Acharn

9 hours ago, pablo el sueco said:

My transfer this morning was not usual, though.  On the first Send screen where I entered the amount of dollars I wanted to transfer, It said the deposit would take seconds; not the usual one to three days.  Then after I finalized the transaction a few screens later, the deposit into my bank was indeed immediate.  That has never happened before.  A transfer on the weekend has never posted to my account until Monday or often Tuesday.

That happened to me last month when I transferred another amount and did not select "funds for long stay in Thailand." I got the notice from my bank that a transfer had arrived in the account almost immediately, but when I transferred my pension on 1 Oct. it took until 2:00 PM as usual. This is worrying, indeed.

There's a step where you have to choose a method of transfer. I've always left it on ACH, even though it's usually a dollar or two more expensive that Wire Transfer. I wonder if choosing Wire Transfer will solve the problem.

1 minute ago, AsiaCheese said:

Not allowed here. Only Thai lawyers get a license.

Not sure if that's true. 45 years ago when I was considering divorcing my Thai wife I contacted a firm of farang lawyers (they had Thai lawyer partners, too) named Tilleke and Gibbons. I think they were Australian, but might have been British. It may have been that only their Thai partners could actually plead the case in court, but they certainly offered legal services.

6 minutes ago, bbko said:

Elephant in the room?  The Swiss guy told the police where he threw it within hours, it's not like he was trying to hide it.  Like the Swiss guy and others said, it was so the intruder or others couldn't find/use it.

Well, the story the Swiss guy told makes perfect sense. One of the things that gripes me about Thai action soap operas, the hero never kicks the gun away from the hand of the bad guy(s) after he knocks him out, or picks it up. Of course there are other possible explanations for how and why the gun might have gotten into the pond. Maybe I'm too cynical, but it's well known in America that many police officers have handy a "throw-down gun," an unregistered/untraceable gun that can be tossed on the ground near a dead body after a shooting. I'm afraid I'm not as ready to take this story at face value as most of the posters here.

6 hours ago, meechai said:

Man with a gun entered another mans house

 

Owner beats him to death...where is the problem?

 

Who cares what dead man's mother claims he may or may not have had cash wise? That he previously "had" 300k baht does not mean  a thing in this story. This story is centered around an armed intrusion into another mans home period.

 

Bottom line any intruder found with a gun in my house at night will be found there in the morning (albeit motionless)

 

Side Show: This Thai man was supposedly having an affair with the Swiss mans wife....Now he shows up after midnight with a gun in the Swiss mans house? Guess what the plan actually was at that point?

 

Now dead Thai man's mother makes a claim the dead man had 300k baht & what?? Udon Police visit Swiss man why? They think maybe he set it all up? Had Thai man appear at his home with gun & 300k so Swiss could rob him? Amazing Thailand

Ah. "Man with a gun entered another mans house" And you know this how? Because the house owner said so. A gun was found in the pond? Yeah. Where did it come from? I can think of a couple of alternatives. Dead body with lacerations on its face in the house when police arrive. House owner says he fought with intruder. House owner has lacerations and/or bruises? Story doesn't say. I infer you think Thais are stupid, especially Thai police, but I disagree.

16 hours ago, 2 is 1 said:

Most of  offshore entities  are not illegal!

Funny, that's like the reason President Obama gave for the Department of Justice not prosecuting the bankers in 2009. Of course, "most of" implies that "some of" IS illegal. I don't know about Thai law,  or Finnish or Estonian law, but it's become known that under American law a lot of income that IS taxable gets hidden in Cayman Islands, Lichtenstein, Isle of Man, and Las Vegas. Yes, America provides some of the most opaque tax shelters in the world, but of course we never mention that. Sorry, I'm going off topic. From what I've been able to learn of Thai history, they have reasons to distrust people with foreign connections.

9 hours ago, digger70 said:

Say If,If he's by chance Not guilty.How can he do a Reenactment of the Event.

If he does the Reenactment That sure proves that he's guilty. 

 

Some of the "reenactments" I've seen on TV news, the cops are pretty obviously coaching the defendant through the play. Not always. Anyway, it's one of the reasons for the Fifth Amendment  to the American constitution, and why the judge is supposed to question the defendant pretty closely when he/she enters a guilty plea. Farangs mostly come from legal systems with similar safeguards against self-incrimination and don't understand the background of the Thai legal system.

8 hours ago, smedly said:

what ?

 

The Thai was armed with a firearm and made an unauthorised entry to the property to commit armed robbery and discharged the firearm when challenged, he was then disarmed during a violent struggle and incapacitated - the Swiss man should be getting a medal

 

pretty clear to me

Well, we have been told a firearm was found in the pond, and the Thai guy was found tied up and dead with cuts and bruises in the house. We only have the Swiss guy's and his wife's stories as to how that came about. You seem to believe their story. Do you have a reason for that?

On 10/3/2021 at 5:24 PM, Skeptic7 said:

Sure. Thailand was the epitome of Old Asian Charm and "Innocence". It didn't take itself overly seriously until Taksin in the early 2000s. Attitudes were better. Smiles were abundant and genuine. Jai Yen, Mai Pen Rai and Sabai Sabai were the national mottos. And mostly, there were WAY fewer tourists back then. A Westerner was a novelty and welcomed sight. It truly was Land of Smiles AND Amazing Thailand back then.

 

It's still pretty good, but nothing like back then. Glad I was here for it and still glad to be here...but back then it was Fan-<deleted>-Tastic! ????

I remember one year while I was stationed at the Pentagon, I took leave to come back and visit my wife, probably 1979 or 1980. My wife had sent her daughter to stay with some relatives or friends in Lop Buri and we went to pick her up to stay with us while I was here. Lop Buri was where  Special Forces had their base during training Thai Army people, but they were pulled out in 1975, and most of the people there had never seen a farang. Even when the SF were there they rarely went off base because Thais in those days had no bars or pubs -- they did their drinking in restaurants without entertainment. Anyway, the kids had never seen skin as white as mine, and one, maybe six or seven years old, was brave enough to come up and rub my forearm to see if the white came off. Yeah, there was much more opportunity for your average Thai in those days because of the deforesting of the Northeast opening up so much land. It was like the Wild West in many ways. The atmosphere was buoyant.

Well, I was stationed at the Army port at Sattahip from 1971-3, married a bar girl, and spent nine years in The States and then Germany. Retired and came back permanently in 1982. I have to say I liked the '70s. It had a freewheeling feeling like the Wild West. You had "communist" insurrections going on in the Northeast and the South, the army was deforesting the Northeast as part of their campaign, generals and even colonels were getting rich from illegal logging and the cleared land was available to anybody willing to work hard enough to farm it. There were even ways to establish legal ownership of the land, but it was still a patron/client society, with power held by local "godfathers." Thailand had had military dictators at that point for 25 years. When I came back permanently in 1982, former Gen. Prem Tinsulanond had been appointed Prime Minister by the Revolutionary Council, the military junta that had been running things since the counter-revolution of 1976 and there was almost no open corruption. He forced elections and a blatantly corrupt former general became the "civilian" Prime Minister. His cabinet was so visibly corrupt the people welcomed the coup in 1989 but protested so strongly when Gen.
Suchinda tried to establish a dictatorship that the junta appointed a businessman, Anand Panyarachun, Prime Minister. Like Prem, he was completely honest and competent, and the country prospered. After him were a series of tolerably corrupt governments, until Thaksin Shinawatra was elected. Most upper and middle class Thais will violently disagree with me, but he was the best Prime Minister of the whole period. I admit he was blatantly corrupt, but he offended the elite because he shifted the graft to a different set of families than had been in control for so long. He enacted populist reforms that led to an explosion of prosperity in the countryside that has led to Thailand now being a poor first world country. His reforms were so popular that the dictatorships that have followed have not dared to do away with them, so that now any Thai city is only distinguishable from an American town by the temples. I think the '70s and '80s were more fun, but now we have a lot more creature comforts and conveniences. We're in kind of an awkward transition now. PM Prayut was not a particularly bad dictator, and has not been a particularly bad "civilian" Prime Minister, but he lacks charisma and is boring. I look forward to whatever comes next.

12 minutes ago, jphunt46 said:

So joe , say I had 500,000 baht in bank how much income would I need to show for retirement extension 

also does pension payment need to come direct from government to thai bank or I can take from my bank in oz every month and transfer via Ozforex  to thai bank ? 
 

Since that's 5/8 of the required deposit, I would presume you need 3/8 of the monthly requirement, or ฿24,375.

I've seen banana chips for sale at one shop on the way to Bangkok from Nakhon Sawan that sells a big variety of Chinese confections and Japanese daifuku. I didn't like them, but I love the fried bananas from street vendors. They sometimes sell fried cassava, as well, and I wish my niece would not buy those to make up the weight when they don't have enough bananas left.

Oh, that's very helpful. Thank you.

23 hours ago, Chris.B said:

Have you checked your spam mail folder? The appointment could be in there.

 

Nakhon Sawan have been vaccinating the over 60s for more than 3 weeks now.

 

 

Yes, I checked my spam folder. Nothing. Do you know if [email protected] will reach them? Neither of the emails I got to register gave a contact address and both said not to reply to them.

ETA: Two posts up from this one is a clear explanation, with a call center number, but from his description it doesn't look like it's very helpful.

We didn't get any rain, yet, today.  Maybe tonight. September and October always get lots of rain. My memory is that the highest tide of the year always produces floods in Bangkok in October. Usually floods in most provinces. Our "front yard," mostly bare dirt, is pretty much a swamp, but the neighborhood is not flooded.

Interesting. I live about ten kilometers outside town of Nakhon Sawan and I haven't heard anything since I got the reply back from expatvac that I had successfully registered. I'm also registered at Sri Sawan hospital, supposedly to get the Moderna vaccine next month (maybe). I wonder why expatvac hasn't given me an appointment yet. I'm over 80.

In the frame on Nawarat Bridge, the caption says พ.ศ. 2010, but in the sound track she says 2510, which makes more sense. พ.ศ. 2010 would be 1467 AD. พ.ศ.
 2510 would be 1967 AD. I'm surprised they were still using so many pedicabs. I first came to Bangkok in 1972, and they had been outlawed there by then. I didn't bother looking through the rest of the video to see if any other dates were given.

Scouse123. I wasn't really thinking you were alcohol dependent or alcoholic when I suggested AA. The Third Tradition is that the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. I just found that most of the people I met there are the same kind of people I hung out with in the bars, and fun to be with. Most are really not poster children for mental health, but most are a lot of fun. Unfortunately some are religious fanatics, but they tend to stick with each other since most of us identify as recovering Christians. I consider myself an agnostic, too, in the sense that I believe whether there is or is not a creator god cannot be decided by reason. It's a axiom, like the parallel postulate in plane geometry. Either you believe it or you use one of the alternate postulates (there are infinite parallel lines or there are no parallel lines). Generally, I think the Eightfold Path is a good way to try to live and doesn't require that you believe anything. I'm quite sure I am an alcoholic, but I haven't had to take a drink of alcohol for 45 years, so I don't have a drinking problem any more but I still have a living problem.

3 hours ago, crazykopite said:

Would be interested to know if the chief has ever jumped out of an aircraft as he has para wings embroidered  above the DSI badge on his uniform it’s like every Monday government workers dressed in uniform full of medal ribbons and gold braiding it creases me up 

Back about 40 years ago I read a humor book by a Thai bureaucrat, one of a series with "Smile" in the titles, describing his experiences as he rose through the ranks. It was hilarious. The one I was reading was the point where he got promoted to Nai Amphoe. He had to go through a training school that lasted six weeks or so. Very military oriented, and included parachute training. They qualified with a tower jump.  The chief is a policeman, though, so his training may have included one or more airplane jumps, but probably 20 or more years ago. I remember there was a coup where Police General Phao Sarasin tried to oust Field Marshal Phibunsongkhran. The police in those days had frigates, armed aircraft, and tanks. After he won the Field Marshal made sure they didn't.

At the graduation party from the Nai Amphoe school, one of his friends described how much he was looking forward to getting home and boinking his wife. "I've slept with a Kharachagan's wife, and I've slept with a Balad's wife, but I've never slept with a Nai Amphoe's wife."

I'm amazed you've lasted 10 months. As you say, you need to find some activity to fill the time you used to pend drinking. I gather you're still in Isaan, so Alcoholics Anonymous isn't really an option. Because it's based on American midwestern middle class protestant Christianity (most people who stick with it seem to ignore the God thing) it's never gained widespread acceptance in Thailand although one farang did succeed in establishing a group in Chayaphum. He had to learn Thai very well to do it, though, and I think all meetings are now online because of Covid-19. Lots of English-speaking farang members in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Wish I could think of some alternative to suggest. If you have decent internet you might start hunting for resources. Some of my old AA friends "meet" virtually once a week on Zoom and if you start searching "aa meetings online" you can probably find some that will accept newcomers. At least it would give you some  English speaking contacts. There's some religious group that's been advertising here at AN or TV, or whatever this place is called now. Had a slogan like "we're here for you." I don't see one of their ads today, and don't remember their name, but I'm sure they'll pop up again. They probably have resources to suggest. If you know about archive.org, they have a project for volunteer proof readers. That could take up a little time if you enjoy reading (I do). Good luck. 

1 hour ago, oslooskar said:

Why don't you just buy some Thai purple sticky rice that they stick inside of bamboo? You could scoop it out into a bowl and then add some cinnamon and cream. Maybe even some nuts and raisins,

That's called khao lam (or lum, as in lumber). They make it with the white sticky rice, too, but I haven't seen any for years. Never thought about adding raisins. I should try that, ask my niece to keep an eye out at the market. I stopped using cream, only use whipping cream now. Pricey, but delicious.

It was always false. SARS-Cov-2 is a fast-mutating virus like influenza. The vaccines were always designed to reduce the severity of the symptoms. They do not prevent infection,or confer immunity, so they will never produce herd immunity. It's like the common cold -- you can catch it again after you've had it once. Get vaccinated anyway, the fact that the symptoms are less severe is a big deal. You're almost certain not to die. It's just too bad all the public health authorities decided to lie about the vaccines, it's destroyed people's faith in them.

Pfui. I hate these hypotheticals. "Could," "might," "There's a risk of." No information to help assess the actual risk. It's all just meant to arouse fear or hope. Heck, the baht might suddenly jump up to 31, too. I'd love to see it drop to 35 and stay there for three years, and it might do that. Who knows?