bubba

2 minutes ago, Katia said:

 

I find that vendors often seem to understand "jay" in a Western context-- some seem to get the idea that I don't want animal products, but spices are okay.

 

 

Well of course spices are OK for vegan meals. Spices are vegetables, not animal products. Am I misunderstanding something or are you saying that vegan meals should not have spices? I think maybe airlines think that, as this would explain why their vegetarian meals always taste like flavourless cardboard.

Yes, I have had some servers at restaurants who were Burmese and even Vietnamese and a few Filipinos. I do not know whether they can read Thai, but there is always someone there who can. Anyway, probably easier to try that than providing Thai spelled in phonetic symbols to a visitor who cannot speak Thai and expect him to read that and be understood by said Burmese food workers.

Sorry about the repetition, Oxx. I think we were both typing at the same time. lol

Actually, it really isn't all that easy to get vegan food on the street here. Every now and then you will see a "jae" vendor with a yellow flag out. You might want to learn the two Thai characters for "jae", and it's only two, in red on a yellow background:

To ask for no MSG, that might be a bit difficult unless you can do Thai tones, but here it is:

Mai sai pong choo roat 

Or here's an idea...you could print this out and keep it with you...just show it to the vendor:

ไม่ใส่ผงชูรส

7 minutes ago, questionsreplies said:

7 minutes ago, questionsreplies said:

I agree that you are totally wrong.

Well, given that you must "know Thai very well" and you also must have considerable experience with eating and preparing vegan food (jae) in Thailand, then we would all be happy to hear your revelations to back up  your accusation. Please do elaborate.

3 hours ago, abab said:

 

 

What a drama ! fish sauce in your dish ! And if you believe that Thai respect the vegan rule strictly even when it's veg festival, the one who knows nothing and seem proud of being retarded is you.

 

The only real vegan food is the one you cook yourself, anybody with a brain usually knows this.

 

 

 

 

To the contrary, Thai people are very conscientious about preparing food that is truly vegan during the vegetarian festival. Even when it is not vegetarian festival, if you buy food from a vegetarian restaurant, you can be sure it is vegan. For many Thais, this is a religious issue to them.

2 hours ago, Oxx said:

 

That really is one of the more ill-informed posts I've read here for a long time.

 

Thai food makes extensive use of fish sauce, oyster sauce, shrimp paste, meat stock, and other animal-based products.

 

And the so-called "vegetarian festival" isn't about vegetarian food.  The food is vegan and eschews anything with strong flavours such as onion, garlic, herbs, spices.

And don't forget the pork oil that many vendors use for stir fries.

4 hours ago, baneko said:

 

 

I asked whether you were in the sticks as DHL may have passed the mail onto a different courier in remote locations.

Fedex also OK. My company swear by DHL and wont use any other courier. They have locations in Houston, Dubai, Luanda, Batam, Bangkok, Perth, Almaty, Aberdeen, Baku to name a few. Being American I thought they would use Fedex but no they use DHL.

 

 

Well now that you have listed all those locations, I know who your company would be. Needless to say that they are much larger than we are, so maybe you are getting special treatment!    

8 hours ago, Oxx said:

This Chinese religious festival is based upon the lunar calendar, so Bangkok's dates are the same as Phuket.  The dates certainly won't be affect by the royal cremation.

 

I trust that you're aware that in Bangok the festival is really only marked in Bangkok's Chinatown.

I have found that the vegetarian aspect of the festival is celebrated all over Bangkok. Just look for the yellow flags. Even 7-11 and supermarkets like Villa lay on loads of frozen vegetarian microwave meals.

1 hour ago, wayned said:

I agree that DHL is useless, read post 57.

 

An update on my first , AND LAST, shipment by Ebay GPS.  They sent me an email yesterday with a big SUCCESS on it.  Your package has been delivered.   Maybe it was, but not to me.  The email was one that you could not respond to so I went through their website and complained.  I got another email from them, no response allowed,  stating that I needed to wait a while for the seller to straighten it out.  The seller delivered to GPS and GPS is ebay so I responded as such again though their website..  This morning I got an email, again no response allowed, from a real person apologizing for the problem and stating that they would check by contacting the agent here.  He also said that I should ask for a refund but that their system would not allow me to do that until after the end of the delivery window that was May 3.  I respond again through their website terminating the email  that IMHO the only resolution to the problem was euthanasia of the entire GPS staff and have yet to hear back.

 

IMHO the only reliable service from either the UK or the US is the postal system!  I'm sure others will disagree!

That's too funny. That is exactly what happened to me last week with a delivery from eBay GPS to my office, via DHL. After sending two separate stacks of signed company documents and my passport on two different days, then multiple calls to DHL between my office and them (yes, we had to pay to courier those to them), I received an email a couple of days later saying "Success, your shipment has been delivered"! But it was not delivered. Finally, it arrived the next day, after DHL spent one week clearing it following its arrival at BKK. That is the service we prepaid for with eBay's GPS.

1 hour ago, baneko said:

 

 

Always use express delivery to house. Mate on Koh Tao also no problems. Good Service. Are you in the sticks?

 

 

No, I live in central Bangkok and our company is as well. We used air courier services extensively at work, as in around 80,000 to 100,000 per month, mostly with Fedex since we have had such dreadful experiences with DHL.

Seems you were lucky, compared to others of us who have experienced nothing but headaches with DHL's delivery and customs clearance services in Thailand.

DHL Global Mail has a DHL tracking number; however, once it reaches Thailand all they can tell you is that it was handed over to Thai Post. I know this once from experience, when I didn't receive the parcel for more than a week after DHL tracking stated they had handed it over to Thai Post.

DHL offer two different services.

Their Global Mail service is a cheaper service that utilises Thai Post. 

DHL Express is the one that provides door to door delivery via DHL couriers, but if you live upcountry, they will hand it over to Thai Post EMS.

Either way, I avoid DHL if at all possible.

ThaiWai: We have found their Fedex rates to be about the same as our company account rates here, and sometimes a bit cheaper. US Post Office EMS rates with them are always considerably more expensive than Fedex.

If you were able to get even a small package sent over by UPS from the US for US$40, your friend's company mailroom is getting a very good discount indeed.

1 minute ago, janclaes47 said:

I'm well aware of the problems that seem to attached to DHL and I have always avoided them exclusively, but I had no other option this time, unless I wanted to wait 4 weeks on delivery.

 

The lady at the call centre also asked me, if I was not happy with their service, why I used them.

 

I told her that I and most other people avoid DHL like a toothache, which made her laugh, but it didn't change anything to my advantage.

Same here, Jan. I had no choice with this vendor, as the only used DHL.

One other solution if you are buying a product in USA for shipment to Thailand is a shipping drop. We use:

https://www.shipito.com/en/

When your shipment arrives, they notify you by email and you can log in and choose which courier you would like to use. For an additional $1, they will "lose" the invoice from the vendor inside the box and then you complete your own commercial invoice with the correct description and value.

Really sorry that your shipment came by DHL. We do a lot of small shipments of electronics from USA and UK, but mostly from USA. From my experience over the past couple of years, I can tell you that DHL is almost always a complete and total pain the backside when it comes to their clearance procedures.

Just last week, I ordered something from USA, for our business and to our business address. I ended up paying the all-in charge for shipping and clearance services, including duties. This is the Global Shipping Service that Suradit mentioned above. Unfortunately, some shippers require this, but I didn't find it to be much more expensive that shipping + duties and VAT.

After arriving at BKK, we had to send two different stacks of paperwork over to DHL and they even wanted my original passport, which of course I refused to send to them as they said they needed it for two days! They also mentioned additional fees, although I had a receipt from the vendor and the global shipping service clearly stating that all fees were prepaid. One week and about fifty pieces of signed paper later, they delivered.  This is not the first time we have had major bureaucratic delays with DHL.

With Fedex for exactly the same type and value of product, we receive a notification by email, sign one piece of paper and email it back and our package is delivered the next day. That also states the amount of duty and VAT. If we need to pay those, their delivery person collects it we have our package.

Maybe I have just had bad luck with DHL, but I always avoid them if at all possible. 

Haven't we all seen a new user here who joined to create a hit and run thread with some sort of incredulous tale,  thus trolling all sorts of replies?

...only to disappear into the aether, never to be seen again?

I am not inferring that this is the case with this thread...just sayin'

12 hours ago, onthesoi said:

 

That will only be true if the vendor says that on their site and charges extra money for import tax etc  If he just placed a random order and provided an address in Thailand then the OP is the importer so responsible for all paperwork.

This is true for any shipment - the importer is responsible for clearance, not the shipper. That's why there are brokers and customs clearance services.

I ordered a pair of personal walkie-talkies from a vendor in the USA off of E-Bay once, and they got stuck in Customs. As an add-on to the price, the vendor provided Customs clearance and duties.  Thai Customs started wanting paperwork this and paperwork that, catalog showing the price, and on and on. True, there could have been a problem with the fact that it was a transceiver and didn't have some sort of required certification. After a couple of weeks of back and forth, I notified the shipping service, they couldn't work out anything with Customs and they returned the to the vendor. I then received a full refund. 

While these customs services are not always cheap, they are great insurance. 

Permanent residents of the US (green card) who remain outside the US for more than a year, will have it lifted the next time they return as they assume you have abandoned their residency. Between six months and one year is iffy. The way to preserve residency and the green card is to obtain a re-entry permit, and the application must be lodged while in the USA.

...or better yet, get a gas hot water heater, if you are able to mount one on the outside.  No worries about bad and potentially dangerous electrics, plus with the cold ambient temperature of water in the winter, you actually get a hot shower with lots of water, rather than the trickle that you might get with some electric heaters.

I would guess that the energy cost is less as well.

If you don't trust the police ID that is produced, you could always request to go to the nearest police box for the interview. If the "officer" in question refuses to do that, then I would be suspicious.

17 minutes ago, Time Traveller said:

To answer the OP's question: Does he intend to live in the US in his future life? If the answer is no, then citizenship is not worth it.

 

Oh, you'll hear these people scream (all of them Americans) on about the travel benefits of a US passport. But for me (i have a greencard and weighed up the pros and cons) if it's only about the passport then why bother to apply? 

 

Permanent residents have basically most of the same rights as citizens if he's living in the US.  But if he does't want to live in the US, a lifetime of applying for visas is much better than a lifetime of filing US taxes as an expat. Remember it was that SOB Obama that signed FATCA into law. The complexities of this law is so extreme that US Citizenship is akin to a ball and chain around your life forever. Perhaps Trump and the republicans will overwrite this law and simplify the tax code, but until then he will always live with the risk that a simple mistake in his tax filing and foreign acct reporting responsibilities could bankrupt him through IRS fines.

 

And besides foreigners (non-resident aliens) who've given up their green card can still get the SS retirement benefits paid to almost any country if they've worked in the US for 10 years or more. 

These are the main considerations but there as some lesser know situations that may affect some individuals - such as land ownership rights and specific tax laws concerning inheritance taxes come to mind.

Unfortunately for Thais who are US permanent residents, Thailand is not on the list of countries where Social Security benefits can be paid out. 

Also, if someone really does not want to keep up with their green card residency obligations or annual re-entry permits, they can go into US Immigration here in BKK, surrender their green card and they will be given a ten year multiple entry visitor's visa. This was the case with one of my staff last year.

No, a "green card" is by definition permanent residency and not intended for those who want to reside in the US for a short time. There are many people who for one reason or another elect not to get US citizenship and they continue to live/work in the USA for their entire lives. 

I know of two cases (one Australian and one Japanese) with green cards due to marriage to a US citizen. Both had a problem with swearing allegiance to the USA in order to get their citizenship, so they elected to remain on green cards.