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APPS (Advanced Passenger Processing System)

Thai Immigration Unveiles New (APPS) Screening System



Authorities check the data of passengers gathered before they arrive in Thailand using the data-tracking system installed at the new 24-hour center at Suan Plu’s Immigration Division One.



The APPS gathers passenger information from airlines flying to Thailand based on the data collected at the check-in airline service counters, including name, gender, nationality and country of residence.

That data are sent to the APPS database along with the flight number and passenger seat number.

Criminal data from Interpol would be linked to the APPS system this year so authorities could intercept criminals coming in to the country.

The system was set up this month at the newly opened Thai Immigration 24/7 Centre and at major airports.

APPS is already in use in other countries such as Japan, Canada, China, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The system is being used alongside other security tools including the Personal Identification Blacklist Immigration Control System, the Case Management Intelligence System, CCTV surveillance and the CRIMES system.

The immigration centre at Suanplu’s Immigration Division One will have officers monitoring incoming data 24 hours a day.

[thailandgr]

173rd place: Bangkok ranks near bottom of ‘safe city’ list for expats


A tuk tuk on Yaowarat road


In a new survey by consulting company Mercer, political unrest has sent Bangkok close to the bottom of rankings measuring personal safety of expats.

Out of 230 cities across the globe, Bangkok shamefully ranks 173rd when it comes to personal safety for expats, according to the Quality of Living Rankings by Mercer, which was released Tuesday.

“Following considerable political unrest and terrorist attacks in several tourist areas over the last few years, Bangkok ranked 173rd for personal safety,” said the report.

Mercer highlights safety as it is a key factor that multinational companies consider when sending expatriate workers abroad. Topics such as social unrest and security threats are added to the complex challenges facing multinational companies when analysing the safety and health of their expatriate workforces.

But it isn’t all bad being an expat in Bangkok as the city came fifth in Southeast Asia in terms of good quality of living.

In the Asia Pacific region, Singapore dominates both lists as it ranked eighth place for personal safety and 26th place for the quality of living category.

Following Singapore in Southeast Asia was Malaysia, with Kuala Lumpur at 86th place and Johor Bahru at 103rd for quality of living. Also above Bangkok is Bandar Seri Begawan in Brunei (102).

Other key Asian cities ranked highly in the quality of living index included Tokyo (44) and Hong Kong (70), followed by Shanghai (101).

Bangkok (129) was followed by Manila (136), Jakarta (142), Phnom Penh (195) and Yangon (201).

Globally, Western European cities enjoy some of the highest quality of living worldwide as they took seven places in the top-10 list with Vienna at the top spot, followed by Zurich (2), Auckland (3), Munich (4), and Vancouver (5).

At the bottom of the list were mainly Middle Eastern and African countries, with Baghdad taking the bottom spot, followed by Central African Republic’s Bangui (229), Yemen’s Sana’a (228), Haiti’s Port-au-Prince (227) and Sudan’s Khartoum (226), which all ranked low for personal safety.

[thailandgr]

Sleep Box short stay hotel coming to Suvarnabhumi



The Miracle Group is eyeing Suvarnabhumi airport for its next “sleep box” hotel after the soft launch of the sleep cabins at Don Mueang airport this week.

Aswin Ingkakul, executive director of the Miracle Group, said the company is negotiating with the Airports of Thailand Plc (AoT) over the proposal for Suvarnabhumi airport.  He said the sleep box hotel at Suvarnabhumi could open this year. It is aimed at serving passengers who are waiting for connecting flights. The sleep box hotel at Don Mueang airport is the first of its kind in the country.

There are 25 sleep cabins available, but only five sleep box rooms are available during the soft opening. The hotel is expected to be fully operational at the end of this month.

The sleep box rooms at Don Mueang airport are partitioned into five sections, each consisting of five, 15 square metre rooms.
 Each cabin of the sleep box hotel, located on the fourth floor of Terminal 2 of Don Mueang airport, is equipped with a bed and a private toilet and can accommodate two guests.  A television and Wi-Fi are also provided.

Room rates for the first three hours are 1,000 baht with a meal voucher and 200 baht for each subsequent hour. Customers who stay only an hour will be charged 300 baht with towels and bathroom amenities provided and those who stay from 9pm to 6am the next morning will be charged a flat rate of 1,800 baht and provided with a meal voucher.

Mr Aswin said it is too early to predict how the sleep box hotel will fare. Compared with Japanese capsule hotels, which charge an average of 400 baht per hour without en suite bathroom and meal voucher, he said the sleep cabins at Don Mueang are excellent value.

According to Mr Aswin, the Miracle Group will launch an office facility, Co-Working Space, on the fourth floor of Terminal 2 covering 700 sq m in the next few months. It will be fully equipped with modern office accessories.

[thailandgr]

Inside the Thai sex scene — where women are sold like meat

Grimy, neon-splashed Walking Street, populated largely by young hookers and pie-eyed Western men, is the main attraction of a Thai beach town called Pattaya. Sex for hire there was most certainly what drew Ben Bartanyi, the 49-year-old American real estate broker recently arrested for allegedly performing a sex act on a 20-year-old dancer in one of Pattaya’s many strip clubs as other patrons cheered him on.

Ben Bartanyi (r) admitted to performing a sex act on a Thai bar worker in broad daylight.Photo: Thai Police

Some people may have been surprised by the outrageousness of it all. I wasn’t. Ten years ago I visited Thailand to do a story on the commercial sex trade there. By all accounts, nothing has changed.

Then and now, lining Pattaya’s red-light strip, open-fronted bars bear suggestive names such as Virgins and SugarBaby (which vows “p - - - y without attitude”); they offer illicit promises that all too often are kept.

Small stages inside teem with nude or bikini-clad women who are there for the taking — so much so that they have numbers pinned to their skimpy tops or G-string bottoms. These numerical designations make it easy for customers to call them and take them out for cheap sex.

I remember my Pattaya hotel selling condoms at the front desk and having signs warning that the age of consent is 15. In a Marriott there, a clutch of men loudly strategized about visiting a brothel where you must have two women at a time. Nobody seems to care.

It was a raunchy scene where women were readily available. Most of them came from the poor northern part of Thailand. They moved to Pattaya or Bangkok to earn money to send back home. As one girl wearing a skin-tight knock-off T-shirt that read J’Adore Dior, explained to me, “I need to make money for family. They grow rice and raise buffalo, but they are very poor. They need money for tools. You can get very hungry in Isan [the northern, rural region from which she comes].”

Of course, many of the naive family members thought their daughters and sisters were working in the big cities’ department stores. Surely, family members would be horrified to know what comes with making the money they receive. “What’s hardest is when I have a drunk customer who becomes really stupid,” I heard from a girl who called herself Lin.

Young Thai girls stand outside the brothels of Pattaya city.Photo: Getty Images

Sitting on a bench, staring out at the Gulf of Thailand, she continued, “Maybe he refuses to wear condom, tells me that he wants me to have his baby. Or he beats me. That happened once, when a customer was drunk, shouting at me, and I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. He ran toward me, tried to punch me, missed and hit the wall. Then he kicked me. I grabbed my bag and ran.”

Photo: Getty Images

These days the girls earn as little as $28 per hour. It’s a pittance for the work involved, but a lot more than the $10 per day that they could make with factory jobs at home. Still, they sacrifice a lot by being in Thailand’s sex trade, where diseases run rampant (according to one 2007 study in the International Journal of STD of AIDS up to 20 percent of Thai working girls are HIV positive) and drugs can be the only thing that gets the girls through shifts.

“I have few friends and no life outside of work,” a Bangkok bar-girl told me, standing on the fringe of Nana Entertainment Plaza, a three-story mall of sorts, where hundreds of prostitutes work out of strip clubs with names such as Play School and Bottoms Up. “It is bad what I do, and I cannot have a Thai man. Now I look for farang [Thai slang for Westerners] to support me. Someday I will be a good person.”

As the Thai government seems to turn a mostly blind eye to the trade, — it’s not technically legal but it is widely tolerated — the beat goes on. Westerners keep coming for the thrills they can’t afford at home, and Thai women who are caught up in the sex biz grimly endure.

“I miss my family, my baby girl,” a young mother, six months into the trade, told me and started to sob. “This is not the life for me. It’s a bad life.”

One of the many red-light bars in Pattaya city.Photo: Getty Images

Nypost

[thailandgr]

People queue outside the Sta Travel shop in Birmingham to grab cheap tickets to Thailand. Photo: Shopping In Bham

A recent flash sale in England for a limited number of round trip tickets to Thailand costing THB2,500 shows that the kingdom still has the power to lure travellers despite its recent reports of attacks.
Or maybe people just love cheap flights.

Bargain hunters queued outside Sta Travel shops in London and Birmingham for two days to get their hands on flights to Thailand for GBP49 (THB2,500), with some even quitting their jobs to try and get the tickets.

Dozens of people camped out @STATravel_UK Victoria to buy £49 return flights to Thailand. Old school. pic.twitter.com/paEiiIVUjY

— Sally Peck (@mathildeny) April 27, 2016

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The flash sale started at 9am UK time on Thursday and was held at STA Travel’s offices in Grosvenor Gardens, London, and Corporation Street in Birmingham.

Some people queued for 33 hours, pitching up tents and camping overnight in sub-zero temperatures outside the stores.

The sale for the 50 tickets, which normally cost THB18,000, even made some people quit their jobs in the hope of snatching up a bargain.

Mollie Merrifield, 18, and her 19-year-old boyfriend Dan Jeffs were working at McDonald’s and Domino’s before they heard about the sale, reported the Express.

Mollie said: “We both quit our jobs to come here today, because otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to make it on time.”

She added: “They just didn’t reply. We tried to explain.”

It is unclear if their foolish bold endeavour paid off.

The reduced fares will fly to Bangkok from Heathrow and Birmingham Airport, via Doha, with travel from May 1 to June 30.

@STATravel_UK @bournemouthuni You guys were incredible!Everyone in the queue was amazed how well you looked after us pic.twitter.com/ofq6RS9Evh

— Gav Topley (@gavtopley) April 28, 2016

http://bangkok.coconuts.co/2016/04/29/cheap-travel-brits-quit-their-jobs-queue-thb2500-flights-thailand

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MAY THAI NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

May 01 (Sunday): National Labour day
May 02 (Monday): Substitution for National Labour day
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 05 (Thursday): Coronation Day National holiday
May 06 (Friday): Coronation Day National holiday
May 09 (Monday): Royal Ploughing Ceremony Day National holiday
May 20 (Friday): Visakha Bucha National holiday

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[facebook]https://www.facebook.com/richardbarrowthailand/photos/a.249968125017062.77912.149529535060922/1346465552033975/?type=3[/facebook]

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http://bangkokhardtime.com/index.html

The surreal true story of how a western teenager came of age in 1960's Bangkok, turned international drug smuggler and walked the prison yards of Thailand's notorious "Bangkok Hilton"


by Jon Cole
              The surreal true story of how  a  western teenager  came of age in 1960's Bangkok, turned international drug smuggler and walked the prison yards of Thailand's notorious "Bangkok Hilton"



It was 1967 Bangkok, the Summer of Love, and for teenager Jon Cole, son of a US Green Beret colonel serving in the Vietnam War, life as a young Westerner in the Southeast Asian City of Angels is sweeter than mangoes on sticky rice with coconut milk ... then he is introduced to the infamous House of Lek.
Drawn to the underbelly of Bangkok, the International School Bangkok pupil soon discovers ganja, opium and the two-dollar bordellos.
What follows is a surreal but true story of one Westerner's relationship with Thailand spanning over four decades.
A drug habit picked up at the House of Lek with schoolmates and GIs on R&R from Vietnam leads to a lucrative career as a drug smuggler, a nasty smack habit and, ultimately, a stretch inside Thailand's notorious prison, the "Bangkok Hilton".
At the heart of Jon's account of his arguably misspent youth in Thailand and his subsequent life inside Klong Prem prison is a hard Thai-Style acceptance of the consequences of his own karma and a desire to expose the fallacy that Westerners are mistreated in Thai prisons. 

[thailandgr]

The Most Overrated vs. Underrated Bangkok Experiences

[thailandgr]

Fake Thai Baht in Circulation and How to spot them!

HOW TO SPOT THOSE FAKE THAI BAHT NOTES IN CIRCULATION

The 1000 Baht banknote is of the greatest value In Thailand and vastly used within the kingdom. Reports have been given that counterfeit 1000 Baht notes were retrieved by police in the province of Chonburi at the local market. One vendor of a butcher’s stall said he did not realise the tender was fake until after goods had been purchased from him.



The fake 1000 Baht note contains the serial number 2D784400.

It was also reported that counterfeits had been used in Trang Province which is a worry considering the two provinces are such a long distance apart. There are major concerns about how the fakes have spread throughout the eastern sea board, which could mean Pattaya has been targeted!

Additional training has been given to workers having to deal with money on how to identify forgeries. Visitors should also be aware that a majority of bus and local transport Providers will probably not accept 1000 Baht notes so try and have some smaller change on you just incase.



Please be vigilant on your travels especially if you are changing up foreign currency. A hefty fine of 40,000 Baht could be issued for having counterfeits in your possession or even worse, if using the fake notes with the intent to do so is a 15 year year prison sentence! (You wouldn’t put wish you were here on a back of a postcard if that happened)



To try and prevent that happening while in the land of smiles, here are a few helpful little tips of what to look out for.

#1. Always check if the silver strip down the left hand side is not to far from the edge. It should not overlap the garuda image in the top left hand side or the Box at the bottom. The box should not have a zero in it.

#2. Hold up to the light and check there is a water mark of his majesty the king and a translucent water mark of the Thai numeral 1000.

#3. Always feel the texture as counterfeits are usually very thin and are easy to tear

[thailandgr]

The Noodles that Cause Chronic Inflammation, Weight Gain, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease

[Oytopikos]

TAT issues advice for foreigners in Thailand



 

Recommendations regarding Mourning Period for His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej

 

Thailand is now in an official period of mourning following the passing of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

 

In this regard, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) would like all visitors to Thailand to continue with their travel plans as normal. Furthermore, kindly be advised of the following:

 

• Many Thai people will be wearing black or white clothing as a sign of mourning. This is not required of visitors but if possible, they should wear sombre and respectful clothing when in public.

 

• Visitors should refrain from conducting any inappropriate or disrespectful behaviour.


• Tourist attractions will be open as usual with the exception of Wat Phra Kaeo (Temple of the Emerald Buddha) and the Grand Palace, as they will be the venue of the Royal Funeral Rites.


• The Government has asked for the cooperation from the entertainment venues; such as, bars and nightclubs to consider the opening of their business operations during this time. The decision will be made by the individual owners.


• Most of the traditional and cultural events will be taking place as usual, although the celebrations may be changed for appropriateness as a mark of respect, or the events may be dedicated to the memory of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej.


• All transport, banks, hospitals and other public services will be operating as usual.


• The related authorities have stepped up safety and security measures for all Thais and visitors to facilitate their travelling around the country.


• For any enquiries, please contact our TAT domestic offices or Tel.: 1672.

 

TAT would like to thank all visitors for their understanding and supporting Thailand during this period of time.

 

Source: http://www.tatnews.org/recommendations-regarding-mourning-period-for-his-majesty-king-bhumibol-adulyadej/

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Cabinet waives visa fee for tourists from 19 countries

In order to promote tourism during the tourism high season, the cabinet agreed on Tuesday to waive visa fees for tourists from 19 countries as of December1 until February 28.

Tourists from 19 countries which include Andora, Bulgaria, Bhutan, China, Cyprus, Ethiopia, India, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Romania, San Mario, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan need not have to pay the 1,000 baht visa fee when they apply for a visa at Thai embassies or consular offices.

In the meantime, the cabinet agreed to reduce fee for visa on arrival at immigration checkpoints for tourists from the 19 countries above mentioned.

The two measures are expected to increase tourist arrivals by over 357,000 during the three-month festive season, generating revenue amounting to 28,703 million baht. They will help create over 62,000 temporary jobs and increase the government’s tax revenue by about 1,200 million baht.

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IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN......

Immigration announce crackdown on illegal activities at tourist sites throughout Thailand



BANGKOK: 15 Dec., 2016

The immigration department has announced a crackdown on illegal activities at tourist sites throughout Thailand as the tourist season gets into full swing ahead of the New Year.

The department said they will be particularly looking out for foreign gangs preying on tourists.

Chuchat Tareechat said that in Bangkok his department would be focusing their attention on Khao Sarn road, the Bang Rak area, Sukhumvit Road and Soi Nana.

Outside the capital they will target activities in Phuket, Chonburi, Chiang Mai, Surat Thani and Songkhla.

Their attention will concentrate on Pattaya, Samui, Hua Hin, Doi Suthep and Phu Kradung in Loei province.

They will be looking for tips, conducting searches and hopefully making arrests.

Of particular interest will be international law breaking, criminal activity, sex offenses and human trafficking in children.

Members of the public with information about law breaking can call the department on 1178 or use the ID of INVEST_IMM on the Line application 24 hours a day.