bkk_mike

Japan is getting rid of their instant tax rebates and switching back to having to get the tax back at the airport. That would suggest there has been some fraud. Presumably either individuals approaching tourists to buy something tax-free, or shops using the tax free forms with locals rather than just with tourists.

Doge stopped publishing what the savings were, i.e. stopped linking to the project that the saving was from. Because it made it too easy to look at the project, and realise that the project ended already, so there was no spending left to save. Or that they triple-counted the same saving... And overestimated it before triple-counting it. But we'll maybe see the real numbers. It depends if anyone able to audit the numbers hasn't been fired.

Have done it once when my wife was in London and I was in Thailand. It is a bit of a pain. Wife had to do the forms at the embassy which needed to be submitted to the passport office. But it was literally 20 years ago. I took my daughter to the passport office first and got a reference number for my wife to use at the embassy, but I can't remember if that was just something obvious like my daughter's ID number.

As opposed to the good old-fashioned fascists like Trump. And with Trump's 76% tariff on Thai goods, getting the Thai population pissed off with foreigners is bad for all of us, not just you Americans.

The markets are down 10% in a week. The Nasdaq is down more than 20% from it's high which means it's officially a bear market. People are losing money, including people that supported Trump. And even if you only get your news from Fox News, they can't logically explain his tariff rates. The drop in the markets will be a problem for anyone getting close to retirement. Because their pension will mostly be invested in the stock market. The idea that Trump is remaining popular is bull<deleted>. His popularity was dropping almost as quickly as Elon Musk's before "liberation day" hit the markets.

GM pulled out of Thailand a few years ago. They sold their factory to GWM (Great Wall Motors). They pulled out of all right-hand drive markets globally. I think the only US brands for sale are Tesla and Ford. People do like the look of the Ford pickups... Unsure about Jeep. Not seen someone I know driving one in Thailand in years. Tesla were doing OK. But I don't know if they're going to get the same anti-Musk backlash that they're getting in Europe and Canada.

Chinese hybrids will be restricted to the companies that have factories in Thailand (GWM's Haval, BYD, Geely, etc.) This is because only full EVs avoid the import duty if built in China. Personally, I think hybrids are a stopgap if you drive a lot in cities, but drive long range often enough in a country with a bad charging network, that you can't go fully electric. Because you get increased complexity and higher servicing costs than regular diesel, but only better mileage in stop-start driving in cities. If you drive in the city all the time, and can charge at home, fully electric is a no-brainer. If you never drive in cities you might as well just get a regular diesel.

I take it you didn't follow the cladding issue in the UK after the Grenfell Tower fire. If lenders won't lend on the property to a new buyer, the price drops pretty badly. Add in the issues in England and Wales with leaseholds and...

1. If he's got family in the UK, he probably wants to live near them most of the time. 2. The UK will freeze (as in stop increasing in line with inflation) the state pension of UK pensioners who live in Thailand. If you only go there for holidays, you keep getting the increases. 3. If he's still working at 72, that's either through choice (because he genuinely likes his job) or because of financial necessity, which would tie in with option 2 4. To you he looked healthy, but maybe he has a medical condition such as diabetes where he's getting free treatment in the UK, but if he moved to Thailand, he'd have to pay for treatment. But the real answer is. He doesn't want to live in Thailand full time.

Not at the moment it's not. Have you seen what the US has been doing the last 2 months...

Does this mean all those places with NIMBYs that blocked wind farms can be given a fast-tracked nuclear reactor instead?

That's BA - they want to fill their planes at Heathrow with people flying business. And couldn't give a toss about anyone else. And as much as Thailand may wish it, they're currently a tourist destination far more than a business destination. It's fine, BA has a pretty terrible economy class. (At least for anyone over 6ft tall). I try to avoid flying with them if there's any better choices available. And if they're only flying from Gatwick, every choice will be a better choice (House in London is 1 tube stop from the Elizabeth line, so Heathrow is the obvious choice if I can't fly from London City... - but I've only ever done one return flight to Bangkok starting at London City - KLM - change at Schipol...)

Locked safe in a hotel room (or Airbnb) can be reset and opened by the owners. It protects your belongings from "guests" or the cleaning staff. It wouldn't protect them from the people that have the user manual and know how to reset the safe when a guest forgets the combination they used.

It's the Daily Mail. A "newspaper" that prints lies so often it's banned from being used as a reference on Wikipedia. And the same pictures appear to have been used on another article about an overstayer. So either this story, or the original one, also in the Daily Mail (no surprise), are complete bull<deleted>. Or given it's the Daily Mail, quite possibly both stories are complete bull<deleted>.

Some of them will be Hong Kong and Taiwan.

I thought that was dependent on the double taxation agreement. So US social security and all Hong Kong pensions are exempt. UK state pensions aren't unless it's a government pension (i.e. civil service pension). Admittedly a UK state pension not being classed as a "government pension" for the double taxation agreement does feel a bit weird... So for Oz, check the double taxation agreement.

The issue for pitbulls is they were literally bred for fighting. That means significantly stronger jaw muscles, so if they bite... Like most dogs, it's down to the owner more than the dog... But those jaw muscles mean it's a lot more serious with a pit bull. I once had a dog who we rescued. And very occasionally, around other dogs, it would suddenly just have an immediate change of character and attack. Which is why we kept it on a lead if we saw other dogs around when walking it. If you didn't witness it, you wouldn't believe it if you saw the dog the rest of the time. (It was a Shih Tzu, so even the other people walking their, usually significantly larger, dogs, would mostly just laugh... They wouldn't laugh if it was a Pit Bull. They'd call the police on you...)

Given those countries allow Thais to travel visa-free, not going to happen. If anything it might be the countries where Thais need to get a visa to visit that might get more restrictive...

If available, connect with a wired connection to your router, if that's bad, then call True. If a wired connection is good, then it's WiFi solely, which will either mean you've got an aerial problem (i.e. damaged aerial on the device you're using or the router), or possibly someone else has set up a nearby WiFi on the same channel and changing channels to a less congested one might fix it (usually possible via a setting on your router). If there's no uncongested channels it may be time to upgrade to a new router with a newer WiFi version as 6 and later tend to handle congestion better. There are free apps for phones to do WiFi analysis, and you can use one of those to check if there's less congested channels available.

He's the person that pushed Brexit for decades, saying it would solve migration... Only for immigrants station to shoot up after Brexit. Brexit is a disaster. It's costing the country £2 billion a week and nobody is talking about it. Why do you think he changed the name of the party from the Brexit party. So the idiots that were sold the idea that Brexit would solve everything are now being told to "blame the immigrants". And that the solution is to withdraw from the ECHR so we can treat them worse than laws set up to literally prevent another Hitler say we're allowed to treat people. (And if you think removing their human rights won't as a side-effect take away our human rights - then you're an idiot of the highest order). By the time you're posting here, you'll be living in Thailand. Think how you'd be feeling if Thai people were proclaiming their support for a political party that blamed immigrants for all their problems... P.S. Before Brexit, I seem to remember Farage saying we can "be like Norway" quite a lot. Given leaving the Single Market, and the loss of passporting is causing more than half the tax losses from Brexit, the fact we chose to be like Albania in terms of our deal with the EU, rather than "being like Norway", is the biggest problem of Brexit.

The only reason Thailand would get it is Red Bull pushing for it on their behalf. The route around chatuchak has at least got half decent transport links for people to get there other than by car as the roads will be totally screwed up...

You really don't understand Brexit caused at least some <deleted> for those married to Thai nationals. Prior to Brexit, you could travel with your Thai spouse to the EU without (at least in theory - when already in the EU) needing to get a visa, so long as you were travelling together. If you chose to get a visa, it was free (because that's the rule for those married to an EU national). Now. to take your wife from London to Paris on Eurostar, you have no choice but to arrange a visa first. And it's no longer free. That's relatively inexpensive if you're in the UK - because they need the flight bookings and the hotel bookings BEFORE you apply for the visa. And losing the money for an Easyjet flight and booking at the refundable hotel price rather than the non-refundable one - isn't that much money. Do it from Thailand sometime... the difference in fare for a refundable flight and a non-refundable flight is quite significant. Then you wonder why people complain about Brexit from the other side of the world - because Brits there are affected by it too. And just like in the UK - nobody's life has been improved by Brexit. And you may not have noticed this - but all the idiots that brought you Brexit campaigned on a promise that Brexit would lower immigration... - Have you looked at the figures... - Immigration shot up after Brexit. What dropped was emigration. All those pensioners leaving the UK and retiring in Spain stopped in their tracks - because Brexit shafted them too. Thailand will let in people on a spouse visa for the visa fee. No income requirements, no language test, no TB test. And the visa is very cheap compared to the UK one. And it's issued in a matter of a few days - unlike the UK one that you pay an arm and a leg for.

2 a week was 2022. In 2024 it's down to 1 every 2 weeks "just". Admittedly they're also building so much wind, solar, nuclear and hydro that coal is reducing as a share of China's electricity supply. But that's what happens when the rest of the world decides to get everything "made in China".

Do you know why the flare on offshore oil rigs is off to the side, because on the really early rigs like the Deepsea Pioneer it was often above the platform. The noise of dead birds landing on the control room roof got really annoying. By having the flare over the water, the dead birds fall straight into the sea. I'm sure there is also a safety concern that moved the flare off to the side as well. But I'm not joking about the repeated thud of dead birds falling on the control room roof depending on the time of year, presumably because it happened to be on a migration route.

Haven't been to Safari World for decades. Despite my house being very near to it. Wife can still go with the "kids" (all in their 20s now) with no issues as they have Thai ID cards. Of course, they spend less money inside the park than if I (and my wallet) was with them. National parks is one thing, where it's taxpayers money funding them. Private businesses with dual pricing on the other hand...