Guderian

All I can say is I hope they have better facial recognition systems than are in use at Heathrow. My old biometric passport hadn't worked in the e-gates in T4 for several years. When I flew back to London in late August, I had a new passport which was less than a year old, yet the e-gates in T2 failed to recognise me, in spite of trying at least 5 times, to the annoyance of the staff and other customers. So you're ordered to go and see the only human being checking passports on the UK/EU side of Immigration, but there's a huge queue of people there. I got chatting with a couple of them and one of the guys had a passport that was even newer than mine, yet it didn't work. He was a frequent flyer and said that it never had worked. My guess is that around a fifth of people were failing to get through the e-gates and so being told to go and see the poor solitary Border Force chap we were queuing to see. Some people were getting quiet aggressive with him, but the flaky software and/or hardware was hardly his fault, and there was nothing he could do about it. Welcome back to Britain, where everything's massively overpriced and nothing works. You're not allowed to take photos in the Immigration area, but I was cheesed off at the huge delay so I got the phone out. That's not a check-in queue, that's the queue to see the sole human being in Immigration, lol. That lot took over 30 minutes to get through. Now translate that to a normal high season day at Swampy and imagine the potential for huge delays!

Blame the Russian, Chinese and Indian governments. They're buying immense amounts of gold bullion with their foreign exchange reserves rather than stashing it away in dollars (with a little bit in Euros and even less in Sterling). It's not our money that's dying, why would you say that, it makes no sense? It's the post-war, dollar-based international financial system that's being undermined as it's being used by the US government more and more as a weapon of coercion. If you were Putin, Xi or Modi, you'd be doing exactly the same thing.

Madness, but look at Phuket where they even banned deck chairs and sun beds on the beaches. For many Westerners, the whole point of a visit to the beach is to lie comfortably in the sun for a few hours. There's no telling what crazy ideas Thai officialdom will come up with next, from making the Pattaya Beach walkway a shade-free zone to preventing expats from buying new homes and cars as nobody can be sure they won't end up with a huge tax bill now on any large sum they remit to Thailand after 1/1/24.

<sarcasm> Of course, it makes perfect sense, since Thailand has so many similarities to Singapore and Switzerland, indeed they're almost indistinguishable! </sarcasm>

Hang about, it's the dollar and other Western currencies that have declined seriously against the Baht over the last six months, so where does the 'depreciate further' come from?

Interesting, an NPL is self-evident, but I didn't know what an SM loan was, this explains it: 3/ Non-Performing Loan (NPL): a loan in which the borrower is in default and has not paid the monthly principal and interest repayments more than 90 days. 4/ Special Mention Loan (SM): a loan in which the borrower is in default and has not paid the monthly principal and interest repayments for 30-90 days So the banks and car industry have outstanding loans of almost 470 billion Baht on which repayments are not being made. Given the difficulty that the Thai government has experienced trying to raise a similar sum to fund its 10K Baht digital wallet scheme, this amount seems to be large enough to be worrying. After all, if a bank goes broke because of its non-performing loan portfolio, its the Thai government that ultimately has to pick up the deposit insurance bill for up to 1 million Baht per account. Anyway, I certainly wouldn't keep more than a million Baht in any account under the present circumstances.

It sounds more like a storm that will affect the south of the country, the main part of Thailand seems to have a 10% chance or less of getting any rain. Regional updates In the northeastern region, the morning will be cool with strong winds and slight rain in some areas, In the central region, 10% of the area will experience thunderstorms, In the eastern region, 10% of the area will experience thunderstorms, In Bangkok and surrounding areas, 10% of the area will experience thunderstorms.

I'm on my sixth Samsung TV, an 85 inch QLED one, and I think it will be my last one. While the picture is good the software is rubbish, their media player is about a decade behind the times in the formats it can handle. On top of that, there's now the rigmarole as already mentioned of having to register an account with them just to get the wretched thing working, plus the advertising which you can;t do anything about, plus it's a locked device so you can only instal the apps that Samsung deems acceptable. For a consumer device costing well over 100K Baht that's just not acceptable in my book. To add insult to injury, they then screwed me out of the full 3-year warranty on the big TV and would only give me 1-year. Crooked as well as incompetent. Next time I'll just buy the biggest cheap TV I can find and add an Android box or mini-PC to it. None of the Samsung smart TV's I've had has ever lasted more than 7 or 8 years, and I've also had a Samsung fridge-freezer that conked out after 5 years. Samsung is hopelessly over-rated IMHO.

Something similar happened to me a few months ago. I live in Pattaya and, in the past, I've always taken a taxi to and from Bangkok, but for a change I decided that I fancied driving to the hotel we were staying at in the Nana area of Sukhumvit. It looked pretty easy on the map and I was using Google Maps on my phone connected via Android Auto to the infotainment display in the car to make sure I didn't go wrong. For some reason, the phone tried to divert me off the 7 motorway near Swampy, but the road seemed clear so I just continued. Then when we were maybe 10 klicks from the turning off to get to Sukhumvit the phone again told me to turn left at some junction that I was unfamiliar with. As I was in 'new' territory for me I did as the phone commanded and ended up on a maze of much smaller roads with traffic travelling quite fast. In one section we were underneath the Skytrain or maybe an actual railway as there were alternate periods in deep shadow and then bright sunlight, but I was just following the traffic ahead while keeping a safe distance and watching to see what Maps came up with next. We came out from the alternate bright/dark flashing road onto a large traffic junction with half a dozen cops there and we were flagged down to stop as I'd gone through a red light. I didn't argue the point, I'm sure they were right, though I certainly hadn't seen it in the bright/dark area. Having lived here for 20 years, the cops usually only have a large presence like that in places where they're certain to make some decent money. Anyway, an old female cop showed us (the Thai GF was with me) a laminated plastic menu saying that the penalty for running a red light was 4,000 Baht. A load of old cobblers, I knew, but I just smiled and let the GF do the talking. The cop eventually came down to 1,000 Baht then the GF said that her father is a retired policeman up in Phitsanulok so she would call him and he could fix the ticket for us. Really, it works, I've seen her do it before when she had a run in with the cops locally down this way. He wasn't picking up, though, so after some more bargaining the cop came down to 700 Baht and said that was as low as she could go. The GF was gearing up for Round 2 of the negotiations but I was getting bored and was happy to just cough up the 700 Baht. No ticket or receipt, of course, but we were soon on our way again. While we were sitting there arguing, I saw at least three other vehicles pulled up by the cops, presumably for running the same invisible red traffic light. In the hotel, the GF's father called and he said that the ticket should have been no more than 400 Baht, so I was 300 Baht out of pocket but it was a lot better than the 4,000 Baht the crooks, I mean cops, had originally demanded. It was an amusing and educational episode, anyway, though the GF was fuming. All part of the rich tapestry of life here, but genuine tourists will probably not be very amused by such greed and larceny.

It was just a natural reaction to the gastric shock of consuming something that's not been deep-fried. She should have asked for the battered marijuana, lol!

In much of the UK now, shoplifting is regarded by the authorities as a victimless crime and therefore not worth pursuing. For insurance purposes, stores have had to to warn their staff not to confront shoplifters as they may be high on drugs or carrying a knife and get violent. Even when shops have clear CCTV footage of the culprit and the act, the cops refuse to take any action as they claim they're too busy. But that's no different from having clear CCTV footage of someone burgling your home, plod will give you a crime number to make a claim on insurance, but they're extremely unlikely to investigate it any further. This dumb hussy probably didn't even realise that it's still a serious crime in Thailand, thought it was the same as at home in Cleveland and just waltzed in, saw something she fancied and then tried to waltz back out with it again. Blame the British politicians, police, lawyers and the rest of the great and the good who condone this sort of behaviour, it's as much their fault as hers.

I just bought one from Amazon in the UK to replace a very old desktop PC in my gaff back there. Excellent value and it does everything I want, which includes a fair bit of video editing. This is the one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/DreamQuest-Desktop-Computer-Dual-band-Bluetooth It was really simple to set up and get working, no fuss or nonsense at all, certainly compared that with the Dell crock-o-shlte laptop I bought here in Pattaya 2 years ago. My brother's been using one for years in the UK, but his just broke down and his lazy son-in-law refused to come and see what the problem was and if it could be fixed, so he just bought the same one and is also delighted with it. If you can get it in the UK they have regular offers of £40 off the quoted price, so I ended up getting it for £170, which was a bargain, again certainly compared with the Dell laptop that cost me 16K Baht.

The first thing you should do is to go along to the local tax office and ask for a Thai TIN (tax identification number), explaining that you're an 83-year old pensioner with no income from employment in Thailand, only from overseas pensions. They'll most likely refuse to issue you with a TIN, making it impossible for you to file a tax return, and then you won't have to worry about the issue any more.

If the Shinawatra family donated, say, 80% of its wealth directly to the poor it would be a good start. And when that happens, the poor can begin raising flying pigs... lol.

You can always use an agent if the paperwork is too much hassle... I did that a year ago. I'd just got back from 6 weeks in the UK and had arranged to buy a new car almost as soon as I returned, so I needed a residence certificate. I also had a new passport which had to be entered in the Immigration system and the visa stamps transferred before I could do the residence certificate. That meant two trips to desk 8 in Soi 5, and between the jet lag and seeing the dealer, plus a trip to the bank to get a cashier's cheque, I really didn't want to waste more time getting the residence certificate. I used a German guy whose office is just a few hundred yards away from the village where I live. He took photos of me and my passport but didn't want any actual paperwork (I already had a valid TM30 slip stapled in the passport), relieved me of some money, and the next day the residence certificate was ready in his office. There are occasions when it really is worth paying an agent to do this stuff for you, but it's up to you to judge when that is

Take a completed TM8 plus copies of the ID page, valid visa and last entry stamp from your passport, and 1,000 Baht for a single-entry permit. Get a number for desk 2 and wait until you are called. Hand over the paperwork and cash, then sit and wait anything from 15 to 30 minutes while they shuffle papers behind the counter. A guy will then bring a bunch of passports out and call for names or numbers - get yours and go home. Simple, takes about 30 minutes all told, though if the place is busy it can take an hour. As with all bureaucracy, not just the Thai version, patience is a virtue in us supplicant peons.

Given the tourism demographics these days, it's probably going to be replaced by a chain called Guangzhou Chicken. lol

Why? That's the only bit of your money that's atcually safe from the TRD now if you spend more than 180 days here in a tax year, lol. I wonder if they're going to time this like they did the change in the remittance rules last year so that it comes into force wef the start of the New Year, i.e. 1/1/2025 in this case?

I might not mind paying tax in Thailand if I got anything back in return but, as it is, I can own the pot that I piss in but not the square foot of land that it sits on. They'll have to do a lot better than that before I start handing over my offshore, tax-free moolah.

This was months ago already. Has anyone actually seen a comment on Lazada or Shopee saying that Thai VAT has been included for a cheap purchase from Big Brother? I haven't noticed anything.

Not long after he got out of his enforced stay in a prison hospital, assuming he was ever actually in there, I recall him musing that his daughter might rep[lace Srettha as the next PM. It sounded ridiculous at the time, yet here we are 6 months or so later and look who's the PM. Thaksin and his whole family couldn't care less about the Thai people, they're only in it for themselves.

You can have a look at the AN cars for sale section: https://aseannow.com/forum/79-cars-for-sale-in-thailand/ or Thai forums like Bahtsold. There's a Pattaya FB page called Cars For Sale in Pattaya which has a lot of vehicles on offer. In all these cases, though, it's up to you to judge if the car is what it's said to be. I'd be careful buying from the Russians as they often buy cars that have had a serious accident then do them up and sell them without mentioning it. OTOH, I know a guy who unwittingly bought one and has driven all over Thailand in it for 5 years without any issues, it's only now he wants to sell it that he's finding cannier buyers know that it's been in an accident and insist on a steeply discounted price. The many second-hand dealers around the town will usually give you a 3-month or 6-month warranty, but you pay for it in the price, of course.

Smart move by the Shinawatras, it's so much simpler to embezzle cash than wretched digital currency. I guess the money for the 30 million people who were originally slated to get the 10K Baht but who will now be left empty-handed will constitute a Shinawatra family 'consultancy fee'. They should be careful, though, more than a few of those 30 million are going to be mighty angry at this decision and will be unlikely to vote Pheu Thai again.

The authorities should bring these two groups of schoolkids together, give them a serious talking to about Thainess and then drop them off in the evening, fully armed, in Soi Yensabai to sort out the noisy Kuwaiti biker problem. lol

Duh, wouldn't it have been a good idea to arrest them and find out where the assailant is hiding out? The Thai cops don't really seem interested in catching him.