jackcorbett

After I bought this condo a large amount of time went by before either I or anybody else was able to get a house book and clear title through the land office. Well.....that has now been finalized. One of the last steps through this process was that each and every one of us had to provide proof through our bank that the funds we used to buy our condos did in fact come from our home countries and not Thailand. When I first bought my condo, the developer recommended that we wire money directly into the developing company's account. I said I'd prefer to wire money from my U.S. bank account directly into a Thai bank account with the Commercial Bank of Siam. Helmut representing the developing company shrugged and said he had no problem with that. Several months ago, Helmut told me my title and house book would soon be finalized through the land office. At the time he was going to the land office on an almost daily basis working through the paperwork for all the condo owners, and he told me I needed to get a statement from the bank that would clearly show the wire transfers as having originated from a U.S. bank. Then he said: "Otherwise we cannot make transfer (of the property). But I couldn't go to just any of Commercial Bank of Siam's branches. I had to go to the one where I originally had set up my account. So I took my bank savings passbook there and asked for transcripts that showed the paper trail of monies going from my U.S. account to my Bank of Siam account. Within minutes I had the statements I needed and these showed the actual transfers from my bank account to a larger bank in the U.S. and from there to the Bank of Siam. And that was that. Other condo owners got the necessary statements sent over from their banks in their home countries. When I asked Helmut about whether or not Thai banks such as Commercial Bank of Siam would have the required paperwork showing wire transfers from foreign accounts to its Western customers accounts, he said they certainly would since it was Thai law that they have them so that their foreign depositors buying condos could take their money back out of Thailand should they ever want to sell their condos and leave the country.

How about a pyramid scheme? Any one of them will do. Proof? Just make a phone call and check it out and they'll tell you about all the people who started with nothing, worked just four hours a day, and became millionaires within four years. Here's a phone number you can try right now to get the scoop from the horse's ass's mouth itself. 1-414-deluded.

Speaking as a farmer who has a farm that raises corn and soybeans we farmers have been forced to sell ahead, oftentimes before being sure there is going to be a crop. Needless to say an awful lot of money is riding on whether these commodities rise or fall and when we sell our grain whether it's the cash crop or on the board of trade. Needless to say there's been a lot of outfits trying to sell various "marketing tools" to help enable us farmers spread our risk due to market fluctuations and in the past 35 years I've not seen a single one of them do any better than the dartboard approach. And none of my farming pals have either. We've seen a few suicides among both farmers and grain elevator owners who's gotten on the wrong side of futures trading. So, with this little bit of knowledge under my belt, I walked out of an expats meeting (which are normally quite good) when the guest speaker got up to sell his get rich quick schemes based on the rise and fall of commodities because as far as I was concerned, the man had nothing to say, nothing of value to offer, and all he wanted to do was to make a living at someone else's expense.

For the past year and a half my bank has been sending me monthly statements to Pattaya. It only takes a week to ten days to get them. I also use Skype to stay in touch with my bank by voice and of course, email. Same with my C.P.A. in the U.S. But in the past few days I found out that my U.S. bank had finally implemented online banking. As for transferring money I have money wired from my U.S. bank to my Thai bank account every three to six months. I use ATM cards, one for my U.S. bank account and one for my Thai bank account. As for my credit card company I get my statements sent to me at my Pattaya address. I don't think I've missed a credit card statement or bank statement. I can also get my credit card statements online. Far as taxes, I use the same version of Quickbooks as my C.P.A. I will shoot my company files onto a server online for him to peel off or email them to him. He will then send me my income tax returns which I will then sign and send in to the state or IRS, usually with checks included in them.

Just prior to my permanently moving to Pattaya I applied for and got my retirement visa at the Chicago Thai Consulate. I simply visited my sister in Chicago staying there for three days. On the third day I went back to the Consulate to get my retirement visa. This consulate was very gracious and cooperative. I needed to prove 1. 800,000 baht in my U.S. bank account, produce the medical certificate, produce the police report I got from the Illinois State Police, fill in the correct forms and that was that. As for the medical certificate, I visited an office manager at the doctor's office. And I just waited for her to come back with the form all filled out by the doctor. Didn't even see him. I renewed (extended) my retirement visa after living in Pattaya for one year. This time I went the "proof of income method". My giflfriend and I took a cab to Bangkok to the American Embassy. We got there before 10 a.m. I paid the 1200 baht to the embassy, got shuffled around a bit and was out of there in less than two hours. I had heard that no proof of income was necessary with the American Embassy but since I believe in Murphy's Law I brought tax returns anyway. The embassy was only interested in getting its money. The gal at the counter merely asked me, "Do you really make this much?" I said that I did and that was enough for her. I could have been a complete pauper and still gotten my retirement visa. When I got to Pattaya Immigration to pay my fees for the retirement visa the immigration officer told me that my letter from the American Embassy attesting to my net income would be valid not only for this year's retirement visa but also for subsequent years until my passport expired.

I went through Ponthep Werachon (038-300-967) when I bought my condo. He's Thai, but his English is excellent. He's the man writing many articles for the newspapers in English about property law here in Thailand so you've probably already seen his picture.

Great pictures Mark. Where did you take most of them?

Just went to Carre Four to TTNT's office. Everyone was unsure of who was supplying the incoming phone line into the condo....TTNT or TOT. If it were TOT TTNT could not give me a line. But afterwards I checked at the condo's office and found that our main line is from TTNT. My girlfriend has told me that TOT is not all that concerned with getting new customers whereas she felt TTNT is. So it looks like we can get a line into my condo without too great a wait and that I might be the guinea pig here.

Here at Wongamat Residence Condos the promised high speed internet connection for every condo owner has proven to be a complete failure. Overall speed is comparable to dialup service while reliability has gone from being unacceptable to an expected complete loss of service nearly every day for at least a couple of hours. However, we are being billed just 130 baht a month, so we are getting exactly what we are paying for–very little for very little cash outlay. Condo management started with TRUE but after completely unsatisfactory results it switched to TOT. Again–our service was terrible. When we could not connect to the Internet I’d go just two hundred meters up the street and get on at the Internet café nearly every time. But since the coming of the high season our service has gotten even worse. I’ve checked both my download and upload internet speeds against what I could get at the Internet cafe’s and found my speed to be at least three or four times slower than what I could get there. But in the evenings my upload speed would be around 12 kps with a download speed of around 50 kps. This on a connection speed promised to condo management of 1000 kps. Even worse at this time there doesn’t seem to be a single day when for a period of at least two hours I have no connection whatsoever. Soon for the first time the condo owners will have a meeting and one of the issues to be discussed is whether or not keep the present arrangement. We can decide for instance to bring a single high speed line into the complex or to cancel our service altogether which would leave each condo owner a choice between having no service or whatever type of service he is willing to pay for. Apparently condo management struck a deal that costs all of us around 7000 baht for internet service but the line is shared between several other buildings. Then the internet signal reaches our reception area where it is sent through each condo owner’s phone line (there are around 60 owners here) and this is how we get the rock bottom price of 130 baht per owner. I am seriously thinking of going to TOT on Monday to order a new phone line with Internet service for either a 256 download speed or 512. My monthly cost will of course be much higher. But hopefully there will be far fewer customers per line. For instance we checked with TTNT at Carre Four where we were promised no more than 10 customers would be placed on each line. But TTNT apparently does not service Naklua whereas TOT does. So what kind of Internet service is everyone else getting and what do you think of my seeking the private arrangement I’m considering?

Obviously there is a reason I posed the question about the school bus accident that Thursday North of Chiang Rai. It involved my live in girl friend. A phone call comes in from the Chiang Rai area around 7 p.m. It is from my gf's parents. Her little girl is in the hospital and has not been discharged. Next day my gf goes to Chiang Rai. As of 7 p.m. the night of the accident the little girl seemed seriously injured. Temporarily on a respirator. Possible glass in her eye from sitting at a window on the school bus. Later that night my gf gets call from her father that perhaps it is not all that bad. Girl is asleep. Main doctor had left before seeing the girl. He will check on her the next day. Anyway.....the next day my gf finds out at the hospital that everything is under control. Naturally I am suspicious.

What supposedly occurred is a bus carrying a bunch of factory workers ran a light after which it collided with a school bus. Two children died on the spot and two died in the hospital within hours of the accident. The accident occurred North of Chiang Rai on Thursday around 3:30 p.m. This might have been on the news or perhaps someone here has heard about the accident.

The person wanting a place to stay in Jomtien will be here in one week upon which he intends to stay two months. He is wanting to stay in Jomtien, preferably down by the ocean and wants a place with a swimming pool. He's looking for something in the 15000 baht per month range.

I'll go over in the next day or so to take another look at Nova Mirage. There is of course, the first building where Tommy has his Nova Mirage Restaurant where there's damn good coffee, terrific bread, real bacon, etc and I think this is what you are referring to. I'm not sure you are aware of two new buildings simultaneously going up behind this first building. Then there's that open space on the other side of Park Beach condo. I think there will be some building going up there soon. Then there are the back areas. For instance there are a couple of streets that extend towards Naklua Road East of the Long Beach Hotel, Skybeach, Northpoint, etc. All sorts of stuff going up there. And then in the general region of the Temple of Truth North and East of Nova Mirage there's condo building going up there. This area is starting to flesh out fast and there's going to be a fair number of people living here with needs for good shopping, restaurants and all kinds of other service businesses.

Update on Northpoint condos----My gf and I walked over to Northpoint down the Beach and we took a tour of the place. There are display condos here already and these displays are very nicely done. There are going to be two towers, the North Tower and the South Tower. One will be 46 stories high, the other 54. Very closeby are the Skybeach condos which are over 40 stories high. If one were to walk North along the beach from the site of Northpoint there is the Park Beach condo building at 30 stories and a third sister complex just a bit further North at about the same height. But if one were to walk South from Northpoint presently under construction there is a new View Talay project in which they are working hard well into the night. This place will be ready for occupancy within one year. Other projects are springing up here at Wongamat Beach. The real mystery card is a very large expanse of land about a quarter of a mile South of Northpoint, and something very big is going to happen there. I have heard rumors of a Big C or Carrefour type of shopping center. While at Northpoint yesterday I learned that this large property is owned by the same company that is building Northpoint so I think we can expect something really big to happen here. Prices for the Northpoint condos start at 4.5 million baht and this is for just a 52 square meter efficiency. When you stand in front of Northpoint facing Pattaya Bay the view is stunning, easily equal to anything I've seen in Phukett or Ko Samui. Barring some form of economic catastrophe, the handwriting on the wall is as clear as a bell for Wongamat Beach. It is going to be the place to live and it is going to become increasingly costly to do so. Already I'm seeing a lot more foot traffic near my condo along with more and more cars and motorbikes, easily double that of what I saw not much more than a year ago. Also, more and more restaurants. One more thing......30 percent of Northpoint is already sold out and it's not going to be ready to move into for three years. Also.....I have just found out there are six units that have become available here at Wongamat Residence. I believe a handful of owners are trying to snap up a nice short term profit. Still.....these units represent good solid value in my opinion but you have to walk 150 meters to the beach to enjoy it.

Will do.

When I try to post a reply to the hotel reviews section all I get is a black screen that appears to be the background for this topic area and I am stopped right then and there. A friend of mine brought this problem to my attention as he could not add comments I tried to help him out and now I am encoutering the same problem....but only in the hotel reviews section as all other topic areas are working fine.

I used to run into young marines quite often at a place called Big Daddy's Cabaret in Missouri. This is a strip club several miles from Fort Leanard Wood, a U.S. military base engaged in further training U.S. servicemen once they had gone through basic training camp. Because of the night club's proximity to Fort Leonard Wood, its clientelle was overwhelmingly military. At that time I used to do a lot of photography in strip clubs because I was writing for several adult magazines. The name of the game is always to get the best pictures possible and this meant running all around the club in order to get the best angles of the grils on stage, jumping in front of customers viewing the club action, tripping over the feet of customers sitting at their tables, etc. In other clubs I'd often run into drunken customers who'd get angry at photographers who were "supposedly getting in their way", but this NEVER NEVER happened at Big Daddy's. Paradoxically the young U.S. servicemen in the crowd were the most vocal and boisterous group of customers I'd ever seen in a strip club, but at the same time they were very polite. And out of all of them I liked the U.S. Marines the best. They exhibited the most esprit de cours of the various U.S. services represented there. They seemed to be very proud of being Marines believing themselves to be an elite, but they were not overbearing about it. They also were more fun to be around and were in general much more loquacious than the servicemen from other branches of the U.S. Armed Services. Because of my experiences over at Big Daddys and what I've later read about the U.S. Marines IF I HAD TO DO IT OVER again (I never served in the U.S. military) and if I were to enter the U.S. Armed Services I'd choose the Marine Corps hands down over all the other U.S. services.

One year ago last April, I bought a condo here at Wongamat Beach for 27,381 baht per square meter. The place, Wongamat Residence is just one half a kilo from Northpoint so I often get a good look at the work in progress at this new development. Seems like everything is appreciably higher now than when I made this investment. As to investing in a car to get around here, that choice would be up to you. I get by just fine with a Yamaha Nuevo automatic that I paid around $1400 U.S. for. Most guys living at Wongamat Residence drive bikes although some have opted for cars to escape the danger zone. The neighborhood here is more upscale than Central Pattaya. I will often joke with my girlfriend or pals...."Let's go to Phukett, or Ko Samui or (wherever)" and then we will go go down to the Long Beach Hotel's beach to lie around in the sun or swim in its pool or ocean. Consider that the Long Beach is a four star hotel with all the amenities my comment that we only have to walk 200 meters to get the glamorous resort feel is pretty much spot on.

There's a new fly in the ointment. For two days all internet connections here have been down. But thanks to my pal who just got here from the U.S. we've found the most recent culprits have not been TOT but at least two Westerners living in the condos here at Wongamat Residence. Here's what has happened. My ip address should be automatically changed but it should always be in a range that goes like this. 10.0.0.10. But we've found that the ip address on both my wireless connection with the laptop and the desktop that is connected directly to the wall has been assigned an ip address that begins with 92. Turns out that one resident has a Belkin device that he has plugged in the wrong way to that it feeds ip addresses to the other residents that guarantee they can never connect to the Internet. We have identified this person as Belkin, but we have now identified still another resident as Linksys. So there are at least two guys who are plugging in their routers or access points into their Lan jacks from the wrong jacks on their machines. There is a temporary fix to this problem...until we can find the culprits that is. The fix is to go to the MS Dos prompt and type in ipconfig /release This sets the ip address to 0.0.0.0 The next step is to type in at the MS Dos prompt ipconfig/ renew It might take several attempts but what this does is to set the ip address to where it should be with a number starting with 10.

Dotcom.....I hear you loud and clear. I am presently on my laptop. Friend of mine on the desktop and I am using a wireless connection but I have a wireless access point plugged into a jack. Works fine for a second computer here but I agree, best to rely on the tested proven hard wired setup and keep the laptop and wireless just for the home network which probably does lose some speed for the laptop.

I have a Yamaha Nouvo which I like very much. As most here already know it is fully automatic and it has a long life drive belt instead of a chain. It seemed to have this market segment all to itself but now Honda has introduced the Honda Click and the Honda Air Blade. Whereas the Nouvo has a 115 cc. air cooled engine, the other two machines have 110 cc's. Like the Nouvo the Click and Airblade are fully auto with drive belts but they are water cooled unlike the air cooled Nouvo. I've heard the horsepower is the same but I've also heard the two Honda entries have more horsepower since they are water cooled. The Airblade also has much longer travel shocks than the Nouvo so it might ride better. However, the aircooled setup of the Nouvo is simpler with less to go wrong. The Click is smaller than the Nouvo and Air Blade and it has smaller wheels which means less stability at speed. But it is more easily managed than a bigger bike by small Thai females. It runs 45,000 baht to the Nouvos 53,000 baht and about the same for the Air Blade. So what are everyone's thoughts on the bikes I've mentioned?

Finally.....back online. And TOT is finally sending someone over, tomorrow....Shows how much this company is concerned with customer service. Talked with Helmut today who is the ramrod getting this condo done. He said Wongamat Residence started with TRUE, which was really bad. He said a few other things I will not repeat here but it had something to do with being cheated. I agree that we all need to stick together to give ourselves a little clout. By the way, an English pal of mine turned me onto a man I had met a few times before. A Dutchman who owns the first bar on the South side of Soi Six. Anyway, he's pretty savvy about the Internet in Pattaya so I went to his bar tonight and asked about wireless. He felt it was worth looking into as did my English pal. Anyone know anything about it? I understand one can look into it at Tuccom on South Pattaya Road.

I just came back from the U.S. TOT connection down for nine more days. tot At 2nd Internet cafe with no proxy. My theory is TOT must keep Internet cafes going as they are businesses but they give the shaft to residents of condos figuring condo owners have more money than brains. I have a test and would appreciate help from as many of you as possible. Try going to http://www.alphapro.com//YaBB.pl and see if you can get in as I have disallowed proxy access This will determine if your residence connection goes through a proxy or not. Then, please message me if you can get in or not. Very possibly someone is using proxies for residential customers and money is being made thru screwing the customer. I will keep disallowing access through proxy servers for two days I might be onto something. We need ammunition to take to someone high up with TOT

About ten days ago, for five days out of seven, I was completely unable to send out anything on the Internet, including e-mail. Then someone came out from TOT who downloaded a file that changed configuration settings and voila I could now makes.changes to my web site, send emails, etc but my renewed ability to actually accomplish something online must have lasted for 2 days tops. I had to go to the U.S. for a week. BUt I've been calling my Thai girlfriend back at the condo who tells me we've not had internet access for five days now. So for the past two weeks we've been doing without internet access more often than we've had it. ONe thing I've noticed however and that's for some reason Tot has our condo going through a proxy. I checked the computers at Sktyop INternet cafe and although it also uses TOT it does not go through a proxy. WE are thinking the proxy is dropping packets or not doing its job and this could be the main culprit. ANyone has any ideas on the subject?

Alan.....the owner of the Pattaya International Hospital was sitting next to me that day he spoke at the expats meeting. I found what he said to be ambiguous on this subject. I might be wrong, but the way I took it, was he meant his statement about Pattaya's water to be tongue in cheek......that is, a lot of the water being sold as "pure water" is just as pure as Pattaya's City Water (meaning he's sure some of it no more than Pattaya's City water which obviously is unpure).