a silly old tradition.

It could be useful for getting a hassle free visa though.

I popped into Toyota Hua Hin last week and ordered one of those new model Vigo's.

It was in stock so paid a deposit, wired the money to myself and I'm going to pick it up this week.

Maybe you'll get lucky and they might have one in stock - I suggest phoning the sales manager at a few branches and asking.

Those Fortunas seem a little too big and expensive for what I need a vehicle for which is driving to the shops and generally staying out of the rain.

I've just returned from a weekend in Bangkok and while there I purchased 4 curries at Bawarchi in Sukhumvit Soi 11 - it's the best curry I've had and I've been eating Indian curry for a long time. I packed them in ice and brought them back to Hua Hin so my freezer is well stocked with good curry.

I heard 'The Bridge' bar in Khao Takiab started doing indian food a few weeks ago and it's meant to be pretty good although I haven't got around to trying it yet.

I've considered hiring someone to do a 'curry run' to Bangkok for me once a month. With a medium sized ice box and a return bus ticket I could have a never ending supply of the best Indian food Bangkok has to offer right here in Hua Hin.

I would agree about Bawarchi in Sukhumvit Soi 11 but parking is impossible. I am not very mobile walking wise...so the alternative is to park far away and get a taxi.

You can just use ChefsXp and get them to deliver it to the hotel - it's much easier.

I've just returned from a weekend in Bangkok and while there I purchased 4 curries at Bawarchi in Sukhumvit Soi 11 - it's the best curry I've had and I've been eating Indian curry for a long time. I packed them in ice and brought them back to Hua Hin so my freezer is well stocked with good curry.

I heard 'The Bridge' bar in Khao Takiab started doing indian food a few weeks ago and it's meant to be pretty good although I haven't got around to trying it yet.

I've considered hiring someone to do a 'curry run' to Bangkok for me once a month. With a medium sized ice box and a return bus ticket I could have a never ending supply of the best Indian food Bangkok has to offer right here in Hua Hin.

The problem with the reporting is that the hotel has to fill in two forms, one for each guest and a total sheet. The information required includes when visa was issued & when expire.

Not only this you have to personally take them to immigration within the time frame. They do not let you do it online here in Pattaya.

I wonder if every establishment conformed to this rule where they would put all the paperwork !

You can do it online in Hua Hin via the national website !

This new proton preve looks ok to me. I popped into the local Hua Hin dealer today when driving past. I'm going to have a drive of one and see how it is.

They said it will take 1 week to deliver the new car from stock, sounds good to me.

Thanks for the information. I'll complete a TM.18 and a TM.20 before I go to the immigration office. It's only a few miles away so when there is a problem I can easily get it rectified and return later.

I'd like to get a 'certificate of residence' but I'm a little confused, perhaps someone could help me.

I need this for three reasons.

1 To prove my home address to a foreign and local bank as I don't have any utility bills in my name

2 To obtain a Thai driving license based on my full current UK driving license. I don't have an international permit

3 To purchase and register a car in my own name

From looking through the forums it appears that I can get one of these by filling out the TM.18 form which is titled 'Application for Substitute of Certificate of Residence'.

There's also a TM.20 form which appears to be something very similar.

I'm in Hua Hin and will use the local immigration office here.

Is the T.18 form the correct one to use for the above purposes ?

I 'invested' $10k and made $50k profit out of Bitcoin this year. I sold all my bitoins into the market for $60k.

There was a market crash and things have been very volatile recently, I'm out of it for now until things settle down a bit.

It's hard to imagine that if every hotel, resort, guesthouse, apartment, private home and homestay (of even one room) in Thailand must report all foreigners staying each day within 24 hours, that every Immigration Office in the country won't be overwhelmed immediately.

We have a 4-room guesthouse on a little island where there is not an Immigration Office within a one-hour speedboat ride. Must every facility on this island with foreigners put a paper report on the 8am speedboat to the mainland each morning? That alone would overwhelm the Laem Ngop Office, and we are just one tiny island among many in Trat. And the Internet on this little island is hit-and-miss, at best, so I don't think online reporting is really plausible.

This seems unworkable; so perhaps others are right; that it is just another "tea money" law passed so police can harass lodging establishments for payoffs. And for hotels that allow "extra guests" in a patron's room, does this mean the "extra" guest can only be Thai? Must their Thai ID be recorded to prove they were not foreign "extra" guests?

This is why it's all done on the internet and it takes only a minute or two for each guest.

I remember all this in China. The thing there was that every place we stayed (guesthouse, hotel, etc) had a method to report this information through a website. For them to report our stay took about 20 seconds and, in some cases, was integrated into in-house billing solutions.

What chances are there of this happening in Thailand? More likely is that pockets will be filled and the newly fattened officers will switch off and sleep off their excesses and we can all rest easy again.....until next time.

This is all done by website in the background. At the place where I stay the owner doesn't have a computer at the moment.

As incredible as it may seem I was given a sheet of paper containing all the login details to the immigration departments computer and asked to enter my own details using their login.

I did this, it takes only a couple of minutes per person.

You need to enter your name, passport details, etc. The site is in Thai only.

I entered my details and gave her the piece of paper back. I have no doubt she will be back when it needs doing again unless she gets her lazy son to do it on his computer.

Apparently last time the boy was too busy to do it as he was playing online video games so i did it instead.

I have hundreds of these bitcoins.

I might add, I didn't buy them at the current price either. Much much lower.

Maybe you can donate some to Naam

Seriously though PM if you want to sell some

I'm not selling any at the moment but I was considering buying a car in the next month or so with some of my profits (assuming I don't lose it all) so I may cash out half a million Baht or so at some point. This all depends on how the markets move though.

500,000 Baht is currently 251 Bitcoin. It will be interesting to see how this 251 figure changes over the coming weeks and months as people rush to purchase bitcoin.

Maybe the car dealership will accept a direct payment in Bitcoin. They can be hard to get hold of.

Now I see the use for bit coins:

http://guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/22/silk-road-online-drug-marketplace

Yes, nobody ever did that with other currencies

I have hundreds of these bitcoins.

I might add, I didn't buy them at the current price either. Much much lower.

I found that it all comes down to how many air conditioners you want.

For example I wanted a two bedroom with A/C in both rooms and A/C in the living room.

I looked at a whole bunch of places and only one of them had A/C in all three rooms where I wanted it so I moved in immediately.

Like someone else mentioned this can be done online via a website. This is what happened when I moved into my current residence.

My girlfriend watched as the kid entered the details directly into the website after first logging on.

These things can be worth a lot of money depending on what material they contain.

Xanax is abused, but as far as I know not for date rape. That's new to me. It is used (abused) here for it speed effects by students up late cramming for test and teenagers mostly, I think.

It's not a date rape drug, they use much more powerful powdered barbituates for things like knocking people out in bars. If you're drugged and robbed in a bar someone will have dosed your drink with barbituates.

As for students using it for it's speed effect, that's simply not possible. This drug does the opposite which is why it's often used as a sleeping aid on long haul flights.

The people who will be mostly affected by this will be long term users who use it for anxiety, they will suddenly have a major problem if it's not available any more as they are probably addicted to it but don't realise it. Also their anxiety issues will most likely recur.

I wouldn't expect this to make much difference though, they banned Midazolam a couple of years ago but it's still available in some places although pretty rare. Xanax doesn't work as a sleeping tablet on flights for me so I use Midazolam which works perfectly. These are all in the same class of drugs as Xanax and Valium. They are all benzodiazepenes.

The banning of the cold medicine pseudoephedrine in Thailand widely known as the brand 'sudafed' in the UK really annoyed me as it was a very good decongestant which I always used when I had a cold. Of course you can still buy it in some pharmacies throughout Thailand if you look around. They banned it as the active ingredient can be used in the manufacture of some illicit drugs.

This is a misdemeanour type offence isn't it ?

Varnishing a floor is actually pretty cheap. You pay someone to come into the apartment for a couple of days and clean it up with a belt sander and then apply a layer of varnish / seal. The total cost should be a couple of thousand Baht.

Linking IP theft in Thailand to a few streetside stalls on Sukhumvit road / Silom is crazy. This has pretty much nothing to do with it.

They're talking about factories producing counterfeit goods on an industrial scale. Think of large factories employing hundreds of people.

Do people really think a country gets put on a 'watch list' by the USA due to some street markets selling fake DVD's, watches and handbags ?

Good show, but just the tip of a very big iceberg. Has anyone tried to buy a genuine version of Windows 7 lately? Impossible.

It's not impossible to get a legit copy of windows, it's easy. You just go to a proper IT store and purchase one. It's widely available.

The police should be able to find out where he was staying.

Passport numbers are recorded and logged when you stay somewhere.

I moved into a new place last summer and the lady who owns it got her son to logon to the internet and enter my passport details into some kind of government registration system. How do I know this ? My girlfriend took my passport to the guy and watched him enter the information online before bringing my passport back.

I'm staying in a place which rents out a few holiday style houses to tourists, however lately the owner has started renting to people who want to stay long term instead of people who just stay for a few days. I can imagine that this same system is (or should be) used by all guesthouses and hotels across the country. Where I'm staying there are only 5 houses so it's a pretty small scale operation but they have access to this system to register anyone who stays here.

Congrats. Waiting 3 years after application for Thai citizenship and heared nothing.

You're not likely to either.