jacko

Bloody well done Torrenova. This link explains the mysterious ways of PEA, and how my bill works out. What a great way to tax the rich, electricity costs go up depending on consumption....by 65% per kwh for >400 kwh. If you use less than 5 kwh...it is free! I need to find a neighbour consuming under 150 KWH/month, run a cable from his house and pay his bill along with mine and save money! I have unplugged my water cooler after catching tilac filling pans for cooking with chilled water!

Do you really mean videos? Sony or VHS...... DVD rental places are all over...well VCD, seems to still have a grip.

Just 51, and live up Soi Siam CC about a km. 2000 baht/month would save me a grand...I am interested but GF wants us to buy one. I have a UK trip in 4 weeks and might contact U when I return. Multiple Tourist visa....trip to Cambodia, one entry and 60 more days, cost 2k. Extension for 30 days, save 1 entry but 1900 baht. Visa only has a life of 6 months......as I go back to UK soon I will just get another, cost £25/entry. Border run makes more financial sense......get me some duty free too! Visa Info....thanks to Pattaya Expats Club

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 while. I hope this one will do better than 2 years. 2k/month would cover that. Health Insurance..paying as needed at the moment but am looking into that right now. Looks like 60k p.a will be needed. Unsure whether to get a Thailand based one or a worldwide plan. Some of the other numbers may be high as I 'know what I spend' and would guess that it is a shade less than the 55k pcm I come up with here. Also looking to buy a motorcycle to save on the rental.....depreciation on vehicles here is slow unless you crash it...then it gets fast.

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.......you have to exercise your teeth now and again. Not sure if I am financially challenged, I can live off my interest with this lifestyle, but I sure am getting a Cheap Charlie reputation on this board. Staying in has been easier with the World Cup, she likes to watch a Thai soap, I will play on the computer or read....so an internet link is necessary, as is cable or satellite.

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 be nice some days and beyond our current cooking facilities. I am partial to a Sabu fish, a mackerel. Last time I had one of those it was at one of the Walking Street, over the sea, restaurants....they only had a couple of fish, rather small, so I took both of them. I think it was about 1000 baht for them cooked. Today, one fish of about 14 inch, maybe 1 1/2lbs turned out very well done 'on the barbie in tin foil'. She had bought it at Carrefour...how much.....27 baht. I am quite full and content right now, I will open one of my large bottles of cold beer.....23 baht. When you are older and less demanding of life, you can afford it.

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 when they were real new to the world.

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 happy about this, I wonder if any of his children will benfit from this tax as they did in the 'Oil for Food' Iraq scandal. Governments seem pretty poor at getting monies to the Worlds poorest people, although frequently the privileged few in the worlds poorest countries seem to benefit quite well. I would like to decide where my charity donations go, rather than having the UN or the French government select for me. I suggest a tax of French luxury items, wines, pate and overly fat cheeses would raise more money, and improve the health of the Western world by reducing consumption of these unhealthy products manufactured purely for the gluttonous. Something about introducing taxes, that are benefiting another country seems amiss. Perhaps keep it in-house and instead of cancelling out Angola's debt, how about cancelling out the debt of Eurotunnel? Alternatively raise enough to fill it with concrete.

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 good internet connection read this chap..Lot of crap but some good info

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 with 3000 baht electric bills, they will reduce in the cooler seasons. If you ever see the lunatic spraying water on his roof at 6pm, you might be passing by my place! Water is cheap and plentiful at the moment.

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 prices to home, but if you are on a limited budget consider prices relative to the locale. I would say the main reason for people to retire here is that their money goes further. Anyhow, the way energy prices are going, you may well be giving due consideration to your energy consumption soon, even if polluting Canada and South America is no consideration.

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 today if not for financial advisors Spreading risk is the catch-phrase, so depending how much you will get, can you go to a condo and some investments? These are decisions only you can make, take advice yes, but these guys cannot predict the future either.

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 tried for a few days not to use AC...but June is not the month for it, and I have too much insulation on my midriff! Thanks for the feedback.