.png.3b3332cc2256ad0edbc2fe9404feeef0.png)
OldAsiaHand
-
Posts
958 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Downloads
Posts posted by OldAsiaHand
-
-
The Post carried a story this morning announcing that KTB will now be operating an international wire transfer service online. KTB? Good Lord. They can't even manage to get anything done right when you're standing in the bank looking at a person. The mind boggles as to how badly they can screw things up online.
-
Many thanks.
-
Just one more thought....
When you wire funds to a Thai bank, the originating bank will charge you (USD20-30 is normal range) and the receiving bank will charge you (THB500-THB1000) is normal range). Frequently, however, you will also find another USD10-25 'disappearing' in transit. That is yet another fee imposed by the correspondent bank through which the transfer is routed and you should expect it to turn up frequently, particularly on wires to Thai banks.
-
It's OK, logpoacher. I found the thaibrary website and am in touch with Oui by e-mail.
Could you post the URL you used? I tried to Google Thai Library and found a www.thailibrary.net, but when I tried to reach that URL all I got was a 'server unknown' error message.
-
There is only one English language library in Bangkok which is more-or-less public. It's called the Neilson Hayes Library and it's on Suriwong up near the western end. To tell the truth, although the building is quite charming, the library itself has a dated and very limited collection. Unless the thesis is on something related to Thailand before, say, 1980, I wouldn't waste my time going over there.
-
For what it's worth, I endorse the clear consensus here: say no.
I know of no case in which a foreigner has been squeezed like this and has ever seen a baht again. However bad it may be on your daughter's circumstances now, consider how much worse it will be when you have to decide whether to write off the 'loan' or try to collect it the Thai way (i.e. by threatening the debtor physically until they come up with at least some of it).
Moreover, when you say no, I suggest you say it politely, but very firmly indeed. If you don't close the door permanently now, you will almost certainly just get another request sometime in the future.
-
Talking about that seniority principle - also part of the whole issue....my secretary is 24 and rather smart. My driver is 51 and....my driver. Now the driver tries to tell the sec how to do the job and the sec doesn't dare to tell him to get lost. Even worse, she will do as he told her, at least until he's gone. Then she will come to see me and complain. Steep learning curve for her, but I insist on that she handles the problem, as she is in the company's hierarchy higher. And...it is getting better. By and by - in a Thai way - she is keeping him more and more at bay and she's gaining significant self confidence.
I've been through similar scenarios here a number of times and my own experience is that such gains in self-confidence are seldom if ever permanent with Thais.
On the whole, while Thais may learn to cope with a particular situation in a way that is new for them, they don't take the result as a lesson (in a western sense) to be applied to other areas of their life. Yes, I know that is a generalization and that doubtless there are Thais who have behaved differently; nevertheless, it is an accurate summary of my own experience here.
-
Old asia hand....I am sure that Donna and Bannork can make up ther own minds.
Oh dear, another one of those posters we love so much........
Jopha apparently thinks we should just shut up and let him pontificate rather than express different or even, God forbid, ouright contrary views. Actually, that's fine with me. I hereby leave this thread to him.
-
UBC's standard of service has always been so poor that it would be impossible EVER to conclude that it's 'slipping.' Where is God's name could it 'slip' to?
-
This 'green light' has been given so many times over the past ten or so years that I'm surprised the bulb hasn't burned out by now.
I'll believe it's for real this time when they start pouring the foundation, and maybe not even then.
-
Your should read more widely, donna. There is a much bigger choice of Asian-connected fiction available here than just local bar girl rubbish and Sudam's politically correct, but desperately mediocre and tedious prose. If you're in Bangkok, go down to Kinokuniya in the Emporium and look through their Asian sections. I'm sure you'll find something interesting and far more worth your time.
-
The truth is they don't want to learn and progress. They just get their salary and that's it. No need to progress or anything. No active thinking. It's very frustrating as a boss. You want to see them progress, outperform, but they don't, despite your very instructions and procedure to make them so. You have to "micro manage" them, it's embarrassing.
Here, here. In the blizzard of political correctness that this board usually turns into, almost nobody is willing to say what you said and say it straight out. Almost any foreigner who has ever been in a position of managing Thais will tell you exactly the same thing.
My own view is that the notion of achievement leading to upward mobility that drives most westerners in at least some modest way is totally absent from Thai culture. Here there is no social mobility here, hence no real motivation toward success or achievement.
You can't gain status through achievement since your status is what you were born with, so you are best off not trying to achieve anything. Instead you reason that, with the reward for success being nothing, the punishment for failure, a significant loss of face, is not worth risking. You are therefore always safest just to sit exactly where you are, draw your salary, and make no effort at all. Yes, of course there are exceptions, but alas, the principle is still generally applicable.
-
I got my car on the 12th without red plates.
every two days I am told "tomorrow' for the red plates.
No one seems to know what potential problems are for driving without plates.
I want to drive to Pukhet tomoErow......
We've bought two new cars in the last few months, both delivered with red plates by different dealers. For the first, the regular plates took a little over two months to come. For the second, we're now at well over two months and still counting. So don't hold your breath.
-
Smart people in government would do more good, but we all know what the chances of that are.
-
This topic has been done to death here, but regardless, I think there is at least one point still worth making.
Every single time the why-are-we-here subject is raised on the board, it quickly turns into a slanging match between the whingers and the love-it-or-leave-it crowd. Why does it never seem to occur to anyone that there are those of us who live here, not because we really want to, but for a wide variety of other reasons.
Everybody has to live somewhere, and there aren't too many of us who feel like we're living in the one place on the planet we'd really like to live in. Most everyone I know feels that way, so we tend to bitch about the place we do live, sometimes reasonably and sometimes not so reasonably. On the whole, people are permitted to do that without being told that they ought to get the heck out of town or shut up.
'Cleveland! Love it or leave it!' Doesn't have much of a ring to it, does it?
And yet -- sigh -- Thailand (and those who love it) seem to martch a different, perhaps even a more demanding drummer. Every darn time somebody says something negative about the country or about Thais, somebody else starts demanding they up stakes and leave if they don't like it.
I'd like to, really I would, but I can't right now. Still, I'm looking on the bright side. By the time I can leave, maybe I'll have saved up enough to live in Monte Carlo.
-
But how about a satelite dish. Here in the US, DirecTV and Dish network are avail from anywhere between $40-$120 a month, but due to the geosyncronous position of their satelites, I doubt that they can accessed from BKK . Is there a satelite subscription service avail in BKK? If so, approximately what are the costs? And is there a website with some of the packages that are offered.
Chuck
UBC has both a sat service and a landline cable service. The contents are identical, except for the digital index on the sat system. That's really your only option. Well, I suppose there must be some hobbists who put up private dishes and figure out a way to defeat the scramblers to access direct feeds off braodcasts satelites (it's not illegal as far as I know), but there are no commercial alternatives.
If you're going to live in Bangkok you've got to get used to what the rest of us live with. You take what you can get and smile bravely.
-
We have two sons, both of whom go (went) to school here. In our personal experience, the very top international schools in Bangkok (ISB, Bangkok Pattaya) are, in most respects, the equal of most any top schools in the world. But they will also cost you what the very top international schools will anywhere else in the world as well. Actually, perhaps a little less, but count on B500,000 per year per child or there abouts. That's just the reality of it if you want to get the best for your kids regardless of cost.
If that's something you can't do, then you don't want your kids going to school in Thailand. There are cheaper international schools here, but they aren't, in my experience, anything to write home about. And forget about public schools. No, at the very top in terms of cost, your kids are as well off here as anywhere. Below the very top, they will be better off in nearly any western country with a reasonable public education system.
-
The headline here is quite misleading. It's not the SET index that is down, it's the Consumer Confidence Index. Quite on the contrary, the SET has been up fairly strongly since the Chinese currency surprise. There's not any good reason for that, you understand, but it's up anyway.
-
I'm wondering if American football is shown much on TV there? Is it broadcat on regular TV? Cable TV? Avaiable on satelite? I would like to be able to watch it from my apt.
And another question. How expensive is cable tv or a satelite?
Thanks,
Chuck
ESPN Intenational is carried on UBC, the only cable system availablle here. In past years, ESPN has generally carried most Sunday night and Monday night football games live, which puts them on out here about eight on the following morning. Occasionallly they repeat the games in the evenings, occasionaly they don't. The biggest problem in trying to watch football in Thailand is that the announced schedules are frequently unreliable and the games will not be carried live or repeated when scheduled, but will appear at some other and totally unannounced time.
In addition to ESPN, one of the Star sports channels (also carried by UBC) has also carried live football in the past, usually two of the Sunday afternoon games from the networks, which puts the games to air out here in the wee hours of the morning. Like ESPN, sometimes they are repeated, sometimes not. Regardless, if you have a VCR, you just tape them and play them back at your leisure.
As for the cost of UBC, I'm not absolutely sure since thankfully I don't pay the bills around here. I seem to recall it's something like B1000 per month or something like that.
-
I'm trying to find info on the new spa at the Royal Bangkok Sports Club. Anyone been there, or know its name?
RBSC is a very private club indeed. The waiting list is so long that I think it has been officially closed now. I'd be very surprised if there was any basis on which RBSC facilities are open to non-members (other than as guests of members, of course).
-
I've always thought that the explanation for the way Thai merchants treat their customers rests more on the Thai obsession with demonstrating relative status than it does on purely commercial explanations.
In the US, for example, the merchant wants the customer to think that he has the higher status ('the customer is always right' et al), even when he doesn't. That makes for a happy customer and a greater likelyhood that more products will be sold.
In Thailand, by contrast, the merchant usually makes it very clear that he has all the status ('Big 5% discount....') and the consumer has none. By definition, the merchant has the goods and the consumer wants them, so it's up to the consumer to bow down to the merchant in order to obtain what he wants.
A bit simplistic, I know, but there's still a good deal of truth in looking at the matter this way.
-
And if you don't know that, either you don't live here or you don't understand what's really going on around you.
Yep. Good observation. But I would say they had same nasty attitude since the 1997 IMF crash that they still blame on us, not them. Thaksin successful political platform is a product of the IMF crisis
I guess it sounds like we're organizing a mutal admiration society here, Butterfly, but I'd have to say 'yep' to your observation, too. The first big wave of change in our standing hit when the baht collapsed due to the utter ineptitude of the Bank of Thailand, and the second started with Thaksin's election on the back of what passes here for neo-nationalism. There is now real face to be gained for a Thai when he stands up to a foreigner and shows him who is boss in this country, even when (perhaps especially when) that's not an particularly issue.
That's nothing fundamentally new in that, of course. Smugness and arrogance have always been major elements of the Thai character. It's just that more Thais now seem to feel less constrained about expressing themselves agressively, both verbally and physically, at least with respect to their long-standing resentment of foreigners living among them. It's my wife's observation as a Thai that the more confrontational style of life can be seen generally these days, by Thais and foreigners alike. She says that she more often now is made to feel uneasy as a result of being married to a foreigner than she was a few years ago, certainly more than she was ten years ago.
Still, Thais are fundamentally cowards and won't take you on unless you are at a disadvantage by virtue of numbers or rank or some such. Remember the we've-never-been-conquered-by-foreigners nonsense they love to throw at you? Of course they haven't. Thais alway surrender before anybody has the time to get a good conquering organized.
-
What the (coherent) posters are saying here is that Bangkok is more dangerous for foreigners now than it was a few years ago. For my part, as a long-time resident, I don't see any doubt that's true.
On the whole, Thais have never liked us much, but they've generally been careful in their contacts with us. Somehow taking on a foreigner, whether verbally or physically, always seemed a bit too risky. Too much unknown and unknowable stuff there.
In this new-era, local-pride, we-Thais-can-give-the-finger-to-anyone age, however, foreigners have been pretty much stripped of our historical immunity from harassment. There's even a degree of status to be obtained from your fellow Thais these days when you go around pissing on foreigners, literally or figuratively. In a couple of short years, we foreigners have both lost our historical exemption and become real targets.
And if you don't know that, either you don't live here or you don't understand what's really going on around you.
-
Opposite Penthouse is Cafe New Orleans.
I've never had such poor service anywhere in Thailand. Not just once, but maybe a dozen times over the past six years. Never again.
Humphrey - I had the same experiance..
They used to have a rib buffet a couple of years ago, we ate and they seemed to be disturbed of us orderinag a seccond plate of ribs. If you have this kind of offer, be prepared of customers eating.. Disturbed but not shaken. Have not been there since.
Cheers
Make it three thumbs down then. I tried the place once, found it was awful beyond words. When I gave it another shot a few months later just to be fair, it was even worse than I remembered. Never again.
Farang Boss Managing Thais
in General Topics
Posted
Oh, Christ, here we go. The cry of the sanctimonious, self-appointed guardians of the politically correct is about to be heard again in the land.....
Have you ever noticed when someone says that 'they' are lovely, smiling, gentle folk who love us all ever so much that there's never a peep heard out of these smug, superior guardians of self-righteousness about 'cultural generalizations?'
But when you utter even a single word that might be taken as criticism of 'them,' the preachy, moralizing, pious types come spilling out of the trees to remind everyone how superior they are to rest of us, burdened as we are with our less evolved sense of social justice. Lord help us.