Guderian

Oh dear. Meanwhile, in filthy, polluted Pattaya (well, filthy polluted Dongtan Beach, anyway), lol...

...and what we call Central Pattaya Road was apparently called North Pattaya Road back then.

It's been bad for the last week. When I checked a few hours ago, it was over 160, only a bit better than Chiang Mai which was at the time ranked third-worst in the world, behind only Lahore and Delhi.

This is where they discover that the system is already set-up to send the money collected into a bank account in the name of P. Chan-o-Cha, lol.

When will we get an Immigration chief who promises to make things smooth for all the tens of thousands of expats living here? Did they take him on a tour of the Soi 5 office so he could see the long queues of people waiting outside in the street? If he wants to help, he should be lobbying for funds to expand the office and its staff to deal with the ever-growing customer base. But you can bet the conversation went something along the lines of, "Now what's the best way of squeezing as much money as possible out of all these dirty farangs?"

Still nothing from DWP inviting me to apply for my state pension, but I recently received a Christmas card posted well before Christmas and that took over 7 weeks to get here so maybe it's not surprising. I had a look at the form to fill in and mail back and it's all a bit daunting, far more information asked for than I can remember, so I tried the phone call option to +44 191 218 7777 using Skype. Got through within a few minutes, a lady took my details, went through some security questions, then asked some others about my last employment history. If you don't know the exact date, you just make one up as close as you can to whatever you remember. She then took my UK bank account details and asked if I wanted payments every 4 or 13 weeks, I opted for 4 weeks. After agreeing to a declaration that was it, supposedly, all done and dusted. They'll send me a confirmation letter and also SMS messages to my Thai mobile if need be. Very simple and quick, definitely the way to go. Thanks for the information on making the claim by phone, it's a sanity-saver.

The road is two-way, and plenty wide enough except at weekends and holidays when selfish people park so as to reduce the width to just one vehicle. Maybe they should make it one-way on weekends and holidays, the rest of the time there's no problem?

Thanks. If I understand you correctly, then I might qualify for an uplift of 1% per 9 weeks of deferral, like everyone else, but if CPI next September is still running at, say 5%, I wouldn't qualify for that even if I hadn't started taking my pension yet? As my pension will be £8,400/year, that would mean if I deferred taking it by 27 weeks I'd get an extra 3% uplift, or £252, for the rest of my life (but not indexed, of course). On the downside, deferring by 27 weeks would cost me £4,361 in pension income, and I'd have to live until I was at least 83 years old just to break even. Hmm, if that's right then I think this is a clear case of better having the jam today than deferring the pleasure, lol.

I sorted out all the extra payments many years ago and am due to start getting my pension at the end of May this year. The current forecast is for just over £700/month. Not surprisingly, although it's now less than 4 months until my 66th birthday, I've heard nothing from DWP about making a claim. My address with both the DWP and HMRC is in Thailand, so the pension when I get it won't be indexed. Reading some of the posts above, I was wondering if it might be worth delaying taking it in order to benefit from the next indexation based on the CPI in September 2023. To qualify for this, could I start taking my pension in October this year, or would I have to wait until the indexation is applied in April 2024?

The stupid council paid for that vast expanse of empty sand to be dredged from the seabed, it's far larger than beachgoers down there need so I really don't see the problem. Just charge them a fee and give them a licence. There are two options: allow local businesses to make limited use of certain parts of the new beach in a regulated manner, or buy a dozen camels and start 'Crossing the Sahara Desert' tours for the Chinese tourists when they return, lol.

Not really surprising, the RTP has been past its best-before date for longer than I can remember. But when the politicians calling the shots are even more corrupt than the cops, how do you fix things?

That's Pattaya in the background? Where exactly?

Hire a wheelchair for the day and have someone push you there, you'll be let in very quickly.

As my mother used to say when she was treating herself to something expensive, "Why have cotton when you can have (Thai) silk?"

I don't know about the rest of Thailand, but Pattaya is full of tourists. Makes a tear come to my eye when I think back to the quiet, halcyon days of 2021, lol.

Prayut has to be able to keep an eye on that pesky Thaksin and his whereabouts somehow, lol!

Prayut will have his lads polishing their tanks in preparation for the next coup, lol!

Just flash your nazar amulet at them, also called the evil eye, that'll scare them off for sure!

That's one of the businesses in Pattaya that actually had a good pandemic. Remodelled it and the amount of custom seems to have increased quite a bit.

Offer the Mayor a suitably padded brown envelope and the work will be finished in no time, lol.

I've been on to the GF for months to get the bitches spayed, not just to prevent pregnancy but also to avoid the chance of pyometra in the future. I offered to pay for it, but she hasn't bothered and this is the result. Maybe Buddha forbids spaying dogs, I have no idea.

Does anyone know of a vet doing this, or selling the medicine? The dim-witted GF already has 8 dogs that she struggles to feed, and now my favourite bitch is bloating up like a balloon, obviously pregnant. I took her to two vets this morning, the Na Jomtien Pet Hospital and Muang Ake but they're doing the Buddhist mumbo jumbo and refusing to help. Jeez, as if Thailand doesn't already have far too many dogs.

Beautiful dog, good luck finding the owner, I'm sure he or she will be desperate to get the dog back.

I got fed up with the excess of tourists in Jomtien many years ago, not so much the families and sensible ones, but all the people tattooed from head to toe, drunk or out of their heads on narcotics from the time they woke up, aggressive and with no manners whatsoever. I moved around 1½ km inland and bought a house there, it's not a tourist-free area, but there are far fewer of them out here. When I drive to Jomtien now and see the crazy traffic and crowds of people, with more than a few head-bangers among them, I'm very glad I took the plunge and left the main tourist/entertainment/beach area. If it gets much worse in the city, I might look at moving out to the lake, or maybe even down to Ban Chang.

When I was a kid in school in the UK, we were often slapped about the head and other parts of the anatomy. I won't say it built character, but it did teach you to show the teachers some respect and I don't recall it ever causing any long-term damage. I realise this has very much gone out of fashion now, and probably a good thing too, but it must make life much more difficult when dealing with a certain type of pupil.