Guderian

Didn't the OP ever hear of Google? It came up with loads with a simple search like 'xmas day lunch pattaya 2022'. https://www.hardrockhotels.com/pattaya/christmas-buffet-dinner-2022.aspx https://www.facebook.com/pattayachristmasnewyear/ https://sportsmanpub.com/booking-xmas-dinner/ https://www.royalcliff.com/new/christmas-lunch-buffet-on-25-december-2022/ https://www.restaurant-in-pattaya.com/xmas-lunch-2022 https://www.pattayamail.com/whats-on/yupins-exquisite-christmas-dinner-2022-book-your-tables-now-415345

The poor Thai staff have to wear face masks all day, refusing to wear one when you're using their services is showing a lack of respect for the people here. Tourists won't realise this but, for those of us who stayed here through the pandemic, it was the ordinary Thai staff who kept the country running, selling us all food and drink and other necessities, even in the early days of 2020 when nobody really knew how dangerous Covid would turn out to be. Please be appreciative of their efforts and wear a mask.

If their plan is to give a booster every six months then they should be starting to roll out jab #5 around about now. I had my second Pfizer booster (fourth shot) last July. Any news on the next round of boosters, hopefully it will one of be the new bivalent jabs like they're using in the UK now?

Yep, before the pandemic I used to head off for a few cold ones in Marquee Bar after meeting people for lunch in the Hilton, it's really not far at all.

I expect the cops will soon decide it was suicide that caused the loss of money, so they can go back to the office and put the kettle on, lol.

It sounds like you hold a UK passport. In that case, unless you've managed to change your domicile with HMRC to Thailand, which is extremely difficult to do and anyway they're very unlikely to ever confirm it in writing until after you're dead, then the UK tax people will be looking for a chunk of your estate if it's large enough. Please don't confuse domicile with tax residence, they're completely different things, I've lived in Thailand for 20 years but I'm 100% sure that as far as HMRC are concerned my domicile is still the UK. This is an extremely complex area as it involves the taxes on death of two separate countries for which there may be no treaty provisions, and just because you have property in Thailand doesn't mean (as many people naively assume) that it's of no interest to HMRC in the UK. If your estate is large enough, you should try and find a lawyer with relevant expertise, or contact an international professional legacy planner, though they don't come cheap.

Thanks for posting. It's interesting that Phetchabun now has a much larger Immigration Office than Pattaya, when the number of tourists and expats in Pattaya must be at least an order of magnitude greater. This is the Jomtien Office serving the Pattaya area, but the reality nowadays is much worse than it looks in the picture as there are often long queues outside, and for some services like 90-day reporting won't even let you into the building.

How about a crackdown on Baht Bus drivers stopping illegally wherever they like and driving dangerously? If you get one point on your licence for each instance of dangerous driving, then the average Baht Bus driver will lose his licence in a single day, lol. Actually, probably in the morning already.

Is Joe Ferrari invited?

There are plenty of Bolt cars in Pattaya, but their stupid app doesn't work half the time. On Saturday, I'd eaten with the GF at Hemingway's in Jomtien Complex Condo. Opened the Bolt app and ordered a taxi, he accepted and started coming, but then I noticed that the app thought I was in VT1, not JCC. I sent the guy several messages telling him the app was playing up and where I was, but he ignored me and when he'd arrived at VT1 he then sent me an abusive message about my not being there. I'm back to using Grab as at least their app usually works.

That's an offering to the spirit that guards the pedestrian crossing, someone must have stolen the bottle of red Fanta and bananas, lol.

Don't be too sure, the budget speech gives the big picture but the exact details aren't announced until the Revenue starts issuing them in its press releases a week or two later. As an example of this, take the infamous IR35, the One-Eyed Scottish Idiot didn't mention it in his speech in the House 20 or so years ago, people only found out about it in a Revenue press release called IR35. And it's still contentious to this day.

Just another day in our little slice of tropical paradise, lol.

So in a typical Makro checkout queue, say 6 people of which 5 want to use cash and the other one to use their phone, the people with cash in their hands will now have to wait three times as long so that three times as many people can mess about with their telephones, forget which app they need to use, try to get the cheap camera on their free AIS phone to focus on the QR code, mess it up and start again, at least twice. They should do an experiment first, have separate checkouts for people who want to pay cash and for those using digital payments, and then see which one is the faster and more popular. That'll kill this Orwellian scheme dead in its tracks.

Quite right too, after all it would be very bad for Thailand's image if, say, Xi Jinping popped out for a late night snack at a noodle vendor on Sukhumvit and was accosted by a drunken farang on overstay. And what if Justin Trudeau accidentally bumped into them while he was looking for some overnight company at Spanky's in Nana Plaza, why it could have the makings of a diplomatic incident!

The last couple of times I did the extension myself I was given the paper telling me to provide proof of funds after 3 months, and I complied like the hamster in a wheel that I am. Last year I used an agent and she returned with my passport duly extended for another year, but no demand to provide proof after 3 months. So yeah, I'd figured out that this was some kind of exercise to try and intimidate lone expats, or a CYA exercise for Immigration, but thanks for confirming it anyway @Jingthing

Yeah, that's the one, it's currently £12,570, so if we lose that it'll be taxed at 20%, costing us £2,640, assuming your UK pension(s) are worth that much. It's clear enough that the tax-free allowance isn't going to increase, but given that the state pension is frozen if you live in most countries outside of Europe and the US, it would be a bit harsh to also remove the tax-free allowance.

The media is full of rumours about what taxes will be raised and what thresholds frozen. I was talking to a friend here two days ago who used to work in investment banking in London, so he's not daft about financial matters, and he said he'd heard a rumour that the tax-free allowance for expats would be removed completely. That would cost most UK expats around £2,500/year, so not at all nice if he's right, but I haven't seen this rumour anywhere else. I know that it's also one that's been trailed several times before at budget time in the pre-pandemic era, but it never happened. Has anyone else heard this tale?

I just use decent quality (so they're strong) screw-top plastic food containers (like jars, the sort of thing you would freeze some leftover soup in, say), fill them with water, freeze it and that works fine in a cool bag. I've always got one or two ready in the freezer. Be aware that they get a lot of condensation on them as they thaw, that may or may not matter to your food. Here's one so you can see what I mean:

No idea. He was doing the Halong Bay tour near Hanoi on Monday so I'm not even sure if he's flying here from there or travelling down to Saigon for the trip. The flight's supposed to arrive at UTP at 2:30 on the 10th, anyway.

About as much use to the vast majority of expats living here as the foreign land ownership scheme was.

The vaccines should in most cases stop you from falling seriously ill or dying from Covid, but they're not very effective at preventing you from getting it in the first place. After surviving 3 years of the pandemic in Pattaya, without a single sick day, I went back to the UK in September and, within a week, I'd caught the wretched virus. And that was less than 2 months after my second Pfizer booster, so four shots of vaccine in total. I was down for a week, symptoms very much like a bad cold but with loss of smell and appetite. Worse was the tiredness and brain fog it left me with for around 3 weeks afterwards, that only passed a week before my flight back to Thailand last month. Being a generous sort, I also gave it to my older brother, and he had the same symptoms but almost 2 months later is still suffering the 'long Covid' effects. He'd had 3 shots of Pfizer in total, but his last one was almost a year ago. Whether it was the lack of protection from a recent vaccination or just his age (he's 6 years older than me) that caused him to have much worse problems that I did I have no idea.

An old friend of mine, currently on holiday in Vietnam, is coming to visit me in Pattaya on Thursday. I was surprised that he was able to get a flight to U Tapao from there. Convenient for us both, anyway.

Don;t forget the Porsches!

Well at least you can get almost anything here, unlike more remote parts of the country with far smaller farang populations. In the 1980's I lived in the Niger Delta for 7 years and almost all imports were banned. We had large salaries and plenty of money but nothing much to spend it on. Sometimes one of the service companies might get a shipment of food brought up illicitly from Gabon, and we were more than happy to pay the equivalent of £10 for a can of asparagus, or £30 for a bottle of beaujolais. Pattaya is infinitely better, imported things may not be cheap here but they're not usually unaffordable and at least you can buy the stuff if you want it. And maybe the biggest plus here that people take for granted is the wide selection of high-quality breads, I've never seen anything like it in the tropics. A mate of mine lives up country in Amnat Charoen (I know, where?), and if he wants decent foreign-style bread he has to make a 150 km round-trip to Ubon Ratchathani, and even then the selection is very limited. Most of us living in Pattaya forget just how lucky we are here compared with most places.