sbf

Farmers at 7.4 million households would be my guess

No my bank branch is in Isaan. I guess I have had to get 4-5 cards out of province over the last 4-5 years., most recently in March this year.

This is not so in my experience with Bangkok Bank at all. I split my time between two different provinces and have on several occasions obtained a replacement card from Bangkok Bank in Phuket which is not the province where the my account branch is located. Just presented passport and bank book and a sorry tale of what happened to te bank card this time.

It’s not just the cops, army and politicians - corruption is rife through many government departments and local authorities here. If you have dealings with some of these officials and you are observant you will see it in many places, often with exquisite and profitable execution. If only the energy and talent invested in the corruption were applied to the good of the country

I have a similar situation, house in two provinces, and flit between them. Online for 90 day reports is the best way to avoid having to be in your extension province area at the right time, but of course once a year you must be in the IO office province to complete your extension. Worked pretty well since they have stopped the ridiculous, stay away a night and you have to report to IO nonsense. That was until Covid lockdown, and I had to go through a change from my preferred address province to the other province as I was locked down there.

Concur with this, Dream Beach at the northern end of Layan may be the same place as you are referring to in your post. Mostly Locals there. I have never been charged there but must admit haven’t ventured there for 8-9 months. No deckchairs but very popular with the locals and plenty of food stalls at the weekend. Nanyang before the town also has many food vendors. Our favorite at least in dry season is Naithon In between the two above mentioned. Still no deck chairs, bring your own or a mat. Plenty of food vendors along the road at the back of the beach. More tourists usually on this beach though plenty of Thai families at the weekend and late afternoon.

Yes thanks for the input. I know that one can drive straight through by staying in either Lane 1 or 2 as largely the inspections of Thai citizens has stopped. In fact over the last month I have only seen one time when they were inspecting for Thai citizens, and that was the day the gunman went beserk down in the fish market in Phuket town. However road signs prior to the check point still indicate that foreigners must go through Lane 3, so does anyone know if we are still officially meant to stop and show our passport every time or not. I have seen nothing to say we do not.

Are not all foreigners leaving Phuket supposed to present their passports for inspection at the check-point before leaving the island. If her van driver stopped and complied with this regulation why was this not picked up there by the Immigration officials, this is exactly why the check there which inconveniences many of us is there. If her van driver did not stop and comply will he also be hunted down and brought to justice for his or her complicity in this 'escape'

All well and good, you have been caught speeding, you cop a small roadside payment or make it official and go pay a slightly larger one at the station, your choice. However what if you were being wrongfully accused of some driving misdemeanor and a much more substantial payment demanded say 50,000 as has happened to me here, would you still be happy to pay up?

Many people on this forum have lived here long enough to have had a number of interactions with the RTP. The fact that there are few rushing to their defence seems to suggest that these interactions are perhaps not as favorable as the good General maintains. My personal score is 5-1, not in their favor I would add. I have lived and worked on four continents in my lifetime. I have never had anything but positive things to say in any of those other countries regarding my personal interactions with their respective police forces.

The Thai test may be extensive, but that does not mean much in my recent experience. We have to drive quite a lot in our small business. The load was falling on myself as the only licensed driver so I decided to get two staff members fully licensed at the companies expense and during work time. I chose two 30-40 year old employees, one male and one female. Firstly I had to really hunt around to find a driving instructor in our area. I eventually tracked one down, but it was only one and this was in a relatively large province with well over a million inhabitants. I decided to get one employee at a time through the process and started with the woman. She is in my estimate hard working, intelligent, thoughtful, good at planning ahead, and a patient person not given to outbursts of emotion. The instructor took the female employee for I guess 4-5 lessons at the rate of a couple a week. She complained about the instructor, saying he was far too bossy and pedantic. Eventually she said she wanted to change and her friend had told her about another instructor linked to the drivers license test facility. She made some arrangements and I duly took her to the test facility and left her there in the morning. That afternoon she called to say she was finished and asked that I go pick her up. She was fully licensed and from memory 1000 baht lighter. Of course it was much harder to get the male staff member to follow the plan after that. He just went to the test center under the wing of the 'instructor' there and in less than a day was licensed. During my extensive driving here I get to see a Highway Patrol car out on patrol occasionally. To relieve the monotony of the long drives I will sometimes tuck in behind them and see how good the driving is. My record was 8 offenses by the Highway Patrol driver in around 10 km including overtaking on a solid yellow line, jumping a green light, driving in a defined motorcycle lane, changing lane without indicating and eventually speeding in restricted speed zone built up area. My point is until international standards are met for the issuance of driving licenses and the training of those tasked with keeping the driving standards up, there is little hope of reaching high standards of road safety in Thailand. Both these matters are the responsibility of the government. Further the personal responsibility of drivers and motorcyclists for their own and other road users safety as mentioned by many already in this and the never-ending threads on road safety in Thailand that we have had over the years, is dire and needs to improve dramatically. One only has to look at the proportions of people on motorcycles not wearing helmets (which in our area is around 70%) to see that fellow road users have little regard for their own safety. From memory it was about 1992 that crash helmets were compulsory by Thai law, so the fact that after 30 years rates of helmet use are still so low shows that the road safety policies of the various governments we have had are not working. I dare say the same is probably true for DUI and seat-belt wearing in cars, they are just not so observable.

I do feel very sorry for the kids and the interruption to their education. Also we can all see the disruption this virus has caused to economic activity. We as a family have suffered huge disruption to our business and have had the last two years without anything like our normal income, surviving really on our savings. However I think that you belittle the danger of this virus, in deference to the vast majority of the medical community and public health officials around the world. I gave my accurate and honest account of a young Covid patient from my direct recent experience. This was not the sniffles. A normally healthy child was pretty ill. Interestingly now that she is recovered the hospital have asked us to take her back in 3 months. Presumably to check for long Covid. I also thought the quarantine would be traumatic for her. We got a roster of family - grandma's, aunties and uncles, older brothers and sisters etc involved to call her frequently. We delivered food every couple of days although we could not see her. But kids are quite resilient and apart from one moment just after we dropped her off, she remained cheerful throughout. She made friends of course as kids do, and her only complaint was the quarantine food was not very nice. I find your comment about "my paranoia" not being good for her mind somewhat offensive. On the basis of one anonymous posting you have diagnosed me as paranoid - interesting.

Well this was not our experience, or rather my 11 year old daughters. She finally went back to school three weeks ago today. School closed a day later due to positive Covid case. Daughter felt unwell on the Friday, was negative to home ATK test at midday. Still unwell in the evening, took her to the local hospital - told there was nothing they could do in the way of testing until the following day. Went to another hospital the following morning - positive ATK. Told to go to the main provincial hospital. PCR tested and sent home. The following morning we were called, she had tested positive on PCR and had to go to quarantine that afternoon for 10 days. All the rest of us had to PCR test. She was symptomatic with severe headaches, aches and pains in muscles and joints and ended up with a terrible hacking cough. She was not well at all for from the Friday until the Sunday and over the first few days of quarantine. And of course the trauma of being dragged off to quarantine - not pleasant. Anyway a little more than the sniffles!!

My observations for Isaan are firstly many more small roadside stalls. I see this as a sign of many more people trying to make an income from these micro-businesses because alternate employment opportunities are just not there. My bank seems very quiet currently and has been for the last couple of months. A couple of years ago it was hard to get a seat - and that was before Covid spacing took half them away - often the queue meant any bank business took around an hour. These days waltz in get a ticket and almost always straight to the counter, out in 5 minutes. I don't see many established businesses closing locally but without a doubt times are tough for many in speaking to business owners. The very low rice price is impacting farmers throughout the region and they are looking for alternatives to increase their income. Our business deals in contract growing of seed crops and we are almost overwhelmed with enquiries from new groups of farmers at the moment. Again a few years ago we had to work quite hard to build these up. Hiring workers is also very easy currently, which has not always been the case. Local labor rates have also fallen from a couple of years ago when most would not work for anything much below the minimum wage - 300 baht at that time. Now many employers are only paying 200 baht a day for agricultural laborers. There are tales of employees not paying their workers at all for months on end. I would add that we pay substantially more than minimum wage before I get flamed for being exploitative.

I couldn't get vaccinated in a timely manner on Phuket as my visa extension was issued in another province. I had to change my immigration address to Phuket and then wait out a 3 month period which would have seen me become eligible about now to apply for my first shot. Not wishing to delay vaccination for this period of time, I travelled to Bangkok - got two shots of Pfizer three weeks apart in September. The only problem was I could not return to Phuket until two weeks after the 1st shot under the rules as they were then. Luckily I had things to do in other provinces, so waited out of province until my second shot and returned to Phuket fully vaccinated. Free at Medpark Hospital, Bangkok although I am not sure of they are currently operating this scheme. Check their website. I would happily have paid. None of the other apps - Expatvac etc came through for me. I am happy that I decided on this course. Our youngest tested positive after catching Covid at school last week, and is now in quarantine on Phuket. The rest of the household tested negative but we were all vaccinated.

This is what the public health officials here have insisted on even though she is less than 12 years old. I am really furious about it as whilst she is a fairly strong independent child this is not something any child should have to go through. She could easily have isolated at home, she has her own bedroom and bathroom. If anything by the time they took her in she was on the improve, with headaches finished and just a bit of a cough. The rest of us have tested negative by ATK today and will get our PCR results tomorrow morning. Within 5 minutes of leaving her at the quarantine she called in tears because she did not know where the toilet was and needed a pee. Very traumatic experience for the youngster. Getting back to the point of the article, all other family members have tested negative, the only place she has been in the last 10 days is home or at school, so perhaps the official needs to put a little more thought and a lot more science into their statements.

Haha these authorities are incredible. My daughter went back to school Monday. On Tuesday afternoon the school closed again. Covid present. On Friday she was unwell in the morning, gave her an ATK test - negative, but she was still unwell late afternoon, so early evening we took her to the local hospital In Phuket. They would not see her, told us to come back Saturday morning. Saturday morning tested positive on ATK. Told to go to Vachira Hospital for PCR. Did that. This morning they called, she has tested positive. And so this afternoon she is off to the kids quarantine hospital for 10 days. Meanwhile the rest of us have been told to test. Half way through the process and they stopped at 11.40 for lunch. Will complete after lunch and then take daughter to her quarantine at the appointed time. She has been nowhere except school and the house for the last 10 days, so I am pretty certain she got it from school.

I would argue that Thailand's fall down the educational tables, its rise up the corruption ladder, and the increasing concentration of wealth into the hands of a tiny portion of the population - all of which have become much more pronounced over the last decade and especially under the current administration - will ensure Thailands slide for years to come. If there is now a government policy of suppressing the sex industry that will only exacerbate the slide in the short term at least. Can't remember where I read it and it was a couple of years ago but flights arriving into Bangkok had the highest proportion of male to female passengers of almost any major arrival airport in the world. Anyway there are some pretty big minuses to having such a large sex industry as Thailand has, which seldom get debated and probably never will since there is no admission by authorities that the industry really exists.

It depends what your budget is and what you are looking for in a neighborhood. The Pahklok tambol is in the quieter east side of the island towards the northern end. For us it has everything we are looking for although it is fairly quiet in a rural kind of way. You are close to international schools, shopping in Thalang, beaches 10 -15 minutes drive (Naithon / Naiyang), not far from the airport and the main road to Sarasin and Phang Nga ( 20 minutes drive). With tree covered hills as a backdrop, this area seems to be becoming increasingly attractive to expats.

In my experience shipping in to Thailand is very cheap at the moment. I have brought containers in from Australia and Europe over the last year. It is shipping out which has increased enormously - 400-500% from a year ago to almost any destination - we send 5-6 containers a month out to US, Europe, Australia etc. Exchange rate changes will be impacting prices of imported goods more than shipping rates IMHO.

This is rather a sanctimonious statement which I feel should be responded to. Many of us feel we are pretty well assimilated here, have our lives and loves, families and friends here and are able to converse with those around us adequately and do not necessarily live in expat enclaves. Whilst being able to speak the local language is important surely one can make contributions to a country without being highly proficient or even proficient in the language. More difficult but doable, at least the Thai government think so, as they are happy to encourage this new long stay residents visa on the grounds of how much wealth they will bring, with no talk of a language proficiency requirement. My next point is that Thailand has multiple languages. In my area Thai is only spoken extremely rarely. We do not use it for almost any day to day communications within family or with staff. This is probably the case for roughly half the countries population. So it is a little difficult to become really proficient in a language which is rarely spoken day to day in ones life. Next point, when one is attending a medical facility of any kind, I hope that we can agree it is extremely important for the patient can clearly understand the diagnosis and treatment being proscribed. However this often involves quite a lot of detailed medical and technical language. These aren't usually words that come up in daily conversation. Good for you if you can follow a detailed medical conversation in Thai, but it is beyond most of us. This lack of complex and technical vocabulary does not mean we are not well assimilated or second rate people, it just means that certain words are beyond our comprehension. According to my good Thai Doctor friend most rural Thai's cannot follow a detailed medical conversation either, either because of poor educational levels or linguistic deficiencies. We had an example of the reverse situation occur a decade or so ago. We were in the UK, my Thai wife was a guest in the country on a limited time visa. She became extremely ill and had to be rushed to hospital. She needed emergency surgery. She was in surgery within an hour of arrival at the hospital. Whilst my wife was in surgery a nurse came and asked me to go into the theatre. My wife's English was plenty good enough to converse and assimilate with the UK locals, it was just not up to the technical directions of the surgeon. I had to translate his instructions on to my wife. The hospital apologized after saying because of the urgency they just did not have enough time to get a translator in. Turned out they could call on Khmer, Lao and Thai language speakers which really impressed me for a hospital in a reasonably rural area. My overwhelming sorrow in all of this court case fuss is the lack of kindness perceived as being shown to guests and foreigners who live here, many who have contributed their time, money and skills to the betterment of this land, have their lives and families here, and I believe they deserve better. Contrasting to the UK situation we found ourselves in, the emergency surgery was provided free of charge and I am eternally grateful to the NHS for dealing with our case in such a prompt, kind and gracious manner. How would I have felt if we had been charged substantially more than the locally appraised cost of the surgery - well probably not as positively as I do about the UK is the answer.

Not the case in my opinion and observation from various countries I have lived and worked in. Civil servants are often required by their departments and the law of the land to respond within certain time frames to the citizens of the nation. Many countries have strong, positive, responsive civil services, sadly I do not rank Thailand on my personal experience as one of those.

Civil servants is not a correct title as it implies civility and service, neither of which are much forthcoming from many government employees here. These people are amongst the obstructors in chief to progress especially Thailands economic progress. To give but one example we have a product our company exports. In order to gain entry to certain countries some paperwork is necessary between the Thai government and the importing countries government to complete, but only for the first export, after that nothing further is required. The paperwork requires about 1-2 days concentrated work to complete. We have been waiting 5 years now for completion of the paperwork to three countries to allow us to export there, and I fear we will be waiting 5 more years. The officials in the importing countries complain about the Thai's saying they never reply to emails and so on. We have the same problem when we politely ask for updates on progress. Loss to the Thai economy well at the very least 25 million per year in export income, and a fair amount of extra employment and taxes generated for the government. Worse is that we now steer away from any potential orders with countries which require this paperwork. We are but a small company, I can't imagine what the total cost to the economy is, I would imagine it is far more than the combined salaries for the Civil Servants.

Not quite the full story, Auckland is still in level 4 full lockdown, the rest of the country only level 2 which is much less restrictive. Yes they did lock down at one case, but the total number of people infected is pretty close to 1,000 now. Great that they have controlled it enough to get back down to 13 new confirmed cases today. I hope it continues to reduce, as NZ is just about the least vaccinated population of the OECD countries.

I doubt your Lambo would make it down our potholed riddled gravel road mate, but if you want to bring it up and try it will give us all something to laugh about and we could all do with a laugh at the moment. I'll take my 4WD pick-up any day as a good practical vehicle for rural Thailand.