simple1

Out of respect for the dead we must demand that a thorough investigation is carried out.

Out of respect for the dead we must demand that vehicle maintenance in Thailand is vastly improved.

Out of respect for the dead we must demand that public service vehicle drivers are highly trained.

Out of respect for the dead we must demand that the Thai authorities crack down on anti-social driving.

If we don't do that, then there will be far more dead, far more people maimed, far more widows and orphans.

So for all those people on the other thread that said let's not turn this into Thai bashing........if this happened in our own countries our press, our people, and our authorities would be all over it in minute detail.

It's not Thai bashing, it's unacceptable practice bashing, and even if this accident was a simple unforseeable tyre burst, it's better for everybody that the Thai authorities investigate it and learn the lessons from it the same way our authorities would.

RIP to the victims, the best tribute would be to work hard to prevent it from happening again, not by becoming Thai apologists.

That helps no one........least of all Thailand.

You know posting demands via TV will make no difference whatsoever. TV is useful forum to provide information, warning, concerns and frustration, but to repeat will not make any difference to practices in this country. If people wish to try and influence safety considerations in Thailand, the only way to be heard is to write/email respective embassies.

Try Wantana in Pattaya Klang, authorised HP & IBM reseller with good tech support department

I opened a Bangkok Bank savings account years ago - I believe it was in 2005 on a tourist visa at the head office located at 333 Silom Road. I was told that the only branch a foreigner without a work permit or long term visa could open an account (at the time) was at the head office branch so that's where I went and there were no problems.

It doesn't really matter whether or not you start working in Thailand later on or not, since you will receive a debit card with the visa electron logo (Be1st card) and you can freely deposit/withdraw funds using an ATM and you will receive a passbook from when you apply and you can use any of the banks ATMs or branches for most banking transactions, although sometimes you may be re-directed to your "home" branch.

Strangely though, when I applied for internet banking access in 2008 when I was working in Thailand, I was told I needed a non-B visa and a work permit! Although I was told I could apply for internet banking with these documents at any Bangkok Bank branch. So on this advice, I went to one of the Sathorn Road branches near my work and tried to apply for internet banking. For whatever reason, the clerk did not succeed in providing me access and I never followed up on it but if anyone could explain why a foreigner can open a bank account on a tourist visa but then requires a work permit for internet banking please enlighten me!

I have an O visa and opened a saving account with Kasikorn Bank, provisioned on the same day with Visa Debit Card, provided will full internet banking services with good security.

Am i right in what I've been told that 3rd class insurance here only covers a certain amount which isn't much.

No way near enough to pay for a written off newish or any car really ? Or medical bills ?

2 farangs (without a dash cam) most likely aren't going to win on whose fault it is.

First class insurance provides 200,000 baht bail bond money that is required if you are in an accident that causes serious injury/death, also fully comprehensive; including medical bills (of course with a max limit). Not enough cash on hand for bail bond, go to jail whilst waiting for the court case that could take up to six months before the hearing. Up to you if you want to take the risk and only pay for third class insurance.

OP: Out of interest what's the visa you and your partner have for living in Thailand? Is it a special category B visa for media/journalism?

Best wishes for your endeavours. Don't forget to upgrade your car insurance to first class; otherwise you will end up in a world of pain with the Thai "system", that will take the smile off your face, if you have an accident.

Sure you can find more crime in certain parts of London, Sydney and New York. But here is a clue - They Are Not Tourist Destinations! If anything the opposite is true. If you are trying excuse the situation by attempting to compare Phuket's crime statistics favourably with some of the most crime blighted spots on the planet, then you really _are_ living in Fantasy Land.

Compare like with like. Which other tourist destinations have similar patterns of crime. Once upon a time, South Beach Miami might have done; no longer. Agra perhaps? It is a tough job to find anywhere that consistently gets so much bad press _as a tourist destination_ as Phuket.

Sure you can find more crime in certain parts of London, Sydney and New York. But here is a clue - They Are Not Tourist Destinations! If anything the opposite is true.

Are you kidding??? You have just named 3 of the biggest tourist destinations on 3 differant continents!

I think he means there is a difference between "holiday destinations" and "tourist destination."

Holiday destinations are for rest and relaxation and tourist desinations are for cultural, historic, religious etc etc reasons.

Phuket is predominantly a holiday destination.

He did reference Agra which is a cultural attraction, so I suggest your analysis is not correct???

British justice will ensure that, if proven guilty, she will spend just a couple of years in quite nice prison accommodation at the taxpayer's expense and will then be free to leave with her ill-gotten gains. She'll probably even have her flight back to Thailand paid for her.

And they wonder why the UK is going to the dogs.

I might normally say 'One could not make this crap up' - but you just did.

We shall see what happens if she is convicted.

You could probably spend the intervening time preparing your apology.

Darrel, as already posted, under UK law the woman, if convicted, will have no access to the deceased estate. You know this so why persist with misinformation?

I have a feeling your link drops will get snipped, so you might want to post the cost here. As mentioned above, no car, health or renters insurance?

I have always had car insurance, but in nearly 22 years in Thailand I have never had health insurance, maybe I am just fortunate but I have only ever been to a hospital to have a tooth pulled.

Wonder how much money it would have cost me for 22 years health insurance?

I know , it could have all gone wrong IF I had fallen ill or IF I had an accident, but it didn't happen, I do have number 1 car insurance, that, I am careful about, and my GF has medical insurance that costs 20,000 per year.

For me, other than a traffic accident, I self insure.

Fair enough for the self insurance for medical, but the impression I get from the blog is they don't have much spare cash. Unless their employer provides for them. if so should be referenced in the blog.

A couple of observations:

You only have third class car insurance. If you are unlucky enough to have an accident this is a decision you will deeply regret. Invest in first class car insurance - do it now!

No allowance made for medical insurance - again an omission you will regret if you or your partner have an accident or fall serious ill.

After addressing these two issues, update your blog

only been in the UK 14 years and still got poor English...what a vile creature

I wonder how many expats there are in Thailand who have been here for 14 years or longer who either have poor Thai or would feel confident enough in their Thai language abilities not to use an interpreter if they were facing police questioning on a charge of murder?

after 14 years in England I would hazzard a guess that she is actually a 'British citizen' and entitled to many of the benefits the country has to offer her including legal aid....after the same amount of years in Thailand what are you entitled to apart from 'If you don't like it go back to where you came from'

difference is she was welcome to stay on in the UK even after her husbands death where as you will always be an alien/visitor/guest

does that not count for anything at the very least learn the language or is she playing the foreigner I no understand english card which is what I was getting at...

back in your box

Getting a citizenship anywhere you SHOULD be able to speak the local language, if not then thats the flaw in the country's system in my opinion.

Legal aid and everything else is usually how well the country is doing financially.

Also the "If you dont like it here, well get out" is what a lot of coutries locals love to say.

Man, I am tired, I need a beer.

In Australia they have car stickers saying that - slightly different wording though

I have a donut LPG thingy. I was getting 270 km per 42 litres on the highways.

Now, in town I only get about 135 km per 42 litres or about 500 baht.

DOes this sound right or do I need to get it tuned?

Difficult to answer, but as you're only getting 3.2 ks per litre of LPG get it checked out. With a 1300 cc engine I get around 7/8 ks per litre in heavy traffic

is there a statistic, how many farangs in thailand die of "heart attack" or "fall at home" per year?

Put it the other way round - what are the stats for Westerners killing their Thai wife in their home countries?

Sure you can find more crime in certain parts of London, Sydney and New York. But here is a clue - They Are Not Tourist Destinations! If anything the opposite is true. If you are trying excuse the situation by attempting to compare Phuket's crime statistics favourably with some of the most crime blighted spots on the planet, then you really _are_ living in Fantasy Land.

Compare like with like. Which other tourist destinations have similar patterns of crime. Once upon a time, South Beach Miami might have done; no longer. Agra perhaps? It is a tough job to find anywhere that consistently gets so much bad press _as a tourist destination_ as Phuket.

Sure you can find more crime in certain parts of London, Sydney and New York. But here is a clue - They Are Not Tourist Destinations! If anything the opposite is true.

Are you kidding??? You have just named 3 of the biggest tourist destinations on 3 differant continents!

Exactly - UK alone had 32 million foreign tourists visiting in 2011 as opposed to Thailand's 15 million.

here you go:

http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html#countries

Well intentioned, but utterly futile while the South West monsoon is blowing. Most of the trash you refer to has arrived from thousands of miles away

So just leave the garbage on the beach for months?

Today the BISK (British International School of Krabi) made a beach clean up with the kids and collected 95 kg of trash.

BISK get my vote. That's over 200 lbs. Waaaay to go!

It's also good for locals to see that happening. It may get them to think twice, next time they're about to toss litter around. After all, it's the locals (particularly fishermen) who toss trash, much more than visitors.

I used to live in a Moo Ban in Pattaya. At the back of the house was some empty land where the locals would throw their trash, even though there were garbage bins, cleaned by the Amphur every week, within a few metres. Nearly every day I would clear up the eye sore and the locals looked at me like I was crazy. Getting closer to the point I have seen school buses visiting the beach and the kids just throw their rubbish on the ground, in front of the teachers, and nothing is said. Even though Thais are quite nationalistic, as far as I am aware, there is not a national grass root education on waste disposal issues. So it's going to take generation/s before we will see any noticeable improvement.

EDIT: Even at my house when the family visits with the kids, the children drop their food waste etc on the ground. Again nothing is said by the parents and I have to request the children to pick up their staff & dispose it properly.

Think of all the lives ruined by the chemical crud that ignorant people smuggle everywhere, severe punishment should be universal and will be a good deterrent as users of hard drugs are increasing and doing destruction to everyone including themselves. Too bad the scientists and chemists of the world don't put their heads together and invent some good drugs that render the evil drugs inert. DREAM ON.

Nonsense ... the users get caught with small quantities of drugs and generally get a slap on the wrist. In this case a desperate student tried to make a fast buck buy transporting something people want. Other than people using drugs and operating machinery that could injure or kill innocent people who cares if they do drugs. Making drugs illegal is just as pointless as making riding a motorcycle without a helmet illegal. If you don't care about your health and want to ride a motorcycle without a helmet you should be allowed to. The US tried to make alcohol illegal and that little experiment should have taught everyone in the world how pointless it is to make such things illegal. The only thing the US needed to cure was drinking and driving, which they have done a pretty good job of. Depending on where you live getting arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol will cost between $5,000 and $10,000 for a first offence. Add to the direct cost is the increased cost of insurance over the next 5-10 years and in some cases loosing your job.

As long as there are people that want drugs or alcohol or cigarettes (I can just imagine the increase in crime if they made cigarettes illegal) someone will supply them and the suppliers won't get caught only the desperate mules will.

Disagree, when looking at the big picture the cost to the economy for traffic deaths/accidents is massive.

So you have got all your knowledge of the UK from CNN...BTW meat pies is more of an Aussie thing.

The UK has one thing the US hasnt got....a recorded history which goes over a 1000 years and quite humbling to go to one of those historic places and realise someone may have stood on the same spot as you 900 years previous and seen basically the same thing your looking at...

Further British music is far better.. ....even you yanks have to admit that...

BTW...those youths your talking about for the most part are not "African" per se

Yanks are smart enough to not fly to the UK just to listen to music. We let the music come to the US. And what thrill is it to know you are standing on the same spot as someone 900 years ago? I would be much more thrilled to know I was standing on the spot that some yanks chased the red coats out.

Gotta love these yank bashing threads. Only makes it more clear why the UK is not known for tourism. Your food is crap and your birds are fugly. Could also be why most pommies want to get as far away as possible. Who really wants to live on a small, cold, rainy little island in the North Sea?

London is now known as one of the premier locations for high quality restaurants. Your comment on tourism needs to have a sprinkling of facts applied. Source info for following is:

http://www.visitbrit...acts/index.aspx

Inbound Tourism to the UK

The 30.7 million overseas visitors who came to the UK in 2011 spent £17.9 billion. These figures represent a 3% increase in volume and 6% (nominal) increase in value compared with 2010.

from the news article "However, as assault against a tourist is a non-compoundable offense under the Thai Criminal Code, it cannot be privately resolved between the parties concerned." Does anyone know if this has been previously utilised by the Thai Courts.

Seems a fair sentence to me, so long as it's a first offence. From reading the report, it's more like the tourist was the <deleted>, but violence is uncalled for.

Are Land Offices still registering usufructs? - not if at the time of application you are married to a Thai, not enforceable under Thai law.

I don't think there has been any directive to Land offices not to register usufructs. Usufruct is enshrined in the law and would require an act of parliament to phase it out, something that is certainly not a legislative priority of the current government. What has been happening for years is that some local Land Dept staff either don't like usufructs or, more likely, don't like usufructs in favour of foreigners. So they just refuse to register them and, this being Thailand, they act like little Hitlers with the power to make up whatever laws please them. Technically you may file a complaint about their refusal to abide by Thai law with the Administrative Court but I can't say how far this would get you, particularly if there is any element of nomineeship in the ownership of the land in question.

What the Land Office's don't like are Usufructs presented to them that have been severely modified by lawyers, some of them have so much clauses and alterations they just confuse!!, never known of anyone having a problem registering an Usufruct using the standard paperwork provided by the Land Office.

In my experience the Land Office in Bkk didn't look at the agreements between the parties to the usufruct drawn up by lawyers. They were only interested in their standard form, although they did interview my wife and ask her somewhat half heartedly if she really wanted to assign a life time usufruct for nil consideration. It is possible that some offices might ask to see the agreements but they will not register them as part of the usufruct. If the lawyer's agreement creates a problem, it might be easiest to tell the Land Office that there isn't a separate agreement - just the standard form. The legal agreements don't effect the registration or enforcement of the usufruct by the Land Office which is to done according to law and ministerial regulations. Any breech of the legal agreement has to be addressed in a civil court. I think the problem is more likely to be the interview of the usufructor revealing the essence of the lawyers' agreement and the officer's personal conclusions that the deal is unfair to the Thai usufructor. At any rate any agreement between man and wife can be held by a court to be null and void under the Civil and Commercial Code, if the court rules that one spouse took unfair advantage of the other.

So in essence, a Usufruct between a foreigner and their Thai wife will be accepted and registered by a provincial Land Office. This is opposite to what I have been told by a Thai lawyer, but never mind. You are saying the Usufruct is subject to a Court ruling for enforcement should the parties, at the time of separation, not agree on access rights to the property. Therefore the Usufruct instrument does not provide the foreigner, married with a Thai, any certainty whatsoever.

You know I just realized if I was Thai and could also understand English fluently I would really have a wounded soul from what i've read on most Topics and posts. This is the FIRST politician to even address the subject of corruption in the Tourist industry that you all have complained about so persistantly. Some of you can't speak Thai and don't even know who Chalerm is but its not enough to staple your mouth shut from hating on this admirable politician. France and England have colonized Laos,Burma, Cambodia, Malaysia, etc and multinational Corporations have already colonized Thailand. Here comes the NWCO, hopefully with loads of NGO's.....

One of the reasons some people do not respect Chalerm is that he supported extrajudicial killing when Thaksin was PM. Also recently was quoted as saying people convicted of drug offences and receive the death penalty should be executed within 30 days (playing to the gallery). Noting the other topics you contribute to, you probably subscribe to Amnesty International so take a look at their website for further info. Hope this assists in your understanding

Is their a certified utility for drag and drop of emails as an attachment for yahoo mail?

@AnandaSatvha - be very careful, there's a history in Thailand of activists being murdered if encroaching on business/political interests

To the OP:

I used to wonder the same thing my first year here. Now I probably distance myself from farangs much more than I do Thais in public because I've found the odds to be higher that I won't like them.

Although I have more close farang friends than I do Thai, excluding family here, it is hard to find ones who have integrated into Thai society or have a desire to as opposed to seeing Thais and Thailand as a place to be used all the while not understanding themselves why they think and constantly complain that Thais & Thailand only want to use them.

Nothing prejudice against my own kind, I just see it as the same as the odds being much lower I am going to find friends at a Christians for the Death Penalty gathering... sure there will be some but most will usually not be people who I enjoy being around. Sometimes we can't help who we become friends with but I try now to do my best to limit the negative people I my life.

Funny antidote but one that didn't surprise me at all ... I often smile at people when our eyes meet be it walking on a sidewalk or on a subway. Yesterday, I did this to an Australian or New Zealand father who had a very cute kid who was waiving at me and my wife. His response was; Do you have a <deleted> problem?

With reference to you last paragraph; for some reason it reminds me of living in Australia. My Thai wife used to commute to work by train with a Thai girlfriend and converse in Thai. On a number of occasions a commuter would have the front to say "when in Australia, speak English". wife retorted in English "when you come to my country do you speak Thai with your Australian friends". Getting back to the topic I also minimise social contact with farangs; so many either complain about their experience of living in Thailand. Alternatively boast about having sex with bar girls. just weird when it's a paid transaction.