Ricardo

The som-tam lady, source of inside-information & understanding on all things Thai, told me there was once a Thai-agency which improved its operating-efficiency & then cut its fees ? 🤔 I think she must still be pissed, after a serious celebration with her friends/family over Farang-New-Year, to say anything like that ! 😎

Happily I'm remitting just a shade under B500k per annum, in the past two years, just short of the point where I'd have to pay income-tax on my remittances & trivial bank-interest. I suspect that I'm not the only farang doing this ? 😎

Presumably any Jewish politician, when being sworn-in, uses the Torah ... does that also make them enemies of the USA, in Tuberville's eyes ? The important thing is surely, that the person doing the swearing respects/embraces the sacred-writing of their choice, and is therefore reluctant to lie while swearing their oath ? Non-believers, as we saw demonstrated last January, might only pretend to lay their hand upon the holy-book.

And this is at the same time as an attempt by the TRD (from 1.1.2024 onwards ) to start taxing expats on their (visible) bank-transfers into Thailand ! A cynic might wonder whether the two things might possibly be related ? Although that said, I don't see why the total amounts being transferred-in would change, by all that much ... just how the money we live on gets here.

I always thought it was a commercial-decision for the local airlines, when to add extra-flights or put on larger-planes, but now learn that it was the CAAT all this time ! I do also recall when, 20-30 years ago, Thai Airways would put on B744s instead of smaller aircraft, over Christmas and the New-Year rushes, and thought this was so they could make more money ?

First one not yet completed or delivered, let alone the rest of the order.

And the Bank-of-England also did the same thing. Hence little change against the Thai Baht, whose relative strength continues.

or perhaps trans-species Brass-Monkeys ?

I wonder what idiot told President Piggy, that the Mayor of London has anything to do, with setting national immigration-policies ? Mind you, there's a certain US-citizen that many Brits (not all) would hope is not allowed to visit our green & pleasant land, ever again. Who might that be ? Hint ... he cheats openly at golf !

The same was true of Thailand's previous fleet of submarines IIRC, they were built in Japan and delivered just in time, to not-get-used to repel the Japanese-invasion & occupation of Thailand on 8th December 1941. Japanese invasion of Thailand - Wikipedia

Is that the same track-dualling project, which has been underway for over twenty years, and is running way behind schedule ? It will get there in-the-end, and hopefully help freight-operations to move containers more-economically around the country, both inbound & outbound !

The crisis is loss-of-money.

Just to add that some sections of the new LCR-line are only single-track ...

Apologies, double-post

I would like to point out that, just because you disagree with their (and many others') opinion, does not make them wrong in what they say. We are all entitled to our opinions. What you (and many others) describe as "living rent free in their head", I would suggest is no more than taking a healthy interest, in the actions of someone who appears to be hell-bent on leading that country to chaos, having recently been re-elected by a narrow-margin on that policy-platform. Trump is destroying alliances & trading-patterns which took several decades to build-up, I personally would take an interest, if only because it seriously impacts my investments & retirement-funds ! Time will show, fairly soon IMO, who is right anyway.