redwood13

Hours are 11:00-22:00 and as "Anfield" said, it's inside Top's at the entrance nearest Beach Rd. -redwood

Just a caution - be sure you know what you're getting for your money Friend rented an apt. on Soi 4 but - for whatever reason - did not realize that he'd have to buy sheets, towels, duvet, fan, waste basket etc, etc, for his stay -redwood

Posted yesterday on thaivisa a guy does as you describe. He deposits a check drawn on his US credit union into his Thai account and is given a receipt. He says that this has been acceptable to Immigration officials where he lives. Total cost: 203 baht See posts #10 & 13. http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?sh...105702&st=0 -redwood

Some sort of statement of entitlement for X dollars per month issued by the military at your retirement should be satisfactory. The US Embassy only requires you to affirm that you receive a monthly amount from the US Government and/or other sources. They don't require you to show any evidence of the amount you claim to receive. The British Embassy does require documentation. However there have been reports on thaivisa that at least in the case of Bangkok Immigration there have been demands to see financial documentation to satisfy the requirements for retirement. This has been for all passport holders not just Americans. I've seen nothing about any such policy at Pattaya Immigration. You don't of course have to actually bring the equivalent of 65K baht into Thailand each month. -redwood

".........Foreigners may not generally own land in Thailand....................The right to own land is not included in the Treaty. Thus Americans are in the same position as others foreigners in relation to land ownership." http://www.bia.co.th/006.html -redwood

What I think most retired Americans do here is transfer funds from their US bank account into a Thai bank saving account, (I use Bank of Thailand) using a repetitive wire transfer agreement. This agreement has to be initiated in the US. I request transfer by a telephone call to the US using a security code. I believe some US banks will process the transfer using the Internet but mine will not - this is once the agreement is in place. Dollars are transferred and then changed into baht, as you have a baht account, in Thailand which gives the preferred rate of exchange. You can then access funds using the ATM card issued on opening the account. I'm told you can deposit foreign bank checks into your Thai account but it may take several weeks for the funds to be available. And as Alan pointed out you wouldn't have proof as to the source of such funds. With a retirement visa you don't want Immigration to have any suspicion that you're working in Thailand. When you apply for an extension of stay after your first year here they will want to see a letter from your Thai bank stating your account balance and also your bank book showing the same balance. They may also examine the bank book to see what sort of activity your account here has had. Funds sent by wire transfer will be coded in your bank book indicating foreign origin. -redwood

A single entry N-I O Visa is only valid for a stay of 90 days. The reason you need a N-I O visa is because what you're going to be doing is requesting that Thai Immigration extend that visa to a full year. And you'll be requesting that they do this on the basis that you meet their qualifications for retirement. That is, formally speaking there is no such thing as a "retirement visa", even though most all of us use that term. Similarly there's no "marriage visa" - your extension is based on supporting a Thai - in this case a wife. From what I've read on thaivisa.com I very much doubt that you'll be able to get an O Visa from the Thai Embassy in Manila. You can still (I say "still" because there was some word on thaivisa.com that this would be for a limited time only) get a Tourist Visa changed to an O in Bangkok and likely in Pattaya as well. As Emil has indicated they can do this immediately or they may ask you to return 3 or 4 weeks prior to the expiration of the "admitted until" date of your Tourist Visa. As Pete has said you'll need the 65k pension/income as certified by Embassy letter. Also there have been reports that at least at Bangkok Immigration they may want to see supporting documentation for the Embassy letter in the form of pension slips, tax records, etc. I haven't heard anything about Pattaya Immigration asking for this. You will also have to have a local bank account and provide passbook/copies and bank letter of deposit balance as that is a general requirement. If you're qualifying based on pension/income then the amount in the account should not be material except it match the bank letter. -redwood

"Apart from the purchase price of your property, the following fees will also have to be paid. In most cases, the seller will pay, but sometimes the seller will ask the buyer to share the costs or pay them all, depending on the final cost negotiated." Property business tax = 3.3%. Transfer fees = 2% Stamp duty of 0.5% The above is from http://www.mlsasiapacific.com/thailand-property-fees.php Also see http://www.siam-legal.com/land/taxes_Buying.html -redwood

Seems to me if you don't have a foreign currency account with SCB then the funds would be deposited into your Thai baht account. To me the most conservative thing to do would be to put the money into your Western bank account and then once you're in Thailand and ready to buy the condo SWIFT the foreign currency into your SCB Thai account. -redwood

"For DStv and CAtv (Digital) subscribers, UBC-True will temporarily suspend our signal during 01:00 to 06:00 on 16 January 2007 (the night of Monday 15 January) in order to process a re-numbering of our channels. During the aforementioned hours, no viewing of UBC programs will be possible." http://www.ubctv.com/eng/channelrelocation.aspx -redwood

I believe I’ve seen something on thaivisa that indicates some guys do use direct deposit in a Thai bank for their SS benefits. I wouldn’t do it. For one thing, as you’ve seen from what happened last Monday, you simply never know what the Thais might do in the future re currency controls. I have my check deposited into a bank in California and using a repetitive wire transfer agreement I send money over by SWIFT every few months. Re Medicare I’ll take this opportunity to add to the discussion. I declined to enroll in Part B when I initially signed on for Social Security benefits and was self-insured on moving to Thailand as my age and pre-existing conditions (high blood pressure) precluded my obtaining health insurance here. That worked ok until last January when I had an episode of tachycardia. Went to Bumrungrad and had a workup done. I had an echocardiogram and also a stress test. Given the results of those tests they wanted to do an angiogram which was priced at around 45K baht. I was fine with that, but there was also the possibility of my having to have an angioplasty procedure done depending on the angiogram findings. This is expensive and even more so if stents, which are priced in the neighborhood of 100,000-200,000 baht each, are needed. And of course any complications would really run up the total. Meanwhile I was symptom free after starting on a new medicine (Tenormin + the Enaril I’d been taking) with no recurrence of the tachycardia and at no time did I have any chest pain. My lipids are within normal limits, but there is some history of cardiovascular disease in my family. So, I decided to enroll for Part B of Medicare. There is a limited enrollment period from 1 Jan. until 31 Mar. each year. Fortunately for me I was in that time frame, however coverage doesn’t start until 1 July. So I now pay $88 per month for part B coverage instead of the $55 I would have paid initially. My cardiologist and I decided I could wait until July to have the angiogram done and that I would have it done in the US. As you know, unlike Thailand, in the US you can’t simply walk in to a clinic and be seen within a few minutes. I had made an appointment for an initial visit with a cardiologist in April for July and the earliest I could be seen was late in that month. As expected I had to have the stress test and echocardiogram repeated and that was 10 days following the cardiologist appointment. About a week later I had the angiogram done. Results were normal. It was done the University of California Davis Med Center which is in Sacramento. Procedure is essentially painless and the only hard part is lying almost flat on your back for about 6 hours following surgery. I worked in heath care for most of my life and I have nothing but good things to say about the care I received both in the hospital and as an outpatient. Per the doctor’s instructions I waited about a week before returning to Thailand. Costs? I think I’ve received and paid most of the medical bills and the total out of my pocket is about US$1,500. Additional were the travel costs and high expenses of living in California for 6 weeks and some personal shopping. No rent, as I stayed at my daughter’s house, but I’d sometimes do some grocery shopping and the total at a super market is pretty stunning. And a big benefit was getting to know my 18 month old grandson. -redwood

Here's a thread from another board re Rates to Go and the Bella Villa: Bella Villa Pattaya Problems -redwood

You'll have to be in Thailand to open a bank account here. Don't know how it works with Canadian banks, but in the US to send money by SWIFT you'd need to set up a wire transfer agreement with your US bank. In my case it's a "repetitive wire transfer agreement" which allows me to initiate the transfer of money from my US account to my Bangkok Bank account. ("repetitive" in that the agreement is valid for 10 years.) I telephone a number in the US and give them instructions re the amount, the currency I want sent - always US dollars, not baht - and my code number. Money arrives here in 12-16 hours and Bangkok Bank then converts the dollars to baht at the going rate. What I think you should investigate doing is setting up a SWIFT transfer agreement with your Canadian bank and when you arrive back in Thailand open a bank account here. You'll have to make arrangements with your Canadian bank to complete the SWIFT agreement once you have your Thai bank information - name, address, account number, SWIFT code, etc. Once the above is done transfer the required amount of money into your Thai bank account with the notation that the money being transferred is for the purchase of a condominium. You can then request that your bank issue you an FET Form (Foreign Exchange Transaction Form) to take to the Land Office. -redwood

The bar/restaurant facing Beach Road is officially named the Beach Cafe I believe, but is called "Charlie's" by the locals mainly because it's owned by a Thai-Chinese scamster named Charlie - duh! He owns the building (inherited from his deceased father) which runs from Beach Road back to the money changer next to the Mandarin. The Stone Oven, whose menu items are available at Charlie's in addition to its own space on Soi 6, is owned by a Danish guy who leases the space from Charlie. Charlie's also has its own separate menu with Thai and farang offerings. Thai food is ok as is the Club Sandwich Going up Soi 6 from Beach Road is newly remodeled "Thumbs Up" which is on the same side of the soi as the Sportsman and further up also on the right is the "Derbyshire" which also has Thai food. Since the street is dark by 01:00 (with a couple of exceptions) most of the kitchens are closed no later than 23:00. -redwood

If I request by telephone a SWIFT transfer from my Wells Fargo account in the USA to my Bangkok Bank account around midnight the money is available that afternoon. -redwood

As of a month ago per the folks at reception - book a double and a "guest" is ok. 1000 baht will be added to your bill. -redwood

The 85K exclusion refers to foreign earned income. -redwood

Yes, Stone Oven. Looks like it's closed. Good pizza I'm told - but probably a poor location. -redwood

This customs job requires extra fortitude Agents fighting a cyber war on internationally trafficked child porn must wade through the images in building cases against makers or users. By H.G. Reza - Times Staff Writer November 7, 2006 Jorge Guzman looked at the photograph of the Asian girl with concern and revulsion. The child looked about 8 years old. Her arms were tied together, and so were her legs, and a man was having sex with her. "There are some things in this world that are not meant to be seen," Guzman said. "This was one of them." Guzman makes his living looking at photographs like this, trolling the gutter of child pornography in cyberspace. He heads a computer forensics team of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, based in downtown Long Beach, who track creators and consumers of child pornography trafficked internationally on the Internet. Working in a cramped lab with sophisticated electronic equipment and computers seized from suspected pedophiles, agents look for evidence by dissecting a computer's hard drive like a medical examiner performing an autopsy. Guzman has seen hundreds of images of children used by adults for sexual gratification, but this one stunned him like no other. Seeing a prepubescent girl having sex with a grown man was bothersome enough. It was the smile on her face that haunted him. There was no way she could have been enjoying the degradation, he said. Did she realize she was being used to satisfy someone's sick fantasy? Was she told to smile? Was it a nervous smile? He will never know. Since launching Operation Predator in July 2003, which established Guzman's team and about two dozen others across the country, ICE agents have arrested more than 9,000 people suspected of accessing child porn, including 2,000 in California. Guzman's team has played a role in hundreds of cases nationwide, and dozens more are under investigation. The team also assists local law enforcement. Assistant U.S. Atty. Anne Gannon in Santa Ana said evidence gathered by the forensics team was so damning that few cases went to trial. Every one of the 20 child exploitation cases she has prosecuted has resulted in guilty pleas, she said. "Their use of technology and cooperation with local law enforcement agencies has been hugely successful in identifying and jailing persons who are the greatest threat of exploiting children," Gannon said. Before computers and the Internet, most child pornography was collected from photos and magazines smuggled into the country. Customs agents worked at the major postal distribution stations screening suspicious mail from countries known to produce kiddie porn. Today, computers make child pornography available on demand, mostly from distributors in Eastern Europe and Asia, Guzman said. Although computers make it easier for pedophiles to satisfy their sexual fantasies, they also make it easier for investigators to identify and prosecute them. "If you think you're not going to be discovered, you're wrong," Guzman said. "The minute you make a couple of keystrokes, you have an Internet address, and you've left a trail for us to follow." ICE agents have also begun collecting evidence from cellphones and iPods, Guzman said. Jennifer Corbet, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said forensics investigators help establish suspects' intent, making it impossible for them to claim they accidentally accessed a child porn site. "They can show it was the suspect who typed in 'child porn' [to a search engine] or downloaded pictures to a file labeled 'Young Boys,' " Corbet said. ICE investigations are not limited to cases in the U.S., Guzman said. ICE has agents in 46 U.S. attaché offices abroad working with law enforcement in those countries to identify child pornographers, he said. Americans who create child pornography in foreign countries are also violating U.S. laws. Recent changes in child protection laws also allow the prosecution in U.S. courts of Americans who leave the country to have sex with children. Almost all of the predators targeted by ICE are men, but investigators are seeing more images of women molesting children, agents said. ICE Agent David A. Melvin has been tracking creators and consumers of child pornography through the hard drives from their computers since the inception of the team. In 2005 he performed 195 forensics examinations, some involving multiple hard drives from a single computer. The job can be gut-wrenching, he said, especially when looking at the faces of nameless victims, some of them babies, whose photographs are powerful evidence against an accused maker or consumer of the porn. Few victims are ever identified. "I've been physically ill," Melvin said. "You come upon certain images that are so disgusting and upsetting you have to walk away to compose yourself." Melvin's job is to prove that a suspect has downloaded the illegal files to his computer. He begins an examination by taking out a hard drive and screening its contents for evidence. Taking care not to damage or contaminate the hard drive, Melvin uses forensic software to make a duplicate of the hard drive's contents, from which the evidence is extracted. Melvin says looking at child porn is "a sick fantasy" pursued by people who know it is wrong but cannot make themselves stop. His job is to stop them. "Every child out there deserves the love and protection that my children have at home. That's why I do this." Still, it is impossible to become immunized to the debasing images of children that an investigator like him sees on an almost daily basis. "You have to have a valve. You've got to be able to talk about it in order to deal with it," Melvin said. "Sometimes I go home and tell my wife I saw the worst thing I ever saw." http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ic...1,4388577.story -redwood

The consensus on the thaivisa board is that nobody knows. However after 1 Jan. we'll start to see folks who have been in Thailand for 90 days try to get additional days via border runs or by applying for 60 day tourist visas or whatever other means they can think of and only then will we know how Immigration is going to deal with all this. -redwood

Your mileage is likely to vary given the wide range of experiences on this recent thaivisa thread on the subject of internet banking. Internet Banking Thread -redwood

Per thaivisa it seems they're once again sometimes, maybe wanting to have a look at your boarding pass, either as you leave the aircraft or as you stop at Immigration - so hang on to it. -redwood

I'd apply at the Honorary Consulate in Houston. Last I heard they were issuing double entry tourist visas and are generally very user friendly. ROYAL THAI CONSULATE-GENERAL 600 Travis, Ste. 2800 HOUSTON, TX 77002-3940 Tel : (713) 229-0636 Fax : (713) 228-1303 E-mail : jrichardson@tindallfoster.com Honorary Consul-General, Mr. Charles C. Foster -redwood

The requirements for obtaining an extension of an O visa on the basis of supporting a Thai wife have changed as of 1 Oct. 2006. You now have to have a letter from your embassy (as per the extension for a retirement visa) confirming that you have an income/pension of at least 40,000 baht per month. You cannot use money in a Thai bank account nor a combination of income/pension plus money in a bank account to qualify. The 40,000 baht monthly income can be the combined income of both spouses. Anyone who's had such extensions prior to 1 Oct. can continue using money in the bank or a combination of money in the bank and income to satisfy the requirements. My experience on obtaining an extension of my retirement visa was that Immigration wants to see an active Thai bank account. In my case I use a combination of money in the bank and monthly income. Last year they went through my bank book line by line and checked to see that money was coming in on a regular basis and also looked at my withdrawls. In the case of selling your condo the Tor Tor Sam, now called Foreign Exchange Transaction Form, should be evidence of your having initially brought in foreign currency from outside Thailand and I'd think that would be so noted when you re-deposit it into a Thai bank. -redwood

Suggest you do a search on thaivisa.com as there have been several threads there re various educational options in the Pattaya area. -redwood