grabitanrun

Thanks Guys,

I'll read thru all this - and respond to those on here.

Grabbit

Hi Guys,

A bit of a quandary - I was looking to sell my house nr Pattaya (Mabprachan) but doesn't look like there's any buyers right now, however my wife should be returning to the UK in the coming months and I don't want to leave the property empty (spent a fortune this year bringing it back up to spec), here's the issue:

Should I look to rent it out, (my problem is my experience in the UK of trouble-tennants) or ask my wife to get one of her friends to live in it? - rental income really isn't the issue but how the hell do I find reliable (and decent) tenants over here?

Grabbit

Yes,

He did the right thing repairing it, maybe remaining closed for a short while as a sign of respect might have been good, but nonetheless as long as the police had gathered all the evidence then it was the right thing to do

Hey,

Just a quick question, is £5k really enough to live off - unless you rent out your UK house, which is fraught with problems unless you have someone to manage / maintain it for you.

I'm looking to retire in a few years and was looking for £3k a month on retirement to make sure that not only could I live comfortably, with as many overseas trips as I wanted and be able to save a little for a rainy day - and that would only be till my UK pensions (which are small) kicked in to bump it up further.

Grabbit

Is it possible to get a new car / pickup for around 600 - 700,000?

I know that's not much, but don't spend a lot of time in Thailand at the moment and my missus destroys vehicles.......

Annoyingly I don't see the upgrade and when I use the Microsoft link it says "link not found" - bodes well...........

Hi All,

Who would you recommend to use for House contents and buildings insurance?

I have lots of Apple computers (laptops, iMac, Mac mini, etc), I developed a corporate deployment solution for them and they really are excellent. I run VMware fusions to give me a Windows environment, which works very well. From my (corporate) experience, I can tell you that in the last 2yrs we have deployed around 2000 to directors and senior managers and have only had 3 repairs - one fatal (SSD failure) and 2 needing a full rebuild.

Look at the new 12" Macbook Air with the Retina display, the screen is fantastic and doesn't weigh much more than an iPad.

For Windows - look at the Sony units, we've trialled a few (we are a Lenovo shop primarily) and they got good feedback.

Most of the major mobile companies have kiosks in BKK, plenty offering 2 month deals with unlimited data too.

Can anyone advise me on the best broadband around Mabprachan (near Wat Toon Tong). I want to "work from home" whilst in Thailand - mainly voice / video conferences (similar to Skype).

I've asked my wife but getting nowhere - all sensible advice greatly appreciated.

Grabbit

Let think, what day is it today?................

Just driving into Pattaya now from Mabrachan, just want decent bacon eggs and sausages

Guys

Breakfast in my local hotel is dire - where's the best place to go?

Guys how much is reasonable to spend to get a decent truck?

Any IPTV box will need a decent internet service (IPTV - Internet Protocol TV)

That was a heartwarming story, thank you for posting.

Sometimes we undervalue the things closest to us, I've had 5 dogs now through my life I've had to watch them either pass away or be put down due to increasing pain and it's never anything less than heart wrenching.

My (thai) wife loves our current dog, a Shih Tzu, she'd never had a dog before, she walks around 7 miles with him each day, even in bad weather, I would hate to think how she would feel if anything happened to him, although she appreciates his time here is limited.

Good luck, I hope you find another "friend" to keep you and your wife company

If I understand it, if I leave £8k in a Thai bank, which isn't really a lot of money, I will have no problems getting a visa when I start to spend more time in Thailand with my wife. Thinking of doing either 3 or 6 months at time and then going back to UK or travelling.

The Etihad price is on their booking system, so it's legit, wasn't really looking for cheaper, rather recommendations on airlines you've had good experiences with.

I normally fly Emirates but they want over £500 for same dates / times and I've heard that Etihad have vastly improved since my last flight with them around 8yrs ago

:-)

Morning,

Coming over in Feb from Blighty and started looking at airfares - Etihad are offering return fares starting at under £300, anyone aware of any other good offers right now?

About 4 years ago I sold a house in Thailand, I was able to transfer the money out easily, albeit I had to split it into 3 transfers to keep the transfer within acceptable limits - I think I did it in 3 x £20k chunks.

For general use, most browsers are fine, personally I find Firefox is quicker but I also use Chrome, so I keep all 3 :-)

TBH - I had a similar experience some years ago when I lost a bag on a beach and had it returned with all the money the next morning, but that's tempered by every bugger who tries to rip me off when working on my house, also how on earth does he manage to stay so long with the current visa rules....... :-)

Here's an example, I've been quoted £3000 to paint my house - my builder from the UK is willing to fly out and do it cheaper.........

My friend,

We all live by our own ethical and moral standards, if the illness diagnosis is confirmed and as you say your are financially healthy, then what does your conscience tell you to do - would you ignore someone in need?

So, take the 10k, you'll easily eat that up on solicitors bills - mine cost me £32k

If she's determined to take you for all she can get, then fight it, I contested every detail and reduced the settlement down by around £200k.

Pre-marital assets can be argued as out of scope, main advice is if she goes for broke then make it hard, if she cannot live in your house, she has to find somewhere to live, the longer you drag it out, the more she will miss Thailand and take a settlement to go home.

In the end I sacked my solicitors and finished it off myself, barraging her solicitors with queries which they are obliged to respond to, also remember that getting legal aid in a lot harder these days, which may help your case.

Ha! - I started working professionally on computers in 1974, first mainframe had 4k of memory!

Also remember the IBM Displaywriters, which preceded PC's

Remember spooling jobs down modems to IBM to process and taking several hours to get the print output back again

Does anyone remember John Osborne and his portable computer - I recall the advert with John standing in a telephone booth with a big suitcase sized device using an acoustic coupler onto a BT payphone :-)

It was great fun in those days as few real experts existed, now I manage multi-million dollar projects in time critical phases - were did the fun go to?