Toy Boy

You can't, but there's not much point in kidding yourself that TW will actually pay the headline rate into your bank account. You know, it's like the days before TW when we used to look at XE.com, but you couldn't get the XE rates so you had to knock off around 17 satangs from the XE rate to get the TT rate. It's the same with TW, you need to knock off the fees to get the 'real' exchange rate they'll give you to compare it with TT.

Yeah, but you have to knock off the TW fee to get the "real" exchange rate that you will get in your bank account here, which comes out at 36.75 for £1000 with the headline rate at 37.04. Makes TT's 36.90 look generous!

Jeez, and right after six bombs go off in Bangkok while Mike Pompeo is visiting. It's not just the bullet-proof Baht, the bloody currency's bomb-proof too!

A decent read on Sterling's demise in the Mail this morning. I personally think he's spot-on when he concludes: "Even so, it strikes me as deranged to see a tumbling pound as anything other than bad news. To put it very simply, the further our currency falls, the more we pay, not just for sunhats and ice lollies on holiday, but for the fruit and vegetables in our supermarkets, the appliances on our High Street shelves and the cars on the dealer’s forecourt. Higher prices mean lower living standards, a slowing economy and, in the long run, higher unemployment. Nothing to celebrate there.... And if Mr Johnson is not worried, he should be. For if the pound continues to plunge indefinitely, the only people who will lose their shirts will be us: the British people." It's also good to see him debunking the myth that even respectable economists peddle these days, people who should be able to analyse the economic data themselves and draw their own conclusions, rather than regurgitating the sham-wisdom peddled by monetary doves who couldn't care less about people's standard of living. “Indeed, according to some Brexiteers, we should cheer a falling pound, since it will make our products cheaper abroad, boosting British business, turbo-charging the economy and providing countless new manufacturing jobs. Unfortunately, very few economists or businessmen find this remotely plausible. Nor do I. For one thing, these days most British manufacturers rely on imported components, which would be far more expensive with a lower pound. So their goods would not be cheaper after all. And the idea of a devalued pound unleashing an exports boom has long since been exposed as a self-deluding fantasy. Back in 1967, Harold Wilson told the nation that a lower pound meant we could ‘sell more goods abroad’. No such boom materialised. It did not materialise in 2008 either, when the pound took a battering during the financial crisis. Nor in 2016, when sterling dropped like a stone after the EU referendum.” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7307953/Sterlings-plunge-left-holidaymakers-despair-worried-long-term.html

The GF told me there'd been scary rain down in Nong Nuch in the evening, but in my arid part of town the cacti are thriving and the tumbleweeds are still blowing down the dry soi's.

Here's one for the Taffia, 'Last Summer', set in rural Wales in the 1970's. I can certainly relate to a lot in this film, being from rural Welsh Wales myself. I thought it was going to be a Welsh rehash of 'Stand By Me', but that's absolutely not the case, it's totally different. I think it's one of those films that some people will love and others will hate, but I certainly enjoyed it. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7406704/

I know you'd have to be mad to buy your Baht from them, but look at thr current SCB Fx rates (the Buy Notes column at the right-hand end): https://www.scb.co.th/en/personal-banking/foreign-exchange-rates.html GBP = 36.39 USD = 29.57-30.41 EUR = 33.41 AUD = 20.44 at the time of writing (the page will update so you will see different rates) Those numbers ought to make you feel good about getting the rates from TT, lol.

All a question of degree. The AUD and EUR are just being mugged, the GBP is being raped, sodomised and slaughtered.

I already am, but what can you do? I own my house in Pattaya and have a car and motorbike here, most of my stuff's pretty new and in good shape so it should last for years, and if I'm careful then I don't see any major expenditures on the horizon (though there's always the unknown unknowns, of course). So the exchange rate only really affects my food and drink costs, electricity, and discretionary spending. I'd never spend a winter in the UK so it might be possible to go back for six months in the summer to enjoy the 'cheaper cost of living' back there, but the savings aren't going to be life-changing. I go back to the UK twice a year for a month anyway, and bring back to Thailand the best part of two suitcases full of food, so a lot of what I eat in Thailand I buy in the UK anyway. Booze is becoming very expensive in Thailand at these exchange rates, it may be a good excuse to cut down on my alcohol consumption, who knows? Plus if I started spending summer back in the UK I'd lose my non-resident status for tax purposes, which would complicate life for a while, as well as making it permanently more expensive. I haven't worked out all the numbers yet, but as long as I'm careful in Pattaya and don't go crazy in a Gogo bar or whatever, then even below 30 Baht/£ I don't see much upside to returning to the UK for half the year. The other thing to remember is that Britain imports a hell of a lot more than it exports, so the weak pound will work its way through into consumer prices eventually and inflation will go up. The current 'low cost of living' in the UK is unlikely to last very long.

XE is quoting 38.20 at the moment, so the pound should just be keeping its head above the 38 mark at the likes of TT. Surprising given that the government seems to have gone into full no-deal ahead mode.

.....but where are the tinned salmon sandwiches? Impossible to have a real buffet back then without them, lol!

I watched Captain Marvel last week. I enjoy most of the Marvel films, not so much the TV series though. Anyway, this was decent enough, lots of action, an attractive star, and amazing effects, I enjoyed it. I checked up the review sites and saw that it had many negative reviews. I couldn't figure this out as I thought it was a good movie, but digging a bit deeper it seems that Brie Larsen is a bit of a feminist headcase who'd said something along the lines of she didn't want men to go and see her new film. Kind of childish really, I don't suppose Marvel were over the moon with her for that one. There's some explanation here if you're interested: https://www.looper.com/145793/captain-marvel-already-getting-flooded-with-negative-reviews-on-rotten-tomatoes/

Dinner last night with the GF. I brought back a Tesco turkey crown from the UK and roasted it. I made peas, baby carrots, roast potatoes, stuffing, home-made Yorkshires and gravy to accompany it. Mint sauce and cranberry jelly as optional condiments. Very nice too, we both cleared our plates. Washed down with a large glass of Australian red followed by coffee and Remy Martin XO. It's a hard life.

My first trip there was 15 years ago and I loved the place, but even back then there were signs that things were changing for the worse. Blue Mountain only had a couple of houses left on it by then, the rest were being closed down by the cops. I don't suppose there's a single house of pleasure left up there now. I had friends who'd been visiting there for longer and they said it was a pale shadow of what once was, and this is in 2004. On my last visit, I think it was 2007, the Chinese invasion had already started. There was a massive new hotel (and casino I guess) that had been given one of the beaches as its own private property. The most expensive hotel had recently opened up on a small island catering to Chinese tourists (and businessmen, I guess), the most expensive room ran to a cool $2000 a night. And this in a country utterly mired in poverty. My first visit coincided with a serious crackdown on armed crime, I was only near one incident involving a gun on that trip at the Fisherman's Den rooftop bar run by Kiwi Brian. The other trips there were no gun incidents, and I appreciated the improved safety. I guess they already knew the Chinese were coming and they would be scared off if there was any untoward shooting so they must have decided to stop it altogether.