Gaybutton

It's not just the US dollar. Today, with the exception of the Euro, all the major western currencies slid against the baht. I have given up trying to understand why. It would seem to me that in light of all the turmoil in Thailand and the residual effects, the baht would have fallen against other major currencies. Is there anyone out there who knows enough about economics who can explain it to those of us who don't understand? I was expecting the baht to be in the 36's against the US dollar by now. Instead, it's back in the 34's. What's keeping the baht so strong?

They may be able to buy their way out of it as far as their troubles with the Thai authorities are concerned, but that doesn't mean they're going to come out of this unscathed. If nothing else, it's going to cost them a fortune. I'm also not so quick to assume they can buy their way out of it at all. It used to be easy to do if you had the money, but now it's not so simple, especially if there has been publicity, and often enough you can't buy your way out of this kind of trouble no matter how much money you can come up with. You also have to factor in that a UK-based NGO is involved. That alone could spell trouble for these guys. The problem is there is rarely any follow-up to these news items, so it might be very difficult to discover what ends up happening to them. But one thing is certain, whether they can buy their way out of trouble or not. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. The part that makes it to my "I Don't Get It" list is the fact that pedophiles still take the risk in Thailand. I find it very difficult to make sense out of it considering that so many have been caught and that it is so simple to find legal-age boys who look so much younger than they actually are. Whatever it is that makes them do these things, I just don't understand it. Once again, though, whether the charges against these men are true or not, their arrest had nothing to do with the bars. It is rare for arrests to occur when people take a boy off from a bar. In the vast majority of cases, it's people who are doing things with under-age boys elsewhere.

The following appears in the BANGKOK POST: _____ Waiting on Thaksin By Post Reporters The possible line-up for a Democrat-led government is emerging, but the Puea Thai party still hopes to break up this new alliance with a phone-in speech on Saturday by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The political gamesmanship is certain to intensify now that House Speaker Chai Chidchob has called a special session on Monday to elect a new prime minister. His Majesty the King has approved the sitting. The Democrat-led alliance, comprising four small parties and a powerful faction led by Newin Chidchob, has agreed in principle on the allocation of cabinet seats. The Democrats have agreed to give 5 or 6 seats, including the major portfolios of transport, deputy transport and deputy interior minister to the Friends of Newin faction. The faction's candidates for cabinet posts are Boonchong Wongtrairat, Supachai Phosu, Suchart Chokechaiwattana, Prachak Kaewkla and Sophon Sarum. The Democrats have agreed with Banharn Silpa-archa, the former leader of the dissolved Chart Thai party, that his new Chart Thai Pattana party will retain five cabinet seats. Puea Pandin, which is said to be bargaining hard, expects five portfolios. It also hopes to enlist five more MPs, from the dissolved People Power party, and will then negotiate for extra seats. Ruam Jai Thai Chart Pattana wants two seats - energy and deputy finance minister - while the dissolved Matchimathipataya party, which is looking to re-register as a new party, has proposed switching the natural resources and environment portfolio for the commerce minister's seat. A source in the Puea Thai party, formed to take in MPs from the dissolved PPP, said the party expects to take in at least 10 more MPs after Thaksin's phone-in. The party has been pushing, through Pracharaj leader Sanoh Thienthong, for Puea Pandin leader Pracha Promnok to be prime minister. Natthawut Saikua, of Puea Thai, said MPs should listen hard to what Thaksin has to say. "They should also realise who had them elected as MPs in the first place," he said. Pongpan Sunthornchai said the Puea Thai party and people from Puea Pandin and Ruam Jai Thai Chart Pattana will hold a press conference on Friday. He claimed Pol Gen Pracha and Ruam Jai Thai Chart Pattana leader Chettha Thanajaro have agreed to form a government with Puea Thai, after being approached by Thaksin. Democrat secretary-general Suthep Thaugsuban admitted he is concerned about Thaksin's planned phone-in to the red-shirt rally. Thaksin still had a lot of political muscle to flex. However, he remained confident the alliance would hold together. The Democrats have asked their allies to be careful in picking candidates for cabinet posts, he said. They should all be well-respected and qualified. "The goal of the formation of the government is to serve the public's needs," he said. Details of the allocation of cabinet seats would be finalised after the selection of the prime minister. Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva said there was nothing more than the national interest in the deal between the Democrats and Mr Newin. Mr Newin had warned him there would be criticism about their public meeting on Tuesday, he said. "But after he decided to work with us, and was under great pressure, I thought I should meet him and deal with it straightforwardly," he said. Pracharaj leader Sanoh Thienthong stuck to his plan to form a government of national unity, saying Pol Gen Pracha would persuade the Democrat party to change its mind and join the ranks. "If they want me to form a government, they should leave me to do the job. There must not be a phone-in or a red-shirt rally," he said. Army commander Gen Anupong Paojinda admitted he had talked with core members of political parties over the formation of a new government. He reminded them to make decisions that would take the country forward and restore peace and order."We have security problems and society is counting on us to restore normality. Some issues have nothing to do with the military, but society is pinning its hopes on us," he said.

Friday, December 12 OPENING RATES: US Dollar: 34.85 Euro: 46.095 British Pound: 52.185 Australian Dollar: 23.175 Canadian Dollar: 28.0825 _____ CLOSING RATES: US Dollar: 34.78 Euro: 46.31 British Pound: 51.935 Australian Dollar: 22.7125 Canadian Dollar: 27.7975

If you have not yet voted in either of these contests, now's the time. The winners will receive their prizes Saturday night, December 13.

I'm not sure I would equate plain-clothes police officers with the usual type of raid. I have a feeling that it's more likely to be that one or more of the pedophile suspects they have been pursuing is still at large and they're trying to hunt him down. That's what it seems like to me, anyway.

Well, that's it then. If you want these Emails, just don't sign up for them. If you don't want these Emails, do sign up or them. Sounds like the embassy has been in Thailand too long . . .

I suppose that's possible, but if they are able to do that, it's going to cost them a fortune, not to mention the reception committee that will be waiting for them when they arrive back in their home country. You can't always buy your way out of these things. "Sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't." - Chief Dan George, "Little Big Man"

What fees are charged for that service?

Thursday, December 11 OPENING RATES: US Dollar: 35.16 Euro: 45.685 British Pound: 51.995 Australian Dollar: 22.975 Canadian Dollar: 27.8425 _____ CLOSING RATES: US Dollar: 34.83 Euro: 45.80 British Pound: 52.11 Australian Dollar: 22.97 Canadian Dollar: 27.775

That would be correct if the airlines are still flying the same number of flights per day or per week as they were last year. I don't know if the airlines have cut back the number of flights they are running, but if they have, a full flight still may not mean as many people are making the trip as this time last year. Judging from the numbers of farang I'm seeing in town, in bars, and on the beaches, the tourism industry is in for a huge loss.

I never thought about that. I always thought it was wage plus commission. I didn't realize that it's commission only. In some of the bars there are boys that show up to freelance dance whenever they wish (or do the "one-knee shuffle"). They are not paid. They're hoping to be taken off and get whatever they can get from the farang. The bar still charges an off fee for them, though. I think they also get their commission if a farang buys a drink for them.

Wednesday, December 10: Today is a public holiday. Exchange rates are not published today.

Poor service is definitely not exclusive to Thailand. In the USA, nearly every time I was in a grocery store trying to find something, if I asked an employee something like, "Where is the tartar sauce?", the answer would almost invariably be, "Aisle 6." On the rare occasions when the employee would actually take a moment to personally show me to the item, I would make sure to commend him to the store manager. Sometimes the service is much better here in Thailand. In places such as grocery stores, hardware stores, etc, whenever I ask an employee where an item is, he will almost invariably take me to it. My peeve is more with certain policies at some of the local stores. For example, when I first moved to Thailand, my boyfriend wanted a beanbag chair. We went to a local hardware store where they were advertising a promotion for them at 1400 baht. He picked out the chair he liked and we went to the cash register. A tag that said 1400 baht was attached to the chair. The cashier rang up the sale at 2000 baht. I called him on it. He said, "Promotion finish yesterday." I showed him the price tag and pointed out that the bean bag chairs on display had a big sign in front of them that also said 1400 baht. He wouldn't budge. I asked to see the manager. A girl came over, who was no more the store manager than I was. I pointed out all of this to her too. She also wouldn't budge. She said the reason the prices were still in place was because they didn't have time yet to re-do the price tags. I mentioned the fact that it is 3:30pm and the store has been open since 10:00am. She still wouldn't budge. I asked her if the store intends to honor the price shown on the item or not. The answer was no. A farang standing behind me and listening told me that he had recently spent a lot of money in the same store on floor tiles. He told me that a few boxes of them contained broken tiles. He returned those boxes to the store only a few hours after having bought and opened them, but the store refused to refund his money or even exchange the broken tiles. Needless to say, that's one store where I no longer shop. But not all stores cheat customers in that manner. One store that I do like is Big-C. Whenever I buy some sort of appliance or electronic device there, they always open the box and make sure the unit is working before I purchase it. Then they carefully re-pack the box. I bought a washing machine at Big-C. It came with a 1-year warranty. About two months later it broke down. I went back to Big-C with the warranty paperwork. They told me it's too late to replace the machine, but they told me where I could go locally to have the machine repaired under the warranty. There was no problem at all and my machine was promptly repaired with no charge to me. Several months ago I bought a DVD player at Carrefour. In the store a check was done and it worked just fine. Of course, as soon as I got it home it wouldn't work. I took it back to Carrefour. They tested the unit and they also couldn't get it to work. They told me it must be a defective unit and they immediately replaced it with another one. They checked that one too and it was working. When I got it home it was working and that's the unit I've been using ever since. Those are the kinds of stores where I prefer to shop. They do stand behind what they sell and they live up to their promises if anything goes wrong.

The following appears in the Bangkok Post: _____ Tourism Losses Could Hit 130-bln Baht The tourism industry may lose up to 130 billion baht of revenues because of the closure of Suvarnabhumi airport, Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) deputy governor for international marketing Santichai Euachongprasit said on Tuesday. According to the initial assessment, the number of foreign tourists between December 2008 and April 2009 could drop by 2.3 million and the loss of revenues should be around 86 billion to 130 billion baht. The decrease would be about 40 to 50 per cent when compared to the same period of the previous year. Mr Santichai said the TAT initially aimed to welcome 16 million tourists, but the number could be slashed to 14 million due to the political and economic crises. The TAT will fine-tune its marketing plan by emphasising on restoring tourist confidence. Previously, the authority proposed the "Seven Wonders" campaign to promote important tourist destinations in the country next year, but it will also try to restore the national image by apologising to tourists who were affected by the seizure of airports by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and beefing up security measures. The TAT in cooperation with the private sector will come up with different tourism campaigns and promotions to draw in more tourists as well.

It isn't just Thailand, folks. Welcome to corruption, American style: _____ Illinois Governor Arrested in Obama Successor Probe AP - CHICAGO – Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested today on charges that accuse him of trying to benefit from his ability to appoint President-elect Barack Obama's replacement in the U.S. Senate. The U.S. Attorney in Chicago says federal investigators bugged Blagojevich's campaign offices and placed a tap on his home phone. At a news conference on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said the corruption charges represent "a truly new low." An FBI affidavit says the 51-year-old Democrat was intercepted on wiretaps conspiring to sell or trade the vacant Senate seat for personal benefits for himself and his wife. FBI chief Robert Grant says even seasoned investigators were stunned by what they heard on those tapes. Fitzgerald described the situation by saying: "We were in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we wanted to stop it." The governor has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

In the film, when the attorney first starts talking to von Bulow, he says, "You have one thing in your favor. Everybody hates you." von Bulow responds with, "Well . . . . . that's a start."

It depends on the bank. They all have their own system. Many now have an OPT, which stands for One Time Password. When you make the transfer, they send you an OTP. You have to enter the OTP to complete the transfer. Some banks don't use OPTs. The ones that do usually give you a choice of receiving the OTP either by mobile phone text message or by Email. Siam Commercial, for whatever reason, has suspended the Email OTP and will only send by text message, which doesn't do much good if you are making the transfer from somewhere outside of Thailand. I think the easiest bank to work with for online transfers is Bank of Ayudhya. TMB is easy too. Bangkok Bank is fairly simple. With all three banks you can set up the transfers online. No paperwork is involved. You can do the same with Siam Commercial, but it's a problem if you need to do the OTP by mobile phone. I don't have an account with Kasikorn, so I don't know what's involved with their system. Based on what Billyhouston said, it sounds like you'll have to make a trip to your bank branch office to set it up. But try online anyway. Billyhouston didn't say how long ago he set things up with his account. Until recently, several banks required paperwork to set it up, but only recently have changed their system so that the whole thing can easily be done online. You might as well try setting it up online first. If you can't, that's when to go to your branch office. If you do have to go to your branch office, try to go to the same branch where you first opened your account. Some banks won't do that sort of thing unless you are in your primary branch office.

Are you talking about transferring money from one Thai bank account to another Thai bank account or are you talking about an international transfer? If it's an international transfer I don't know of any way to avoid fees. If you are transferring from one account to another account with a Thai bank, depending on the bank there are either no fees at all or a fee of about 20 baht or so, depending on the bank. That applies if it's the same bank. In other words from one Bank of Ayudhya account to another Bank of Ayudhya account. If you wish to find a bank that does this kind of transfer with no fees at all, then don't walk into a bank to ask. They really wouldn't know. What you want to do is call their service number and talk to an online banking agent. That's where you'll get a reliable answer. I could be wrong, but I think you can do this kind of transfer with no fee with both Bank of Ayudhya and Siam Commercial. I'm not certain. There may be other banks that will do intra-bank transfers without charging any fees, but you'll need to call their service numbers to find out. If you are transferring from one Thai bank account to an account at a different Thai bank, you can do that online too with most banks, but depending on the amount of the transfer, most banks charge a fee of 25 to 35 baht. In other words, from a Bank of Ayudhya account to a Kasikorn bank account. One possible solution, if you're talking about international transfers, can work if you have your own Thai bank account. International transfers usually cost a set fee, and the fee is the same per transfer, regardless of whether you are transferring a small amount or a large amount of money. What you could do would be to transfer as much money as you can to your own Thai bank account and pay the fee. After the money is in your account, you can then transfer smaller amounts to your friend's account online without additional international fees until the funds in your own account are depleted. You won't avoid fees that way, but you can at least save a lot of money because you will be reducing the number of times you have to pay the international fees. It's been a long time, but before Thai banks offered online banking I used to wire funds to a Thai bank account from the USA. At the time, the fee was $40 per transaction, regardless of the amount of money I was sending.

The following appears in THE NATION: _____ Prasong Tells Foreign Ministry to Revoke Thaksin's Passport Former foreign minister Prasong Soonsiri Tuesday demanded the Foreign Ministry permanent secretary to revoke all types of passports of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Prasong submitted the written demand to the permanent secretary and threatened to file nonfeasance charges against him if he refused to revoke Thaksin's diplomatic and ordinary passports. He reasoned that the Foreign Ministry's directives prohibited issuance passports to anyone who face criminal charges and Thaksin has already been sentenced to two-year imprisonment.

It seems strange to me too. Most of the time, when a public holiday is declared, the banks and government offices close. I didn't see anything about that, one way or the other, in the article, so that remains to be seen. Just how that is supposed to boost tourism, other than perhaps for Thais themselves who are on a holiday within the country, goes beyond me.

The following appears in the PATTAYA DAILY NEWS: _____ GOVERNMENT PREDICTS GLOOMY ECONOMIC OUTLOOK FOR THAILAND IN 2009 Acting Finance Minister, Suchart Thada-Thamrongvech, on December 8, admitted to being seriously concerned that the country‘s economic problems will intensify in Q1,2009. "The economy has begun to signal its worsening because policies drawn up to address the problem cannot function properly and state agencies need to wait for a new policy from the next government," Mr. Suchart is reported to have said. The fact that the mid-year budget of Bt100 billion must be suspended pending consideration and approval by the next government, hardly helps matters. However, Mr. Suchart did express satisfaction over the Bank of Thailand (BoT) Monetary Policy Committee's decision to reduce the policy interest rate sharply because it would encourage financial institutions to reallocate their assets in more promising avenues of investment; however, he said that a further cut in interest rate would be encouraging. Further predictions · The economy is likely to weaken more in 2009, in line with a further slowdown in the global economy, with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth forecast to fall to 3.9%. "We have to revise the growth projection down because the global economic slowdown is affecting our economy," said the National Economic and Social Development Board's Secretary General, Ampon Kittiampol. · "Net exports are falling and local political turmoil is seriously deterring investment and tourism," Ampon Kittiampo said. · The pace of export revenue growth will slow in 2008-09, while import demand is likely to improve. Exports suffered during the recent PAD blockade of Suvarnabhumi Airport, which was a huge blow to Thailand's tourist industry that brings in the equivalent of about 7 % of GDP. Losses were estimated to cost 1 billion baht ($28m) a day to the tourist industry. · "The world economic recession will have a strong effect on the Thai export sector in first half of the next year and private investment will continue to slow down," Ampon predicted. · Despite the best efforts of the central bank, Thailand will almost certainly fall into recession in 2009 and although the Bank of Thailand recently cut its policy rate cut to 2.75%, this is deemed by most economic pundits as insufficient to prevent the economy weakening further · Thai industry expanded at 6.1 percent, down from 7.7 percent in the second quarter and 9.5 percent in the first quarter, and Ampon warned that the global financial crisis would continue taking its toll in Thailand. · The National Economic and Social Development Board projected that the Thai economy would grow at 3-4% in 2009, while inflation is expected to drop to between 2.5 and 3.5 percent. · Thailand's unemployment rate is expected to rise to at least 2.0-2.5% in 2009, up from the 1.5-2.5% projected in November and the 1.4% estimated for 2008, the state planning agency said on December 8. · Unemployed Thais would average 900,000 in 2009 out of a national labour force of 37.6 million, up from 530,000 in the first nine months of 2008, an official at the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) recently stated. 'This is the impact of the growing global economic and financial crisis that affects Thailand,' according to NESDB Deputy Secretary General Suwanee Kamman. She continued by saying that the unemployment rate next year could be even higher than her new forecast as it did not take into account the effect on the tourist industry of the week-long blockade of Bangkok's airports by PAD protesters.

Maybe not dedication. It's more like I'm simply not tired yet, so I get the daily count out of the way. I appreciate what you said. We've had our little tiffs. I don't hold any of it against you. I'm glad you don't hold any of it against me. In any case, I'm flattered that you think I deserve an award. If people are benefiting from this message board and the work I put into it, that's award enough for me.

I wouldn't complain about it . . . Most likely it has to do with the time of day when you withdraw money. I post the opening rates, which usually appear about 8:00am, and the closing rates, which usually appear around 5:00pm. During the day the rates constantly fluctuate. Also, since you're withdrawing from a foreign bank, maybe you're getting an offshore rate. I have no idea why or how it works, but offshore rates seem to be better than the rates within Thailand.

Tuesday, December 9 OPENING RATES: US Dollar: 35.15 Euro: 45.30 British Pound: 52.205 Australian Dollar: 23.11 Canadian Dollar: 27.95 _____ CLOSING RATES: US Dollar: 35.21 Euro: 45.26 British Pound: 51.99 Australian Dollar: 22.885 Canadian Dollar: 27.9325