Shaunduhpostman

18 minutes ago, kimpil01 said:

My facts comes from my own experience. I was there from the 26 of June until the 7 of July this year and stayed in the same cell. It is inhuman conditions but the inmates help each other’s as much as possible

OK, good, its important to hear from people who have been there. But what you saw and experienced isn't what everyone sees and experiences. Perhaps your cell was a good one with a kindhearted boss, perhaps even a kind hearted boss may decide he doesn't like one of the inmates and allows that inmate to be beaten to death.

I will remember this report in the UK newspaper for many years. If more like it come out I will have a better idea about what is going on at the detention center. If nothing more happens for many years then I will think you were probably right, but for now i wonder what they really do with people in there.

I hope more information emerges about the case reported by the overstayer, it seems he may not be 100% reliable, but you have to wonder why would he go to the UK press about this. I can imagine that there might be Thai people in the UK who would not like what he said at all and could give him problems. I think he is taking a big risk, too big just to be say ing anything he feels like saying or to be just trying to  get some kind of petty revenge.

2 hours ago, kimpil01 said:

A few facts regarding the cells and conditions in IDC, Bangkok

1. The cell is run by prisoners, many of them are political refugees waiting for visa to their preferred countries. The room leader is actually a very kindhearted person who helps the inmates every way he can.

2. The cell is about 100m2 and you lie on a blanket on the cement floor. 
3. There are many cells but the cell I’m talking about is where they keep the “normal” westerners.

4. You don’t get out before you have a place to go and money to pay the heavily overpriced ticket.

5. You get chicken or fish once a week (Sunday’s) but if you have cash you can buy better food.

6. The nationalities and number of people is written on a whiteboard inside the cell

 

https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1134655-brit-tourist-tells-of-thai-prison-terror-after-beaten-inmate-died-in-his-arms/?utm_source=newsletter-20191119-1300&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news

From the article in the OP (link to which is also posted above here):

"Kai said: “It’s an inhumane place. There are guards but there is a hierarchy among the inmates. The bosses were Iranian ­gangsters and regularly gave severe beatings. Every moment in there was horrific. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

So there's that testimony quoted from the article and the fact that someone died from a heart attack brought on by daily beatings. Seems to be a rather different picture you are presenting with your "facts". 

Well, this report doesn't give you much confidence that anything will be improved if they are not able to admit that much of the  problem lies with their own inability/unwillingness to make a working system to uphold their own get tough laws and requirements. At least from what is reported and as translated, immigration seems to feel that the uproar  is something to do with problems with the reporting applications' ease of use when in fact, from reports on here, seems that the problem has more to do with the online reporting system not functioning properly period, it, in some cases, doesn't work or in some cases you can't even get a login. If they would address all of that, I would be more impressed, but they didn't they decided to not care about the actual problem and make other problems to solve that are more pleasant to consider. But, whatever it is, I am skeptical that anything good will come of this and that until I see something that suggests otherwise, the brokenness of it all will appear only as just a nice thing to have for them, another tool to create problems and confusion which create pre-texts to collect fines. I can't fathom there would be any motivation or will to actually improve things. Bad reports in the international media will soon fade away and the coast will be clear soon to carry on as they like without broken faces. I would also add there is little chance anyone is going to be happy, as the report suggests we will be, with any improvements that may be undertaken as a result of the upcoming meeting. I would agree with many who post on here that at the end of the day it is the idea of the whole thing, it doesn't matter if it has been made to work more smoothly it is still unnecessary and non-sensical to have report ones whereabouts all the time, it is intrusive and is just more data that potentially is open to  being used and abused, it makes everyone staying here that much more uncomfortable and I think Thailand will lose at the end of the day creating more retirees and foreign family and workers who will leave. That is a harm to Thailand not a boost to their security though I would think that is lost on immigration.

^^ Yep, close to you in Kalasin it's bad, its been nearly two days of mostly really scary rains in sheets, non-stop, relentless. I've never been in rains like this and I have lived in Asia for 23 years non-stop. The wind is at times strong too but it is not a cyclone/typhoon/hurricane, I would assume its tropical storm but I think this is the third one in a week. The first round I checked the Thai govt website and it was like they were on a different planet, the report s bore zero remblance to the actual weather though a map they posted showed a tropical storm or typhoon off the coast of northern vietnam.

Africa and South America and I have also heard Indonesia is yet again burning down. Africa is as bad if not worse than Brazil, Bolivia, Peru which you can find in the media. Seems something is going on, at least two continents, from the reports, and forest watch will show you live on their forest fire map that they are being obliterated.

I hope some day the people who think of themselves as Antifa, anti-fascists, will get a grip and stop playing into the hands of the real fascists with this ineffective and pathetic street theater that does nothing but distract and egg on and legitimize people who sympathize with the extreme right. The real fascists are on Wall Street, in the Pentagon, the white house in the senate and the congress. That is who needs to be fought with lawsuits, voter initiatives, community organizing, strategically and well executed boycotts, strikes, protests when necessary, walkouts etc, good public awareness of issues, and voting campaigns.  If Antifa wants to fight fascism they should be helping to organize society to push back against people like the Koch Brothers, oil and food processing multi-billionaires who with their lobbyist and extreme right Citizen's United are gutting every aspect of a free and democratic and humane society that the United States might still have left. And that is just a drop in the bucket. While folks like Antifa carry out street theater, The Koch Brothers push on with getting laws passed that say corporations are people with rights or no campaign contribution limits making major elections into nothing more than auctions for who can pay a candidate the most. That is the real face and root of facism: government purely as an instrument of corporate and finanace's will. The time is now for young people like those in Antifa to wake up shake off their alienation and work with people not put on Ninja clothes and pepper spray them to organize to take back democracy in the United States. That is never impossible or out of the question and it has happened before that Americans have regained some amount of control back from a corporate-fascist controlled system, after President McKinley and the era of the Robber Barons it happened and then again in the 1930's and again we saw the back of McCarthyism. Enough of the unconstitutional and illegal Patriot Act National Security State, enough of election fraud and coronations by super delegate corporate lackey's, enough of a media that merely function to confuse and hoodwink. Enough of a system that tells us journalism and expression of opinions they don't like is terrorism. Politicians need to be taught that if they accept corporate contributions they can take a hike, in a democracy they work for the people that vote them in not the people who pay them off.

21 hours ago, gunderhill said:

21 hours ago, taninthai said:

If you choose to live in an over crowded city that’s what you have to put up with ......that is the reason I left London.....lol

so you had to report in  London did you?

You can just imagine it, It'll be the new requirement, lol, if you want to come back to Thailand after having been once during the same calendar year, you'll have to report your whereabouts while staying in your home country to a Thai consulate or embassy every 90 days and also file a report for any stay over 24 hours outside of your registered residence. UK and US authorities will agree that people who visit Thailand regularly need to be monitored, are a security threat to the rest of the country and so will be cooperating with the Thai government. Anyone who tries to enter Thailand without the requisite receipts and proof of having  done his or her reports will be held in detention at Suvarnabhumi at his or her own expense (300 baht/hour, not including meals or toilet priviledges) and sold a ticket back home at premium prices at Thai Airways convenience. And you'll have the cheerful types on Thaivisa, "Hey, you know reporting my whereabouts  gave me a chance to practice my Thai every 90 days!" "Immigration wouldn't let me in the country, they said their people in New York reported that I'd overstayed at a friend's house by two hours. But, no worries, they said I can come back next year and the detention room beds were clean and comfortable, just like a hotel, so I had a nice two day vacation right there at Suvarnabhumi!" 

IMHO, it is likely more about harvesting people's data than national security, at least once they get the app up and running for reporting via phones, it would quite conceivably  have much valuable data about ex-pats lives for Immigration to sell or otherwise use. That would be my guess as to what all this is ultimately about. The Chinese seem as hellbent as anyone on monitoring everyone as they barrel pell mell into their smart cities ie, internet wired cities to facilitate tight surveillance and control of their population so I would guess the intelligence agencies and corporations of that country would be the main customers. On the positive side, seems the west is drifting away from security state/ defense against terrorists as the engine for their war and weapons economies towards a new cold war with Russia and/or China. Perhaps we can look forward to a respite from the constant "its for your/national security"  as to why we have to be spied on 24/7 as people come to understand and accept unfortunately that their data has value for government wings,  agencies and corporations.

There must still be a good number of foreigners staying in Bangkok. According to a recent report on the World Population Review website, for whatever it is worth, these are the estimated numbers of foreigners resident in Bangkok by nationality:

That adds up to 720,300 people that Chaeng Wattana should consider will be creating extra paper work and coming in to stand in their queues. You have to wonder if Chaeng Wattana Immigration has considered how this will impact their work loads and the queues, or if perhaps this is some kind of face saving way to tell the world we don't want to allow foreigners to stay in the country at all anymore because they make a mess of the immigration system by overburdening it. But If you run the whole scenario through a series of rough guesstimates you can see pretty clearly it is quite a commitment if indeed they want to commit to the TM30s and still allow foreigners to stay.

If immigration had to spend an average of an extra two minutes (yes I know maybe that is generous and it may be more like 5 minutes) on each foreigner leaving Bangkok and filing paper work to  come back once a year that would mean 1,440,600 extra minutes per year of work or 24,010 extra hours per year.  Assuming they are open for work 240 days of the year (365 days minus 104 Saturdays and Sundays minus 21 days of holiday) that's 100 hours per day being added to immigration's work load. If staff work the same number of hours as their offices are open, 7 hours, they would need 14 people to deal with the load assuming they would assign 14 people to do nothing else but process TM30 applicants, which probably wouldn't be happening. So, assuming staff spend a quarter of their day dealing with the TM30s and applicants, you would need 56 people on staff to be able to take that on.

Also, if they don't make an online system fuctional they would be looking at 3,000 people per day extra coming into the office to file assuming that there are 720,000 foreigners in Bangkok who have to file once per year divided by 240 work days. Something tells me it will take some time before they get the online system so that it functions reliably 24/7 365 days a year. Even if only 1/3 file in person, 1000 extra people per day is a lot. And of course there would be days when many would show up to file such as after national holidays and you could see 10,000 people showing up to file in one day if online systems were down.

I'd say the chances are good that they will drop this after not too long, it doesn't seem to me if can be practically done. You have to wonder why it was dropped a long time ago, it probably didn't make them enough money to make it worth it. But perhaps the chaos creation is the whole idea, to drive people out for whatever reason, to have a Burmese style SLORC totalitarian system nor whatever it is the democratically elected junta has in mind.

Once again Thailand just does as their masters do, that is basically what they do in the US, completely ignore the US businesses and individuals  employing illegal migrants and providing much of the incentive for illegal migration and put all of the blame on those who work for little to nothing as though they are destroying the nation when in fact those workers quite often provide a good service and help the citizenry make a profit and keep consumer prices low  over and above what is warranted. But its a great system to keep workers in line and forever cheap, as illegal migrants they have zero recourse to anything an employer wants to do with them such as not pay them if its no longer the holiday season and they are feeling grumpy. Now all Thailand has to do is set up a prison labor system like the US has had for most of its existence for Thai companies to use people caught and detained as even cheaper or free labor. I doubt Uncle Donald would put sanctions on them for that.

Just wanted to report that it dawned on me what the problem might be, that an old bank account that I had linked to my Paypal account and which never worked was now kicking in when the Paypal system went to validate my card with a bank. Sure enough that was the problem. They did not do it that way when I linked it with my Bangkok Bank Visa debit card, it was easy and seamless,  so it never occurred to me or Paypal staff when I called to ask for help, that the old account was being used by the system to confirm the card.

Anyway, to anyone in the future having problems linking a new card make sure there are not old accounts or cards that don't work but which are still listed in your Paypal wallet, they can take over when you try to validate and connect new cards. Also don't expect Paypal staff to help with any problems you are having, this is the second time they have been completely unhelpful when Paypal became unuseable. Paypal seems to have so much business that they can shrug and say "Not my problem, sorry for the inconvenience, bye!"

I was dealing with them in English and my account with Paypal is Thailand Paypal.

My Bangkok Bank debit card expired recently and I was glad to get a Master Card debit card instead of the dreaded Union Pay that all seem to say doesn't work anywhere except at ATMs. Anyway, I tried linking the new card up with Paypal and the system kicked it back saying the issuing bank denied the card. I called Bangkok Bank about it the next day and they said all should be clear, there was no problems with my card, perhaps the problem lies with Paypal, but that they would investigate the situation and get back to me. The next day I phoned Paypal about it and they re-affirmed that their system had it right that indeed the bank was denying the link up. I called Bangkok Bank the next day and asked them if they had found out what the problem was yet and they said yes they already know I have a problem with the card and they will call back tomorrow. They didn't call back and the next day (today) they didn't call back either. Also, when I called Bangkok Bank the second time the person I spoke with confirmed there was no hold or any other problem with my account and they agreed the problem probably was to do with Paypal.

Has anyone had any success resolving a similar problem? Are there any good alternative banks that link up with Paypal who are still interested in setting up new accounts for resident non-working, non-work permit holding expats?

I doubt anything will happen beyond the 1 day langauge courses. Even if so, training a few vendors to speak Mandarin hardly means the place becomes Chinatown starting this September or whatever they have in mind  until its forgotten next week. What are they going to do next, tell businesses to do business with Chinese only, stop speaking English, serve only Chinese food? Come on, kind of a click bait headline.

No need to go all the way to Vietnam, unless you are interested to go there otherwise. The embassy in Savanakhet is easy, next day you get your visa, and has been a reliable reasonable embassy year after. As far as I know however, it is not directly accessible by air, so may involve a long bus ride from Bangkok, or an Air Asia  flight out to say Roi Et from Bangkok and a few hour bus ride to Mukdahan and then a short bus trip over the Mekong into town. So perhaps depending on where you are coming from, I suppose HCMC may not be a bad choice, perhaps even more convenient though I cannot vouch for the embassy there never tried it and haven't read anything about it on here. KL it seems to me won't do much of anything for anyone as I recall, I don't think you can get anything more than a "go away" from them.

I used the Jakarta Thai embassy in 2012 for a non-O multi and while it took a week to process my visa, I prefer dealing with Indonesians to Thais and that's who they had working there, so everything was smooth, logical, with helpful and communicative staff none of which exists in Thailand and is now an illegal way to conduct anything of importance since about 2012 or so. Though it took a week to get the visa at the Jakarta embassy they told me so up front. But Savanahkhet has been about as game/hidden agenda free as you'll get dealing with Thais, they seem to actually be interested in what they purport to be doing. Also, seems to me I recall reading people who have used Bali to get non-O multis as well, but it is just a Balinese guy running some authorized Thai visa service out his house and very kind of ad hoc but apparently totally legit. At least if it is a week long wait you could  spend it on some good beaches.

Savanakhet has a few reasonable places to stay its got some atmosphere in the old downtown and some different food than you find in Thailand, but nothing especially amazing about the place. Wine is much cheaper than in Thailand, so if you enjoy that, you can take advantage of that as well. I use Savanakhet, it works for getting the multi non-O, no hassles, no being turned away, only once getting rude treatment from staff, so Savanakhet gets my vote.

And now for some more embittered testimony from people who make poor career decisions. It's all beyond being totally FUBAR. You have to laugh, now the Philippines might start paying teachers a living wage? "Ohhh nooo Mr. Bill! What we do now?!" And to add to that and the laws and crack downs on hiring foreign teachers made without any contact with  reality, the schools  add their own mountains of additional hurdles to all of that as most of them can't be bothered handling the hiring process in a remotely competent manner. Its as though they are doing you a favor by hiring you. You can't believe the circus that springs up around bringing a new foreign teacher in,  Theatre of the absurd or theater of cruelty I'm not sure which it is but the wide array of different kinds of predicaments you can get in with unwilling and unable admin and their dealings with recalcitrant and hostile immigration and other govt bureaucrats  and the imagination put into how to completely folk up a teacher's visa and hiring process is quite something.

To take one example, I recently got hired by a university around the corner from my house in Isaan, and the university had the brilliant idea to handle the intake, visa, contract and documents collection process by a committee of 6 or 7 different people.  None of these people could be bothered to read the whole line of correspondence previous so would ask questions that were redundant again and again, I'd get basically reply after reply along the lines of  "They tell me you have many question could you repeat your question?" "Can you explain to me about..." when the question was answered several days ago in the correspondence chain. As is standard nobody had the foggiest notion of the visa and work permit requirements so much time was them asking me because I have been through it all so many times before. They started off asking me in the email saying I'd been hired with: Please send all of your original documents in the mail: passport, diploma, and transcripts and any certificates such your TEFL. I said, "No, get someone else if that is what you require I'm not sending my passport and my diplomas through the mail." Then they said Oh you misunderstood, we asked only for copies.   I must have been asked 8 times what foreign country I was in presently when I made it clear in my resume and at the interview on Skype when again the committee was surprised I was living in Thailand within 15 kilometers of the school and then I was blamed by the snarky lady in big cat eye glasses heading the hiring committee for the oversight, "Well, if you are here, then WHY DIDN"T YOU COME IN to the office for interview," complete with an eye roll.

I finally told them I'm not about to go and work for a school that can't, after two weeks, answer the simple and fundamental questions of when do we start the new term, when are the hours of work so that I can arrange transport and where is the office located so I can drop my copies of requisite documents off. These questions were somehow beyond them, despite the committee all having a very good command of English, and went unanswered for two weeks. To their credit they answered the question about what are the work hours with, "Up to you and maybe you have to teach sometime in the morning and some time at night." so better you rent an apartment on campus we only charge 3,300 per month. I asked, "Oh... so is it a requirement that I live on campus? Its been weeks now and no mention was made of that. Have I not made it clear I have a house here already? Please just give me a range of possible hours." That info was never given, how rude of me to ask for specifics and clarifiction or suggest that things were gradually being sprung on me. . The last straw was when they started in with "You know you have to hurry, we don't have much time now. We take a lot of time to answer your question. No time now." I said "No, you have to hurry and get another teacher because I think I understand how things are over there, all important issues, like say a room to hold classes in perhaps, or say use of a photocopy machine can just be diddled until there is no time left to deal with them and oh then well..., no more time! so find someone else who doesn't mind working in that kind of situation.

Seems by far the loudest is for celebrating a kid becoming a monk, I think the family wants to make sure that not only does everybody know but that it is the primary thing on our minds for a few days. Seems in the last few years the speakers available  now nation wide have power capabilities that are literally approaching organ damage levels. Our place is outside the village, tyet even at our 300 -400 meters distance from town the whole house resonates and rattles and there is a physical impact on your body like someone lightly pounding your chest. I don't mind loud music but the way music has become is that it has to shake people's bodies half to pieces. The Thais will love 5g, same idea, no escape and intense physical impact like severe headaches, itching burning skin, tinnitis, sanook mak mak!

It's all too easy to just to laugh at the guy, but then you have to ask, if anyone finds a way to tap free energy from the vacuum or what have you, do you think the petro-control mongers, power companies etc would allow the media to tell everyone about that? They have nothing but everything to lose if we all found out about some technology that could provide for all of our energy needs. Ridicule is a powerful tool used to keep people away from knowledge and information about things that threaten the current socio-economic order.  You really have to wonder why at this stage we are still essentially burning stuff when our knowledge of physics etc has long since outstripped the level of knowledge behind current energy technologies.

The popular poster at the Thai web site was quoted as saying, "I can't believe Nikola Tesla overlooked this." Well, how would you know what Nikola Tesla overlooked or not? Especially since much of his work was seized by US authorities protecting the Rockefeller's oil business from the negative impact Tesla's inventions and discoveries would have on their profits. Tesla's papers remain classified and locked up out of the public reach to this day and incidentally it was under the auspices of the physicist and US technology boss Vandevar Bush that his protege at MIT, John Trump, current US president Donald Trump's uncle,  was assigned the duty of overseeing the project of saving and archiving all of Tesla's papers upon Tesla's death at the New York hotel where he was being held under house arrest for essentially having abilities, ideas and knowledge that threatened and still threatens oil profits.

And the alternative to sucking cats paws would be....uh....gee....let me think....sorry I can't seem to think of anything else better one might do...perhaps just hoping the problem might clear on its own...up to you!

D-day, huh? This has been the rule for years. How is this like d-day? Are my adrenaline levels supposed to shoot up or something? And a misleading headline used to reel you in and waste your time reading about rules you already know. I guess reading the news here is to help us memorize rules and laws, read 'em again just so as you never forget 'em because they won't be enforced anyway. We're just trying to help. Also, there is a difference between airports as a whole and passenger areas and the rule is regarding items in the passenger areas not the airport as a whole as erroneously stated in the headline. So you have fake news, not news posing as news, and then  brainfarts attached to photos and headlines  which I think we could safely say this "article" squarely belongs in the category of.

I have not heard that the non-O multi 1 year is unavailabale in Savanakhet, Laos. I hope not, since that is what I assume I will be able to go and get without a problem as usual in the next few months.

You could just come over to Thailand and enter on a visa free entry and then make the trip out to Savanakhet to get the non-O multi. I would not go for a retirement visa, it is in the crosshairs of too much hassle and chaos with the perennially difficult internal immigration. To me, a trip to the Savanakhet consulate once every 15 months is so much easier and more worry free, lines are usually not bad and you get your visa the next day. Savnakhet, while not the most exciting town, has some decent if somewhat decrepit atmosphere some good accomodation and food and even some interesting old French colonial houses and buildings still intact.