Gaccha

7 hours ago, NanLaew said:

their nominal fee

Their photocopying fee is certainly not nominal.

AI tools have made it dramatically easier to learn Thai. I have discussed before the dramatic improvements in listening Apps in the last year. This time I want to point you to a function within the more general Grok AI App. This is entirely free.

With Grok we can get it to make for us the exact difficulty level of reading materials, on topics of our choosing, and we can then have Grok send the materials to us on a schedule of our choosing. This lifts off us the tedious burden of finding suitable reading materials.

You simply go the "Task" and set it up. Example:

In the prompt you simply write what you want to be produced for you. If you are not sure you can even ask Grok to suggest a suitable prompt for itself.

In the example below, I simply selected some text of a well-known forum very popular among young Thais. I would describe this text as around lower-intermediate level.

The prompt I have created via Grok is:

"Every day at 10:00 AM Thailand time (Asia/Bangkok timezone, UTC+7), automatically generate one Thai-language paragraph or short dialogue (about 150–300 characters) written in natural, spoken Thai style, similar to everyday Thai people chatting or venting on social media / Line / close friends.

The language level should be the same as or slightly more advanced than this sample text:

[หนักใจมากๆค่ะกับพฤติกรรมนี้ของแฟน ทุกครั้งที่มีเรื่องทะเลาะกันแฟนมักอัพโน้ตลงในโซเชียลเสมอ ทั้งๆที่เคยคุยกันก่อนหน้านี้แล้วว่าถ้ามีปัญหาหรือไม่พอใจอะไรกันให้มาคุยกันตรงๆเราพร้อมรับฟัง แต่เขากลับเลือกที่จะโพสต์ความน้อยใจความไม่พอใจผ่านโน้ตไอจี เรามองว่านี่เป็นปัญหาของคนสองคนระหว่างเขากับเรา การที่เขาทำอย่างนี้ก็เหมือนกับไม่เคารพความเป็นส่วนตัวของความสัมพันธ์ของเราเลย เราไม่โอเคมากๆ นิสัยของเขาค่อนข้างเด็กกว่าเรามากๆ บางทีก็รู้สึกเหมือนว่าคุยกันไม่เข้าใจ เราเป็นคนที่ชีวิตยุ่งมากๆกลับมาจสกเรียนก็ประมาณ 5 โมงเย็นเกือบทุกวัน กลับบ้านก็ต้องทำงานบ้านต่างๆกว่สจะได้ขึ้นบ้านพูดคุยกับเขาอีกทีก็ประมาณ 2 ทุ่มแล้ว พอบอกเหตุผลที่ไม่ค่อยมีเวลาไปก็เหมือนเขาน้อยใจเราไปแล้วที่ไม่ได้ pay attention กับเขา ตอบมาตลอดว่า 'ไม่เป็นไร เข้าใจ' ท้อใจมากค่ะควรคุยกับเขาอย่างไงดีคะ พยายามจะประนีประนอมกับเขามากๆ]

Topics can be very wide and varied (randomly choose one each day):

personal relationships, dating, love problems, family issues

daily life struggles, work stress, study fatigue, time management

friendships, misunderstandings with friends

self-doubt, anxiety, low mood, overthinking

basic psychology topics (e.g., attachment styles, emotional triggers, communication problems, people-pleasing, boundaries)

light / everyday politics in Thailand (e.g., opinions about news, government policies affecting daily life, traffic laws, cost of living, social media reactions to political events – keep it personal and emotional, not formal analysis)

basic economics in daily context (e.g., complaining about rising prices, salary not enough, inflation affecting food/shopping, side hustle ideas, debt stress, saving money difficulties)

health & lifestyle (sleep issues, exercise motivation, diet struggles)

random relatable Thai-life moments (commuting in Bangkok, weather complaints, food cravings, LINE group drama)

Style: natural spoken Thai with casual particles (ค่ะ/ครับ/นะ/อ่ะ/เลย/มาก ๆ etc.), some English loanwords if common (pay attention, ghosting, red flag, etc.), emotional tone – like someone venting or asking for advice. End the paragraph or dialogue with a question, feeling of frustration/confusion, or request for opinion/advice to make it feel interactive.

Format the output nicely: break into short sentences or lines for readability if it's a longer paragraph. Do not use formal written Thai; keep it very conversational."

16 minutes ago, John9 said:

One you tube blogger has advised that you must be able to prove UK ties if you are absent from UK for long time and returning to UK on British Passport even if you have no dual citizen.

Obviously complete nonsense.

I added this App about a week ago. Google Translate is still simply not good enough for Thai for some reason so I also went hunting for alternatives.

11 hours ago, DrJack54 said:

Nonsense. I have done 14 reentry permit at airports. It's a quick process

It does mean you get to jump the initial counter at Swampy and hand in the documents to the Immigration Police Officer in the little side room.

Usually this makes little to no difference but on one occasion I got to jump in front of an inept group of Filipinos. It certainly saved me 30 minutes.

On 1/23/2026 at 4:04 AM, Georgealbert said:

ensuring his safe return to the British Embassy in Bangkok

.... And the embassy will certainly not provide financial assistance. So what is the plan?

I'm looking forward to seeing some links of this firestorm of controversy happening somewhere on the internet. I just checked Thailand's biggest community forum in Thai and I can't find anything.

5 hours ago, Gaccha said:

Crane disasters are so common in Thailand

And before you've had time to read the newspaper article, there is yet another...

47 minutes ago, Purdey said:

Carlos Castaneda say he threw up a lot when he took magic mushrooms?

Obviously if you take stupidly toxic levels of something then your body will respond by vomiting.

If you drink 6 litres of water in 1 hour there is a good chance you will die.

Everything is toxic in sufficient quantities. But magic mushrooms are of such low toxicity that it would be incredibly difficult to try and die from eating them. Your body will vomit it long before that happens.

Any argument against them based on mortality danger simply does not make sense.

Or as AI puts it:

Ok it's clear that none of you have any idea what you're talking about. Let me explain.

The traders of gold in Thailand maintain their gold abroad in US dollars.

When local Thai people come to sell/cash in their gold this causes a rush of demand for Baht by the traders of gold since they now must settle their accounts with Thais seeking to make a profit over high gold prices.

Imagine the local Somchai going to sell his neck chain now that the prices are sky high. Then imagine a large queue of Somchais at the gold store.

This has caused an absolutely astonishing and well known correlation between the Thai baht and gold price fluctuation of 0.8.

Since currency traders know of this they are able to short the USD and go long on Baht. This further escalates the strength of the Baht.

4 minutes ago, Hanaguma said:

She started forward, spinning the wheels. Don't know if she even saw the agent in front

The agent in front fired 3 times. One round at leastthrough the windscreen

You missed a step between six and seven.

She pressed down on the accelerator for a second time and this time the wheels did not spin and the vehicle headed forward.

In that very brief moment the officer saw the vehicle coming towards him and fired.

There is no way that in that tiny moment he could look down at the wheels and see that they were turning away from him.

4 hours ago, federicoP said:

I understand that the first 90-day notification, after returning from abroad, should always be submitted in person.

I tried submitting it online anyway, and after a couple of hours, it was accepted.

This is extremely encouraging news.

Hopefully, this practice will now spread to other immigration bases because it suggests the tech is in place to communicate between border security and immigration offices.

This ~3 year nightmare will hopefully come to an end.

17 minutes ago, BeastOfBodmin said:

The gold buying function also looks interesting.

That is Thais only "currently".

17 minutes ago, jaywalker2 said:

Seems complicated. Home page has no English translation

I'm not really sure what you're talking about. Are you on some web page or something?

You need to download the App and you'll find it can switch to English. To make use of Truemoney you will need the True wallet since that is the very core of the App.

5 minutes ago, CallumWK said:

with Wise you can't send money overseas from Thailand

I should have said DeeMoney. Although I'm sure Wise would like to muscle into the market so it will probably be future competition.

TrueMoney now allows you to transfer money abroad, and not just to bank accounts but also e-wallets and even cash.

The rates appear genuinely competitive particularly with small transfers. Within the App you can typically see a price comparison with the three Thai banks and Wise. This obviously varies depending on the country you're sending to etc.

Unsurprisingly this is limited to foreigners with Advanced level (i.e. those with residency qualifications such as a work permit etc):

Eligibility:

This is True's Sales Pitch on their website:

When they compare with other banks and fintech companies they anonymize them. This is what AI says about this:

What type of destination you can send to depends on the country. For example with China you can only send to eWallets currently:

Their evidence is rather compelling:

On 12/29/2025 at 5:34 AM, Georgealbert said:

A homemade firearm was recovered

One does not simply make a homemade firearm. Where did he learn this sorcery?

3 hours ago, ChaiyaTH said:

I'm not a tax resident neither a Thai, and it works entirely fine for any foreigner. Stop talking crap.

The thread is about dealing with notification of taxable income from foreign remittances to Thailand, and these will not apply to you if you are a non-tax resident of Thailand. Your "solution" is an irrelevant non-solution. 

7 hours ago, ChaiyaTH said:

after 14 years no issue banking, decided to empty all and move to revolut instead

Your solution is a non-solution.

Revolut is not available to Thai tax residents; they will block any attempt to sign up.

The tax remit issues in Thailand apply only to Thai tax residents and are not an issue to visitors. 

This is the Naproxen brand I buy at Boots and Fascio:

Great for migraines and highly effective as an anti-inflammatory.

On 12/16/2025 at 10:30 AM, anchadian said:

does anybody know another UK money transfer service that you can transfer your pensions

TorFX.

And as pointed out above, OFX (also called Ozforex).

Both have convenient Apps to download and register on without human contact.