TallGuyJohninBKK

10 minutes ago, owl sees all said:

I am so worried about this I didn't even go to the farm to feed the dogs (work) tonight.

That's probably overdoing things, a bit.

Overall, it's the kinds of things a farang might do that are particularly visible to others, out and around town or village, that have the potential to create an issue. Far less so doing something on your own private property where you're not necessarily visible to all.

Right now, the whole issue is in a tizzy because of the government's newly announced restrictions and penalties, and then the decision shortly thereafter to at least temporarily suspend enforcement of SOME of the new law -- not clear exactly which provisions they're suspending, though I'm guessing it's those relating to penalties against employers -- since they were the ones griping and have some clout, unlike the average worker.

If it were me, right now, I'd probably pass on driving around with the wife to sell stuff. And wait and see how the whole thing plays out. But I wouldn't change my routine at home.

PS - Technically, legally under the new law, a worker caught working without a lawful work permit could be arrested on the spot, fined, eventually sentenced to jail and/or deported. What really ends up happening in any particular illegal worker case that arises, who knows under Thai law.

58 minutes ago, Jonnapat said:

What sort of world do we live in when the President of the richest country intends to deny basic healthcare to millions of its citizens. 

I've often heard European systems referred to as socialist healthcare as if it is somehow wrong to care for the entire population.

There's plenty wrong with the UK  NHS but at least they care.

Hard to argue with that.  My country was, at least, under Obamacare slowly moving toward universal health coverage.

Now under Trump and the Republican Congress, it's slash and burn anything with Obama's fingerprints on it -- no matter that an estimated 20+ million more Americans are going to end up without any health insurance at all as a result of their machinations.

49 minutes ago, Prometheus33 said:

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The past few trips to Bangkok we have been staying at the Centara Grande @ CentralWorld .. Found it very convenient to nip down to level 7 (I think) for a quick bite at " Sizzlers" .. They are no longer there .. Gone,  as well !!   

You'd think with the current levels of disruption and displacement going on, Central might post some kind of information notice to their customers about why their favorite shop/store may have suddenly disappeared when they go looking for it.

I went in thru the Chidlom BTS Skywalk entrance, and I didn't see any kind of informational notice / poster / anything anywhere during my time inside.

2 minutes ago, Bangkok Barry said:

 

A good point. I used to use a travel agent in Silom Centre. They closed that completely for renovation, he moved out and never returned.

Yep, Silom Centre had a long closure period for reno before emerging as Silom Complex.  And more recently, Siam Discovery likewise was entirely closed for a year or more before reopening with a new look.

I guess Central decided they didn't want to do that with CentralWorld, perhaps because it already had its extended long closure a few years back, entirely unrelated to retail renovation, but entirely related to domestic political terrorism.

3 minutes ago, lopburi3 said:

Your memory does not extend back far enough.  Actually it moved to that new built underground shopping center location behind Gaysorn later - this is the original store opened in 1966 which I believe was the first use of an escalator in Thailand (Central used a wooden staircase until the 70's).  

How do you do it, Lopburi?

I seriously doubt, I'm going to remember what was where, and who moved where, in Bangkok some 30-40 years down the road... Yikes!!!!  I don't even remember the name of the streets I lived on 30-40 years ago, and that was my home.

35 minutes ago, connda said:

Malls get greedy, push their rents past the point where retailers can make a living profit, retailers bail, mall is left with empty and unfillable shops.  Mall languishes, Mall sells land and exits with a capital gain, new owner tears now old mall and replaces it with....???

I don't think anyone's going to be tearing down CW soon, especially if Central is planning to put - + 2 billion baht into its renovation.

But the thing I did wonder about is -- what happens with all the merchants who get booted out of their retail space while Central is doing their re-do?  What happens to their employees during that dead time as well?  And what proportion of the places that get booted out in these kinds of deals eventually end up coming back?

In my earlier post, I mentioned the disappearance of the large free-standing, open-air Haagen Dazs shop at CW. I don't know if their recent departure is related to the renovation project or not. But I did ask the info counter girl if they had relocated or anything like that. And she said, no, just closed and gone. FWIW, a Mrs. Fields cookies shop that also was there for a quite a while also disappeared in the past year from CW, and hasn't resurfaced anywhere nearby AFAIK. Though Haagen Dazs has long had another smaller cafe just down the street near the Chidlom BTS station.

57 minutes ago, observer90210 said:

Haven't been there for some time...does CW have as large a furniture floor as MBK?

 

They did....  Not sure about at present... But seriously, yes, they do have a similar furniture floor. Not sure about comparing their relative sizes.

 I didn't notice yesterday how much, if at all, the furniture floor at CW is being affected right now by the current renovations. It's usually a section I only pass thru on my way up or down to other floors. From past window shopping there, the prices are pretty dear.

3 hours ago, BritTim said:

The answer is that "work" is anything an official says is "work". There is a consensus by the powers that be that certain groups should be left alone (e.g. digital nomads). That aside, mostly, common sense is applied (yes, really) on whether to go after someone for what could be defined as "work". In rural Thailand, if you are on good terms with everyone, and have no enemies, you can get away with almost anything. Avoid being in competition with someone in a way that they could perceive as hurting their business. That is what generally leads to trouble.

This is the fairest assessment of the situation here when it comes to work. Technically, all the things the OP mentioned probably could be considered "work" by some officer if they wanted to judge it so. However, the big question is, will there ever come a time and an officer who wants to judge it so?  Unfortunately, if that time and officer ever happens to come your way, you're pretty much screwed.

In another post here earlier today, one member mentioned that he'd been paying 500 baht to a local BIB to look the other way when it came to an un-permitted migrant house maid. But just lately, the 500b payee came to the poster to advise that his 500b wasn't going to buy protection anymore because there were bigger BIBs pushing enforcement. With the latest attempted crackdown by the government, who knows where all this is going to end up... Things seem pretty uncertain right now, and I'm assuming the officers feel that way as well.

10 minutes ago, brewsterbudgen said:

I work at Centralworld. The boarded off areas are being refurbished. Many have already re-opened.

Many may have re-opened, I can't say about that.

But after walking thru there yesterday, I certainly can say there are very large and long stretches of mall corridors where all the shops have vanished and been replaced by the usual decorated walls. That's certainly what you'd expect to see when they're going about refurbishing the place, presumably they'd do it areas by areas at a time. They're certainly not going to close the whole place for a year plus!!!

5 hours ago, planr said:

They are undertaking a massive centre-wide renovation over the next year or so, bit by bit. See slide 21 here  -http://cpn.listedcompany.com/misc/presentation/20170309-cpn-oppday-4q2016.pdf

Thanks very much!!!  That certainly would explain the appearances there of long strips of boarded up shops....

Looks like it's going to be somewhat messy at CW for the next year or so....

One of the things that always gets me about some malls here, and elsewhere, is the haphazard way their tenants are located. So you go to the mall wanting to buy shoes. And instead of the various shoe shops being clustered together in one area, you find one is here, one is there, and one's at the opposite end of the mall on a different floor. Hopefully that kind of solution is part of their plans.

All these news reports that interview and talk about illegal (un-permitted) workers having to leave their jobs.. That's fine.

But I haven't yet seen a single news report interviewing any business /  business owner explaining why they're apparently having to use illegal / unpermitted migrant workers????  Why not hire Thais? And if you can't hire Thais, why not get work permits for the migrants you hire?

It is possible there's something wrong in the Thai system here???

I pay attention to the malls industry in the U.S. for investment reasons. Suffice to say, the most widely held belief is that the current retail contraction at the stores level is likely to hit the lower-level, less premier malls. And that the top end "destination" malls should continue to do just fine even if it means replacing troubled tenants with new ones. The demand is there.

As for Thailand and online retailers, at the rate Thailand 4.0 is going (or should I say Thailand 0.5), I don't think the local malls have much to worry about in that regard, at least for the foreseeable future. Ain't no Amazon in Thailand.

As for local mall competition, I'm sure T21 and EmQuartier are having some effect on CW. But frankly, I'm in CW pretty regularly, and it's not like it looks empty or less visited now than in the past. (Though buying may be a separate issue).  The food outlets and restaurants seem to be pretty well used, though it's harder to tell about the regular retail store outlets and their business levels.

The strange part about the current look of CW though, is it's not pockets of closed stores/shops, like one vacancy here and one vacancy there. When I was there yesterday, there were quite a few areas where long, long sections of storefronts were all boarded up -- lengths that previously would have involved many many different retail shops, now all gone. That makes it seem like something broader is going on.

3 minutes ago, madmitch said:

 Meantime, what was solved with a 500 baht note to the local BIB became a big problem. We sent her home.

You mean paying off the police doesn't actually always solve the problems that are intended to be solved???

4 hours ago, srchino said:

Poor guy. Just a dog tryin to get a bone.

Or a boner, as it were... 

But obviously, the lady involved wasn't interested in getting boned.

I have the feeling I've read here in the past about there being some kind of a somewhat simplified business structure that can be done between a Thai wife and a farang husband that doesn't carry all the same administrative burdens as a regular business / llc company.

On 6/30/2017 at 5:16 AM, HiSoLowSoNoSo said:

Is it legal to size someone's assets before found guilty in Thailand? Its an ongoing case isn't it?

Indeed, the article -- very badly -- makes it sound like she's already been convicted in the criminal case, which in fact hasn't had any verdict as yet. But that hasn't stopped the government from pursuing an administrative asset seizure case.

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The scheme allegedly wasted around Bt500 billion of state budget and Yingluck herself has been charged in a criminal case and told to compensate Bt35 billion of the damage.

Told by who???  The courts?  Not thus far. Told by the government, yes. But you wouldn't know that from reading the above report.

The article makes it sound like a lot of the problem with "illegal" migrant workers is that they somehow don't possess their own personal documents that they need, and this could be solved just by them taking a trip back home somehow.

But I'd imagine, contrary to that, the bigger problem is that a lot of the low-life businesses employing these people simply don't want to be bothered with paying for and going thru the bureaucratic hassles of applying for work permits for them, even if they were eligible. Or perhaps they're working in jobs that the law says are reserved for Thais only, in which case, getting any paperwork isn't going to matter.

11 minutes ago, observer90210 said:

Were they losing business due to lack of customers and overcharged prices?

There's usually lots of traffic in CW whenever I'm in there.  It's the kind of appearance that almost makes me think Central came along with some kind of big rent/lease fees hike, and it pushed folks out.

I had one restaurant I liked quite a bit that opened there for a few months, and then disappeared a month or so back. In that case, they relocated to Silom Complex. Dunno why, or if it was related to now what appears to be a much broader changing of occupancy there.

Most of the boarded up shops are the ones along the walls. So I thought, perhaps they're needing to do some kind of major renovation/systems work that requires the tenants to vacate. But the now missing Haagen Dazs shop was an open air/corridor location without any enclosed walls, so that wouldn't have been a factor in their departure.

Have folks seen the latest development on this from our hallowed leader?

Anyone have any idea what's going on inside CentralWorld these days?

I'm asking because, the wife and I stopped by there today, and very large sections of the mall that used to be filled with operating shops on various floors (not just in one area) have now been closed and boarded up.

I didn't stop to ask about every missing shop, because the number had to be in the many dozens. But one particularly noticeable absence was the large Haagen Dazs ice cream cafe in CW on the 3rd floor that had been there for a long time, which is now entirely vacated/vanished.

So on the way out, I stopped at the info desk and asked the girl there, "What happened to HD?"  Had it moved to some other part of the mall as part of some reorganization/restructuring? And she replied, NO, the shop simply closed and had not relocated to anywhere else in CW.

So I guess the question is, why suddenly are there dozens of empty/vanished business shops in CentralWorld?

Stupid is as stupid does....

The problem is, AFAIK, the Thai government and its various arms have never been consistent and clear in their enforcement relating to all this (as if they are when it comes to anything here).

They could have an employment policy here stating that it's OK to be a digital nomad in Thailand as long as you're not working for any Thai-based entities or producing any work product for use in Thailand. But AFAIK, they're never done that, apart from a few sporadic public comments by local labor or immigration officers in the past.

So instead, there is on the law books the broad rules about requirements for work permits and now more substantial penalties for those working without them. And the government actually enforcing silly sanctions against things like farangs painting their own houses or fixing own their fences.

The fact that the government hasn't carved out a legal exemption of any kind for nomads kind of leaves them vulnerable to the whims of the local officers and anyone who may have a grudge. Or any other situation that brings them out of their private rooms and into the public domain.

I don't know what the problem is here with the buy off plan market:

--Is it that the banks won't lend enough money to the developers for their projects, so they have to rely on the buyers' funds to actually complete construction, and then don't if they don't get enough buyers?

or

--the banks lend enough for the projects, but the developers go over budget and/or simply abscond with the buyers' deposits without completing the projects?

34 minutes ago, janclaes47 said:

 

 

 

Shall I go on?

They even have/had a Facebook page:

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Suan Sawan Condo

March 27, 2014 ·

We would like to present that We start work of construction again.

A. Building Now 100% Finish except the Transfer Document
B. Building Will Finish on June 2014
C. Building and another building will be ready in 2014.

 

50 minutes ago, AGLV0121 said:

 

Exactly! I know the familiar screen. But recently I no longer had this option at the same ATM at my condo. Hence my question.

What brand of card are you using now, VISA or MC, and did you ever change from one to the other?

The reason I ask is, normally in Thailand in the past, the only cards that would spur DCC screen at the Thai ATMs were MC logo cards.

I've never heard of a VISA logo debit card drawing a DCC prompt at a Thai ATM.