witold

There's a couple of states that have repealed mandatory helmet laws.  I think the latest one was Pennsylvania.  

Euro guys may find it strange, but not everyone wants to live in a nanny state where the govt forces you to do everything that is good for you.  Actually, if you live in Thailand, I would think that would be part of the appeal for coming to LOS - to get away from all the government intrusion.  

If you are not Thai - or at least don't look Thai - it's still a very nice area to go to and visit.  I was there a few months ago.  The area is completely devoid of tourists.  The cities have a small city feel, and the beaches are pretty nice, etc.  While the Muslim population is a bit more reserved, they are generally very friendly and helpful.  My one selfish complaint would be about the lack of better hotels.  

You can't just assume everyone overprices their offerings equally. Some places are put up with fair prices, and some places are put up under-priced to generate interest. You will have to determine which is which on individual basis.

Just one more reason to make any big ticket purchases via credit card. Many cards offer free flight insurance on tickets bought with the card, and in cases like this where you are scammed, a quick phonecall to your card company will usually see the funds released back to you, or at least put on hold so the scammer can't get access to the funds. You then normally have to fax/email them a standard form where you explain why you are contesting the charges, but you usually have a number of days after first reporting the problem to get that taken care of. Takes about 5 min.

Giving your credit card number to people who may trying to scam you is not the best defense, is it?

Here are priorities I wished our governments would concentrate on:

- get the price of food down by about 90%

- get the price of real estate down by 80%

The easiest way to do this to have everyone take a 90% paycut. I wonder why you didn't include that on your wish list?

Most of the favorable price discrepancies in LOS are a symptom of very low wages. In a handful of places where people make a lot more - sukhumvit, silom, etc - housing prices are almost in line to Western prices. The same thing will happen to food and other services as LOS wages slowly creep up.

People say a lot of horrible things about their home countries, but I think they are just venting vast majority of time.

If they are serious and say that they came to LOS because of nazi Bush policies or something, then I just think they are losing their perception and rational thought and are on the way to the crazy house.

Prices for almost everything are determined and listed in Baht.

What Baht-other currency exchange rate is at any given moment is your problem or your windfall.

This is the dumbest suggestion I have heard in a while.

A seasonal business that can not survive a few months of lull is not much of a business. They *should* close. When things are right, different operators with start new businesses or old operators will reopen. It's an equilibrium. If there is no demand, it's silly to subsidize something that is not needed.

You would be surprised how many people carry large sums of money around like this. In the US, lots of small business folks do regular deposits in the 1-200K range. Not too long ago, we used to have Wall Street 'runners' who would make deliveries sometimes in the 1XXX,XXX range between brokers, etc. There's other examples...

What sounds odd to me is the sheer size of this money. The largest Thai note is only 1000 baht as far as I know.

Okay. Enough. You're smarter than I am. The answer to your question in these times is, no, you can't expect to make a good living from traditional farming in most cases and you know that. But you can make a good living if you incorporate your dream with other things. Farming is becoming more and more a corporate industrial endeavor and will one day, be nearly 100 percent corporate, even in Thailand. The family farm survivors will be doing the things that a corporation cannot be bothered with. So, in your case and your area, what is that? Good luck.

There is no way a small farm can overcome the economies of scale advantages of an industrial farm. Don't waste your time. You will be fighting a losing battle. I really like kandahar's response - if you really want to have a farm, find some sort of niche that can not be scaled easily by big operators.

Why so paranoid about your ATM card?

It is unusable without the PIN. It's not like a credit card.

What is the Thai definition of 'RESIDENT ALIEN'?

Normally, 'resident alien' is someone who lives on permanent basis in the country with no additional paperwork required. It does not apply to people holding tourist, ED, or other temporary visas.

I have a hunch that the reason for these small numbers is that most foreigners are not resident aliens in LOS. A good chunk is juggling tourist visas extensions and ED visas... I can see 260K real resident aliens as being correct.

Well, I am in the US right now, and this is a hot debate in the motorcycle community.

Whereas bureaucracy tends to perpetuate itself and only grow, some states have actually agreed to repeal motorcycle helmet laws.

Personally, I would rather have the option not to wear a helmet, even though I always wear it. (in addition to boots, gloves, jacket, and pants.) I know someone who received a ticket when he was moving his moto in a parking lot to another space for not wearing helmet. Why? Because he came across a d**chead cop. Cops already have a ton of discretion. I would rather not give cops more reasons for writing me up and pretend to be grateful when they give me a 'pass' when I re-park my moto to another spot.

Depends on what you use it for.

Personally, I find online storage system much more preferable.

This developer forgot to count the cost, or, more probable, got too greedy by expecting financing resources on the future value of the development before it has been realised.

I wonder if there is any firm who will finance my stock investment based on my expected 200% increase in the prices of the stocks I am looking at....

Most - if not all - developments are financed on a rolling basis and even when they are started by big development firms with billions in assets, the projects are structured to work independently from the big firm. (for liability and financing reasons.) As such, many projects in the US halted construction in the last 2-3 years because of financing constraints and market conditions. Parent companies will not dump more money into losing propositions - the walk away just like home owners walk away when they are "under water". Chances are that the AZ developer mentioned above could easily finish the project - but it would make no sense because they would just increase the amount of money they lose. They will finish things off if things improve and they still have control of the property. If they lost control to the lenders, the lender will sell to another developer to finish things off when it makes financial sense to finish the project. It is not unusual to see projects started in 2004-5 that halted construction and only in the last year resumed construction.

One of the things that are not mentioned in the reports such as the OP is the number of people who are maimed and crippled for life, and need long term medical care, or permanent care by their families.

Actually, it's the opposite. Helmets use actually greatly increases health care costs.

Helmet users survive with vastly more severe injuries and this results in complicated procedures and long - or lifetime - recovery/physical therapy. It really is quite amazing the sorts of accidents helmet users have survived because the brain was not damaged. In contrast, riders who don't wear helmets usually die at the scene even after fairly minor injuries because they bumped their head on the pavement just a little too hard - there is almost no medical treatment cost for these guys, it costs very little to scrape a body off the road.

It's interesting to read all the replies in this thread. I guess it reflects the fact that people come from different backgrounds.

Corporal punishment has been part of the educational system in many countries for a very long time. People turned out fine over the years. Growing up not long ago some of my teachers used a ruler to keep kids in line. (In Eastern Europe.) This was par for the course in the US in the 60s, etc... You daughter won't die from a little red mark, but she will do whatever it is the teacher wants her to do! Don't worry, your kid won't be scarred for life.

I think you are making a big deal out of nothing.

That said, I can understand why you don't like it, and if you don't, feel free to switch your daughter to another school, or change classes. If it is in fact illegal to do this in Thailand, why don't you just point this out to school administration and to MOE? One of these options makes a lot more sense than your preferred choice of trying to get the teacher fired - what is the sense or rationale in that?

Most injuries to the head occur at relatively low speeds where there is damage to arms and legs etc but the rider survives.

Anyone riding at high speed and hitting a large immovable object will usually sustain fatal or massive injuries regardless of helmet use.

I think you don't realize just what sorts of falls riders can walk away from, or at least survive. I've ridden sportbikes in both LOS and USA, on both public roads and race tracks. I have seen my share of crashes, and have crashed myself several times also. I have crashed three times at speeds of around 100kph and walked away. (1 on track, 1 on US road, 1 on LOS road.) Several of my friends have crashed at speeds exceeding 230kph and walked away. Our leather suits, boots, and gloves protected our bodies. Our helmets protected our heads from considerable - and sometimes multiple - heavy impact. You are correct that no helmet will protect someone from running straight into a brick wall or guardrail, but chances are good that once you crash you just tumble and slide... Wearing a helmet makes a huge difference in survival statistics.

One of the things I like about Thailand is that it is not so rules and laws oriented. People keep a more relaxed attitude and don't but into other people's business. I would hate Thailand to become a nanny state like EU and - increasingly - USA. I think public relations campaigns are good, but heavy enforcement is not. If someone takes extra risks, what is it to you?

Inevitably, Thailand develops and the economy grows, making things more expensive. Think Singapore and Hong Kong. While typical expat groups such as multinational company staff and government/embassy workers will still be in Thailand, the increased expense makes it far less likely for people to retire.

I am not sure why you are citing Singapore and Hong Kong. Both these areas have had explosive growth in foreign nationals living there.

Not all foreigners live in a foreign country because it's a cheap place to retire. The LOS retirees might disappear for another more economical destination, but other foreigners will come in droves to replace them. If LOS becomes a more attractive place to do business, a ton of foreigners will come here.

Well what about foreign investment?

Foreign investment has nothing to do with Tourism. Many - if not most - places that have huge foreign investment are never visited by tourists and probably never will be. Tourists are not that big on looking at oil fields, for example. Foreign investment is run by strict internal business formulas that discount for stability, etc.

What are the income tax brackets in Thailand?

I think you're being a little melodramatic. Real Estate never sells over night unless it is prices very attractively.

"1,000,000 baht less than its value " - nine times out of ten this is a euphemism for 'I think my condo is worth much more than rest of the market thinks." In other words, probably overpriced to begin with...

My take on this is that most older individuals have not really studied since graduating university. Learning a language - or any very specific skill/subject - will be tough for them simply because it's been a long time since they really had to study. Heck, I'm 30 and I would hate it if I had to study up my multi-variable calculus to get back the knowledge I had at 21.. and that's not even learning something new!

On top of that, older individuals tend to have more distractions in their lives - family, money - although that may not apply to the Thai community as much...

In my opinion, most westerners don't learn Thai for two reasons. First, they are in LOS primarily for pleasure. Who wants to spend their short or extended vacation doing vocabulary drills each day? I know I wouldn't.

Second, Thai is a pretty useless language outside of LOS. Obviously it is very important if you plan to live in LOS, but if future is uncertain, it's not the same as learning Spanish or French where you have a big chunk of the world speaking it. The second you leave LOS borders, your Thai skills mean nothing. This is a lot of effort to obtain an unmarketable skill.

***

NBD/Peppy, I think the Korean presumes immersion as an integral part of the learning program. He mentions watching closed captioned TV, school interaction, avoiding the Korean crowd where he won't be using English, etc. The Korean's main point is that memorization is key to vastly speeding up immersion learning. I am an immigrant to the US and have observed this phenomena many times. Immersion is how most immigrants learn to speak fair, adequate, poor, or decent English - generally over a long period of time. The ones that have truly gained mastery of the English language in a short period of time have always put in serious hours studying - primarily via word and grammar memorization. Obviously, different people react differently to different memorization drills. Some are more effective than others. But at the end of the day, simple memorization is absolutely critical to speeding up the learning curve.

I would love to see the resulting pic, Blinky Bill.

Traveling by bicycle is great. One day I will have to get in shape and do something like this. Until then, I will stick to motorcycles - still a great experience and more practical in terms of covering ground.