Guderian

Over the last two decades, we've had a tsunami disaster and now an earthquake disaster, it's good job the country doesn't have any active volcanoes!

It's not only Chiang Mai. I was on a break in Prachuap last week and this was the view at the famous Ao Manao.

The UK just increased its price cap by over 6% while Thailand has reduced its electricity price by 4%. I know which one I prefer.

I'm not sure how much it costs to get a motorbike or car released from a police compound these days, but I think a decade or so ago a car was costing around 3K Baht, or that's what someone told me. I assume all the proceeds go into the RTP bank account, no doubt after appropriate deductions for expenses by the local cop bigwigs, so you'd think they'd be on this problem like flies around a jam jar, it's almost a license to print money. Or is it really that much more work and effort than their usual games to raise funds that they aren't terribly interested?

She's probably deeply bitter that she wasn't offered a role in the latest series of 'The White Lotus'. lol

Missing an opportunity - they should try promoting the country as a hub of earthquakes! After all, they want to be a hub of everything else, lol

I agree, one week left to file a tax return yet they still haven't finalised their new rules. They're clearly not very serious about it at the moment, probably realise they've bitten off far more than they can chew. I saw an article on FB last night, in the Post I think, saying that the TRD will focus this year on taxing expats who are making their income in the online world, so digital nomads and people selling stuff online. That might be doable, though I have no idea how they will tell who exactly falls into this category.

The BKK Post

It makes me think of that tale of woe a few months ago from a British pensioner who claimed he'd stumbled into a gate and been arrested and beaten up by the RTP, and had even managed to get the Foreign Office on his side. The true story soon came out that he was drunk as a skunk and had attacked and broken a security barrier, resisted arrest, and had fabricated the rest of his story as well.

Absolutely, it's up there in the design awards with British-designed electricity substations supplying "critical pieces of national infrastructure".... lol

With a base rate already not much above zero at 2%, there's not exactly a lot of room for 'aggressive' rate cuts. Unless they want to venture into the realms of deeply negative rates, but that didn't work out too well in the West, and Thailand's rickety banks might not be able to weather the loss of their overnight deposit income, much less pay to make deposits with the BoT. Which leaves massive QE, but with the public debt already being very high how much QE would the markets accept before they trashed the currency? Plus, QE can have a very expensive downside when you try to unwind it, as the Bank of England and Treasury are learning, well over £100 billion in losses are expected. The paper we're not allowed to quote from has a good article, just search for 'economy waiting to hit an iceberg'.

For someone who's supposed to be a high-flying business genius, he doesn't seem to understand much about how finance works. Unless, that is, he regards this as a better alternative to the government paying to help people in debt...

Yeah, but an incident similar to this could also have happened anywhere a dumb lowlife drunk happened to be near a young girl - a village, a condo, a corner of a beach, or a quiet street. By this logic, to avoid similar tragedies Thailand should ban all alcohol sales everywhere.

They need to fix two things before I'd part with a satang in income tax here: 1) Firstly, apply the same rules to your own citizens as you're trying to do to expats. When every single working-age Thai has a TIN and files an annual tax return, then I might consider doing so too. 2) Taxation is a two-way street, if you want to take you need to give something back in return. So, for example, anyone who pays Thai income tax should NOT be treated as a long-stay tourist but as a permanent resident, with the right to own land and access the Thai healthcare system if they want to, and no tedious Immigration reporting or annual visa renewals with all sorts of bells and whistles attached. As the situation stands, they're trying to take expats living here for suckers, applying strict rules for foreigners and extremely lax ones for Thais, milking pensioners for all they've got and giving nothing back in return. More fool you if you're willing to accept that.

Never say that the news is all doom and gloom! lol

Glad to see it's going to be in Chonburi (City) and not Pattaya (City), lol. If they'd said Nongprue or Banglamung, I'd have been worried.

The northern end of Patong Beach, July 2000, and not a Russian in sight I should think. I even used to rent the occasional jet ski with never a problem. After a hard day on the beach, I trekked back to Soi Bangla for a few well-earned frosties in The Shipwreck, opposite Soi Crocodile. I haven't been to Phuket for 23 years so I've no idea if these places still exist or not. Well, I'm sure Patong Beach and Soi Bangla do, but not the bars I used to frequent, lol.

People used to wonder the same thing about football hooliganism.

Mot herself is fine, but the English guy who usually answers the phone doesn't know his gluteus maximus from his elbow. A few years ago I asked him about getting the visa stamp transferred from my old passport to a new one and he insisted that I had to go to the British Embassy in Bangkok to get a letter confirming that the new passport was genuine. I told him that they won't issue those letters any more, I had a copy of the notice from the embassy saying so, but he was adamant that he was in Immigration every day doing these visa transfers and you have to have a letter from the embassy. So I just went and did it myself, free of charge and with no problems or requests for a letter. That was when I started getting sceptical about using agents, they claim they know everything but are often poorly informed, so I mostly do everything myself again nowadays. I also saw on another forum that Maneerat was giving people incorrect information about the requirements for the TM30. I knew the info was wrong as it didn't agree with my experience and it was also confirmed in a topic about TM30's on the Visa section here on AN. Maybe if they put a bit of effort in and bothered keeping themselves up to date on the latest developments I might be willing to hand over 5K or 10K Baht, but not any longer as things stand.

Turtles are so yesterday.... the bête célébrée du jour nowadays is clearly the Butterbear! lol

Swiss druggies, Swiss kicking lady Thai doctors, Swiss with a pack of vicious dogs biting locals and foreigners.... in the news for all the wrong reasons. The Brits need to work a lot harder at their bad behaviour as they're being eclipsed by the Swiss right now! lol

No need to poison the dogs, it's the owner who's at fault. Feed him some poisoned Gruyere instead... lol.

In my experience, many tourists have been calling for alcohol sales sanity for at least the 20-odd years I've been living in Pattaya. Why are they only now paying any attention. is their non-tourism economy really that dire?

This is basically why Khun Thaksin was so desperate to avoid actually spending any time in prison, he really didn't want some large, tattooed, muscle-bound inmates to commit suicide on him. lol

I'll wait until they open one closer to Pattaya. In the meantime, I can get reasonably-priced bags of frozen Swedish meatballs from Villa and Ikea lingonberry jam from Lazada so I'm happy acting the Swedish chef myself,,, ah, hergy dergy bergy....lol.