Guderian

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.

A bit short on details. How much is the tax reduction, and what kind of tax do they reduce? A rebate on your income tax, or a reduction or cancellation in the VAT on the purchase? Is this scheme available to homes owned in a company name?

I was there last week to get a re-entry permit. I rolled up around 3:00 and there was no queue at the ticketing desk. Desk 2 was busy,as always, but that's because they make people wait for 20-30 minutes after they've seen the IO to get their stamped passport back. It was moderately busy, about what the place is designed for, so no problem getting a seat. I just read a magazine for 20 minutes and then the guy brought around the stamped passports and that was it. No problems or drama at all, if only it was always like that.

If you've got a Thai friend or partner, just give any old stuff you've got - electrical equipment, clothes, tools, anything really - and they'll find a use for it if there is one. It saves you hoofing about the place, anyway.

I did an extension last December and had to sign the usual form, but there was no order to return in 3 months to check the bank balance. I thought they'd already abandoned it back then as it's clearly not compulsory, as has been mentioned here several times over the last year or two.

With the tendency of Thai trains to jump the track, I think I'll stick to my car for getting around. I mean, it's one thing being derailed at 20 or 30 km/hr, but quite another at 200 km/hr.

Where's Anutin when you need him, handing out masks at the airport and shouting at 'dirty foreigners', only at Africans this time? lol

This is interesting, the digital wallet scheme was very much Srettha's baby and, although Thailand has been signed up to CRS for a decade or so, the decision to start taxing all foreign remittances into Thailand was made on Srettha's watch. Given his financial background, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he was the one pushing it from within government. Now that he's history maybe the pressure on the TRD to try and crowbar a few satangs out of reluctant expats will hit the rails, too?

I've found this a problem, too. Often, the specialist you need to see is obvious, like a dermatologist for a skin problem, or an orthopaedic surgeon for a joint issue, but sometimes there can be multiple symptoms that make it difficult for a layman to figure out who to see. In the past, I've sometimes used the Swiss Dr. Olivier in Jomtien to figure out which specialist to see, but that doesn't work if you're not in Pattaya. I had a very good experience in Bangkok Hospital in Pattaya recently, though. I had a lump on the side of my moob which was a little bit tender. I assumed it was a subcutaneous cyst which needed to be cut and drained, I've had them before, so I booked an appointment to see the dermatologist I use here. She took one look and said that it's not a skin issue, I needed to see a surgeon right away, and she sent her nurse to get me an appointment. Twenty minutes later I was with a surgeon who also took one look at it and said it wasn't his area of expertise, I needed to go to the breast centre. Off we went and I soon saw a great doctor there who knew his stuff and spoke very good English. He did a USS but couldn't tell exactly what it was, most probably gynaecomastia but he couldn't rule out cancer. So he did an ultrasound-guided biopsy which was quite pricy, and I got the pathology results a week later - yes, happily it was gynaecomastia. What was interesting was that I was only charged for seeing the breast centre doctor, the dermatologist and surgeon I saw by mistake were free, so well done BHP for not gouging patients. I was also very impressed with the speed, the whole thing done in a matter of two or three hours, family back in the UK reckon it would have taken at 3 to 6 months on the NHS. Even the Thai public healthcare system isn't exactly fast, the GF has taken her grandmother to the local government hospital several times about a lump on her breast for around 2 months now, and she'll be having a biopsy done in a week or so. I've got to say, 10 out of 10 to Bangkok Hospital in Pattaya for the way they looked after me.

Thanks, that's helpful. Maybe I'll bring back a couple and see what I get rather than the whole lot.

Thanks. Any idea how much the scrap value would be compared with that day's headline gold price?

Many years ago when still living in the UK, I inherited some gold sovereigns. I just stuck them in a drawer in the bedroom and more or less forgot about them. With the price of gold nowadays, I'm starting to think that selling them would be a good idea. I could do that the next time I'm back in the UK, which would be the easy option, but I was also wondering about the possibility of bringing them to Thailand with me on my next visit and trying to sell them here. I expect that would be more complicated than doing it in the UK, but with the uncertainty over how the TRD will treat remittances in future it might give me 100-200K Baht in cash here that would be "under the radar", so to speak. Even if the TRD did find out somehow, I could always tell them that I've had the sovereigns here in Thailand for a long time, there's no way they can prove I haven't. A sovereign is the same almost-pure gold that the Thais like and the current price is around £475, so how much would the Thai gold shops rip you off because it's not "Thai" gold? Would it be worth the bother, or should I just flog them when I'm in the UK next?

Are you sure about that, how many are still coming on Zero Dollar Tours? It wouldn't surprise me at all if Srettha's family were in on the lark, too.

I've seen and heard of many examples of the Thais double pricing, so a foreigner has to pay anything from 2 or 4 times what a Thai does, up to maybe 20 times as much. Two days ago I visited Wat Arun with the TGF for the first time. All the online guides had said it cost 100 Baht admission fee, which seemed fine to me, a total of 200 Baht for me and the GF. When we got there, though, the sign clearly said 200 Baht admission fee, so I sighed and handed over 400 Baht to the lady behind the counter. The GF jumped in and yak-yakked here and she gave me 200 Baht back. Apparently, entry is free for Thais and 200 Baht for foreigners, an infinite mark-up for farangs compared with Thais. Well I can't really complain as I'd expected to pay 200 Baht at the outset and ended up paying 200 Baht, but it's still kind of annoying after living for 20 years in this country.

Soon to be inscribed on a new Statue of Thainess: Give me your drug-addled, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to avoid the draft back home, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the useless, tempest-tossed tossers to me, I lift my spliff beside the golden katoey!

San Mig Zero is so-called because it has zero carbohydrates, but still manages a 3% alcohol content, so I think it's around 60 cal/bottle, the least fattening of all the popular beers here. Well, it's popular in Pattaya where there's a lot of fat farangs, lol.

Straight ahead.

Only a colour blindness test, which does seem to be a bit of a challenge to a surprising number of people (usually mild red-green blindness).

Rocks? Man, this generation of Thais are such a bunch of snowflakes!

I had a personal encounter with Babangida on the road between Warri and Sapele and, if I hadn't had a very savvy Nigerian with me, his guards might well have shot me!

A lot of people use the income route to prove they have the funds to apply for a visa extension based on retirement, though personally I've always kept 800K in a savings account and use that route. As I understand things, using the income route you have to prove to Immigration that the income arrives in Thailand from overseas every month. So why is it that the TRD have never, ever challenged someone using this route to prove that the 65K Baht/month coming in wasn't earned during the current tax year? Plenty of less well-off folk will have been moving their pension income to their Thai bank account as soon as it comes into their overseas account, so under the old rules that should have been taxable, yet the TRD as far as I'm aware has never even tried to do so. Now we have a small rule change so that all assessable remittances are taxable, subject to exemptions from the double-taxation treaties, and I don't really see why the TRD will put a huge amount of effort into trying to collect that money when they've shown zero interest in collecting potential pension taxes under the old rule. And as for the taxation treaties, I was reading elsewhere in an article that had nothing to do with Thailand that even HMRC in the UK usually has to resort to employing the services of specialist legal firms when a double taxation treaty is involved. If well-educated, well-trained and well-supported tax inspectors in the UK need to pay for specialist advice and interpretation, what chance is there of the average tax inspector in a Thai office knowing what it all means?

When I was living in Nigeria under the military dictatorship of Ibrahim Babangida, I asked my right-hand Nigerian man, a very sharp chap, which was better for the country, a military or civilian government? He said that, all in all, the military were probably better for Nigeria as there were fewer generals stealing the public money than there would be civilian politicians. I had to laugh at that, though Babangida was a genuinely nasty piece of work, nothing like the genial Loong Tu.

Sounds like a serious case of wishful thinking....

If they were serious, six months ago already they'd have been writing that Thaksin had been told to stop planning to replace Srettha with his daughter. The fact that this is only now becoming an issue just tells us that the political wind has changed direction a bit. No doubt, the puppet master will be working hard to make the political weather more favourable for his family again.

Here's a copy of the 1981 UK-Thailand double taxation treaty, which I believe is still the version in force. As you can see, it's mainly related to business activities of one sort or another. I guess 40-odd years ago, the small number of British pensioners living in Thailand at the time didn't merit much consideration. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80bddc40f0b623026953eb/uk-thailand-dtc180281_-_in_force.pdf