srs

without an income the bank would like to know how is she going to service the loan ?

By letting others service her, either that or rinse a farang.

That of course is one option. ;-) Though I doubt that would impress the bank since there won't be a rinse-a-farang-contract.

I was under the impression that since there is a house as a security the bank would give away some money quite easily.

I mean, about what monthly "fee" are we talking about for a 70.000-80.000 baht loan?

The Thai owner of the house does not have a regular job (studying at university before) and no positive or negative connection with a bank.

The "only" security is the house.

She has a good friend working at the bank though ;-)

For me it would just be very helpful if I could get some rough idea of how easy or difficult it is to ge a small mortgage like this.

In relation to the construction costs of the newly erected house we are talking about a max of about 20% mortgage.

And of course how much this would cost per month/year.

Hi all,

I hope you can help me out here?

Is it difficult to take a small mortgage on a house in Thailand?

Here are the facts:

We are talking about a small house in Isaan.

Brand-new ;-)

Construction costs: about 500.000 baht.

Owner: Thai (of course)

What would the owner have to do in order to get a small mortgage of about 80.000 baht !! on this house?

What documents are needed?

Is this easily done?

Of course it should be done with a "reputable" bank.

How much interest is to be paid monthly / yearly?

Thank you all for the help

I used AirBerlin a couple of times on the route Bangkok - Duesseldorf.

As lazygourmet said: no-frills service but if you get one of the low-priced tickets it is good value for money.

No personal in-seat-entertainment, average legroom. They offer extra-legroom seat for - i think - 60 Euro!! oneway.

One big plus is the one-way-pricing policy. You don't have to pay the same price for oneway or return like in most other airlines.

Another big point: it feels very safe (and is 100% safe so far ;-) ). German high standard of security and maintenance.

And the Sansibar Curry Sausage is very good too ;-)

Thank you everybody for the input and the help.

1.)

My wife's name is on the building permit. i guess that is a good thing.

Master of the House. That's an interesting term.

So, don't you think it is possible

a) that my wife sends her brother a letter of authorization so that she can be registered as MOH?

or alternatively register her brother as MOH first and later (when she comes to Thailand in let's say 6-8 months) change this registration to her name?

2.)

The Chanote I was referring to really seems to be a land title that was "upgraded from possessary rights farmland".

So there really seems to be this 10 years sales restriction.

Still sounds odd to me since I guess if somebody is broke and cannot buy food at least can say "Hey, at least I am the owner of an area. I just have to survive for 10 years until I can sell it ".

3.) As far as I know Dual citizenship is not allowed in Germany.

But as always there are some exceptions from this rule.

So if Thailand does not release Thai citizens from Thai citizenship she would be able to keep both citizenships.

At the moment I don't see the big advantage of having the German citizenship over having a very strong "permanent alien residency".

Personally I would not want to give up my original citizenship.

Let's see.

Thanks again

Hi all,

I hope you can help me out here.

At the moment my Thai wife an me are building a small house back in Thailand.

Both of us are not in Thailand but everything is working out smoothly. No problems at all. The architect and supervisor is a person we can trust.

So, really no problems here. ;-)

Now my questions:

1.

What happens after the house is finished? How do you register the ownership of a house in Thailand?

I am asking because the house will be finished in May or June. But we are not sure if my wife can go to Thailand shortly after the house is finished.

Her mom is moving into the house.

But I don't think it is a good idea if my mother-in-law is the house owner since one day when mom dies (god bless her), suddenly there will be a long lost and forgotten son who never took care of her and who is then fighting for the house.

I do not mean to talk bad about Thais at all. This kind of stuff happens in Germany every day.

So I would like my wife to be the owner of the house.

Is it possible to register her brother as the owner first and then - in let's say December 2011 when my wife goes back to Thailand - change the sole ownership to my wife?

Or can we wait with any form of registration until December?

My wife said something about the government institution providing the infrastructure for the electric power. She said they need an ownership regsitration first.

2.

Is it really impossible to sell a land including the Chanot if the initial purchase of the land is not 10 years ago?

My wife said that but I cannot believe it. My understanding would be that you can sell the land anytime but if you do so within the first 10 years there will be a tax on the profit.

Can you confirm? And if so how is the procedure of a sale?

3.

And one more question:

What happens if one day my wife would like to have the German citizenship. Does she loose her land?

Thanks a lot to anybody

I can recommend the HTC Desire Z.

My wife has an iPhone 4, so I can compare.

iPhone 4 looks nicer but in my opinion the Android OS is way better.

For me Android and HTC with their own interface on top of Android did a very good job in improving the usability and the "feeling" of the OS.

That is also one advantage of HTC Android over Samsung Android. The HTC Sense interface feels better than the Samsung TouchWiz interface.

The Desire Z has a built-in keyboard which is really nice if you write many emails.

I have also tried Android phones (both HTC and Samsung) of the next lower price range. These are usually good too but you can definitely feel the difference in terms of touch behaviour and screen quality.

I am 100% satisfied with the Desire Z.

If I had to mention downsides it would be the battery life and the weight.

For me this is not an issue so far.

Good luck with your smartphone.

The first song is a Da Endorphine song too.

My wife has just told me the name:

Dai Yin Mai

ได้ยินไหม

Try City Home at Ratchada Soi 10.

8000 Baht up for a studio.

Pool, gym, laundry, minimart, restaurant.

Nice mix of people.

Walking distance to MRT Huay Kwang and Cultural Center and to TOPs, Carreforur and Esplanade.

Had a great time there.

Are you already in Bangkok? If so take a taxi to Soi 10. At City Home you can ask for studios in the office near the pool.

For photos try this: http://www.unc.edu/~ton/CityHomeRatchada.html

Try Oriental Suite at Ratchada Soi 7 and City Home at Ratchada Soi 10.

I have never seen a single roach in these places.

Highly recommended.

I have been living in New York (Manhattan). Roaches everywhere inside the houses.

But here in Thailand I do only know them from walking on the street.

Maybe I am just lucky with the choice of my apartment houses.

Thank you for your answers.

There really is a note stated on the backside of the title. It says that a change of name is not allowed within the first 10 years.

I still don't understand that. So the land can be sold but the name on the title cannot be changed.

I wouldn't buy land under that restriction.

This is what I was told:

โฉนดที่ดิน นศ.4

Ok. I have some more information that might help. We are talking here about a small area in Issan.

I was told that in the past it was normal that people just owned the area that they lived and worked on.

Often they did not have a legal document whatsoever.

Recently the government is pushing people to "legally" own their land and makes them "buy" their land and have proper land deed documents.

So, for the area we are talking about this is the first time that a Chanot has been issued.

I don't know if that helps.

Hi all.

I hope you guys can help me out here although there is no "Farang" involved.

Person A (Thai) has an original land title document (chanot, nor sor 4) in his possession.

The owner's name on the document though is the name of the A's aunt B (Thai).

This is due to teh fact that the land sale was only possible on one certain day and A has not been in the city at that time. So A payed the money and called B to buy the land (yes I know it is not clever).

Now A and B went to the local "land department" together in order to change the name on the land deed back to A.

The officials said that is not possible within the next ten years.

Is that correct? Is there really no way?

That means you cannot sell your own land to somebody else within the first ten years.

I was under the impression that one has to pay some taxes on that deal (as it would be handled as some kind of speculative transaction).

But is it really impossible?

Thanks a lot

Not a good experience from my side about the new building and office.

I arrived late at 1:30pm. And i guess that was the mistake.

Took the MRT to Chatuchak and then a taxi.

I found the Copy-shop downstairs but the guys working there didn't know the procedure. They didn't know which pages of the passport to copy. The guys at Suan Plu did know. Very easy before.

At the office itself i spent 3 hours. Only one lady was accepting the visa extension applications (at Suan Plu I experienced that many times two employees were working at the counter). The employee at the new office left her desk many times and was not seen for a while.

You cannot sit there an read a book and relax since you always have to check for the employees calling out queue numbers. There are no electronic displays doing that job.

At the time I got my passport back the desk for the 90 day reporting was closed already. So I have to do that another day.

Outside the building no taxis anymore.

Took a motorbike to the main street and had to ask a couple of taxi drivers to take me back to either MRT or Ratchada. The first five or six of them refused to do so.

So, two lessons learned:

- the project manager who was in charge of moving the immigration to the new office did a horrible job. One would expect to take the chance and also improve the whole visa process

- my mistake: I went there too late. Better go early in the morning.

I would love to pay tax to Thailand if there was an easy way, but I don't need four employees and two million Baht in working capital (have tried that, but I spent too much of my time inventing work for my employees), and I don't need all the hassle connected with any kind of visa or permit in this country. This problem is not unique to Thailand, but it does represent a huge opportunity: If they could create a sort of haven for online workers like myself, they could gain a lot of monies earned in taxes and whatever else people spend every day. Thailand would have been a great base for any online freelancer... if they could get their act together.

Agree 100%.

I does not affect me anymore but I was thinking about establishing a company here too.

Since there are obviously two groups of people that are addressed in this thread in particular let's state some figures - maybe some food for thought for the Thai government and for the I-am-better-than-you crowd.

Let's say you are doing remote work via internet - webdesign, programming, whatever.

In Europe you charge an hourly rate of 50 Euro. This is a pretty low rate but then again you are far away from the customers.

In theory you have about 160 billable hours, in reality you generate e.g. 50% of that.

This still provides you with revenues of about 4000 Euros which is almost 200.000 Baht.

The workload is easily done by yourself. Any employee or office would be a blow of money. You just don't do that and as zakk9 said: invent work for the employees the Thai government wants you to have.

So what can you do:

1. Work illegally or in a "grey zone". Then at least you put some money into Thailand, let's say 30.000 for an apartment and 60.000 for the rest.

2. Go home or somewhere else. Benefit for Thailand: 0 Baht

2. Hope for some cleverness of some thai officials so that they grant a visa and a work permit to remote workers without having them rent an office and hire employees.

Monthly "benefit" for Thailand: Income Tax + 30.000 condo + 60.000 expenses + 5000 for the outsourcing of the needed accountancy and I guess a few more things.

After a while you hire a freelancer every now and then (who at least officially has to pay income tax from the revenue generated with you) and then MAYBE after a longer while you intend to expand and rent an office. .....

Well, this is not possible as of now but then again to make it possible would be a clever move.

Why is the government going for the zero Baht option 2 or forcing people into option 1?

In the end it's all about money.

Do the math with all the "remote workers" that are supposed to be in Thailand.

And don't tell me this is peanuts.

What is it that stops the Thai government from jumping at that opportunity?

Hi all,

does anybody own a Sony Walkman Phone and has similar problems (and a solution)?

I have a W850i here which is working fine besides of everything that has to do with the Memory Stick.

It has a Memory Stick adapter and a 512 MB Micro SD card.

Sometimes everything is working fine and then suddenly the phone does not recognize the memory card anymore.

For example you are listening to some music and the suddenly it says "Playback failed".

Then if you check the file manager and select "Memory Stick" it says "No files".

Same thing happens sometimes after a restart of the phone.

So this is not a permanent problem and is generally solved by restarting the phone.

But of course this cannot be right and is pretty annoying.

The memory card works perfectly in the card reader in my notebook.

Thanks a lot

Thanks everybody for the answers.

I am going to check every website/plan mentioned.

This is new for me.

My "farang" insurance takes care of everything but certain dental procedures.

I don't have to worry about how many percent of a treatment or which parts of the treatment are going to be payed for by my insurance.

An expensive but convenient Western European accomplishment. ;-)

So, thanks again.

I don't know of any built-in solution which is strange since it would be easy for Microsoft with all their manpower to implement that.

Must be some company policy related reason

Good luck

Hi all,

I would like my Thai girlfriend to have health insurance and would like to know if anybody does have any experiences with that.

Currently she is a student (I don't know if this makes a difference) but soon she is going to focus on a fulltime job doing her studies part-time.

Is there any flexible plan (maybe payable monthly) that you know of.

Does not have to be a fancy plan that covers the top hospitals.

I just want to have some amount of security that if somethings happens and she has to stay at the hospital the insurance will take care of it.

Thanks a lot

Hi opalhort.

This might be something for you:

http://www.demtron.com/blog/post/2008/09/2...-Generator.aspx

It works for me.

Back from Vietnam and here is a quick update for those interested:

I bought a VINAPHONE prepaid card for about 120 Baht + 30 Baht for GPRS activation.

In Hanoi GPRS/EDGE was working pretty good.

Outside of Hanoi (between Hanoi and Halong) there was no chance of using GPRS/EDGE.

Maybe other providers do have a better coverage.

In Hanoi GPRS is almost not needed though since you can almost everywhere log into an unsecured WiFi (at least in the Old and the French Quarter).

Hi all again.

Is it possible to buy a prepaid card for my mobile phone in Vietnam that also lets me check my emails via GPRS?

Can anybody hint me to a Vietnam provider who does that?

Right now I am on a DTAC Happy card with an GPRS/EDGE package.

Very easy in Thailand.

But as far as I know you can use this Thai Happy prepaid package to make calls from Vietnam (although expensive) but you cannot use GPRS service abroad.

Is that true?

Any other options?

The product code can be changed with a software called "Nemesis Service Suite". Just google and you will find lots of infos.

But i prefer to have the guys at MBK do it for me since they do that every day.

Costs: 300 Baht

And the way I did it was

1. Update the Nokia Software Updater to version 1.4.98

2. Run the firmware update withe the NSU

3. Go to MBK and let them change your product code / language pack

Here is a little update:

Yesterday I made the new firmware update of my E71.

Everything went fine.

But of course after the update I was back to the standard languages (English, Chinese, Malay, Indonesia) corresponding to the product code of my phone.

I went to MBK and had them change my product code for 300 Baht (I think you can do it on your own but these guys do it every day - so I let them do it).

So now I have the western European language pack with the newest firmware.

From what I read on the internet today it seems as if warranty is lost after changing the product code. But what can you do if you want to have your own language. The concept of these product codes and language packs is not really clear to me.

Regarding the new firmware (210.21.006):

It seems to be an update of minor issues.

It feels as if the phone's menus are faster and the camera is a little bit better.

But I am not quite sure about that.