richardt1808

Does he have a visa (physical sticker in passport with an expiry date) OR does he have an extension of stay ? An extension is what happens when you have had the work permit for longer than the duration of the visa and which then extends your permission to stay in the country. Visas do not get cancelled, so if he is here on the actual visa, then he may remain until its expire date and return anytime after on a new tourist visa. If he is on an extension, then he needs to get the extension cancelled at immigration, which will need to be accompanied by a letter from the employer confirming the last working day. Other documents may also be required. 

One of the criteria when assessing the application for permanent residence is the payment of Thai income tax. In order to to qualify as a 'resident' for tax purposes, you need to be in the country for at least 180 days in the tax year during each year that you are on your work permit. I'm sure that you could safely spend several months out of the country during the year with no problem, but as Joe mentions above, there would be questions if you were away for extended periods of time. If it were a BOI company, they may be more lenient in some respects, so it may be a good idea to talk to a Lawyer who has BOI experience.

Best of luck !

Every taxi and Uber driver in Bangkok will know how to get there - the location is at Chaengwattana Road, Soi 9. For Uber, just pin the location above as the destination.

True4U also has dual audio for foreign movies which have been Thai dubbed

Agree with Joe. You shouldn't have a problem with immigration when you arrive. Enter on your US passport and complete the arrival form quoting the first name in that passport. (Have the other passport handy, in the unlikely event of a question).

When exiting the country, you will be questioned because the immigration desk will check that your name on the boarding pass matches your US passport, so you will need to show the other passport and explain.

Perhaps when booking the ticket, you can put your US first name as your middle name on the booking, which will help eliminate questions.

I'd say you were very lucky to have ever received your deposit back on the day of moving. Most landlords either spend that deposit money as soon as they receive it, or they use it to re-pay the previous deposit - it never goes into a savings account to sit and wait for the end of the lease. A friend of mine once waited 45 days for his deposit, so 30 days ain't that bad.

Hope it's not a large amount

I'm not sure what your question is. Do you want to know whether it is legal for people to use a town-house for a commercial purpose ? (In which case, yes, depending on the location and agreement of other owners if it is in a complex. Thai laws are generally more permissive in this area than other countries).

What kind of concerns are you talking about ? Are you planning on using your proposed townhouse for a commercial purpose, or are you worried about being disrupted by the business of other owners?

With respect to cost, renting office space vs renting or buying a whole townhouse would each have their own pros and cons and cost criteria. Obviously if you rent or own the whole house, you should have a lot more freedom in terms of how you use the whole space.

I have a different view to the first response. You are permitted to work while your Work Permit application is being processed.

I recently had a vaguely similar situation. My current work permit was valid until July, but due to not receiving my new passport in time, my extension of stay expired along with the validity of the old passport; so after a long discussion with a senior official at immigration, I was advised that I had to physically leave the country before the expiry of the old passport because extensions cannot be transferred to a temporary travel document. So, I had to fly out and wait a week for the new passport to arrive, and then get a new NonB in the new passport before returning to Thailand, which, they explained, would also require a completely new work permit. So we then had to do a fresh WP application which was duly done last week and I am now waiting for the new WP to be processed.

Thus, in theory by returning on a fresh NonB, you would be doing something similar and as long as your school is happy to support a fresh WP application, you should be fine (ie you would be working while your new WP application is being finalised).

Hi there,

There are probably many teachers who don't do a full 8 hour working day, so basically, if you are able to find an institution or company who is interested in employing you and who is prepared to sponsor the work permit, then I'm sure the actual working hours could be negotiated. There is no mention of hours on the WP itself, so not entirely a stupid question. The problem would be, of course, finding an employer who is looking for someone to work part-time. Small chance of that, but not impossible, I would guess.

I have in the past had the executive test done at Bumrungrad, which was extremely thorough, but the cost is now in the region of 20K and this year I decided to give the St Louis program a try. Although, it was much cheaper, they offered basically the same tests and the exercise stress test was, in particular, thorough and the doctor who specialises in that was very good. All the results were emailed to me a day later and I quite liked the fact that there were a series of automated comments alongside anything which was slightly out of the ordinary; so, although the doctor who gave me the verbal result basically said I was in good health, I was able to read all of the small print and I did identify several things which I did some of my own homework on and then discussed with my regular doctor on my next visit.

I'd definitely echo the comments above regarding doing your own homework as well, and definitely don't be afraid to ask questions.

cheers

Yes, there are always varying degrees of the meaning of the word 'resident'. Just take it to mean that you should be currently staying in Thailand; which is logical since you will need to sign and submit the documents for a minor.

Hi,

TVB, GEM, H&F are the only ones which do not come in English.

As you should be able to guess from the names, most of the channels are U.S based and hence in English.

Many of the English channels come with dual audio, ie. you can select either English or Thai dubbing via your remote (should you have Thai speaking household members).

For the extra 4 movie channels alone, that's great value for money.

OMG there are people dying of starvation in Africa and bombs going off in Europe. Take a chill pill and stop complaining about nothing !

It really depends on what the check-up is for, doesn't it.

While I do agree that privacy means very little in Thailand, you will certainly invalidate any insurance policies if you submit a false report (and I'm pretty sure that the fine print will mention possible criminal charges too). More scary, would be if you are trying to hide any serious or contagious disease which could potentially put lives at risk and in that case insert flaming comment here: ....

If you're simply being paranoid for no reason, let me offer this: On a recent check-up for my new work permit, my hospital was extremely thorough in checking my passport and required a copy. A friend of mine did a driver's license application a few months back and his certificate from a small mom and pop clinic was refused - they told him to use a proper hospital (which would obviously have similar identity requirements)

If you have been renewing the WP every year, then why would you have a new Non-B Visa ?

Normally, the process is that you request a one year extension of your old NonB, based on having a WP; then you have your WP extended accordingly. The dates on the WP should line up with your visa extension date.

Hi Andre,

I am in a similar situation and have also lived here for more than 10 years, so packing up and jetting off to SA to wait for the new passport would be ridiculous. My work permit is valid until June, but my passport expires in February and thus my permission to stay also expires same day as my passport. I applied for my new passport in November, so the new one definitely will not arrive before the existing passport expires. Quite unacceptable.

The South African Embassy can do two things for you: First, they have a standard letter which confirms you have applied for your new passport and which can be shown to Immigration to at least prove the validity of your situation. Second, they can issue you with an emergency travel document which is supposed to have the same validity as a passport, which is valid for 3 months and costs B 300; but it does require you to have a valid air-ticket as proof of your departure within those 3 months. With this emergency travel document, you at least won't be on overstay and when the new passport arrives, you should be able to do the transfers from your old passport without too many questions.

I will be collecting my letter on Monday and applying for the emergency travel document at the same time and then our HR department will help me negotiate the next step with Immigration.

You can PM me with your contact information and I'll keep you updated.

Best,

Richard

16GB is your RAM. Nothing to do with data storage.

You have a 500GB storage drive of which you have used 138GB and there is 362GB free. Simple

Hi,

I have also lived in Thailand for more than 15 years. I work in a large Thai multi-national company and there are several people in our Finance department who are really good with formulas and linking data from multiple excel sheets. With regards to actual macro programming, I thought I was the only one in the country who could do that - but I now know that, including you, there are at least two of us !

Advanced Excel is not something I have seen taught anywhere here and I think that the biggest reason is probably because Thai finance people generally don't speak English very well, so doing a little self-teaching via Excel forums is beyond their level of capability. It also boils down to the way most Thais are taught. Thai education focuses on 'rote memorization' ie. a learning process that involves repeating information until it's remembered verbatim. This means that Thai students are often brilliant at recalling lists of facts or reciting complex theories which have already been taught to them. However, they are often NOT taught how to think for themselves and come up with unique and untried solutions to problems. It is very unusual to find people who can 'think out of the box'. I am generalizing here, but I'm sure you get the point.

I have no complaints about this though, as I love the fact that many of my colleagues sit in absolute awe at my ability to complete tasks in a matter of minutes that normally would take them days to do; or how my team of workers are continually able to come up with new and better ways of solving simple problems that they simply haven't taken the time to think through in a logical fashion. It is skills like these that help to make us indispensable and we should enjoy the fact that most others don't have them.

Be aware that if you change the colour of your car to a new colour, you need to have your records adjusted at the Land Transport Department and you should have a valid reason for doing so. A friend of mine had to jump through all the loops and he vowed he would never do it again.

Thanks for the great suggestions guys.

We had an electrician over who was great. He replaced the breaker with a 10A one and did current draw test, plugging items in one-by one. The wife forgot to ask him if the screw on the old breaker was loose, but I opened up the panel again when I got home to check the others. He must have tightened them all as they were all rock solid. The receptacle in the old breaker was black and slightly pitted, so It looks like it was indeed a loose screw.

Many thanks !

Hi,

I had the same thoughts as you a while back and was trying to choose between a 525 or Mercedes C180K. I spoke to my wife's uncle, who runs a car dealership upcountry as I thought his opinion would be particularly helpful. His advice was:

If you are buying second hand, you are safest with Honda and Toyota in terms of reliability, repair costs and re-sale value. Mercedes is okay, provided you can find a good private mechanic. BMW, in his opinion, is like a crying baby. It continually demands attention and no matter how much money you throw at it, there will always be some new problem the next month. I went with the C180K and it served me very well for 5 years, but I did take a huge knock on the re-sale value.

There are thousands of BMW for sale around Thailand, and almost zero demand because of the reasons mentioned above. Unless you have your own diagnostic unit, or a really reliable private mechanic, I would forget BMW here. But, if it is less than two years old and being sold with Motor-plan - that's another story.

Cheers

Your post sounds like the breaker has tripped and you did not notice that some device/appliance is off, no dead plugs?

That would be strange indeed. Are you sure you have checked everything?

Hi, thanks for the reply. I did a quick check when it first tripped last night, but I will do a thorough check of every socket and appliance as soon as I get home.

It is rather weird

It looks like that circuit is drawing a lot more that 20 amps, the insulation has melted when the circuit tripped causing a surge of elecricity to arc as the breaker closed the circuit, what are you running on that circuit?

You need to find out exaclty what is running on that circuit, things to look for is Air conditioner and hot water system as they should have a separate 25 amp breaker each.

what else do you have that will draw more than 20 amps?

Let me know.

Hi,

I traced all of the circuits when we first bought the house. This line runs only to normal outlet sockets in 3 rooms. The following items are the only things that are connected:

LCD TV

VCR

Cable TV Set-top-box

WiFi router

2 lamps

All our AC units, stove, laundry equipment are each on different separate circuits; all with their own breaker. I will double check to see if there are any sockets on the same line which I may have missed, but we were really rigorous during installation of all high-current items, so its definitely nothing like an AC unit.