AyG

Am I right in thinking that Immigration (specifically Chaengwattana) will for a fixed deposit account accept the bank letter dated the previous day and won't require you to make a withdrawal or deposit on the actual day of one's extension, whilst with a savings account they will require a transaction on the actual day if the letter is from the day before? (Anything to simply things at Chaengwattana is most welcome.)

Older references won't reflect the fact that a new province (Bueng Kan) was created back in 2011. That might explain the discrepancy.

You misunderstand. What IMA_FARANG is saying is that if the bank letter is dated the same day as your application, showing your bank book may not be required at the discretion of the officer processing your extension application.

Uh, the bank letter doesn't include seasoning information, so surely the officer will always need to see the bank book.

Nothing new here. Been same way for years.

If you want to arrive early, then you have to accept the extra step of making a transaction and updating your passbook on the day.

Quite why Immigration thinks you're likely to withdraw all the money from your account the previous day, I just don't know. It does seem rather ludicrous.

Incidentally, a fixed deposit account which does not allow withdrawals is not acceptable; you must be able to withdraw the money any time (albeit with loss of interest). That said, with such an account (at least in my experience) I haven't been asked to make a token withdrawal on the day.

When I saw the title my thoughts first turned to Japanese cube melons, and then to the traditional Japanese art of bonsai kittens.

What do you consider "worthwhile"? Helping children, animals, the disabled, those with leprosy, the poor, the environment, elephants, &c., &c.?

Does anyone know whether the Krung Sri bank at Chaengwattana will provide account balance letters for accounts held elsewhere?

And will Immigration accept such a letter? (In the past, elsewhere they insisted on a letter from the branch where the account was opened.)

Thanks.

No one was ready for a disaster of that magnitude & nor can anyone be blamed.

Sorry, but the embassies of other countries were far, far better prepared, so of course the British Embassy can be blamed. Do you really think that no British Embassy anywhere else in the world had previously ever had to deal with a disaster? That no British Embassy had ever heard of disasters anywhere in the world? They should have learned from such experiences and prepared an effective disaster plan. They didn't. They are to blame.

But anyway, that's off point. The point was: they didn't apologise for their abject failure to help British citizens in dire straits.

The British embassy apologizes

That would be a first.

I don't think they even apologised after their sheer incompetence and/or laziness in handling the tsunami aftermath.

Tofu

Dried and fried

Or can be baked for a healthier version.

I suggest the OP searches for "tofu chips" or "tofu crisps". Plenty of recipes out there on the web.

There is no white fresh asparagus in the whole of Thailand, only the green type ' noo man farang'

That's clearly untrue. The Anantara hotel is currently advertising "Celebrate White Asparagus Season". The menu looks good. http://bangkok-riverside.anantara.com/uploads/promotions/Brio_White_Asparagus_Menu.pdf

Just a simple misunderstanding. FRESH White Asparagus he says is not available anywhere in Thailand. The Menu you posted advertises white asparagus but does not mention fresh white asparagus...so I would assume it is canned.

As to where to find White asparagus...to my surprise I saw canned white asparagus at a couple of small Thai/Chinese Bakery supply shops. This is in Ubon. I'm sure some of the Thai / Chinese Bakery supply stores in Bangkok would have that as well.

There are numerous hotels in Bangkok currently offering fresh white asparagus imported from Germany. These are seasonal offers. From memory, Conrad is another one. So no, it's not canned. The thought that somewhere of the standard of Anantara uses canned asparagus is, quite frankly, ludicrous.

What exactly was the error?

In my case, on my first extension, the money was automatically moved between two accounts within the same bank during the seasoning period. The immigration officer's assistant (trainee?) noticed this but the immigration officer said it wasn't a problem. It may well be worth giving it a try - you might get away with it.

There is no white fresh asparagus in the whole of Thailand, only the green type ' noo man farang'

That's clearly untrue. The Anantara hotel is currently advertising "Celebrate White Asparagus Season". The menu looks good. http://bangkok-riverside.anantara.com/uploads/promotions/Brio_White_Asparagus_Menu.pdf

Thanks to Ed Snowden's leaks we know that the NSA and GCHQ have broken VPN encryption. They did so back in 2010. What we don't know is how they've done it. There are two obvious possibilities:

(1) they have obtained the root certificates which are used to sign private keys

(2) they have found an exploitable flaw in the encryption standards. (The paranoid believe that the NSA introduced flaws into the standards themselves for this purpose.)

So, when you use the Internet you should assume that the NSA and GCHQ can see everything you do when using a VPN. However, given the massive volume of data which passes through the Internet, they can't spy on absolutely everything, so unless you're being specifically targeted for investigation, you're probably relatively safe.

Also be aware that after communication is decrypted it can be visible to anyone monitoring the website you've connected to. So, for example, if you were researching how to make chemical weapons, it's possible (or even probable) that the US authorities would know what you've been doing.

NSA and GCHQ have cracked PPTP and L2TP VPN encryption protocols. They've also cracked HTTPS.

OpenVPN encryption continues to frustrate their efforts.

How do you know? It was several years after the NSA broke VPN encryption before Ed Snowden's leaks revealed they had. In all probability the OpenVPN encryption is broken too.

Any file encrypted with TrueCrypt (at the time) was impenetrable to them but now that the developers of Truecrypt aren't developing it any more, you'd be best off using alternatives like VeraCrypt which is based on Truecrypt but with even stronger encryption. alt=thumbsup.gif>

Again, how do you know? Indeed, if it was truly impenetrable, then why abandon the project? For that matter, why did the TrueCrypt team post on their website "Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues". The reasons for TrueCrypt's developers' actions are unclear. The official reason - that Microsoft ended support for Windows XP - is clearly horse pucky. Could it be that they learned of an unfixable security loophole? Were they under pressure from the NSA to include security backdoors and didn't want to comply? Anything based upon TrueCrypt is now going to be suspect until the truth comes out. I most certainly wouldn't trust any product based upon TrueCrypt.

How do you know? It was several years after the NSA broke VPN encryption before Ed Snowden's leaks revealed they had. In all probability the OpenVPN encryption is broken too.

Granted just a blog but published earlier this year but it's likely more credible than some bloke on Thaivisa forum

https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/12269/openvpn-appears-safe-nsa/

Again, how do you know? Indeed, if it was truly impenetrable, then why abandon the project? For that matter, why did the TrueCrypt team post on their website "Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues". The reasons for TrueCrypt's developers' actions are unclear. The official reason - that Microsoft ended support for Windows XP - is clearly horse pucky. Could it be that they learned of an unfixable security loophole? Were they under pressure from the NSA to include security backdoors and didn't want to comply? Anything based upon TrueCrypt is now going to be suspect until the truth comes out. I most certainly wouldn't trust any product based upon TrueCrypt.

OK well anyone can speculate. There's any number of reasons why they could have abandoned the project. Governmental agency pressure for refusing to build backdoors into the software being just one but I'm thinking that if that was the case, where's the logic in believing that TrueCrypt volumes could now be vulnerable?

Maybe you should read up on VeraCrypt before dismissing it and spouting conspiracy theories.

http://www.esecurityplanet.com/open-source-security/veracrypt-a-worthy-truecrypt-alternative.html

The point I've been trying to make is that the NSA is prepared to move heaven and earth to ensure that individuals have no privacy and no security. For most of us that doesn't matter. However, if I were an Islamic terrorist (I'm not) or an aficionado of pictures of prepubescent children being raped (I'm not) I would not trust any of the products currently available 100% to guarantee that I remain out of prison, am not abducted on the streets and transferred to one of the USA's "secret" foreign torture camps, and will not have a weaponised drone appearing above my home and blowing me to smithereens.

As Herod Agrippa said to Claudius "Trust no one, my friend, no one. Not your most grateful freedman. Not your most intimate friend. Not your dearest child. Not the wife of your bosom. Trust no one."

Edit: messed up the formatting. Goldenrod text is new

Thanks to Ed Snowden's leaks we know that the NSA and GCHQ have broken VPN encryption. They did so back in 2010. What we don't know is how they've done it. There are two obvious possibilities:

(1) they have obtained the root certificates which are used to sign private keys

(2) they have found an exploitable flaw in the encryption standards. (The paranoid believe that the NSA introduced flaws into the standards themselves for this purpose.)

So, when you use the Internet you should assume that the NSA and GCHQ can see everything you do when using a VPN. However, given the massive volume of data which passes through the Internet, they can't spy on absolutely everything, so unless you're being specifically targeted for investigation, you're probably relatively safe.

Also be aware that after communication is decrypted it can be visible to anyone monitoring the website you've connected to. So, for example, if you were researching how to make chemical weapons, it's possible (or even probable) that the US authorities would know what you've been doing.

NSA and GCHQ have cracked PPTP and L2TP VPN encryption protocols. They've also cracked HTTPS.

OpenVPN encryption continues to frustrate their efforts.

How do you know? It was several years after the NSA broke VPN encryption before Ed Snowden's leaks revealed they had. In all probability the OpenVPN encryption is broken too.

Any file encrypted with TrueCrypt (at the time) was impenetrable to them but now that the developers of Truecrypt aren't developing it any more, you'd be best off using alternatives like VeraCrypt which is based on Truecrypt but with even stronger encryption.

Again, how do you know? Indeed, if it was truly impenetrable, then why abandon the project? For that matter, why did the TrueCrypt team post on their website "Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues". The reasons for TrueCrypt's developers' actions are unclear. The official reason - that Microsoft ended support for Windows XP - is clearly horse pucky. Could it be that they learned of an unfixable security loophole? Were they under pressure from the NSA to include security backdoors and didn't want to comply? Anything based upon TrueCrypt is now going to be suspect until the truth comes out. I most certainly wouldn't trust any product based upon TrueCrypt.

According to the website they provide a service to Chinese people and foreigners who wish to travel to Thailand to run a business, for tourism and for study.

That's section 2.2 on page http://www.thaiembassy.org/chengdu/th/organize

A VPN connection is not encrypted, the connection merely gives the user a false IP address which therefore hides their correct location. But any data they view, transmit or receive is not encrypted.

100% wrong. The traffic from your computer or mobile devices is encrypted from you to the VPN endpoint, which can be in a different country your office or merely at your home. It is then decrypted, if you are using a VPN to access the Internet, and sent out onto the internet.

Actually, the poster isn't 100% wrong. A VPN connection may or may not be encrypted. Encryption is pretty much universal these days, but the use of dedicated connections and virtual tunnelling protocols can also both be used to establish a VPN. Traffic encryption is not the only fruit.

In the very early years of Thaksin's tenure 3 prisoners were executed, one was a foreigner, Taiwanese,I think. There were filmed live walking to the execution chamber, at that time the condemned were shot. I believe they were executed because they continued to deal drugs behind bars.

Almost right. It was in 2001. Five prisoners - four for drug smuggling on a massive scale, one for murder - and there were two foreigner, one from Taiwan and one from Hong Kong. They were shot by machine gun. Now, of course, Thailand uses lethal injection (though hasn't done so yet AFAIK).

This is a fake. Wombwell is in the Barnsley East constituency, and the UKIP candidate is Robert Swiffen.

Not fake.

As noted on the election poster, the guy is standing in the Barnsley borough council elections, in the Wombwell ward. Not in the GE.

I stand corrected. Thank you.

During the same period the military conducted campaigns against Thai communists in the northern provinces.

Until the early 90s there were memorials on some of the hills around Phitsanlok commemorating the executions of hundreds of people - their bodies burned by the military in oil drums.

I'm not sure if you're making two points here, or one. Something's not right.

In the north, in 1972, around 200 communist insurgents were killed. That didn't involve oil drums AFAIK.

In the south in late 1972, 200 or so people were killed in Phattalung province (which is in the south. Phitsanulok is not) in the so-called "Red Drum Killings". (Some reports put the number as high as 3,000.) The individuals were beaten unconscious, then dumped into oil drums part filled with blazing gasoline and which had a metal grill part way down. Not a nice way to go.

could be worse, MIKE HUNT

Do you remember the Radio 4 comedy series "Radio Active" set in a radio station? The characters included "Mike Hunt", which I thought rather risqué for Radio 4 at that time, along with Anna Daptor, Mike Flex and "children's favourite" Uncle Mike Stand.