petedk

Reading the headline, I thought it was the police who had a hand grenade. 😁

There is a Thai guy in our soi who does exactly the same and has been doing so for the past 15 years. He doesn't care who sees him and no one (except me maybe) seems to care about him. At least he wipes his hands afterwards (in his hair haha).

What amazes me is that no one ever notices that these places don't have licenses until they are raided. I read somewhere once that maybe as many as 60% of pubs and nightclubs don't have licenses to operate.

This story reminds me of 2 Chinese guys who stayed in luxury houses near us. The houses cost 200,000 + baht a month to rent and there was 1 Chinese man in each house. They stayed there 3 months and NEVER came out. They ordered food via Grab and also ordered prostitutes quite regularly. They would be practicing martial arts and weightlifting nearly all day and looked very much like military or police officers, so we all thought they maybe the houses were "safe houses"

I agree with you entirely. I travel to both UK and Denmark and it is annoying that I can't have a bank account there. All countries should allow people to open bank accounts if they need them. With all the other measure in place it should be reasonably easy to stop criminals.

Why not look in the more hiso places of Bangkok. Gambling and "luxury" prostitution among certain foreign nationalities is very rampant, but it's more organised and discrete.

I am a British citizen but haven't lived in England for 40 years, but go there at least once a year and recently I received a check for 90,000 GBP, but could I open a bank account in England? No. I lived in Denmark for 20 years and have children there and go there 1 or 2 times a year, but when I came to Thailand I was forced to close my "convenience" bank account in Denmark and transfer all the money to Thailand. I then opened a sterling account with a Thai bank where I could deposit my check. Why should tourists and short term stayers in Thailand need a bank account?

Wrong! My Chinese student age 8 was fined for not doing 90 day report and also fined 20,000 baht for visa overstay. Edit: After reading one other comment here, it seems that he was tricked into paying. His sister age 15 was also fine 2000 for not doing a 90 report. She didn't do a TM30 either, but I can't remember if she was fined for that.

He loves public attention and to be this quiet for so long is unusual.

Almost the first words my cousin said when he woke up after 6 weeks on the edge of life and death "God isn't like what we think he is."

To be honest, it was the first time that I ever used Grab and he told me that the rules were as such. It was only later that I found out it wasn't true. Lesson learnt!

They don't exactly look like billionaires. haha

I did that recently and to my surprise he turned the meter on. When I asked why he just laughed. When we arrived at the destination the meter showed considerably more than the arranged fare, and he charged me the meter price plus 50 baht "Grab fee". I protested for a few minutes but he gradually became more and more aggressive, so I ended up paying the amount he asked for. I haven't used Grab cars since, but I use Grab motorcycles often.

The pink card was quite problematic for me. I first applied to the district office when we had the floods in 2010 and was told to apply after the flood problem had eased up. I tried again a year later and was told to wait as there were some local elections coming up in about 10 or 12 months. Third attempt was around 2015 and was told to wait until; the coup government had settle down. Fourth attempt was late 2016 and was told to wait until after the funeral of the late king. Finally, I absolutely needed the pink card and yellow house book when I retired in order to receive my social security payout and continue my SS healthcare, so I approached the district office again. It was made quite clear to me that they were expecting a little tip of about 10K. Anyway I went ahead and the process took about 3 months of meetings (always with the same documents.) On the day, it took all day from 10 am to about 16.30 and I had to wait outside afterwards with the "brown envelope". While waiting during the day, we talked to another couple who were being processed for pink cards by a different officer. They started the process one week before and were in and out that particular day in about 3 hours, so I opened the envelope and removed 5K. Oh, we had also been trying to get married at this district office for approximately the same number of years. Eventually we got married at a different district office and that process took about 3 weeks.

I didn't have a pink card at that time. I received (paid 5K) for my pink card 4 years ago