BangkokHank

My feeling about this case is that the accused are guilty and that King Power for once wants to prosecute a genuine foreign shoplifter - as a way try to undo the damage done to their credibility by the fake arrests / extortions they were involved in earlier.

That being said, a simple fine should have been enough in such a minor case. Weeks in a Thai jail is an excessive punishment for shoplifting.

Moving money into and out of a Thai bank account is not a taxable event. Nor is trading stocks from Thailand, either internationally or domestically as there is no capital gains tax on stock market transactions in Thailand. So you are not taxable in Thailand based on your stock trading or transferring profits into Thailand.

many Meters are definitely RIGGED this days !!!

I travel between Suvannaphum and my home 15-20 times every year, and I know exactly the fare and the distance.

one day, I suddenly had 35 kilometers instead of 25 on the Meter, and a fare according to that distance.

unfortunately, I was reading the newspaper most of the time and only noticed it when we almost reached my home.

very important: KEEP THAT POSTCARD with the registration plate and the number and name of the driver, even if the driver asks you to hand it over to him. THIS POSTCARD IS FOR YOU, not for the driver.

Expect a rip-off from any of those drivers who demand the postcard before starting the ride.....

and please DO send the postcard back by mail with your complaint written on it in case something like that happens.

The distance from the airport to my home is exactly 30.0 kilometers. But on my last trip home the meter showed 40 kilometers. When I disputed this, the taxi driver smiled and told me to just pay what I usually pay. The next day I went to the post office to mail the complaint postcard. The Thai postal employee read the card and figured out that a foreigner was about to complain about a fellow Thai. I'm almost certain that, even though I paid the postage, the postcard was never sent. (Remember: Thai Rak Thai) In any case I never heard anything from the complaint department. Next time I won't pay anything and I'll let the taxi driver explain to the police why I refuse to pay. This sort of thing didn't happen in the past. Now that the authorities are cracking down on other scams, the taxi drivers have had to come up with new ones.

I once bought a telephone answering machine at the Emporium in Bangkok. When I got home with it, I discovered that it had an already-filled-out (in Thai) warranty card. When the answering machine didn't work, it dawned on me what had happened: The previous (Thai) owner of the machine returned it to the store when he discovered that it didn't work. They of course put it back on the shelf - complete with filled out warranty card - to be sold to the next unsuspecting sucker. When I tried to return it for a refund, they refused to give me my money back. If that's how they do business at "reputable" stores, just imagine how it must be at other places!

After living in Thailand for 14 years, I just experienced my first "doctored" taxi meter the last time I came home from the airport a couple of months ago. Normally I take a taxi from the departures area, but as I had my elderly parents with me, I thought I would take an "official" one - just to be safe. By the time we got to my home, the meter showed a distance of 40 kilometers - but my home is exactly 30 kilometers from the airport. I pointed out this discrepancy to the driver. He smiled and said "Okay, just pay me what you normally pay." His lack of defending himself was a sure sign that he knew that he was cheating - obviously.

From what I have read about this practice on Thai Visa and other Thailand-related websites lately, this is the new scam for the taxi mafia to make up for revenues lost through other crackdowns. The point is that these airport taxi drivers are going to cheat - one way or another. They think it's their Buddha-given right. So as soon as one scam is clamped down on, they will come up with another one. The current one is tampering with the meter. So be warned.

As for the complaint form that we are given at the airport: I filled mine out, brought it to the post office and paid the postage on it. When I handed it to the postal clerk for mailing, the she read it - and I swear I could read her mind: She was thinking "No way I'm going to let a bloody farang complain about a fellow Thai. We Thais have to stick together in cheating foreigners." And I'm pretty sure she never mailed the complaint form. In any case I was never contacted by the people responsible.

Next time this happens, I'm not going to pay the taxi ANYTHING at all. I'll ask him to wait for the police to get there to clarify the matter.

I always stay at Nana so what I gather from the last three pages to get there I would take the airport train to the last stop.Then have a 15 minute walk to a air train station which i could then ride to Polen Chit or Nana air train station.We usally can negotiate a taxi from the airport to Nana for 450Baht so maybe if two or more of us,a taxi will still be the way to travel.Be back end of october to December what with a new airport train and Thai Air now flying straight back to Brisbane and free tourist visa's for a year I'm just glad I'm a member of Thai Visa .com or I wouldn't know none of this new's keep up the good work.cheers

I live in Soi Nana and I've never paid more than 250 baht for a taxi from the airport to my home (not counting the 25 baht + 45 baht tollway fees.) The trick is not to try to negotiate the fare but rather to get the driver to use the meter. In any negotiation, the driver will always ask for a fare higher than what the meter would indicate. Otherwise there would be no point in him negotiating. And where is the benefit for the passenger to pay more than he should? Doesn't make sense.

Up till now this law has only been enforced against foreigners. Perhaps the authorities finally realized that it is Thais who do most of the littering in Thailand. Interesting, though, that the fine for Thais will only be 100 baht - while for foreigners it's 2,000 baht.

I was once stopped by a desperate cop in front of the Ploenchit Center for dropping a cigarette. When I told the cop - in Thai - that I don't smoke, he sheepishly backed away, taking his false accusation with him.

Kasikorn Bank offer a Debit card based on a savings account.

You can use it just like a credit card, you can also use it to purchase over the Internet as a virtual credit card, with the 3 numbers on the reverse of the card.

See > For English, go to https://ebank.kasikornbank.com/kcyber/login.html#.

click on, K-Web Shopping Card

That will/should take you to the Debit card info.

Search this forum for "opening a bank account" in the box, at the foot of this page.

edit: you may need to copy & paste that address for Kasikorn.

the word "redirect" keeps fouling up the link.

this is not a credit card and can not be used for international airfares or car hires

If this K-Bank card can be used for making purchases online, why can't it be used for purchasing international air tickets? My whole reason for wanting to get such a card is to be able to use it online to pay for flights with AirAsia and such. Can somebody else confirm that it is not possible to use these cards for the purchase of air tickets online? I already have a real, plastic Visa credit card with UOB Bank, but for some reason (not MY convenience, that's for sure), they have decided that their credit cards should no longer be usable for online transactions. ("Bank policy" is the lame excuse I get when I ask them why they changed this feature.)

And on that subject, I applied for a credit card from Krung Thai Bank, where I have been keeping a very large fixed deposit for the past six years. They have refused my application for a credit card with a limit of one tenth the amount of money in my fixed deposit - and most amazingly, they also refuse to tell me why! Again, "bank policy" is their explanation for why they can't tell me why they have turned me down. Duh! I kept telling the bank employee "But if you don't tell me why you rejected me, I can't do anything to fix the (perceived) problem!" (At first he said something about my passport expiring soon. As it turns out, the passport that I used to open my account at the bank would have been expiring soon. But, well, passports expire - and get renewed. My recently renewed one, which they didn't ask to see, will expire in ten years. Which I told him. Then he retracted his statement about the imminent expiration of my passport being the reason why my application was rejected.) How can one deal with such people?

Anyway, if anybody has any ideas about how I can get a credit card that I can use to purchase air tickets online, I would be happy to hear about it.

I have some spare time on my hands and was volunteering in the schools helping Thai teachers with English – until I learned on TV that such conduct without a work permit (costing 5,000+ baht) is criminal. I also planned to make substantial electrical repairs at our wat, a task for which I have time, knowledge and tools. Those plans are now in the trash. A good community member is one that gives something back. However, such conduct seems to be criminal here in the LOS. One would think that permit fees would be waived for volunteer work, especially if such work is for a government institution. I guess this is NOT the LOL (Land of Logic), but what do I know? What a waste of resources with a loss to all. The villagers in my community are so friendly and welcoming! I am often asked, "Will you become a Thai citizen?" They know far, far less than most of us on TV about Thai law as it regards foreigners. NOBODY has any idea that it is AGAINST THE LAW for me to do anything for my community unless I first pay 5,000 + baht and do a lot of paperwork for EACH activity! In the beginning, I was viewed as quite an asset to the community; now I must appear lazy.

Anybody that thinks the rich care one whit about the poor and underprivileged must be asleep. Frankly, I suspect the Yellow Shirts (euphemism for those few at the top that already have everything) fear foreigners because they fear the change that exposure to foreigners ultimately brings. If that is the case, it explains a lot of the problems that are discussed on this forum. Hmmmm, maybe this is more a Land of Logic than initial appearance suggests. You want to find the logic? Follow the money.

I have thought about this issue many times before as well, TongueThaied. Foreigners like us living in Thailand are a tremendous potential source of knowledge and progress to Thais. Yet our help is refused - even when we are willing to help out for free. From this I can only draw one conclusion: The people who make the rules here are not interested in seeing the lives of the masses improved. They prefer to keep them as dumb, cheap labor. I don't think that is a very enlightened, or sustainable, attitude. These chickens are going to eventually come home to roost.

Also, TongueThaied, after living here for 14 years now, I have come to exactly the same conclusion that you have about Thai "logic": I always tell people, "If there is something here that seems illogical and otherwise impossible to explain, just follow the money. And there you will find the explanation."

Given that the victim allegedly was having an affair with another woman (in Malaysia) - that his wife seemed to have known about - I wouldn't rule out involvement by the wife.

Once at the Nana Post Office, just as I was about to be served, a young Thai man jumped right in front of me to the head of the queue. So I immediately pushed him out of the way and resumed my position at the front of the queue. Unfortunately, the postal employee hadn't seen HIM jumping the queue, but she did see ME rather forcefully getting in front of HIM. She proceeded to serve me, but with a dirty look on her face. Ha. Sometimes you just can't win.

In the case of queue jumping at the Immigration Bureau: I have long suspected that these queue jumpers are visa processing agents who pay off the Immigration employees for faster service. (Why else would this queue jumping be tolerated? I mean, it's not like Immigration officers are afraid of the queue jumpers. After all, they are police officers, aren't they?) We non-bribe-paying chumps are then served at the end of the day after all bribe payers have been duly served. I base this observation on many years of sitting around the Suan Phlu Immigration Bureau for five hours waiting for my visa to be processed, during which time very few numbers from the queuing system are called. And then at the end of the day, they are suddenly able to process the dozens of remaining applicants in the last half hour of the working day.

My (former) Thai doctor used to beg me to take (buy) the unnecessary pills that he prescribed for me because he told me that the hospital management had a sales quota for him to achieve. If he didn't push a certain amount of pills, he would get a dressing down from his boss. (Once, one of the pills on my hospital bill was described as a "pain killer" - and I was charged fifty baht a piece for them. Upon closer inspection, this pain killer turned out to be paracetamol - with the hospital's name stamped on the side of it - presumably as a way to add value.)

I tried to explain to him that by selling people pills that they didn't need, he would end up losing customers. Alas, Thais can't think that far ahead - and my prediction came true: he lost me as a customer.

He also told me that his hospital has three price levels for the very same procedures: Cheapest for Thais; more expensive for farangs; and most expensive for Arabs. (Okay, I can understand overcharging filthy rich Arabs. But farangs?! )

Now I do the same thing that a few others have recommended here: I just refuse all drugs from the hospitals. Instead I take the name of the drugs and buy them myself for a fraction of the cost at a pharmacy.

Very nice picture.

Has anyone else had an experience like this? I know I was stupid, I just wasn't thinking. Any advice?

Actually that sort of thing happens to me all the time, and here's what I normally do in such a situation . . .

Well, that screws up my plans. I need urgently to go abroad on Monday to a country for which I need a visa. I was going to apply for the visa on Thursday. If Thursday and Friday are public holidays, the embassy will be closed as well - until Monday. This makes it impossible for me to travel on Monday and I will therefore miss an important meeting on Tuesday.

I don't expect the world to revolve around my plans. But the fact is that these sort of ad hoc holidays can have very serious negative effects on some people.

I recently had my hand seriously cut in a run-in with a ladyboy in Soi Nana. (That's another story in itself.) I first went to Bumrungrad to try to get it looked after. They quoted me an estimated price of 7,000 baht. I told them that was too much so they suggested I try the Police Hospital or Chula. I went to the emergency room of the Police Hospital (it was about 4 in the morning) and they x-rayed my hand; a doctor stitched me up very professionally while a half a dozen very kind nurses looked on and helped out; and they gave me some antibiotics and a tetanus shot. Total price: 1,200 baht.

I don't think that I would necessarily want to have a heart transplant there, but I suspect that they deal with this sort of thing (cuts, broken bones, etc.) on a regular basis. This was my first time to visit a hospital emergency room in my 14 years of living in Thailand. I'm glad I got to experience a "real" Thai hospital and I would definitely use/trust them again in similar circumstances.

By contrast, I have used Bumrungrad for a few non-emergency procedures over the years and I found them to be a severely overpriced assembly line. For private hospitals I prefer Samitivej.

One of the hitmen (the big, ugly one) didn't even bother taking off his police-issued brown uniform pants and T-shirt, nor did he wait until his police haircut grew out. I wonder what profession he practiced before entering the murder-for-hire business?

And do you think there is any connection between the length of time it took to find the culprits in this case and the fact that the mastermind is/was a big financial supporter of the local police?

when a foreigner passes away here they almost immediately start with the character discrediting.

He had a chronic disease or he overdosed on viagra or a person of bad repute etc., they really

should do an investigation before they start taking cheap shots at deceased. really classless.

Right. A couple of years ago a foreigner was murdered in my condo building and it somehow appeared in the newspaper that he regularly brought back men, women and lady boys to his room. This might or might not have been true, but in any case the unfortunate victim was not here to defend himself from this unlikely accusation, which seemed to have the sole purpose of discrediting his character. It made me wonder what might be written about me should I meet with an unnatural demise. With the internet, things printed in the newspaper about us, even if they are not true, become a part of our permanent legacy. How would you feel if something untrue were written about you after your death?

This is by far the best bottled pasta sauce I have ever tasted - and at a price much less than the imported ones. I also very much appreciate the fact that it is not overloaded with sugar like the sauces intended for Thai consumption.

As others have mentioned, I would also love to see a cream-based sauce, but that's another matter entirely and doesn't detract from the fact that the tomato-based sauces are delicious.

I also thought that it would be a good idea to sell the sauces at Foodland but if they charge so much for shelf space, I'm quite willing to walk up the street a bit more to Tops.

Anyway, thanks for a great pasta sauce. It has had a positive impact on my quality of life in Thailand!

Excuse my cynicism, but my instinct, after living in Thailand for over 13 years, tells me that this girl is just trying to milk money out of the new farang boyfriend.

Listen I've got a far simpler rule: "Do not lend Thais money under any circumstance unless you are prepared to right it off immediately as a gift!

I would concur with this - with one slight modification: I would say "be prepared to 'write' it off immediately" rather than "right" it off . . .

My skin doctor is Paritas Sukriket at Samitivej Hospital on Sukhumvit Soi 49. He is an extremely knowledgeable, confidence-inspiring and trustworthy doctor and gentleman. I can recommend him wholeheartedly. He immediately identified some spots on my skin as basal cell carcinoma after years of mis-diagnosis by other dermatologists in Bangkok. I visit him once or twice a year just for screening checks. Skin cancer is one of those diseases that, if caught early enough, can be remedied.

It is probably another example of "the senior cannot be corrected as he would loose face"

I suppose I could launch into a tirade of how I think that the concepts of "greng jai" and "sia na" are holding back the development of Thailand, but I won't, so you'll all be relieved that you don't have to scroll through it.

(hey mods, now how about an emoticon for "loosing face"? )

Are you pointing out the face that they are saying "loose" when it should be "lose"? Or is that YOUR mistake?

there is always complaints about there reporting.........

There "are" always complaints about "their" reporting. I hope English is not your native language either.

Am I the only one who is wondering whether the Thai wife might have had a hand in your friend's death - given that she is so quick to try to grab the assets - and given that you described her as "girl" - while he has three children from his former marriage, suggesting that there might have been a significant age gap between the couple? Just a suspicion.