Buffy Frobisher

Screw the taxpayers. Oh, that's right, that's what they've been doing during their entire time in the Senate. They're just pigs with their snouts in the trough. Nothing more than that.

My wife, the chief cook and bottle washer and all-round handyman, and instructor of the chang of course, tells me that we use either TOA or Beyer brands, premium Weathershield in all cases, depending on what deals Home Pro have. She says that glossy is best because it's easier to keep clean. I can't complain - we paint every 3 years and the place looks brand new after 18 years.

Helpful to us, certainly, but not so for you it seems. It was a nightmare out there this morning. The IO at Counter 29 (the front desk - is that 29? - the boss) is retiring this year, and things have slowed down dramatically. She told me years ago to get off the married-to-a-thai visa and said she'd give me the "sabai sabai" visa - retirement. Worth getting if you're over 50. Much less paperwork.

Couple this censorship demand with Sretta suggesting that he bring Chinese police in to "help" police Thailand streets at night, and you've got the Solomon Islands sellout Part 2. In no time you'll have the Chinese "donating" football stadiums and other facilities to win Thai hearts and minds, and before you know it Mandarin will be compulsory in schools. It only ends in tears. Sretta and his kowtowing to Xi may well be worse for this country than TS and his cronies ever were.

Which side of Bangkok are you on now? If you're anywhere near Crystal Park (Lad Prao area - NE Bangkok) I can recommend possibly the best hairdresser in Bangkok - certainly the best I've found in 20 years.

@tontong7 This is by far the best advice, from @ChrisP24. These girls usually have a few marks that they go after - you're not the only one she's doing this to - and the stupid ones send money and stay on the hook to Hell forever. Just block her on everything, and change your number if she calls. Fade away, have no contact, and she'll go after someone else when the effort exceeds the reward. In answer to your original question, no, there is no blacklist for bargirls to report tourists who didn't fold with blackmail, and if everything else about you is above the law then you have nothing to worry about. That said, if you have broken any law here then you have a LOT to worry about and you shouldn't come back. If you have any further problems with Immigration next time you come back, DM me. I have someone who fixes these things quite effectively. Just keep a copy of everything she's ever written to you.

I'm in NE Bangkok and in our area we've lost all Bangkok Bank ATMs and their branch at a nearby mall, plus 3 of 4 SCB ATMs and their branch too. Even the 7-11s are dropping ATMs. And Zen, the Japanese competitor to Fuji at the Plearnary Mall, have now decided that they won't take cash at all, so they're off my menu too. This cashless society is being forced upon us way quicker than I thought it would.

See what @Adumbrationsaid about Thai vs overseas. I only buy 99.9% so that I can move it out of Thailand. If you want to trade just in Thailand then buying Thai gold makes sense.

I agree with @Proton. Hua Seng Heng is by far the best for commissions, at least for 99.9% gold which I've been buying from them for years. And be sure to get physical gold and stash it safely in a vault, not paper receipts which they also offer. At some point demand will outstrip supply if there's a failure of the $, and those holding paper will have a huge headache.

Sorry for the late response. I use the main Chaeng Wattana office in Bangkok. Renewed my retirement three days ago. Same procedure, and all went well. It helps with Bangkok Bank if you update your bank book after each transfer because they use all the FFT lines in the book to generate your statement for Immigration. If you don't update, as I didn't this year, it adds 3 days to the process while the branch requests a statement of every transaction for the year from the Silom Road Head Office, from which the branch extracts the transfers. The book makes them much happier. I hope that helps.

Pretty crappy. AQI is 114 at Bang Khen in NE Bangkok just now. Over 100 across the whole city, up to 152 in places. Still nowhere near what the folk in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai are enduring. Grab the IQ Air app from your app store. It's as accurate as the meter I have at home, collated from many private and Government weather stations across the country.

Each year when I get a statement from Bangkok Bank to prove incoming transfers (I prefer that option to keeping 800K in an account), Immigration just count the number of transfers - it has to be 12 - and don't seem that interested in what the amounts are. They're always well over the base amount, so perhaps they just look to see if the total amount meets or beats that. It's definitely 12 transfers though, but they don't need to be every month. Once I was asked and just said "exchange rate bad" for the months I missed. Hope that helps.

Can't wait to miss it. ????

Calm down dude. I live my life the way I choose to - you should just go about living yours. I suffer from intelligence and things that interest me. What's your excuse?

I did a run down the Asia Highway from Nakhon Sawan on Sunday night with a Cobra XRS-888 radar/lidar detector activated. Just north of Chai Nat I found one camera which is K-band (most speed cameras in Thailand are K-band) plus they are using SPECTRE to detect radar detectors. It's the only time I've detected SPECTRE in Thailand, so maybe there are others now. It's on an overhead gantry, as indeed are most cameras on that highway. As this is Thailand, it's actually pretty hard to work out what the actual speed limit is on that road. They now have the right-lane clearly marked as 100-120kph, with the middle lane as 100kph and the left lane at 80kph, however in some 100-meter segments of the highway there were 90, 100, and 120kph signs, which seem to be wherever there is a U-turn gap in the median strip. It's massively confusing (and insane!), particularly if you're running at 120kph and have to peel 30kph off in 50 meters without causing a pile-up. There are also very bright LED flashes coming from many overhead gantries just as you approach them, but these appear to be to scare you into thinking that you've had your photo taken as the radar detector didn't see anything. It's also dangerous - most countries use speed camera flashes at your rear. That said, closer to Ayutthaya there are two bridges with cams and flash units that are running K-band radar, one of them with those bright displays showing your speed. I got "done" with one of them at 123kph when my GPS speed was actually only 118kph, so we'll see if they send a pic and what they say about the pic I have. I suspect that like everything here, calibration isn't a strong point. I also got a 500 baht fine a couple of weeks ago going up to Nakhon Sawan, when I moved over to the completely clear left lane (which now has an 80kph speed limit on it) and got hit at 122kph. As always, Thai drivers sit in the right lane regardless of the speed limit, so I just did what was logical for traffic flow. It will be interesting to see how they enforce the new law announced a few days ago that they'll start fining drivers who drive slowly in the right lane, and deducting points. On the Asia Highway, at least, they'd be fining nearly every driver and within a month no-one will have a license! As an aside, on the Chalong Rat expressway in Bangkok, there are 27 K-band cameras between the Outer Ring Rd (Kanchanpisek East) and the city, and these are a mixture of side-mounted cameras and top-mounted, all on gantries. If you're driving in from Khao Yai/the North, the first one is only 100 metres from the first toll gate, and the second one at the Sukhapiban 5 exit. After that it's a mine-field. These ones look like regular CCTV cameras with a small radar panel under them. I'm told by a professional driver that although the speed limit is 80kph, they are set to 120kph. I play safe at 90kph and have thus far been lucky.