jeffer

Reading this topic l wonder if there are two Tiger Airlines. I have flown the Singapore- Bangkok route about 30 times with Tiger without a problem. The planes leave on time ... unlike AirAsia. While l don't select an airline on how cute the staff look l have to say l find the Tiger female staff very attractive in their casual style uniforms.

Singapore Changi Airport is very efficient and so to is the budget terminal. You can turn up for your flight even later than the main airport and immigration is a breeze. Some of you must be very suspicious looking characters if you're encountering problems with either customs or immigration. Maybe some of you want the budget terminal to be a shopping centre with an airport attached like Suvarnabhumi. I'll take the Singapore budget terminal over Suvarnabhumi anyday.

I agree that No. 1 is Jetstar , No. 2 Air Asia, and No. 3 Tiger.

Tiger is typical Singaporean...out to outsmart you.

I'm only guessing but it seems a few posters here who dislike Tiger so much are Thai or Thai-Chinese who love to hate anything Singaporean these days.

1. Tiger is the only one of the three budget carriers which still does not include the Baht 700 BKK Airport departure tax in the price of your e-ticket and remains silent about it. This is to outwit the unwary customer who thinks he/she has a good deal (when comparing prices) only to learn at check-in that the Baht 700 BKK departure tax is extra. I have seen many fuming-mad passengers at check-in.

I must be lucky then because l haven't paid any departure tax at the airport since early this year and l doubt anyone else has either unless their ticket was booked a long way in advance.

2. Baggage (over)weight is Tiger's way of getting more money from you. I saw a group of five who were refused to weigh their bags as a group. Each bag had to be identified and weighed seperately, and the excess weight charged accordingly. Of course, no credit for underweight bags.

I would suppose that bags have to be identified separately for security reasons if nothing else. If you are stupid enough to carry excess weight in baggage when the limits are stated on their website then l don't see how you can complain, unless you think you are 'the special one' and not Jose Mourinho.

3. Food on board is another money source and they make sure the message sinks in...repeated warnings of no outside food allowed on board.

Again, another 'why should the conditions apply to me because l'm the special one' type comment. Any adult who for other than medical reasons cannot go without food for a couple of hours has a problem imho.

4. Bear in mind that Tiger's BKK-SIN or SIN-BKK flight schedule gets you into SIN close to midnight, which means a 50% surcharge on your cab fare, and leaves SIN early in the morning...again a 50% surcharge on your cab fare. (No prize for guessing that Tiger and the major cab company are owned by the same people.)

Now you know.

Yes, now we know you are clueless with that last comment. Tiger have three flights daily in each direction between Bangkok and Singapore. If it takes you until after midnight to get into Singapore on a flight that arrives at either 11.55AM or 5.30pm then l have to wonder if you have ever flown Tiger before or even looked at their website. Returning to Bangkok there are departures at 12.10 in the afternoon and 6.10pm in the evening so why you need to be paying a surcharge for a cab fare is beyond me.

I fly either Tiger or Jet Star, both use late model aircraft and are reliable in my experience. I've found the staff on both airlines helpful and polite but then l'm not trying to get around conditions regarding food and luggage so maybe that helps. Air Asia are okay too but they have let me down once too often with their inability to depart on time.

yes, nobody from the airlines corrected this statement so I take it as true

Some of you are very jaded, aren't you?

you know, maybe you would be surprised at how many 30 year old girls there are in Thailand without a boyfriend, ever. I can assure you they are out there. I'm friends with a family who have a now 32 year old daughter, attractive enough that very few of you would say no to her if she wanted to go out with you, university educated with pretty good English. There were Thai and foreign men wanting to go out with her but she never could find the right guy until she met an English man last year who swept her off her feet. She will probably end up marrying him later this year, one very nice lady that a lot of guys missed out on.

While there might be plenty of girls who will jump in to bed with any foreigner in the hope of improving their lot, there are also many who are still brought up in the old fashioned way who don't and you shouldn't make the mistake of assuming they are all fat and ugly either 'cause they're not.

I have a SiL from Mahasarakham and on my few visits there haven't come across many westerners married to a Thai and it's not a very big province compared to others in Issan. If the OP has been with her for 3 years then it sounds like a serious relationship and he shouldn't need to be asking on an internet forum about whether or not he should be paying a dowry. Three hundred thousand baht for a girl as described doesn't sound excessive for that part of Thailand. Trying to get out of it now is only going to harm the future of the relationship and if the girl is as nice as the OP says it sounds fair enough as the cost of the reception alone in the west would be much more than that so he should just pay up and think of it as in investment in both their futures instead of standing on principle. He won't be losing face whereas she seriously will if he doesn't pay up now after already agreeing to do so. It might be one thing to object to paying a dowry for a girl you've met via the nightlife industry, maybe with a child and a rudimentary education but in this case it's not so unreasonable especially from a Thai viewpoint. Why spoil the opportunity to have a good life with someone over an amount that he has already said is not going to be a hardship for him.

Shouldn't this topic be moved here?

What are the best Thai language forums for someone with questions about software and operating systems (Windows)?

thanks all

It's a pretty basic expectation. You should be able to get in a cab, have the driver turn on the meter and be taken to your destination. The fact that so many people have to fight to get this simple level of service is a poor reflection on what is supposed to be a modern airport.

Every time l come through this airport l never know what l'm going to encounter. I've had one stand up argument with a controller who tried to rip me off far too much, but got the correct deal in the end with even the taxi driver admitting the controller was scamming customers. The other night at two in the morning it was smooth as silk, no arguments, just an efficient service that got me home using the meter, the way it should always be.

I thought the touts were supposed to have moved on but l still had at least ten people approach me, but not in an aggressive way so that's something to be thankful for l suppose. It's obvious high up people at the airport are behind the scams as without them all this malarkey would have been sorted instead of continuing for a year now.

I have a spare 1m baht presently in a Siam Commercial Bank passbook account. I was looking at investing 500k-1m in a term deposit account. I asked at my local branch and was told the term deposit rate is 0.4% for 6 months. I was wondering if l may have misunderstood them as this rate seems rather low. By comparison a similar term deposit in Australia would get at least 5% or even more online with ING.

I had a rates list from SCB a year back and l'm fairly certain the term rates were at least 3%. Are Thai rates really so low when compared to overseas or is there some other form of bank deposit investment l should have been asking about that would provided a better return? Are all Thai banks going to be offering similar low rates or is there worthwhile competition between banks? The rate l was quoted seems strange when other countries rates have risen over the past year, not crashed.