WinnieTheKhwai

1 hour ago, ezzra said:

Now that is lovely piece of news, make you even more paranoid and frankly head to the hills... if i'll die because i was infected owing to the Thai government negligence so help me god i'll sue them in the highest court of the land...

The same court that's handpicked by the junta?  Good luck with that.. ???????????? 

2 hours ago, Ventenio said:

I believe it is DOT COM.  

 

appreciate the information  

Yes it is, thank you for the correction!

I think the blue RTC city bus still goes to Prom?

20 hours ago, Just Weird said:

Foreigners can't get a WP for working in a hotel?

Of course.

I hate to interrupt a good panic and mistrust of China, but you could also ignore China altogether and just look at actual reported cases in other countries.

The number is going up in a linear trend (not cubic or exponential as you might expect), with relatively few infections outside of China, and *really* few deaths.

If it was highly infections and very lethal then you would definitely know about it by now, without needing any information out of China.

This is pretty bad, even for hotels and holiday rental operators who don't cater exclusively to China.  For just about everyone in Chiang Mai for example, Chinese are about one third of everything.

Plus, other people from other Asian countries are also canceling, from Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc. 

So now you're down to about 50% .. and everyone is competing for that 50%, driving prices way down, so you end up with revenue that's perhaps 25% of normal.  

Sounds great.  A welcome addition to local tourism. 

An older and very well-kept develoopment is the Ban Nai Fun village off the Canal Road in Mae Hia / Hang Dong.  Then you just take the Canal road to CMU.

Or, as been mentioned, Serene Lake.  It's pretty nice, and big enough that it shouldn't get noise from anywhere else if you're reasonably close in the middle.   You might hear airplane noise though in one of their condominiums. 

1 hour ago, bangkokequity said:

1. Hotel Act Infringements

Airbnb hosts renting to guests on a nightly or weekly rate, are in effect operating as an unlicensed hotel. This absence of a hotel permit is therefore an infringement of the rules and regulations of the Hotel Act.

Am I the only one with the Google Machine?  Oh wait .. that would provide folks with FACTS ... can't have THAT! 555

You don't state a source, but assuming it's from " https://freshbangkok.com/is-airbnb-illegal-in-thailand/ " then they're wrong.  Or mostly wrong.  Like so many Bangkok-based people they seem to think that every property is a condominium unit.  Or that every AirBnB listing is for a condominium unit. It's not.

1 hour ago, steve2112 said:

i think only if you have more than 3 rooms to rent

Four rooms / 20 people is the maximum you can register for, yes.  But they're fairly flexible on this, i.e. you can 'set aside' certain rooms for long-term rentals only, and keep 4 rooms for daily rentals.  Or when it's a house with more than 4 bedrooms then use the other bedrooms for some other purpose.

1 hour ago, bangkokequity said:

"Airbnb Hosts are often quick to mention that the “Hotel Act” stipulates that only business operations with “more than 4 rooms” need to comply with this law."  But that is so vague, it is a toothless tiger.

 

So how did Airbnb hosting go from a confusing legal jumble to a definite “illegal status”?

In May 2018, a court ruling in Hua Hin convicted two hosts of violating the Hotel Act of 2004; they were charged for renting their condos on a daily and weekly basis in Wan Vayla Condo. The offenders were both charged with a light fine of between 10-15,000 THB for their infringements.

Both paragraphs are problematic.  Those AirBnb hosts who claim they can just rent fewer than 4 rooms are wrong, they still need to register.  Second paragraph:   Those were condominium units.  Which they obviously didn't register for daily rentals. (I think it's not possible to legally register condominium units at all, but someone can correct me if they managed to do that.)

And "Definite illegal status" is completely wrong, of course.  I would be suspicious on the accuracy of anything else on that property website.

1 hour ago, ThomasThBKK said:

 

This is bs, the hotel acct  allows 4 rooms/20 sleeps on single properties such as houses to be rented.

it's 4 rooms with 20 sleeps actually, but that's just for info.

Yes, correct.  And this regulation has existed for as long as I can remember, it's how the first guesthouses in the backpacker days of the 1980s and 90s were registered.

1 hour ago, ThomasThBKK said:

 

Because they rent out a condo room jeez, can you even read. Condos have more than 4 rooms/20 sleeps.

Airbnb itself isn't illegal, breaking the condo and hotel act is. 

It's not airbnbs problem tho.

❤️ ThomasThBKK understands. 

56 minutes ago, bangkokequity said:

Airbnb itself isn't illegal, breaking the condo and hotel act is. 

It's not airbnbs problem tho.

 

You are actually correct here ... just like building a car that goes 200 KMH is not illegal, but driving that fast is

 

I think we're getting somewhere. ????   I can also add that regardless of being registered for daily rentals, every AirBnB host of course must also file the TM30 information on any foreign guests.  The immigration department readily gives hosts a login to their site to make this pretty painless.

9 minutes ago, Blackheart1916 said:

Don't worry, a better set of TAT figures will be along shortly!

You do realize that hotel occupancy rates are not the same as tourist arrivals right?

If you build loads more hotels, and have additional holiday rental options compared to last year's number, and the same number of visitors (or even slightly more visitors) then the occupancy number will be down, while tourist arrivals are the same or slightly up.

Why are there so many people who don't get this?

58 minutes ago, bangkokequity said:

Exactly!  Air BnB ... you know .. the illegal enterprise undermining the hotel industry, and compromising the safety of condo residents, while completely defeating the ability of national security to track "bad guys" ... all shined up and put in a pretty party dress so no one will THINK about it.

What a strange thing to say.   AirBnB is not illegal at all.   Authorities will happily register a property for daily rentals, via AirBnB or any other booking site / holiday rental site.

I know where the misconception comes from of course, with pretty much the entirety of Bangkok journalists completely misunderstanding a court ruling a year or so ago.

Some listings on AirBnB are not legally registered.  So are *many* hotels, hostels, guesthouses, homestays, resorts and whatever else via booking dot com and agoda.  

The booking channel really has nothing to do with it, be it AirBnB or Agoda, Tujia, Expedia, TripAdvisor, etc, etc. 

18 hours ago, 4evermaat said:

I thought there was a script that locks threads that have not had a reply after 12-24 months

What benefit would that serve?  Just forces people to start the same topic over and over again.

17 hours ago, EricTh said:

This is a very old thread many years ago.

On cosmic timelines it's a fairly insignificant difference in age between the first message and this one.

I noticed the drop in temperature. Time to dig up the heater!

On 4/23/2013 at 3:13 PM, canuckamuck said:

If you are of a similar personality type to those throwing the party, go have yourself a time. People know me here, and I know them. I live here full time, I treat everyone with respect, but I have very few illusions left about breaking their stereotypes. If you really want to assimilate go for it, I like who I am already.

It's not so much about breaking stereotypes but about being part of a society, and enjoying the cultural events.  Presumably a major reason to come here in the first place.

This is complete fake news..  The site mentioned has a world city ranking that compares numbes for a full year, with averages per month shown.  It's here: 

https://www.airvisual.com/world-most-polluted-cities  

Several places in Thailand are worse than Chiang Mai over a one year period, including Bangkok and Chonburi (Pattaya) and others.

That's 2018 data though, I bet the North will not be doing as well for 2019 which had a very bad hazy season.

I bet you do. ????    Why don't you not tell us about it. 

Everyone here is very familiar with AirVisual, Air4Thai, AqiCN, etc.  Thank you.

Also, don't move to Pattaya, Laos or Vietnam. 

My Bunga Bunga parties are down to a single Bunga.

Reading between the lines, the main problem may be that he's not in great physical and/or mental shape and may well look very suspicious at any routine checkpoint going by bus to Bangkok to visit the French embassy for a new emergency passport.

He can't fly to Bangkok because if there's no valid passport then he will also very likely not have a valid driver's license or other form of ID. Then again the airline and airport staff don't usually check expiration dates for a domestic flight, however a passport that's over 30 years old may well look obviously wrong: still with an old photo physically stapled to a page, not a digital image. So it may well look 'wrong' and cause a problem.

And travel by bus or train may result in routine checkpoint checks: again an ancient passport will look wrong there.

I'd say he's in need of having someone make sure he's presentable looking and then drive him to Bangkok; there are checkpoints but unlikely to result in a passport check unless something looks suspicious. (Chances are it'll look suspicious, though..  I personally don't have my passport checked when driving with the wife and kids on what clearly looks like a holiday trip, but if he gets his late wife's brother or other family member to drive him in his pick up truck then that's going to look a little off.)

Good thing it's the hot season, so best bet may be to take a day bus to Bangkok. Police are very unlikely to feel like doing checkpoints out in the midday sun. Put old passport in a suitcase in the bus cargo hold.  And don't do it this weekend when the whole country will be on high alert, and Monday is a holiday with the embassy likely closed.

You may end up wishing you brought in more money, before the complete meltdown of that country..