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Are you not going to have a SIM card?
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Sep 2, 2017 02:43
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google maps, strangely enough
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Sep 2, 2017 03:19
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staguar posted:I'm going to Thailand for two weeks and thought I'd download the Google map of Bangkok for offline use on my phone, however, it says it's not available for download. What do y'all use for navigating the city?
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Sep 2, 2017 03:29
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If google maps doesn't work for some reason you can use maps.me for offline maps. The better advice would be to make sure your phone is on the right band, or get a quad band phone (usually marketed as an international model) and get a $5 sim as soon as you get to Thailand.
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Sep 2, 2017 06:49
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Today I saw a white dude walking around a shopping mall with his 80 gallon backpack and conical hat with a sign trying to exchange 2000 baht's worth of money. I guess it's a step up from just begging for money, but seriously just go to a bank. That's why they're there!
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Sep 2, 2017 07:10
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ReindeerF posted:Learn the BTS, MRT and ARL - then every temple name, market name, bridge name and major intersection name and the words for left and right. You are now more functional than mostly any native Bangkokian in navigating Bangkok. Navigate away! Also HERE maps (HERE WeGo is their stupid app name) is amazing in offline mode. The offline gps navigation worked quite well.
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Sep 2, 2017 10:36
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Oh and apparently some BTS stations now even have public toilets. They're only open during morning and evening commute though.
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Sep 2, 2017 11:25
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staguar posted:I'm going to Thailand for two weeks and thought I'd download the Google map of Bangkok for offline use on my phone, however, it says it's not available for download. What do y'all use for navigating the city? Buy a SIM at the airport when you arrive for like 100 baht, it'll come with a Gig of data or something and is easy to top up at any 7/11 if you need more
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Sep 2, 2017 18:25
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Atlas Hugged posted:Today I saw a white dude walking around a shopping mall with his 80 gallon backpack and conical hat with a sign trying to exchange 2000 baht's worth of money. I guess it's a step up from just begging for money, but seriously just go to a bank. That's why they're there! Talking of possible scams, I had a phone call today from some Australian dude who claimed to be working for Kasikorn bank. He knew my full name, phone number (obviously) and the branch where I originally opened my account. He said that someone with an Iranian passport had tried to open an account under that name today, and wanted to know was I Iranian? (My name is very obviously not Iranian.) He told me that Iranians apparently can't open bank accounts in Thailand, so I would need to tell him what my actual nationality was. When I asked him 'What, so you expect me to believe that Kasikorn is now hiring Aussies to work in their call centers?' and he was like 'Well yeah mate, they can't talk any English can they?'  Anyway, I hung up, but how the gently caress does this dude have all this info? I can only think that someone working in that Branch has stolen a bunch of account info and sold it to a group of scammers or something.
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Sep 2, 2017 18:33
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Nationality seems too easy to get for a call, I bet it was the opener for a bigger question down the line like getting you to reveal DOB or asking for your password to reset or something. I wouldn't be at all surprised that the financial institutions here are leaky as gently caress. If a Thai person calls in and asks about a foreigner at all kinds of places (hotels, phone companies, hospitals, airlines, etc), a pretty good amount of the time they can get plenty of relatively secure info about stuff because of take care. I've used that trick to help friends and work-people before (under permission-based circumstances, heh), and tested it on a bank once with alarming results. I always end up amazed that it still works in 2017. This country is a social engineering wonderland/nightmare waiting to happen. Many people don't follow any rules or protocols reliably, there's no general sense of privacy about anything and everyone wants to take care. Major foreign brands seem to be locked down tighter, so you can't ring up like the Hilton and get much, but QC on security is pretty tough when you're talking about something like a local bank with hundreds of branches nationwide employing god knows how many thousands of people, a non-zero percentage of whom aren't the best and brightest in my experience. A data dump large enough to spur a boiler room campaign, though, yeah, must have been a leak from IT or something. Comforting. On a barely related note, an older foreigner I knew who had a very established hotel in Chiang Mai, had been married to a very nice Thai woman for years and who was a slightly crusty, but very erudite and honest guy, had a bank branch manager steal hundreds of thousands of Baht out of his account a decade or so back. Guy had means, they ran an international charity to support a local wat school, his wife was well-regarded in the community, etc, etc. Police basically deep-sixed the complaint, refused to do anything and he never got any of it back. The end. Mai bpen rai na ka. Also, completely unrelated, but I was in the province a couple of weeks ago and got hit with a 25 Baht out-of-province fee during a withdrawal. Thai banks charging a fee for out-of-province transactions is the "American landline telcos still have long distance???" of Thailand. poo poo blows my mind. When I had a KTB account for a while I even had trouble using the card in other provinces sometimes, but KTB and OmSen and the old line banks are a bit of a special :clownshoes: case. The latter problem wouldn't happen with SCB or KBank, etc. ReindeerF fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Sep 2, 2017 |
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Sep 2, 2017 23:17
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ReindeerF posted:On a barely related note, an older foreigner I knew who had a very established hotel in Chiang Mai, had been married to a very nice Thai woman for years and who was a slightly crusty, but very erudite and honest guy, had a bank branch manager steal hundreds of thousands of Baht out of his account a decade or so back. Guy had means, they ran an international charity to support a local wat school, his wife was well-regarded in the community, etc, etc. Police basically deep-sixed the complaint, refused to do anything and he never got any of it back. The end. Mai bpen rai na ka. Yeah, poo poo like this is why, paranoid or not, I keep all my money back home and just keep month to month living expenses over here. It means I have to go to Savannakhet once every 18 months or so to get a new visa instead of extending at Immigration, but that's not exactly a huge burden, and Transferwise is cheap.
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Sep 3, 2017 04:24
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Should have just used like Chase Bank or something for his money. Some Western bank
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Sep 3, 2017 04:38
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He did, yeah. He was a retired guy with a good amount of real money in his UK banks. This was the collective business money and odds and ends from over here. Retirement visa, you have to have 400K (married) in the bank, so I'm assuming he just left it all in there for the annual statements along with whatever else he dropped in over time. I believe the figure stolen was around 900,000, which isn't tiny, but you can weather if you have plenty of cash somewhere else and a pension. Still, not much fun.Bardeh posted:Yeah, poo poo like this is why, paranoid or not, I keep all my money back home and just keep month to month living expenses over here. It means I have to go to Savannakhet once every 18 months or so to get a new visa instead of extending at Immigration, but that's not exactly a huge burden, and Transferwise is cheap. ReindeerF fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Sep 3, 2017 |
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Sep 3, 2017 06:27
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ReindeerF posted:there are several economic bubbles floating pretty high here at the moment and I think they're going to pop each other in the next 5 years. When they do, it's not going to be 1997, but the state of the union is not strong, heh. I want as little money in this currency as possible (but definitely want to be doing business here - it'll be a great time for the industries we work with, which rely on tourism and exports). I dont have any hard data (although I'm sure it exists) but the level of consumer debt in Thailand has to be insane. So many new houses, new cars - where does the money for all this come from? Salaries are getting better, but they still aren't that high, and the credit seems extraordinarily easy to get.
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Sep 3, 2017 10:11
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Yeah, it's a number of things, with the introduction of revolving debt being a big one. We're in the sweetheart period still where most people can just get a credit card. I'm talking out of my rear end here, but last I checked the statistics, household debt had gone from like 12% when I got here up to something like 78%. Can't recall the exact numbers. That was a few years ago. Credit cards, first-time homebuyer schemes, first-time car-buyer schemes, rice farmer credit, rubber farmer credit - it goes on and on. That doesn't even get into the number of empty condos and office buildings that are financed on debt. Then there's the SET, which is a house of cards built atop companies double-dealing from traditional Chinese multiple sets of books. There are plenty of good fundamentals in the Thai economy, but it's sort of like the housing bubble in America in that no one wants to call bullshit on the obvious bad indicators. Real wages haven't grown that much, manufacturers are pulling out left and right, there was a huge boondoggle with ag exports after the rice scheme and the word is the military government has drained a significant amount of its coffers doing the kind of dumb things military governments usually do. I know for certain about a number of loan guarantee programs and things designed to spur economic growth that have been taken heavy advantage of. I don't think there's like a 1997 level crash coming, but even in growth industries there are huge bubbles that are only just being talked about publicly - and this is a country that's never faced a bear market before writ large, which it may be about to. Wouldn't shock me to see Thailand make short selling illegal for the same reason libel, slander, personal defamation and business defamation and lese majeste are so aggressive, heh. Thailand don't like bad news.
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Sep 3, 2017 16:44
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I think the greedy moneyed elites of the world have done SEA and Thailand a big time favor by removing them from the list of emerging economies to throw billions at for their own short-to-medium-term gain. Now it's Brazil, Eastern Europe, Russia etc. in the crosshairs. Instead of a big time crash, we'll just see slower than expected growth and an OK but not exceptional stock market. Is that a bad thing? Probably not, but then again at least they aren't really standing on the edge of the precipice like Singapore.
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Sep 4, 2017 17:42
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That presupposes that Thailand can't finance its own worldwide debacle, which it proved in 1997 it could. It's a very wealthy country and somewhere around the 25th largest economy in the world. 1997 happened for a lot of reasons, but the thing that blew it up was the BOT using reserves to maintain the pegged 25:1 currency against traders after floating it while they were in a huge bubble. Since then, the BOT basically went and copied Singapore and Malaysia (who didn't get caught up in it) and stopped being political tools, at least in theory. The word was they were untouchable. Not sure if that holds under the junta. The problem now is that it's still a huge regional economy, so while I totally agree that these other economies are the darlings of FDI, Thailand still has a huge systemic effect (as was proved during the floods) on manufacturing and agriculture. Thing is, you're sort of right. It won't blow up the rest of the world. The SET and the real estate bubble and the rest of it implode and it'll just make the Baht cheaper, but there's a huge degree invisible to wealthy Western muckety mucks to which Thailand props up regional Mekong economies and itself. If things go tits up this time, the Burmese all go home to a rebuilding country ten years on, the Cambodians go home to a rebuilding economy twenty years on, the Vietnamese go home to a rebuilding economy 20 years on and so on - while Japanese factories are pulling out left and right, American multinationals are cutting jobs left and right, European multinationals like Unilever are decamping (or have decamped) to Singapore and so on. You're looking at a strategic regional anchor with no money in the bank, no political credibility, an inept workforce no longer able to rely on cheap foreign labor (this is something not understood - Thai manufacturing and service is hugely propped up by regional labor for reasons I won't write here) that is ripe for the picking - and it's going grey. I agree that it won't collapse entirely. What will happen to slow things is already happening in ways foreigners don't know about, but it will speed up. What is worth pondering is whether there will be racial blowback in Thailand based on what's happening as there has been in other parts of SE Asia. EDIT: Like I say, good time to sit tight and wait. This place is going to be a dollar store in a few years. ReindeerF fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Sep 4, 2017 |
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Sep 4, 2017 20:32
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So you're saying it isn't a good time to buy a 10 million baht condo in bangkok right now? It blows me away how there's been constant building of those things for so long when the median income in the city is like 20,000 baht a month. And that I can always rent units that sold for that much for $6-700 a month. I actually have some desire to live in Thailand somewhat permanently down the road so I'm doing exactly what you're saying - sitting and waiting to see how things shake out.
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Sep 5, 2017 03:55
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Boola posted:So you're saying it isn't a good time to buy a 10 million baht condo in bangkok right now? Landlords always whine to me that they're not making a profit at the rent we're willing to pay. I then remind them that the unit has been empty for 6 months or more and we're happy to rent elsewhere while they continue to burn money.
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Sep 5, 2017 05:05
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What are the rules for foreigners owning a house/land in Thailand? In Vietnam it's very hard (you basically rent for 50 years or something).
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Sep 6, 2017 00:55
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Any recommendation on a beach/island to check out for 2-3 days while in Thailand? I wouldn't mind trying some snorkeling and my girlfriend really wants to do a beachfront bungalow type place. I didn't know if one side of the country was better during the end of September.
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Sep 6, 2017 01:16
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Senso posted:What are the rules for foreigners owning a house/land in Thailand? In Vietnam it's very hard (you basically rent for 50 years or something). In Thailand, I'm pretty sure foreigners can't own anything. They have to run it all through some Thai proxy or something like that, like Mexico.
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Sep 6, 2017 01:17
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If it's s condo then yes but the whole apartment has to be at least 50 % Thai owned
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Sep 6, 2017 01:53
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It's not a bad time to own property in Thailand but it's not a great time either. Thailand isn't like Dubai where 50% of housing is empty and simply exchanged as currency on it's own or to launder money. I own two small condos which was just getting my toes wet, but I want to eventually own a 2-4 bedroom one in a nice area for Airbnb and have a friend I know manage the property while I am in the States. Chiang Mai is actually a really neat place to own property because the Airbnb return is 10x better than renting, whereas Bangkok is like 1.5 dollar Airbnb for every 1 dollar of rental income. The downside to that is Bangkok is more fun than Chiang Mai and I want to use the place occasionally.
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Sep 6, 2017 02:40
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caberham posted:If it's s condo then yes but the whole apartment has to be at least 50 % Thai owned This is the condo rule. I think there's also some rule about demonstrating the money is coming from overseas, so you can't just get a Thai mortgage and pay for it out of your local salary. dms666 posted:Any recommendation on a beach/island to check out for 2-3 days while in Thailand? I wouldn't mind trying some snorkeling and my girlfriend really wants to do a beachfront bungalow type place. I didn't know if one side of the country was better during the end of September. Koh Tao is the usual recommendation for those two activities, just be warned you might be murdered.
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Sep 6, 2017 12:23
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ladron posted:In Thailand, I'm pretty sure foreigners can't own anything. They have to run it all through some Thai proxy or something like that, like Mexico. I've heard from a few people that there are exceptions to this for Americans only, that an American can actually own Thai land and the house on it instead of leasing both for 99 years or whatever. I never heard the details though so I don't know if it's true. You can, as a foreigner, supposedly own one and only one condo / apartment.
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Sep 7, 2017 04:33
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Sheep-Goats posted:I've heard from a few people that there are exceptions to this for Americans only, that an American can actually own Thai land and the house on it instead of leasing both for 99 years or whatever. I never heard the details though so I don't know if it's true. My understanding is that the American loophole is that an American business can own the land, but to qualify as a business you have to have capital and proof of existence in the United States (so you can't just say I'm Bob the Business, let me buy land). I could be wrong about that though.
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Sep 7, 2017 04:42
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Sheep-Goats posted:I've heard from a few people that there are exceptions to this for Americans only, that an American can actually own Thai land and the house on it instead of leasing both for 99 years or whatever. I never heard the details though so I don't know if it's true. I mean I'm not bitching at all, I get it, otherwise the place would be flooded with Chinese money laundering/sheltering schemes a la vancouver...
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Sep 7, 2017 05:41
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caberham posted:If it's s condo then yes but the whole apartment has to be at least 50 % Thai owned On the Amity treaty, my recollection is there's a section in there carving out land ownership, so Amity treaty companies can be 100% American owned, but can't own land. I forget what other, if any, restrictions there are on Amity companies (aside from the onerous registration process ).
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Sep 8, 2017 08:19
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Some friends and I want to do some KTV in Bangkok this weekend, but I have a feeling that most places will be pretty shady. Can anyone recommend a good honest KTV place that'll serve you beer and has a good selection of English music? Preferably someplace around Silom or another central area. I'd really like to not get ripped off.
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Sep 11, 2017 13:08
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I have heard about renting studios or work space in SEA for people looking to do their work online. What do I search to look for such things? Necessary requirements: stable internet access, clean, plug for my laptop, and good lighting because I have terrible eyes. So technically I could work out of a starbucks, but it would be nice to have a place to call my own and go reguarly.This would be for 2-4 weeks, and I am thinking Bangkok, just because I want to eat Thai food everyday, but ultimately would not matter where.
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Sep 11, 2017 14:54
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nervana posted:I have heard about renting studios or work space in SEA for people looking to do their work online. What do I search to look for such things? Necessary requirements: stable internet access, clean, plug for my laptop, and good lighting because I have terrible eyes. So technically I could work out of a starbucks, but it would be nice to have a place to call my own and go reguarly.This would be for 2-4 weeks, and I am thinking Bangkok, just because I want to eat Thai food everyday, but ultimately would not matter where. "Coworking space" is the term you're looking for. You'll find them all over SEA these days, though mostly still in Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. In somewhere like Chiang Mai the daily rate is usually a few hundred baht (around $6-$8 USD), though you can probably get cheaper weekly or monthly passes. edit; take headphones as well. People are usually pretty chilled, but there's always going to be that time you really need to focus on something and a bunch of startup bros are yelling up a storm around a whiteboard
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Sep 11, 2017 16:49
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Shnicker posted:Some friends and I want to do some KTV in Bangkok this weekend, but I have a feeling that most places will be pretty shady. Can anyone recommend a good honest KTV place that'll serve you beer and has a good selection of English music? Preferably someplace around Silom or another central area. I'd really like to not get ripped off. What you want is Woodball. They have a bunch of locations around Bangkok, have excellent English music, and private rooms in addition to the common room. There's nothing shady about it.
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Sep 12, 2017 04:55
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ReindeerF posted:I wouldn't be at all surprised that the financial institutions here are leaky as gently caress. If a Thai person calls in and asks about a foreigner at all kinds of places (hotels, phone companies, hospitals, airlines, etc), a pretty good amount of the time they can get plenty of relatively secure info about stuff because of take care. I've used that trick to help friends and work-people before (under permission-based circumstances, heh), and tested it on a bank once with alarming results. I always end up amazed that it still works in 2017. This country is a social engineering wonderland/nightmare waiting to happen. Many people don't follow any rules or protocols reliably, there's no general sense of privacy about anything and everyone wants to take care. Major foreign brands seem to be locked down tighter, so you can't ring up like the Hilton and get much, but QC on security is pretty tough when you're talking about something like a local bank with hundreds of branches nationwide employing god knows how many thousands of people, a non-zero percentage of whom aren't the best and brightest in my experience. When I was living over there I thought there was a huge opportunity to establish some kind of Thai/Western consultancy firm to help Thailand with everything from translations and things like modern best practices for everything from infrastructure sustainability to information security to understanding consumer friction points... ... but then I realised it's Thailand and they're the best in the world and everyone else is dumb so the idea would never fly. 
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Sep 12, 2017 10:58
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Hey guys, I finally met an expat in Macau who loves going to Thailand all the time. "Where in Thailand do you like to go?" PATONG BECAUSE THE GIRLS THERE ARE SO NICE. I'M GOING THERE AGAIN FOR ANOTHER WEEKEND TRIP AND I USED TO LIVE THERE FOR 2 YEARS. Then he goes on about the intricacies of paying as little as possible for bar girls. I only knew Patong from this thread. Thanks goons. But I don't get it, he can just be a tinder parasite, why this fascination with bar girls? Oh he's cheap as gently caress, but not very smart.
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Sep 12, 2017 11:04
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caberham posted:
continue....
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Sep 12, 2017 11:10
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Atlas Hugged posted:What you want is Woodball. They have a bunch of locations around Bangkok, have excellent English music, and private rooms in addition to the common room. There's nothing shady about it. Awesome, thanks for the recommendation. We'll definitely check it out this weekend.
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Sep 12, 2017 15:12
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Woodball is awesome
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Sep 12, 2017 15:48
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Atlas Hugged posted:What you want is Woodball. They have a bunch of locations around Bangkok, have excellent English music, and private rooms in addition to the common room. There's nothing shady about it. Finch! posted:When I was living over there I thought there was a huge opportunity to establish some kind of Thai/Western consultancy firm to help Thailand with everything from translations and things like modern best practices for everything from infrastructure sustainability to information security to understanding consumer friction points... Asia.jpg x 10
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Sep 12, 2017 18:09
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A Moroccan-looking dude, talking to an Israeli-looking dude, sitting on the steps of a 7-11 inHong Kong, just turned and threw me a "Sawadhi Kap" as I walked in
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Sep 13, 2017 11:57
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