Guderian

There's a water filter shop halfway along Thepprasit on the north side, between Soi Kopai (Soi 6) and the PTT station. You can take the photos and whatever else you have along there and they should be able to tell you what you need.

Well if they do this then I hope they'll also rescind the stupid ban on beer on SRT trains.

RIP, but this has happened many times over the years. They put horrible pictures of illness and cancer on cigarette packets, and are talking about doing the same for booze. Maybe they should do something similar for big bikes, plaster them with photos of the horrendous physical results of a high-speed crash.

The motorbikes will just park on the pavements instead (that's sidewalks to our friends from the Gulf of America, lol).

Yet another news report involving a Frenchman with a decidedly non-French name. The eldest daughter of the Catholic Church must be in dire straits, no Pierre's or Marcel's or Jean-Paul's left anymore, lol.

I haven't seen this one posted in either the Pattaya or Thailand News sections, and I thought it was worth sharing it. From this morning's Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14346445/thailand-holiday-hell-road-sign-leaned.html As is often the case, I suspect we're only getting one side of the story here, though the Foreign Office seems to have accepted his tale. It started with him bumping into a sign and damaging it. Maybe he'd had a few Changs too many and, when in that condition, some people become aggressive, and maybe that's why the cops arrested him in the first instance? I won't speculate any further, anyway. Many of the photos in that article are the same as those used in this one: ...about a 29-year-old former British soldier who got banged up for overstay. Do the Soi 9 cops now have a standard set of press photos they release showing their desirable cells, lol? Or did the Mail lift the pictures from the AN article? Anyway, if what the guy in the Mail story says is true, then it's an appalling way to be treated. But I think there's a lot more to it than just that. Anyone?

lol lmao rofl

A pity his flight isn't being handled by Washington DC air traffic control... lol

He's probably to busy dining at the Thai Y to hear his wife calling him, lol.

What exactly is a "valid justification" for someone riding a motorbike after 1:00 AM to be carrying a weapon?

I wish them luck, but how many times have they launched a parking crusade like this in the past only for it to fizzle out after a few weeks?

I spent a few days there with the GF about 2 months ago. Very relaxed with few foreigners around, just about the opposite of Pattaya, most folk seem to be in bed by 9:00. Nice countryside, we took in Wat Khao Sukim, it's well worth the detour off Sukhumvit. Chanthaburi is, of course, closely associated with King Taksin the Great, his shrine is next door to the City Pillar and there's a large park with a statue of him in battle, driving back the Burmese invaders. We also drove down to the coast to visit the Kuk Kee Gai (chicken <deleted> prison) which I'd read about in one of the Pattaya papers many years ago. The Taksin Maharaj Bridge at the mouth of the Chant river is also worth a look, there's even a place at the top where you can safely park and enjoy the view. We drove back via the famous Chalerm Burapha Chonlatit coastal highway, though it was a bit of a disappointment. Too much of the road is way inland, and a lot of where it runs along the coast is simply built-up with houses and hotels and bars, so you don't get much of a view. The highlight is definitely the Noen Nang Phaya viewpoint, but if you go there don't miss the Water Pagoda. HTMS Prasae is also worth a visit at the mouth of the eponymous river. There's plenty left to see and do in Chanthaburi, so we'll spend a few more days down there later this year or next. We also had a great hotel, the Rimnaam Klangchan, in a beautiful location beside the river, a top-floor jacuzzi suite, and really friendly and helpful staff. Great breakfasts, too.

I did it 3 weeks ago and there's a sign up where they issue the queue numbers saying that the process takes one hour. The lady said the same to me when she handed me the ticket, come back in one hour. The place was really busy so I went for a drive and had a bite to eat in Burger King, then went back just a bit over an hour later. The wretched place was even more packed now, as not only had a continuous stream of TM47 and TM30 customers arrived, but all the people who had been told to come back in an hour had returned. A woman shouts out ticket numbers randomly and it was another 25 minutes before my number was announced. All in all, from the time I arrived at Immigration until I got my passport back it was almost exactly 2 hours. A huge waste of time for something that's so utterly pointless. Oh, and don't forget that a copy of your TM30 slip is listed as a requirement on their 'what to bring' sign. Why? They don't even ask for that when you do the annual visa extension, which is surely a lot more important than the stupid 90-day report. There are times I almost hope that they start playing hardball over taxes so they can drive me out of the country and I'll never have to put up with this particular aspect of Thai bureaucratic idiocy again!

If your policy to attract tourists is basically: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me..." then what else can you honestly expect? You make your bed and you have to sleep in it, I'm afraid.

Are you sure about that? Her dad seems to be calling all the shots these days.

Well if you will frequent the HiSo tourist places like that, manned by colourful and exotic immigrants from the sub-continent, what else did you expect? Try heading off to a real Thai market next time, like Talad Kwai on Thepprasit, manned by horny-handed Thai sons (and daughters!) of toil.

Ridiculous, the idiots in the DWP refuse to do this nonsense via e-mail or online as they claim that it isn't secure. Does that mean the Government Gateway isn't secure? If that's the case then they have an even bigger problem than I thought, If it's not the case, then why not just set up a page on the Government Gateway so you an register your continued existence there? Mu occupational pension is worth three times my state pension, yet the pension fund is happy to do everything online, including a PoL certificate every two years.

Highly unlikely given that the Immigration computer system can't even communicate effectively with itself (as evidenced by the need to do a 90-day in person when returning from a trip abroad, in spite of Immigration at the airport having clocked you into the system so it knows your status perfectly well). The idea that there'll suddenly be some magic, working interface between the TRD computer database (which, like most Thai IT, will also be an outdated crock o'<deleted>e) and the dodgy Immigration system is in the realms of fantasy as far as I'm concerned. And anyway, if they were somehow to decide to refuse you an extension, for many people that would surely be the time to get the Hell out of Dodge and find a friendlier place to spend your retirement income, or just go the <180-day route.

As long as this cool, still air stays over us, the smog isn't going anywhere. Roll on the hot season and a nice fresh south-westerly.

You know the way these things go in Thailand, they'll have this nice shiny new online TM6 system, yet will still want all the usual paperwork as well. Dropping the TM6 arrival card was the first actual reduction in Immigration paperwork I can remember, but it was obviously too good to last and the Thai bureaucracy, addicted to forms as it is, got withdrawal symptoms and so has come up with this online gubbins. And nothing the Thais do online ever works very well anyway.

Some years ago, I posted an important letter to HMRC in the UK via the EMS track & trace service at the main Pattaya Post Office. Not cheap. Anyway, the letter arrived at Heathrow and then disappeared, so I went back to the post office and asked them to find out what had happened to it. Talk about unhelpful, the guy behind the counter was basically saying to me in Thai, "Why should I, WTF has that got to do with me or this Post Office, falang idiot!" So I found a more senior Thai personage and, when I told them that the letter had arrived in Heathrow but then vanished from the tracking system, she told me that I needed to phone Heathrow airport and ask them where it had gone. Like Heathrow is the same size and as easily navigable as, say your local 7-eleven, lol. In the end, I printed another copy of the letter and sent it again, and this time it got there. Between that experience and Thai Post more or less having given up on actual physical delivery of letters in Pattaya any more than two or three times a year, I try not to bother with the mail any more.

It's interesting to learn that Thailand has two separate tax codes, one for its own citizens and a different one aimed only at foreign tax residents. Odd that I've never been able to find a copy of the foreign one. It must be the case, though, otherwise how can you explain the draconian measures people say the TRD will enact against farangs who don't file a tax return, while never bothering the millions of their own citizens who haven't bothered getting a TIN or offering to pay tax? My Thai builder is a prime example, he earns a lot of money and is in his late-50's, but decided a long time ago that the benefits of joining the Thai tax and social security system were far less than the tax he would have to pay, so he has never filed a tax return in his life. And the TRD hasn't sent its boot boys out to rough him up yet, whereas they'll soon be knocking down the door of any dirty foreigner who hasn't filed his paperwork.

You could have saved yourself the journey and just called 1337, you know?

Taiwan and South Korea are emerging markets nowadays??? lol

That's one thing you don't need to worry about as the Lunar New Year is on January 29 this year, not the end of February.