jacko

Tourist visas are valid for 60 days. Multiple....2 or 3 entries. Second hand bikes are a risk here....the local people change components. Mileage cannot be trusted. I shall shop around. Owen, Gary's post put some numbers to your points, the Expats club does offer insurance, have the leaflet by me now. A lot cheaper than BUPA but these policies are hard to compare.....The Expats one is a deal. Afraid I fly biz class and flights look about the same price from UK as from Thailand - more consolidators. Not extracting anything from my 'portfolio' yet, but inflation IS

Well I don't keep notes...what are you an accountant? Yes I go back to the UK about 2 maybe 3 times a year, but I could hardly call that an expense of 'living' in Thailand. My visa runs (Cambodia border) are about 2000 every 2 months. Get a retirement visa and that is reduced. Internet, included in mobile costs, subsidised by someone with an unsecured wi-fi nearby. 40baht / hour in a cafe..... Taxi to Bangkok for shopping.....for what? I live near Pattaya. Computer upgrades? Just bought this one ! I always had a company one until I quit, then was in internet cafes for a wh

House Rent 15k M/cycle rent 3k Electric 3k Water pennies Cable 500 baht Spending money to Tilac 12k Meals Out 3-4k my(or our) nights out 12k Food/gas/mobile/etc 6k I have rented a furnished house on a 6 month basis, other side of Sukhumvit....to give it a try.

Well cooking facilities were a must for me, but Thai food seems easy, we have 2 burners connected to a bottle of gas...and everything seems to get made in a wok. A rice cooker is essential! Yes, potatoes are above average cost, but they are not Thai food, I ask tilac to buy a few for me to bake as I need the change from rice. She seems unable to get her head around the concept of a single meal without it. Juice, she buys tangerines at 20 baht/kilo, freshly squeezed. Pineapples are a bargain too lately. I get my weekly stodge fix......pie and chips at The Vic or Sportsman etc..

Yes I recall my hotel bill in Houston being inflated by the cost of some new stadium too. I do not say it doesn't goes on in plenty, I just feel it is sneaky and underhand. I can see a tax on cigarettes being used to fund health care, or anti-smoking campaigns, or a car related tax being use to fund road improvements. But a stadium, that will be utilized by an extremely profitable NFL team, should not have to be paid for by 'out of towners'. Anyhow, which idiot expects taxes to be fair? This one!

Since I stopped using hotels, laundries and to some degree restaurants...(and to a greater degree short time places and Go-Gos, apart from one or two nights out a week), money goes much further. Find a tilac who likes to cook and make house.......... She does laundry and ironing in the morning........ Pops off on the motorcycle at 4pm with her basket to the market to shop for tonights meal. For two of us she rarely spends above 140 baht on vegetables, meat, shrimp whatever and turns out a great meal. I thought I would do my bit, so bought a barbecue, a fresh whole fish would b

Oh I thought the biz class on Emirates was pretty good. Well the in-flight entertainment was slick, and the electric seats were fun. Although about 80% of them had packed in about an hour into the flight. The BKK - DBX leg was better than the DBX-MAN, and despite being only 1/2 way along the rows we were down to 2 choices of meal, both chicken. I told them if all they could offer me in business class was chicken they could stick it! They found me an alternative. I can get grumpy on long hauls! But yeah....not quite the VIP treatment I got on my first Emirates biz class flight wh

money is lost just as quickly as it's made. I might correct you to say a BLOODY SIGHT FASTER is possible too!

I see the French government is planning to introduce a new tax on air tickets to benefit the worlds poor. Initially to fund HIV drugs in Africa. You for it or against it? BBC Story Personally I am against it. I dislike governments taking money off me at the best of times, when I have little control over what they do with it. Now if I fly via France, to LOS, I expect I will be subjected to this tax.....I have a foreign government taking money off me and I have no control whatsoever they choose to do with it. Perhaps support the Airbus 380 program! Kofi Annan is very

You put that pretty well. I couldn't understand BA being up there but then went to the site and saw that their 'premium service' passengers rated them well. True, their Club and First class are very good. I guess they didn't survey any of the 100,000 BA passengers stranded on August 12, 2005.

Row 77 is upstairs emergency exit row, bags of space between you and row infront. Because you cannot reach the seatback infront sometimes you struggle to find places to put all the crap. Aisle seat is convenient for getting in and out, but window seat has these extra storage boxes right next to you that gives you the storage space. It is also somewhere to put things down on when the lid is closed. Enough space to climb over the guy in the aisle seat if he is asleep and horizontal. Join their FF club yet? You can check in via internet up to 30 hours before.

I have done KLM Business 4 or 5 times now. Best price you will come up with is around £1400. Tip..row 77. They use rather old 747s and it is nowhere near the standard of BA business. But then again you don't get the BA attitude or extra £1000+ to pay and the occassional strike at Heathrow. You get a nice little Blue Delft house to collect full of schnapps. Many extol the virtues of the newer Middle East Carriers (Ethiad, Qatar and Emirates), but the stopover seems to make the journey very long on the second leg.

Pay attention Mr Samsonite...... Check in with Economy class at KLM checkin in Heathrow, all the way through to final destination. Wouldn't recommend collecting baggage at Schiphol, going through immigration and then checking in again at China Airlines....just to stand in the business class line looking smug.

I used Nok Airways, it was excellent. They only had 2 flights per day, about 10am and 4pm. They have a Nok Plus option too.....like a premium service. There really are a lot of flights down there every day. Nok nok, who's there?

You sound like a very sensible fellow. At least you never considered investing in a part ownership of a go-go!!

Well shop around on the bank account issues. ISAs only allow you to put a small amount of money in. A lot of accounts advertising high interest rates in the UK are basically con jobs, in that you also need to open a regular low interest account, and the high levels of interest are only applied to limited amounts or for limited periods. I would hazard to say they are sold with dubious honesty. The Nationwide E-saver at 4.5% looks good but after tax it is 3.6%, not much above inflation. Even inflation which the government quotes at around 2% seems a manipulated falsehood. If you have a goo

You make some good points although I was originally just trying to figure out how the damned bill was calculated. The AC units are certainly not new and likely inefficient, and Thai houses are not generally built too well, poorly sealing single glazed windows for example. Another point is dark roof tiles baking all day and then ceiling tiles that probably keep the roof cavity hot, making the house pretty warm in the evenings. Even with all the windows open I seem to be several degrees hotter than outside. I need to close up the windows at night so the AC needs to be on! I can live wi

Living in Thailand has very little to do with living in USA. Different items are expensive here relative to the overall cost of living. What you call a small amount, my electric bill, about 3000 baht is 75% of an unskilled workers monthly salary. (for example a hotel room cleaner working 6 days or 48 hours per week in Pattaya....) it might well be a lot more than a rural farm worker gets in a couple of months. What is a small amount to you is certainly not to a Thai, and also perhaps a consideration to an expatriate living here. One of the keys to living here is to adjust and stop comparing p

What an idiotic statement........ If one conserves expediture, one can afford to live 'there'. If one is a spendthrift, perhaps not. Perhaps you are fortunate to be very rich......and it is irrelevant to you, but not everyone is. Also as someone mentioned conservation is a good idea. Besides that is nothing to do with what the thread is about, is this 24/7 AC blowing on your head?

Or a clever way to hit the falang, who else uses aircon! My feelings aren't hurt, I only wonder whether something was going on before I moved in! In reality I have all of the consumption you mentioned, plus a few more hot showers, AC in bedroom all night long, and AC in large lounge all evening. Plus a Tilac who leaves lights on everywhere and the fridge door open...sod the money but my beer gets warm....

I do not think Thailand would change the laws to interrupt a market generating good money, but nobody knows for sure. If you buy a condo, look to be owning one of the 49% in the building that can legally be owned by a foreigner. There are companies out here that will manage the renting out of your condo, View Talay being one. Six weeks does not justify buying a condo that you will be using. As to having money to invest, well I am sure your announcement has brought the financial advisors out from beneath the lawyers who live beneath the slime under the stones. I would be a richer man tod

Yeah I know I have used a fair bit of power. I have a large living room and it gets hot in there in the evening when my tilac wheels out the spicy food! I know the rate is fair compared to the west, and of course I can divide total bill by consumption to get an idiots approximation. The 'sliding rate' is probably the reason I cannot figure it out or get a linear correlation. I was just looking to manipulate my consumption to get the best out of the way it is charged, or wondered whether there were various packages, depending on expected usage, like you get on the mobile phones. I

Are you selling an ownership title or is it coming with one of the bogus companies? I.E. is it, and does it, remain one of the 49% that can be non-Thai owned in the building. What is the annual maintenance charge?

And thank you Mr 'Nothing Better to do trying to bump up his posts tally specialising in the bleeding obvious'. You are in the wrong forum, someone here is asking for advice and information.

Received my first electric bill for the house in the Soi Siam Country Club area. I can't figure out the math, I can only read the numbers. My Thai GF can't figure it either. It is straight from the utility. Seems straight forward in parts, bear with me.... . Meter today minus meter previous = 727 units consumed...OK A mystery charge of 1979.94 baht with a 'per' number of 0.0000 A second charge of 621.15 baht, per unit number of 0.8544, that works out correct for 727 units. A 7% tax on these to give my bill of 2783.17 baht for the month...ouch. This mystery charge of 197