Guderian

Don't be too hard on the Thais, the climate here is much more prone to extremes than, say, the UK, yet the English water companies seem incapable of storing enough rain, or processing effluent adequately to prevent raw sewage from entering the rivers and ending upon the beaches. Plus they allow, even encourage, building new homes on flood plains with the predictable results. I'd say that for a relatively poor country which, every rainy season, has to manage the delicate balance between storing too much water and causing floods, or not storing enough to avoid flooding but then causing a drought if the rains aren't heavy enough, Thailand actually does a reasonably good job. One thing I don't understand is that so many of their reservoirs are simply natural depressions or hollows that they block off with a small dam, yet because of their limited depth they hold relatively small volumes of water. Lake Mabprachan in Pattaya is a good example, why didn't they originally excavate it, say, another 50 ft or more in depth and thereby double or triple its storage capacity? And it's the same thing in many areas, just flood a minor hollow in the ground, never bother deepening it first.

Another possibility if you don't get any satisfaction is to try contacting Baroness Altmann. You may remember her as an effective pensions campaigner who was Pensions Minister under Cameron. She's been elevated to the Lords but is still very active on the pensions front. Contact details are here, be sure to use the correct form of address for a peer: https://members.parliament.uk/member/4533/contact

First I heard of this from SCB was over the weekend when I opened the SCB app on my phone and was taken straight to a screen saying that if I wanted to transfer more than 50K Baht or raise my withdrawal limit then I'd have to use the facial recognition feature. I'm not sure it's worth bothering with, as I've never transferred that much online in any case. For buying expensive electrical goods like a TV, or a bike or a car, I've always used cash, and for the house it was a banker's draft. Is it really worth it?

I've just sent an e-mail off to the helpful lady at the IPC who dealt with my query about the missing pension confirmation letter. If I get anything useful in the reply I'll post it here.

I'm pretty sure it's not the Royal Mail that's to blame as the letters are sent via what looks like the Dutch postal service, postnl, see the envelope below. As always with business mail, there's no postmark so I can only date it by what DWP told me, that it had been sent on March 3rd, and that it arrived at my house here on July 7th. I had some birthday cards from the UK back in May (not sent via EMS) which used the Royal Mail and Thai Post, and they arrived within 3 weeks, not great but both of those services seem to be working reasonably well. So although I can't prove it, the problem appears to be with the postnl service. It's also possible, of course, that the March 3rd date was an internal DWP note, and it could have sat in a physical Outbox in their offices for weeks. It's also possible that however the mail gets from DWP to postnl is a poorly run service and what's causing the delays, we have no way of knowing. What we do know, however, is that the service is not currently fit-for-purpose and one way or another we need to let the DWP know. Maybe some people can e-mail the International Pensions Center via https://secure.dwp.gov.uk/ipc/personal-details while others can try contacting the Embassy or Consulate as suggested by @kinyara, or even do both if it suits you.

I applied for my state pension by phone back in February. No problem, everything went fine and the helpful lady said they'd send me conformation my post. After my 66th birthday I still hadn't received any confirmation so I e-mailed the IPC and around 5 days later got a reply saying that everything was fine and they'd sent the confirmation to me on March 3rd. At the end of June my first full four-week pension payment was made and it seemed about right, a bit more than I'd expected if anything, but I won't query that. Yesterday, July 7th, the confirmation letter from DWP, supposedly sent on March 3rd, finally arrived, it took a bit over 4 full months to get here. This agrees with other recent experiences mentioned here of post from DWP taking four months to arrive in Thailand, and it makes the Proof of Life system both ludicrous and impossible to comply with if they cut off your pension 16 weeks after sending the certificate. I'm going to send them a polite e-mail pointing this out, and I'd suggest that anyone else who's had this experience should do the same. They won't pay much attention to just one complaint, but a dozen or more saying the same thing might get them to take a bit of notice and move from the very slow Low Countries postal service they're using now.

The British system seems more effective, nobody answers the telephone or replies to e-mails, so it's impossible to get an appointment.

They needed to get there ASAP so as to check if he had a wallet full of cash on him, or any other valuables that criminal elements might easily slip away with. Now, what did the report say they found on him? lol

A misleading headline, it makes it sound like the warning is for the whole country, while it only covers 40% of 8 provinces, encompassing roughly 15% to 20% of Thailand's area. A more realistic headline would be: "Thai Meteorological Department issues flash floods and heavy rain warning for less than 10% of the country."

Only foreign criminals? Oh, that's a shame, so they won't be raiding Pattaya City Hall then... lol

Actually, I'd say that it's all the more reason for as many foreigners as possible to leave negative reviews where justified. What are these idiots going to do, fine or lock up tens or even hundreds of thousands of paying visitors who've simply written about a poor experience in the Land of Stupidity? Great, that would be the end of Thailand as a serious quality or family tourist destination. Please do force the issue and let's see what the political ninnies in Bangkok do about it.

Great idea, in no time at all we'll be back to sane exchange rates like 40 THB/USD and 55 THB/GBP.

TAT evidently hasn't noticed that Thailand might be in the early stages of the worst drought in a very long time, with what looks like a very strong El Nino event ramping up. Maybe they should ask the tourists to bring their own water with them, lol. Or more likely they'll implement a 500 Baht 'shower tax' on arrival, the proceeds of which will be used to cushion the retirement funds of senior politicians against the effects of a bad drought. Whatever, if you don't even have enough water to grow rice or sugar cane then the wisdom of begging 30 or 40 million foreigners to come and use what little is left is doubtful.

Here we go again, back to pre-Covid normality, with yet another daily TAT forecast of fantastical impending tourist numbers. <rolleyes>

I swim every day and, unless I'm careful cleaning out my ears afterwards, I sometimes get swimmer's ear, which is just a minor infection in the outer ear canal, but which can be quite painful all the same. I've been using Opsardex for years, it's readily available, cheap and effective. I've never tried using it in my eyes, but it says that they're ear and eye drops. They're not excessively strong so safe to use, if Opsardex doesn't get rid of the problem then best to go and see a doctor and get them to give you something appropriate that's more powerful.

Yes, and the cost of getting a taxi to and from U-Tapao isn't much less than the cost of getting one to and from Swampy. Plus Swampy has regular, cheap bus services from Pattaya (like the airport bus in Jomtien), while I'm not aware of any regular, cheap tourist buses going to U-Tapao (of course, that may be a chicken and egg situation, lol). Then for those of us who like to treat ourselves and fly in business, Swampy has some wonderful airline lounges which we're unlikely to see duplicated at U-Tapao as it will never have the volume of business traffic that Bangkok has, Eastern Economic Corridor or not.

Proof that dinosaurs still roam the planet...

I never regarded Don Muang as dangerous in the days before Swampy opened. I especially liked the fact that you could get a cold beer right by the departure gate, I miss that in Swampy. Since nothing much has changed on the air disaster front that I'm aware of, maybe it's classed as dangerous because of roaming gangs of feral ladyboys inside the terminal building, or Chinese triads kidnapping young women passengers and shipping them back to wealthy bachelors in Shanghai, lol?

Continuing my original topic, now I can't find NexGard Spectra on either Lazada or Shopee. Has it become prescription only, or is there a national shortage of it? If so, what's the best alternative for small dogs, under or close to the 5kg mark?

I'd sooner trust the Devil.

It's actually getting worse. They'd left several open spots in the median where you could do a U-turn, but now they're filling them in or blocking them off. Last night I went for a few beers at the Rompho bars in Jomtien. To get back home I'd turn right onto Thepprasit from Soi 17, and they'd left a gap in the median to allow this. No more, though, they're busy filling it in permanently. The masterplan seems to be that you will only be able to do a U-turn at the new roundabout by the Kaan theatre, which more or less cuts off South Pattaya from Jomtien for the large number of people living in the various villages and developments in the streets along Thepprasit, unless you're willing to drive miles out of your way.

I last did this 10 years ago, and there were no problems then. I just showed the (cancelled) old passport with the original Non-Imm O and re-entry permit in it, along with my new one, and everyone was happy, from the airport check-in staff in Heathrow to Immigration at Swampy. I'll be in the UK in September and doing the same thing, as my old passport will have less than 6 months of validity left by the time I fly back to Thailand. The plan is to use the UK passport office's Fast Track service and get new one issued on the spot. Anyway, knowing how things tend to change over time, I just want to check that things will still be the same, just show both my current passport with all the necessary stamps in it, plus the new one, and the airlines and Immigration will be happy, then get the stamps transferred into the new one by Immigration when I return, which was a free service 10 years ago. Is it still the same or have there been any changes? Thanks for any advice.

Glad to hear that, I still haven't received anything from them, no initial correspondence and no bill. My Thai handyman told me that he went to City Hall to get the bill, but to my mind that's like a turkey asking the farmer how long it is until Christmas Day, lol. I'm never going near that merdehole on North Pattaya Road again if I can avoid it.

The numbers sound a bit suspect to me, but that's par for the course with TAT. For example, in 2017 the official numbers say that over 13 million tourists stayed in guest accommodation in Pattaya, roughly one-third Thai and two-thirds foreign. By 2019, before the pandemic messed everything up, that 13 million was probably well over 15 million as visitor numbers had been increasing by over a million people a year. It must be a year since Thailand fully reopened to foreign tourism, yet they're claiming that in the year from, say, mid-2022 to now a mere 2.5 million people have visited the city, including 1.2 million Thais, less than a quarter of the number before the pandemic. Meanwhile, they claim that foreign tourists have numbered just 800,000, less than a tenth of the number before Covid visited us. That doesn't make any sense, why would the Bangkokians suddenly decide that they'd sooner spend their weekends at home? On top of which, as anyone knows who lives on the Bright Side, the high season was very busy. I live on the south side and I'd hazard a guess that Jomtien had its best tourist season ever, the idea that 90% of foreign visitors have gone AWOL this year is ludicrous. The Songkran week was also busy, especially the final two Wan Lai days, there must have been hundreds of thousands of people who visited the city just for that.

Thanks, that's easier than Chon Buri, the GF lives in Laem Chabang so she'll know where it is.