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bkk_mike

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About bkk_mike

  • Birthday 04/23/1967

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    Bangkok

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  1. No idea where I fit. I met my Thai wife in London. She's two years older than me (but still looks ten years younger, even though we've now been married 25 years). Now I'm actually working in Hong Kong (which is very useful given Thailand's new tax rules as I'll have a Hong Kong pension), and if I ever retire, I'll then be a retiree, but until then???
  2. Probably includes hybrids in the 40%. BEV = 100% battery PHEV = Plug in Hybrid HEV = non-plug in Hybrids. (i.e. Petrol or Diesel powered "self-charging" hybrids. - How the marketers got away with that bull<deleted> nobody knows.) All end in EV.
  3. I would have to disagree. At least with American Traveller. Got one in London that I used to go to Hong Kong last year (very first use of that bag), and I had to take it to the Samsonite service centre in Hong Kong to get it repaired (under warranty) because the pull-out handle for wheeling it around broke on the walk between Hong Kong and Central stations (maybe it actually broke on the plane, but friction held it together until I got off the train from the airport). Similarly I have an old Samsonite suitcase, one of the magnesium ones in green with leather bought from Selfridges back in the 90s, before I was married and had kids so I had money, which was definitely not cheap, where the leather stops for sitting it on (it had two wheels, rather than four - so it wasn't a spinner) fell off. And I had a blue Samsonite, again this one got fixed in Hong Kong - (maybe it's the baggage handling at HKIA), where one of the wheels fell off.
  4. It is supposed to be illegal in the UK to make someone stateless. She is currently stateless. The law that allows the revocation of nationality was supposed to be used on people who naturalised in the UK and then commited a crime, so that at the end of their sentence, they would have to return to their original country. It's not supposed to be used against people who were born in the UK, British at birth, and definitely not supposed to be used against people with no other nationality - because we're signed up to a UN treaty that says we will not make someone stateless. Having the ability to make her stateless because she was still under 21 at the time, so in theory COULD still apply for another nationality because of where her mother was born, when the government would not have been allowed to do it if she was 22 - is particularly odd. Personally, I think she was born in the UK, grew up in the UK, had British nationality (and no other nationality) so she should be the UK's problem to deal with. If that means stick her in jail when she returns, so be it (assuming she's done something that she can be charged with so that there's a court case...)
  5. That link had a phrase I didn't expect to see. Consular letter from the embassy is free. FREE - from the British Embassy? I don't believe it.
  6. In the UK, the airline doesn't check for overstay. They solely concern themselves with whether you have the right to enter the country you're flying to. Think of dual nationals flying to one of their "home" countries. They will check in with the airline with their passport for that country, but it's not necessarily going to be the same passport they entered the UK on. Not checking passports when leaving the country is why the UK has no idea how many overstayers there are.
  7. No it's not. This isn't for check-in. It's for immigration. It would presumably mean no exit stamp in your passport. How important that is for you is a different matter.
  8. Have a Deebot X2 Omni that I use at my flat in Hong Kong. Just tell it to clean when I go out if I think a clean is needed. Just need to leave the internal doors open for it to do the whole flat. You do need to make sure there's no cables dangling though (one day I came back and it hadn't finished cleaning as it had gotten tangled in the cable for a fan). And it doesn't handle steps so I still have to mop the bathroom because that's got a step as it's a wet room. But that's just a wipe round after a shower occasionally. But even when all I have to do is press a button (and occasionally empty the dirty water container and fill the clean one), I still don't mop every day. At the house in Thailand, we pay for a maid to come once a week. But then the house has two floors and the robot vacuum/mop doesn't handle stairs.
  9. Rental income in Thailand would have already been taxable for people living here.
  10. Remember Iceland is the country where the bankers who screwed up in 2008 were jailed.
  11. North Satellite terminal at Hong Kong, and the satellite terminal at Heathrow Terminal 3 both use moving walkways. Hong Kong uses a skybridge, and Heathrow an underpass. (Just listing ones I've actually used).
  12. Between this and the UK freezing my pension if I don't spend most of the year there, I can definitely see me doing something like 5 months of "winter" in Thailand, 7 months of summer in the UK - once I retire...
  13. I once did one of the kids renewals in Bangkok when my wife was in London. She had to go to the embassy in South Kensington to sign a form to say she was OK with the new passport being issued. And the passport office waited for the physical form to arrive from the embassy before issuing it. I.e. My wife couldn't even DHL it to me. It was sent to the passport department by the embassy directly. Bangkok main passport office in Lak Si, but it was around 2005... I think it was rather unexpected for the foreign parent to come to the passport office and the Thai parent to be abroad. I don't know if they'd have been as unbending with the rules with a male child, but my daughter would have been 5 as it was her first renewal... Possibly complicated by the fact that she was born in the UK, so her original Thai passport that we were renewing had been issued in London.
  14. Not wearing a helmet Makes you look stupid. Couldn't agree more. Only idiots ride around on a motorbike without a helmet on.
  15. 90% of rare earths may be mined in China, but it's not because it's the only place with them. It's because it's willing to put up with the environmental impact of mining them the less expensive way.
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