Guderian

Are you sure about that, how many are still coming on Zero Dollar Tours? It wouldn't surprise me at all if Srettha's family were in on the lark, too.

I've seen and heard of many examples of the Thais double pricing, so a foreigner has to pay anything from 2 or 4 times what a Thai does, up to maybe 20 times as much. Two days ago I visited Wat Arun with the TGF for the first time. All the online guides had said it cost 100 Baht admission fee, which seemed fine to me, a total of 200 Baht for me and the GF. When we got there, though, the sign clearly said 200 Baht admission fee, so I sighed and handed over 400 Baht to the lady behind the counter. The GF jumped in and yak-yakked here and she gave me 200 Baht back. Apparently, entry is free for Thais and 200 Baht for foreigners, an infinite mark-up for farangs compared with Thais. Well I can't really complain as I'd expected to pay 200 Baht at the outset and ended up paying 200 Baht, but it's still kind of annoying after living for 20 years in this country.

Soon to be inscribed on a new Statue of Thainess: Give me your drug-addled, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to avoid the draft back home, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the useless, tempest-tossed tossers to me, I lift my spliff beside the golden katoey!

San Mig Zero is so-called because it has zero carbohydrates, but still manages a 3% alcohol content, so I think it's around 60 cal/bottle, the least fattening of all the popular beers here. Well, it's popular in Pattaya where there's a lot of fat farangs, lol.

Straight ahead.

Only a colour blindness test, which does seem to be a bit of a challenge to a surprising number of people (usually mild red-green blindness).

Rocks? Man, this generation of Thais are such a bunch of snowflakes!

I had a personal encounter with Babangida on the road between Warri and Sapele and, if I hadn't had a very savvy Nigerian with me, his guards might well have shot me!

A lot of people use the income route to prove they have the funds to apply for a visa extension based on retirement, though personally I've always kept 800K in a savings account and use that route. As I understand things, using the income route you have to prove to Immigration that the income arrives in Thailand from overseas every month. So why is it that the TRD have never, ever challenged someone using this route to prove that the 65K Baht/month coming in wasn't earned during the current tax year? Plenty of less well-off folk will have been moving their pension income to their Thai bank account as soon as it comes into their overseas account, so under the old rules that should have been taxable, yet the TRD as far as I'm aware has never even tried to do so. Now we have a small rule change so that all assessable remittances are taxable, subject to exemptions from the double-taxation treaties, and I don't really see why the TRD will put a huge amount of effort into trying to collect that money when they've shown zero interest in collecting potential pension taxes under the old rule. And as for the taxation treaties, I was reading elsewhere in an article that had nothing to do with Thailand that even HMRC in the UK usually has to resort to employing the services of specialist legal firms when a double taxation treaty is involved. If well-educated, well-trained and well-supported tax inspectors in the UK need to pay for specialist advice and interpretation, what chance is there of the average tax inspector in a Thai office knowing what it all means?

When I was living in Nigeria under the military dictatorship of Ibrahim Babangida, I asked my right-hand Nigerian man, a very sharp chap, which was better for the country, a military or civilian government? He said that, all in all, the military were probably better for Nigeria as there were fewer generals stealing the public money than there would be civilian politicians. I had to laugh at that, though Babangida was a genuinely nasty piece of work, nothing like the genial Loong Tu.

Sounds like a serious case of wishful thinking....

If they were serious, six months ago already they'd have been writing that Thaksin had been told to stop planning to replace Srettha with his daughter. The fact that this is only now becoming an issue just tells us that the political wind has changed direction a bit. No doubt, the puppet master will be working hard to make the political weather more favourable for his family again.

Here's a copy of the 1981 UK-Thailand double taxation treaty, which I believe is still the version in force. As you can see, it's mainly related to business activities of one sort or another. I guess 40-odd years ago, the small number of British pensioners living in Thailand at the time didn't merit much consideration. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80bddc40f0b623026953eb/uk-thailand-dtc180281_-_in_force.pdf

Blimey, Thaksin's getting to look for like Squirtle, Leo's aged box turtle mate in the eponymous film, every day. lol

Two wrongs make a right, so vaping marijuana ought to be fine, right? lol

Weird, in South Pattaya where I live it was a bit breezy with mostly light rain, nothing that would cause any damage. It just shows how localised these squalls can be.

You'd think Mad Vlad would be checking very carefully that nobody eligible for his draft was leaving the country, but it seems not.

It might have something to do with memorising the tone rules, which also requires memorising the class of every consonant. Memorising the standard model of particle physics is much easier and far more logical! lol

Same, same in Pattaya, Makro has them maybe 2 or 3 times a year from what I've seen. Very cheap when they get them, though, if I see them I buy a few kilos and pickle them.

It happened to me last year. I booked Business Class with Qatar BKK-DOH-LHR-DOH-BKK, and when booking it was clearly stated that all four legs of the journey were in Q-Suites. A few weeks after making the booking, I got an e-mail from Qatar telling me that they were sorry, but the BKK-DOH leg would be in an ordinary 777 without Q-Suites. Fair enough, but they neglected to tell me that the DOH-BKK leg would also be Q-Suiteless. This made me suspect it was a standard marketing ploy at the time, promise Q-Suites and stick to that promise on the prestigious DOH-LHR flights, full of actual serious business people, but downgrade all the dodgy sex tourists on the flights between BKK and DOH, lol. Given that their website currently charges a large premium for flights with Q-Suites, the least they could have done was to offer me free seat reservations by way of compensation, but such ideas are beyond Qatar, the Ebenezer Scrooge of Middle-Eastern airlines. I've given up on them this year and have booked the trip in Business with EVA instead. Stick that in your hookah and smoke it, Qatar.

Since the English language is clearly not one of your strong points, you'd probably just confuse the bejabers out of any medical professional who read it. Really, just choose a hospital that suits your budget then go there and explain your problems in person, they don't bite.

A mate of mine is from Vancouver and lived in Pattaya for a few years, then married and moved up-country to his Thai wife's family compound in Nakhon Nowhere. He goes home for six months every year and rents a condo in Vancouver, though he says it's very expensive nowadays. He can't stay in Thailand for longer than that as it would affect his eligibility for social services/healthcare/pensions, or whatever, you'd know better than me the implications. Just before Covid came a-knocking, he took his wife and two stepkids back to Vancouver so they could qualify for Canadian citizenship. The wife returns to Thailand with him every year now but the kids seem to be settled in their jobs in BC. He comes down to Pattaya for a week two or three times when he's back and enjoys it, and I get the impression that he's getting more and more frustrated living in the middle of nowhere for most of his stay. When he lived in Pattaya and when he's down here now, he enjoys the bars a lot, but I've never heard of him socialising with another person from his home town, so my guess is that there's probably not that many. He does gravitate towards the Jomtien area, though, (like myself) so maybe the main part of Pattaya has more of an active Canuck/BC community, I couldn't say.

Firstly, as I've lived in Thailand for over 20 years I don't qualify for any handouts, whether the Thai digital wallet or the British winter fuel allowance. Secondly, the digital wallet scheme is clearly just a one-off vote-buying exercise. It's also largely unfunded and amounts to the equivalent of some 15% of the total Thai budget, rather more significant than the winter fuel allowance. IMHO, there are far more efficient and effective ways such a large sum of money could have been used to stimulate the economy, but Srettha and his unelected jailbird boss know that those wouldn't give them the same leverage with the public as this handout. Great news for the 7-elevens and breweries, not so good for the Thai economy once the money has been spent and there's nothing left to show for it.

They're being naive thinking that none of the money will be spent on booze or other verboten items. People will just use the digital wallet cash to buy the family food, then use the money they'd otherwise have spent on food to buy Lao Khao, or whatever they fancy.

I watched it last night with the GF. She thought it was great and insisted on watching it again this morning. Personally, I found the story a bit thin to say the least, and the cast a confusing mix of real Thais, luuk krungs, and actual farangs who apparently speak fluent Thai. Try an old film, "Pattaya Maniac", it's far better IMHO. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0902324/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_1_nm_1_in_0_q_pattaya%20maniac