OldAsiaHand

On the whole, Thais don't read and seem to be more comfortable communicating orally.

All sorts of people accustomed, for example, to the western business practice of communicating important information in writing have discovered to their horror that their Thai colleagues and employees wouldn't ever bother reading a word of anything they were sent.

My own view has always been that Thais dislike the black-and-white tone of written communication which frequently leaves them little wiggle room for claiming later that they misunderstood you. The ambiquity of oral communicatin is far more suited to their particular social comfort zone.

Not so sure it is what he meant.

More like we are all a bunch of losers with low social status home who love Thailand because we can surround ourselves with people of even lower status

Right. My own observation is that sums up quite well the appeal of Thailand for a great many of the foreigners who live here.

Singapore has a large number of huge and absolutely first-rate English-language bookstores, but Bangkok is quite another matter all together. There are really only three choices here, and they all offer a small and limited range (at least by world standards).

The best by far is Kinokuniya, the Thai branch of a large Japanese chain. Kino has only two stores in Bangkok, one at the Emporium and one at whatever they are calling the World Trade Centre these days (although the latter branch is primarily Japanese-language). Kino at the Emporium is the closest thing here to a real world English-langugae bookstore with a moderately deep selection of both fiction and non-fiction, although they are oddly heavy on large format picture books and light on contemporary fiction. Most of their current stuff is sourced from US publishers.

The next best choice is the American-owned Bookazine chain with a dozen or so locations all over the country, primarily in tourist areas, although I warn you that Bookazine is really not much more than a glorified newsstand. They have a very good and reasonably deep selection of current massmarket paperbacks, quite a few tourist books and large-format picture books, but almost nothing in the way of serious ficition or nonfiction.

The lousiest by far but probably most visible choice is the Asia Books chain, the locally owned entry in the English-language book business in Thailand. They have about ten high-profile locations around Bangkok, mostly in big shopping malls, although none at all outside of Bangkok. Most of their stock is sourced from UK publishers and their stores on the whole are junky, crowded, and unappealing messes. If you dig around, you can find a fair selection of current massmarket paperbacks from the UK, but you won't enjoy doing it. And if you need help in locating something, good luck in trying to communicate with the dim-witted and frequently non-English speaking staff. Other than the security guards self-importantly strutting about and looking you over with undisguished suspicion, no one will show the slightest interest.

My advice is to bring a six months supply of books and then make a run to Singapore. Actually, you wouldn't even have to leave the airport there to find a great bookstore. Right in the Singapore Airlines terminal at Changi is one of the best and most pleasant English-language bookstores in Asia.

Good luck.

To summerise (sigh) Cannes is an international cinema festival...not a French one...

Oh my. (sigh)

And you're probably convinced O.J. was innocent, too.

If you're expecting it to be cheap, I think you will be suprised. The last time I saw any numbers was a year or so ago. Back then so-called 'ocean front' or 'beach access' property was presumably being offered in the range of 100,000 to 125,000 per square wah (I'll let you do the match to get that into rai, but more than a couple of rai of property anywhere near the ocean would be pretty hard to find regardless).

Otherwise prices were all over the place, depending of course on location. I seem to recall a couple of plots being offered to me as low as 10,000 per wah that was just south of town toward the Everson and west of the highway.

On the whole, the resale market for residential real estate in Bangkok is very poorly developed. While what you say about prices may be true in the sense that developers will continue to raise prices in good economic conditions until they hit a ceiling of buyer resistance, individuals will have a very tough time getting the same result.

There is no multiple listing system such as is common in the US and the UK, and no practice of agents representing sellers, so an individual seller has a difficult time reaching a wide market if he choses to cash in. You cannot imagine the number of foreigners who leave the country and effectively abandon empty apartments after they are unable to find a buyer at any reasonable price. Look at the number of leasing ads in the Post. Many of those apartments are being offered for lease as a last resort because the owners can't find buyers.

well thats fine but what happens if you are sold a crock of sh1t in property terms,

despite having taken all precautions you get lumbered with a condo that has been built on land they dont own or some other nightmare scenario you can pull the plug on the mortgage payments .

Sounds like good insurance to me , once you have payed the total amount its too late .

your money is lost for good ..

any comment ?

I'm really not sure I'm following you here.

If you are able to get a mortgage loan in the first place (which, without a personal connection with a lender, is next to impossible for a foreigner in Thailand), then I guess you could ultimately walk it whether the unit is titled in your name, that of a company, or that of another individual. That is you can if you are willing to (a) put up with the consequences, or ( leave the country.

Whether the property is in your name, someone else's, or a company title surely won't matter if you do get a mortage loan. If the lender relies on you to support the mortage financially, he will quite rightly insist that you guarantee it. You're going to be on the paper here regardless, and the consequences of siffing the lender will also be yours regardless.

In my opinion the only good thing to come out of the Bangkok post for years when he left, good riddance.

Cheers to that. He was not only a witless fool, far worse, he was a terrible embarrassment to most every foreigner living in Thailand. His perpetuation of the stereotype of the sort of lowlife foreigners most people assume are the only kind who are attracted to this place was a gross disservice to most of the real people who are living their ordinary and sensible lives right here.

A Thai bank can only accept deposits in the US if it operates an authorized branch bank there, and even then, the 'transfer without cost' part of your question can be answered 'no' for almost any bank anywhere. Byt he way, as far as I know the only presence any Thai bank has in the US is just a rep office.

Quite right. Since the restrictions on foreigners owning condos are, as a practical matter, nonexistent, there's no need for the kind of elaborate structure that is sometimes used by foreigners when land ownership is involved.

Thank you all very much for your inputs regarding the housing part.. but has anyone heard of good -decently priced storage companies????

As far as I'm aware, there is no equivalent of the American self-storage facility here at all, so you're ultimately going to have to pay someone for warehousing services.

I'm not certain whether you would agree that they are 'reasonably priced,' but one of the leading companies hereabouts that does international moving and storeage for foreigners is Transpo. We've used them for storage several times and have nothng but nice things to say about them and their facilities.

it seems that all houses, appartements etc... come fully ( and tastefully) furnished.

Wrong on both counts.

My own experience in Bangkok is that the ratio of furnished to unfurnished rentals is more or less the same as you would find in any big city, particularly in larger condos that are on the market. And, in point of fact, I have never seen anything here I would describe as 'tastfully furnished.' Maybe 'functionally furnished,' but that's probably the best you can hope for in a rental.

As far as condo purchases go, you'll find very, very few come furnished.

I would hate to spend two weeks dying of boredom.....mental stimulation is a must!!!

Then you really are going to the wrong place for a holiday. If golf, swimming, sailing, drinking beer, and chasing girls don't work for you, that's about it for Phuket. Even the restaurants, on the whole, are pretty awful.

My best suggestion is that you take a large stack of books, find a nice palm tree to sit under, and pass your vaction that way. But don't wait until you get there to buy your books either. You'll find there're just a couple of really crappy bookstores on the whole island (which are actually more large newstands than real bookstores anyway).

So-called international licenses are generally issued by some kind of recognized organization such as the American Automobile Association in the US. Even then they carry no legal weight. It is the national license on which your legal right to drive is still based.

For example, a few years ago both Hertz and Avis in the US refused to authroize my wife to drive our rentals based on her Thai license and an international license since they said they did not recognize a Thai license. Particularly if you intend to rent a car somewhere, you should check in advance whether whatever documentation you intend to present will be accepted. Arguing with them after you are standing there usually isn't very effective.

Another newbie question, what does ""Hi-so" mean ?

It means 'high-society.' In practice, Thais use it to identify anyone who has more money than they do.

Well, Crocs, day trading on the SET isn't what most of us would call investment. What investment bankers do, or ought to do, is originate (or at least creatively engineer) new undertakings and transactions in order to create real growth in asset values, at least for someone. There is almost no real investment going on in Thailand. Just more of the hair-brained, unsophisticated speculation that has historically characterized the SET.

Samran's choice of words was perhaps slightly less restrained than mine, but he's still pretty much dead on here.

He sounds to me very much like a guy who is in the local loop (for whatever it may be worth). I'd certainly be willing to bet that he has enjoyed quite a few of those nice lunches and dinners at the expense of some visiting ######s himself.

Take a peek. www.lehman.com all will be revealed.

Actually, no. It won't.

The Lehman office in Thailand has never been much more than a letterhead operation -- i.e. an office that does very little but show the flag, allow the listing of yet one more far-flung office on the firm's letterhead, and take visiting firemen out on the town.

The truth is that Lehman does bugger all in Thailand, but then again, no international investment bankers do much of anything here because there's really bugger all to do.

ka12345,

I think you're making a wholly unjustified distinction here. The kind of case you cite is quite typical of the way insurance companies worldwide always tried to avoid coverage if they can get away with it, and as for chosing your own treatment, there's not an insurance company on the planet that will pay for any kind of treatment you fancy unless they approve of it (usually in advance).

The assumption that you are better off dealing with a UK company than a Thai company which is affilated with the same UK company is, in my experience, entirely unjustified, more a pointless demonstration of a narrow nationalist focus rather than anything else.

Don't get a local health insurance from BUPA TH, BUPA Bluecross TH, BKK insurance etc. They have very specific deals with the popular farang hospitals and won't cover the type of things that you really need an insurance co for.

What type of things are those?

I've had cover with BUPA in Thailand for many years and have never had a problem with coverage any different from the problems you always have with any insurance company in any country.

A lot of Russian and Eastern European charters used to come into U-Tapao, but I dont' think there are any scheduled international flights. The Thai government has been trying to convince a few airlines to use U-Tapao. They have been, as you might expect, unenthusiastic.

Yeah, it's kind of odd. While there are a lot of Americans around here, on the whole the American are more likely to be geographically spread out and have involvements in a wide variety of things having nothing to do with our origin. As a result, you are far less aware of anything you might call an 'American community' than you are of, to name two examples, the Brit community or the German community, both of which are highly visible. There are no American clubs, American restaurants (well....Bourbon Street, maybe), or American bars where we gather to get drunk and watch football. My theory is that, mostly, we've got better things to do.

It's no problem at all. BUPA is probably the most popular source of health insurance locally for expats. They advertise heavily in the Post and other publications read by expats. I think they will issue cover for people up to 62 and I've never heard of them requiring a physical from anyone. You can probably get a flyer at the British Club. They used to stick them on the front of the Wall Street Journal, too.

On the other hand, many people doubt that health insurance is a worthwhile use of funds here since health care is very cheap indeed relative to most western countries. My own suggestion is that, if you really do want it, you purchase hospitalization only and don't add in outpatient care. You'd have to go to a lot of doctors to break even on what that would cost you.

The best kitchen supply store in Thailand used to be on Wireless Road in a small shopping center across from the US Ambassdaor's residence. Shoot, what was the name of that place? Jeez, can't remember. I haven't been there in a long while anyway, and although it has been located in the same place for many, many years, I can't swear it still is there. It would be worth checking, however.

You didn't say what your nationality is.

US Embassies everywhere will certainly notarize documents for US citizens (go to the Citizen Services counter), although the charge is something really nasty these days. I can't remember what it is for sure, but I think it's at least fifty dollars or more. I have no idea about other embassies, but surely there is some equivalent process under most western legal codes.

I'm not aware of any equivalent process under Thai law, however. I've certainly never encountered it. That probably explains the bafflement of the Thai Embassy in Singapore when you asked them for notary services.