Guderian

Last year, a number of people reported delivery time for mail from DWP to Thailand of 16-20 weeks, using the postnl service. Has this now improved? I ask as they're currently sending me a document to claim a foreign state pension and if it's going to take 20 weeks to arrive that's far too long. I asked them for a printable electronic copy but they ignored my request. Has anyone had a Proof of Life certificate from them recently, or an invitation to claim your UK state pension, and if so did you notice how long it took to arrive here? Alternatively, if anyone happens to have DWP form CFN 901 I'd be very grateful for a copy. I already asked this question on the UK& Europe forum, but only received one reply, I doubt if that forum's anything like as popular as the Pattaya local forum, so I'm hoping I might get more responses here where I know a lot of Brits check every day.

Thanks.

Same here, I arrived back in Thailand in October with a new passport and then got the visa stamps transferred immediately, free of charge in Jomtien and very simple. I was buying a new car so needed to get the passport in the system straight away. The TM30 was the old one from 2 years ago, I asked and there was no need to update it, and that was also fine to get the residence permit to buy a new car and to do the annual retirement extension in December. I did the first 90-day with the new passport online in January. Probably not surprisingly, I entered my name and new passport number and clicked the auto-fill widget but nothing happened, so I just filled it in by hand and submitted it. It had been approved the next morning when I checked. I'm pretty sure that the autofill widget will work for my next online 90-day report in April now I've resubmitted my personal data with the new passport number. All in all, very efficient service from Jomtien Immigration and the online reporting app.

Last year, mail sent by the DWP via postnl was taking up to 20 weeks to arrive in Thailand according to many reports. I sent them an e-mail explaining why this is ridiculous in June or July, especially for proof of life certificates, and they said they'd look into it. Has anyone found that mail from DWP is now arriving more quickly, and if so how fast? Did they stop using the hopeless postnl service? The reason for my current interest is that I want to claim a Dutch state pension for the 7 years I spent working there. That becomes due at the end of May, and so I sent a query via the IPC portal a few weeks ago. They just got back to me saying that they're sending me form CFN 901 by snail mail to make the claim, even though I specifically asked for an electronic version. If it's still taking 4-5 months for mail to arrive here, then that's not likely to arrive until mid-year, and I'd like them to submit the claim to the Dutch AOW before the end of May, ideally. If the mail delivery time is much better than last year then I won't worry, otherwise I'll ask them again to send me a printable version of CFN 901 by e-mail. Alternatively, if anyone has a scanned copy of CFN 901 or knows where to download a copy (I looked but couldn't find it) then that would be great too. Thanks!

Probably working overtime to try and clear some of the 300 billion Baht they owe, lol.

Why not just bake your own, it's not difficult? If you don't have an oven then buy a bread maker, they're not terribly expensive, simple to use and give decent results.

Can someone please explain what they mean by 'deflation risk concerns'? Are they concerned that their inflatable toys might get a puncture, lol?

Still no mention of the long-promised law recognising civil partnerships in Thailand, though.

Interesting. Back in about 2008 or 2009, I guess, I was getting bored with condo life in Jomtien and looking at renting a house instead. One place I looked at was pretty much exactly where you describe, on Soi Eurostar as it was often called back then. I liked the place but it was way too big for my purposes. I had an idea of sub-letting a room to a bar girl desperate for some decent accommodation, but in the end that didn't seem like a good idea at all, drunken hussies, possibly with their customers, coming back at all hours of the night, lol. The house I was looking at was one of these, I think the one on the right: Out of curiosity, do you remember what you paid for the land back in 1987, or what it was going for in that area per rai or talang wah?

Please show us the forecast for Songkran, if the temperature chart is red to black in mid-February, then in 2 months from now it should resemble a black hole, lol.

So about 300 head cases from a single province decide what the other 70 million can do? No wonder Thailand's plummeting down the table of democratic countries.

I think they showed what they thought of the Muslims when they banned hookahs about a decade ago. (P.S. for the sex tourists, a hookah is a Middle Eastern smoking device, not a Thai lady of loose morals, lol)

I thought the Thai government were big mates of the junta in Naypyidaw. Or was that only under our long-lost but much-loved former military dictatorship?

It seems they've already made up their minds then, and this is just a game to make people think they've open-mindedly considered all the options.

In the Pattaya area, apart from the occasional mango shower (and there were very few of them last year), usually there's not really any rain in that period, so the threat of less rain than that is hardly worrying.

Two days ago it was more or less the opposite warning. I'm not sure if this is down to volatile weather, as mentioned, or volatile forecasting, lol.

Thaksin to walk free from prison on Sunday He's been in prison??? Most people doubt that he's even been in the hospital! lol

From March through August last year my PEA bill was 6,000-7,500 Baht every single month, and I wasn't doing anything crazy. I'd be happy with a solar system that cut that by a decent amount, even just 2,000 or 3,000 Baht a month. I find a number of things ambiguous, though, when I try to run the economics, like in a 5X5 system with no battery, over a typical year how many kW-hr of power is that likely to deliver? It's probably like asking how long is a piece of string, as I guess there are many factors at play, not least the weather, how your panels are located compared with the sun's trajectory, how clean you keep them, and so on. I've tried making what seem like reasonable assumptions and always seem to find that the investment decision result is far from being a no-brainer.

Good question! The village where I live in Pattaya has been looking at installing LED solar street lights, and asking for input from HOA members. One guy who'd spent time with the USAF in the Middle East said that the solar panels on the base where he was stationed had needed cleaning every day to keep them as free of dust as possible. The Pattaya area, and probably much of the country, suffers from a lot of black dust (diesel particulates, or fine ash from agricultural and/or forest fires maybe?) settling on the ground for much of the year these days, I have to sweep it off my driveway and paths almost every day, along with the dead leaves. How often do the solar panels need to be cleaned of dust here?

What I might be after is the ability on hot days, i.e when the sun is shining and the solar panels should be working fine, to run two air cons from the power produced, one 24 kBTU and the other 12 kBTU. I think that's around 4kW of power consumption, not 1 kW. On cloudy days and at night I'm happy to use the mains electricity. From what I saw from your graph, the peak power output availability is far from steady. Does that mean I'd need to generate far more power than I actually need to guarantee the necessary 4 kW to run the air cons, as they're probably not very happy with a fluctuating and unsteady power input? Or does it simply mean I would have to have a battery? Or can it all be configured so that I would use all the solar power available, and it could be topped up in the day to the required level by the mains if need be?

Young people nowadays have enough money to do as much booze and drugs as they want, there's no time left for having sex and kids.

Thanks. Am I reading this right? You've got a 5kW inverter with somewhat more than 5kW of panels attached, and in the early morning it was producing around 2.5kW, which soon went up to occasional peaks of 4kW, maybe averaging around 3.5kW during that time between 10:30 and 14:00? I'd eyeball the average for the day at around 3kW. Is that fair?

Forget the battery which is half the total cost and, for ~50K Baht + installation you could run a couple of air cons during the day and keep the house nice and cool. The problem I find when I try and do the economics is that the 5kW solar panel only delivers that at the peak, and its average power production during, say, 8 hours of daylight is less than 5kW. But how much less? On a clear and sunny day, does it deliver 4kW, 3kW, 2kW or what on average over the period?

That bend is pretty sharp but, being Thais rather than tourists fresh of the last banana boat, they should have known about it. Nobody forced them to drive dangerously fast along there, and they didn't hurt anyone else, so what will be will be. RIP, anyway, a waste of life, but that seems to be the Thai way when it comes to driving.

It might be that, but if she's like my GF then she has zero idea of Home Economics and how to create a budget plan to live on. I give the GF money and she simply goes out and spends it, whether she needs anything or not. I've been trying for years to get her to save a few thousand Baht every month, especially when she had a decent salaried job and a steady income, but she seems to think this is some form of foreign madness, money is for spending, not saving. A week ago, her iPhone finally gave up the ghost after one of her dogs knocked it onto the cement floor. She was utterly desperate and begged me to lend her 4,000 Baht to get it repaired, which I did. She agreed to pay me back at 2,000 Baht/month from the money I give her, fair enough. Now this morning she's sending me photos of a motorbike sahling that she wants for her business selling stuff, which has mostly been non-existent since her last one went belly up for no good reason other than stupidity on her part. I told her that she's already got a good motorbike, a Ford Fiesta that I gave her as a present, and an old truck she bought herself, she doesn't need a sahmlor, especially when she isn't working on a regular basis. Get a job, earn money and save some to buy the sahling. Now, of course, I'm Khun Keeneow, the mean farang so-and-so who never gives her anything and makes her suffer so badly. The Thai education system's got a lot to answer for.