Bluetongue

Like most I assume that I wait for the fine print. As far as Aus goes they changed to this 180 day rule recently but its based on financial year ie July 1 to June 30. Before you could self assess, and I always got to the statement that said contact the tax office, I never did. Now I have been in the habit of doing about 6 months here and 6 months over there. Perhaps the pencil necks who now run the world would like me to pay as a resident in both countries, as I have done 180 days in both. The idea that people should run their lives on some arbitrary bureaucratic determination of what residency consists of is ridiculous and the fact that all countries seem to be doing it is proof that the politicians have been convinced to go along with it. So there must be more money in it. One of its stated aims would be to catch the super rich but of course they will be alright. As Kerry Packer, an Australian business once said to a senate tax inquiry, " of course I minimize my tax, anyone that doesn't needs their head read, you aren't spending it well enough to make me want to give you more than I have to". And their judicious spending of our money has only gotten much worse in the intervening 30 years.

Women in shops in Australia have eyes in the back of their head. When they see the hunter killer lone male shopper coming down the aisle, they'll stop, look at things, even pick them up and put them back, it happens to me a lot, but anyway. I think what the OP may be talking about is the Thai habit of entering a place where customers are being served and immediately engaging with the staff about what they want, usually then waiting their turn to be served, although queue behaviour here might not always be orderly

Interesting OP. Imho low wages for basic and unskilled work, cheap food and locally produced goods and women (mostly) with desirable characteristics are the things that make it easy to stay here. The new Government wont be changing the women. However they are likely at some stage to try to increase wages which will have upward pressure on food and goods. I have always tried to have a bit of leeway for this sort of thing and indeed my income from different sources has gone up. The gorillas in the room are the exchange rate and China, and I can't predict either except I will try. Over the medium term I think the Chinese will want more and more food imports from Thailand and the baht is likely to go up. Situation normal then.

Yes its not mandatory. I've been to dozens of these things. The cynics are saying it's all about face. I don't agree. Yes wealthy people make a big show but its the same ceremony, where the boy has become a man. Often poorer cousins or family friends will piggyback so that costs are lower. I've seen some quite poignant moments, where the mother has broken down, the child washes the parents feet, I reckon it's pretty cool, can't understand why anybody living here would not enjoy one of these every now and then. I've seen them stay as monks for a year, a few months or a few days. Sometimes grown men will do it because they never got the chance when they were younger. I had my farang friend come to this last one, he has been coming here for 35 years,lived here for about 10, he'd never seen this and was really impressed. Yes the music is too loud but it gets turned off early enough.

My nephew just had one the other day. The shaving ceremony was done at the temple with many other novices, this saved the expense of having a function at home, the family still took food along and shared it with other families and guests, but there was no alcohol. Then at home that night a self catered function took place at home with small amount of alcohol, the mother and aunts brewed Sato which the band and others drank. Then the following day we all accompanied him to the temple for the robing, where his supporters literally carry him inside after they all toss the coins which have been painstakingly wrapped in colourful ribbons in the weeks and months beforehand. Also everything must be supplied, his robes accoutrements, flowers, presents to the monk, the announcer, parking attendants yada yada. This can be pared down with a smaller function, right back to all of the different elements being carried out at the wat The most expensive versions in Isaan are "tot jeen" where it is a catered 7 course meal with the caterer supplying everything, table service, stage, dancers, speeches etc, lots of alcohol and several hundred people, also be no change out of 250k. It's hard to say what locals think of the lesser version, not as many of them turned up that's for sure. For their envelope with 200baht or more they want the meal and the lao.

What solicitors aren't going to ask for anything up front from the kids either. The approach of open combat and the narrative that the wife is greedy may not be the case, it all depends like I said on what has occurred over the years and how they get on, whether the children have lived their life on the assumption they are going to inherit Dad's millions. Anyway as I said much better to leave the lawyers out of it if you can, yes worth taking a big cut. Unrelated I had a big third party claim, the lawyers cut stunned me. I would avoid them like the plague.

I could understand a farang couple with sufficient resources to stay at the beach coming here with toddlers and strollers, but getting round Bangkok on public transport with them I couldn't imagine anything worse. Put up with anything for cheaper drugs I suppose. Really unless you do what the Thai does general run of the mill things are not that cheap here, maybe they miscalculated their budget. That wouldn't be hard as I understand mental arithmetic is no longer a thing.

I saw some of the footage from what I assume the OP is on about. It was in Western Sydney. Probably a good hour or more on the train from the city, if they were even running. So the protestors were a small group maybe 10 or 15. The leader of One Nation in NSW Mark Latham was speaking at a church alongside some other speakers, it was part of his election campaign. He often talks in disparaging terms about the gender issues being taught to very young children in the State Education system. Lately these sorts of protests have been very well attended by both sides and the progressives are usually very well prepared with megaphones, chants and tactics, as evidenced in the centre of Sydney next to the University one or two days before. On this occasion they were completely outnumbered by a large number of people, mostly males maybe Lebanese who were behaving aggressively. The police also in very small numbers were forced to huddle around the protestors in between some cars. The police tried to get Latham not to speak but he went ahead anyway. So really I don't get the OP no one was trying to convert anyone it was just the typical deal these days. Yesterday in Auckland NZ a very large number of progressives, aggressively and somewhat violently forced a womans right speaker from England sometimes known as Posie Parker to cancel. Police were nowhere to be seen. So I don't hold with the notion that the progressive tide is being held up at all, quite the opposite. I may not agree with some of it but in these times old fart's opinions count for zip.

I think I was reading that the world has just about reached peak population, it hit 8 billion, but not expected to ever get to 9, in fact the fruits of the China one child policy are expected to ripen into a massive population drop for them. So we have a shrinking gene pool and population, whatever we get we deserve.

I don't think its necessarily right to ignore something just because it doesn't affect you directly. It seems that gender fluidity is becoming more popular, but most of the heat in the debate seems to be concerning the males wanting to be females not the other way around. I have concerns about the long term viability of such behaviours given that there has always been a very small element involved but now growing. My own opinion is that is not healthy for a species. That doesn't mean I want to argue about it though, as that would be pointless, you can see that here. Society has a way of working these things out.

I live in a totally rural situation, I currently look after 4 dogs, one is nearly 13 years old, she is quite clever. I've noticed that most of my neighbors dogs live til about 7 or less so considering all mine are older the quality food probably makes the difference, they mostly get fish and rice but I supplement with dry. We go for walks dusk and dawn, I consider them to be honest loving companions, those that die are buried, unlike being thrown into the creek, I couldn't afford vets bills all the time so I try to manage things but yeh. Don't know if I'll get more probably donate to the shelter that keeps coming up on my feed.

I like it when someone lays out an argument sensibly, whether I disagree or not, and that is then followed by people who clearly disagree but cannot lay out logically and sensibly why. Their response is to play the insult card, and thus lose the debate to any reader that is undecided. But their sense of having won the debate still exists, that is woke. Of course nothing will stop "woke", demographics and the great dumbing will see to that.

Chantaburi is where the durian industry is more dominant perhaps than Isaan. A lot of farmers move from one tree to another chasing the $. A lot around my place have recently gone from lamyai (Chinese demand way down for 3 years due to Covid, but now going back up) to Durian which has a solid domestic demand as well as export. However imo a lot of them don't know what they are doing, as was the case with lamyai too, as there is great discrepancy between the progress the new trees are making. Meanwhile the price of lamyai skyrocketed over new year. Also the observer talking about middlemen, there are a great number of shops selling fertiliser and agricultural chemicals for which the need is overstated. If one poor small plot farmer tells others to put this pink hormone or whatever on the crop, they will all go and buy it, 1000 baht or more for a small bottle. Or the fertilsier they put too much on when the lamyai is small as well as too much irrigation, then when the fruit really needs irrigation and fertiliser at the end, they've run out of water and money. I've seen them go for elaborate anti bat and bird defences such as lights, noise, nets all to stop a tiny portion of the crop getting taken. And a lot of farmers go to great lengths to plant bananas and malagor which they have no intention of using, I saw a guy cut down and pile up thousands of pieces of bamboo which sat on the ground never was used. I saw a farmer up the road tend rubber trees for must have been ten years, it seemed ready to me, he cut it all down and planted lamyai (another 5-7 year wait) I was particularly bamboozled by this one so I asked him why, he said he couldn't get tappers, I privately thought, not surprised, small money, horrid living conditions and have to steal to make it work.

Last time I looked at Janes (a while ago) the Cambodian Air Force consisted of 6oo personnel and its 2 planes, I think King Airs were on permanent loan to Hun Sens security detachment. No danger from Laos either. Not sure about Burma. Interestingly I live on the Cambodian border and every now and then at night a fast jet, presumably Thai, does a run roughly along the border, must be just to s*** them off

One thing is if I am finding it increasingly difficult to deal with Government, banks, paypal, wise, super funds, pensions, providing only digital ids etc etc, my IT and English challenged wife is surely going to find it incredibly difficult. This is just the way things have gone now in Australia anyway as I imagine across the west. So much so that I intend to leave most of it here so that there are only minimal, low value requirements to deal with authorities in Australia which I hope to convince my non challenged nieces or nephews to deal with as executor, last tax return and such

if there is no mutually acceptable agreement, then the executor named in the will can attempt to (I'm not sure of the correct term) register probate, a process which has to be advertised I believe. At that point the Thai wife has to make her claim and if it proceeded to court she would probably get everything I think. Much better to come to an amicable solution without involving the lawyers, sounds like there is probably going to be enough to go around. Depends I guess on the state of the relationship she has with the Aussie kids. I have a will leaving it all to the wife, but I am gradually defunding the Aussie assets, as I think she will be better off that way. No kids to complicate the issue

Hmmm I originally extended non-O by marriage about 12 years ago. About 9 years ago I changed it over to retirement. But they still act as if I am on the marriage sometimes. For instance one guy insisted I bring the wife in for an interview about 4 years ago. The interview was nonsense, comparing som tham information basically. But I haven't had a visit in 13 years. This year I extended about 3 weeks ago as per normal, nothing was said. Last Thursday the wife gets a phone call about 2pm saying they were coming. Their office is at least an hour away. About 10 minutes later another phone call seeking directions, I had to go out to the road on a motorbike to get them. They came in 4 of them, I couldn't tell what rank as they had puffer jackets on. when the wife told them our dogs could bite you should have seen the alacrity with which they jumped back in the car. I had to corral the dogs and three of them came in the back door and one sat in the car with the engine running. One was officious, he demanded passport and ID card and went through it with a fine tooth comb. The older one was chatty to the wife and told her this was a new thing required, too many farang were pretending to be married etc. Anyway they left quite quickly after saying they would be back in 6 months, Also more or less implied to the wife that it was lucky I was there etc, I didn't feel like arguing "eh I'm on a retirement extension". They left and couldn't go quickly enough, the car had taken off before the last guy closed the door. Chantaburi.

I had neighbours who moved because they lost face over various disputes which they involved the authorities in and were put back in their place. However they left cats and a dog behind, the dog was outside. I went and found the daughter and asked her why she left the dog behind, she said it wouldn't jump into the back of the pickup. I convinced her to come round and loaded the dog. Didn't know about the cats at this stage. Later I realised the father was coming round and feeding them, but that didn't last. The animals are all dead now. I think the larger ones which could get out through the eaves got torn to shreds by various dogs, and the smaller ones perished inside.