Sign of the times
Doomladen notices on display in a bar in Soi Diamond. "Due to the current financial downturn, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off Mondays to Fridays." And "Full length undertaker’s coat for sale, only 200 baht. Left shoulder slightly worn."

Purposes of visa
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it has extended the purposes of the non immigrant ‘O’ visa which is available to farangs overseas. Type ‘O’ can be issued by foreign consulates to senior citizens intending to retire here, persons wishing to visit their Thai relatives, those seeking medical treatment in Thailand, official coaches in connection with sports and foreigners having to appear in court here. The memorandum also permits overseas consulates to grant multiple entry, one year availability non immigrant visas at their discretion.

Studying in Britain
When arriving Thai students present their student visa to the UK airport official, he has the power to grant six months, or one year or whatever. Under a recent change, if he grants more than six months, a Thai student may leave and reenter UK without the need to obtain a reentry permit. If the UK immigration officer allows a stay of six months or less, the visa usually expires with the first departure from Britain. More than one quarter of all overseas Thai students are believed to be attending British colleges and universities.

Safety first and last
The Kingdom is introducing more and more laws allegedly to protect those living here. We all know in Pattaya about needing to wear a crash helmet on a motorbike, sometimes anyway, whilst dropping a cigarette end in the street could empty your wallet. Now there are laws to prevent people lifting more than fifty kilos of rice or dumping rubbish in the countryside or having a worn out exhaust pipe. Whilst legislators are being so active, perhaps they could insist that drivers avoid proceeding down No Entry streets and that small boys desist from driving Hondas with three passengers on the pillion seat. That really would be health and safety.

Pleasurable dining out
Driving down Sukhumvit Highway in the Jomtien area, look out for the Tarzan Hut and Sharky sign by Soi Najomtien. It’s a kilometer or so away from the main road, but is a delightful Thai restaurant in an attractive setting. Watch the sun go down and then try some of the tasty and reasonably priced sea food as you gaze out across the starry water. Not too well known by farangs yet, Sharky’s is popular amongst Thais who can always spot a good bargain.

Ground rules for Pattaya investors
Buy a property here because you love it and not because you expect to make a profit... Lease a bar here only after a qualified doctor has guaranteed in writing you are not a basket case... When you think up a revolutionary plan to open a restaurant, remember that a dozen others have gone bust with the same idea... Remember the only farang ever to win a financial argument with a Thai, and live to tell the story, had a helicopter standing by in his garden... If you wanna end up enjoying a small fortune in Pattaya, don’t forget to bring a huge one out here.

Champion boozer
Jack (The Prat) Springfield from Littlehampton has lost his 5,000 baht bet, which was illegal anyway, to drink a Singha beer in every bar and nitery in Pattayaland Soi two within a one hour time limit. He started out at the Beach Road end and almost managed his beery treck to Second Road under the watchful eye of his mates. However, upon staggering into the soi’s one gay go go club apparently named after a large weapon, he threw up and had to recover in hospital. Jack admitted later he had an aversion to male underwear covered in polka dots.

Motivational speaker
The guest speaker at the Pattaya marketing conference was anxious to find a way of bringing home to his audience how really important dynamism and enthusiasm are in making a success of the Amazing Thailand promotion. As he was entering the lecture hall, he noticed the word PUSH written on the door. This seemed to him to be the perfect slogan to draw his audience’s attention. As he reached the climax of his speech, the speaker said, "And if there is one word which captures the secret of how to be successful, then that word is the one written right there on the door to this hall." The entire audience swung its eyes to the door to witness the key to modern marketing. It was the one word PULL.

Breaking news
Cambodia: Two prostitutes this week were riding around Phnom Penh with a sign on top of a motorbike which read, "Two prostitutes $50." A policeman stopped them and told them to remove the sign or go to jail... Poland: The national carrier has withdrawn the advertising slogan Fifty Five Years In The Sky after concerns that potential passengers might be confused about the duration of flights... Mongolia: Families living near a chemical plant have told the Tass news agency that the pollution is terrible and that they would be in big trouble if they were allowed to breathe.
 

Modern Medicine: by Dr. Iain Corness, Consultant

Gallstones

Your gallbladder lives under your liver, on the right hand side of your tummy, just under the ribs. A great little organ which helps with digestion. Unfortunately, it has a tendency to produce gallstones and these can produce an internal gallbladder blockage.

These little stones (and sometimes not so little) are very common in the community. 10% of men and 15% of women will develop these in their lifetime, so you stand a reasonable chance of getting one.

The "classic" gallstone sufferer is described as 5F - Fat, Fair, Forty, Female & Fertile! Do I see some of our ex-pat ladies clutching at their tummies already!

However, it’s not as disastrous as it sounds - 75% of gallstones do not produce any symptoms at all, so breathe easy girls!

Mind you, if you do get symptoms, you’ll know about it. The classic symptom is a colicky acute pain in the gallbladder area which we call "Biliary colic" and you call "Aaagh! Get the doctor!"

Fortunately, these attacks of biliary colic usually settle fairly quickly and by the time the doctor has got there the patient is sitting up and smiling.

How do you know if you are carrying around a little time bomb of gallstones? Your doctor will suspect their presence from the history of pain attacks and will order an Ultrasound of your gallbladder region. These are fancy "X-rays" without the radiation, the image being produced by "ultra" sound waves and the image received by a sensor and projected via TV screen.

Some stones go past the neck of the gallbladder into the bile duct and these are a little harder to trace. These we winkle out using a technique called ERCP (endoscopic retrograde cholangio-pancreatography, if you insist on knowing!) and requires a small procedure to get and endoscope tube into the bile duct.

For troublesome stones the best answer is surgery. There are some centres which try to dissolve the little blighters with tablets, or blast them apart with a fancy technique called ESWL (extra-corporeal shock wave lithotripsy), but surgery is still number one in the treatment list.

The newer "laparascopic" surgical techniques are quite fantastic (first performed in France in 1987) and leave you with only three little puncture wounds instead of the usual 4" - 6" scar. Unfortunately, not everyone is suitable for lap surgery.

So that’s the gallstone picture. To try to avoid getting them, don’t have too much sugar in your diet, don’t get overweight and don’t be a teetotaler! A "little" alcohol is good for you - the problem is, what constitutes "a little"? But that’s another story!

Family Money: By Leslie Wright

Schemes & Scams

A wide variety of genuine investment opportunities are available to international investors.

These include collective investment schemes run by major internationally-recognised institutions, such as unit trusts, mutual funds, and unit-linked insurance policies.

These schemes are designed to accommodate relatively modest amounts of money, and are ideal for most investors who have neither the time nor expertise to manage their own investment portfolios.

As the firms which offer these schemes are very substantial, well established, and mostly located in well-regulated regimes, the risk of losing your money as a result of the firm’s failure is very small.

These types of investments can therefore be regarded as highly secure, and generally produce an acceptable if relatively modest return, ranging from 5% - 25% per annum, depending on the specific investment funds selected.

Market movements of course play a considerable part in determining this return, so professional ongoing advice on your portfolio is useful to optimise gains and minimise losses.

Private banking
For very wealthy individuals, personal investment portfolios are offered by private banking divisions of major international banks.

Again, the majority of international banks are well regulated, and the risk of loss as a result of the institution’s folding are limited.

In some countries legislation is in place to protect investors’ bank deposits - but in most cases only relatively modest amounts are fully protected, and should the chosen bank fail, investors are at risk of losing much of their capital if the bank in question is not supported by a third party.

This was the case with BICC some years back, and would have been the case more recently with Barings Bank in the U.K., had it not been bought up by another international bank. (A similar scenario is happening now in Thailand, with support being actively sought from major overseas banks by encouraging them to buy substantial stakes in various ailing local banks, to fend off a collapse in the local over-extended banking system.)

Direct Investment
For more hands-on investors, direct investments into bond- or stock-markets can be made through well-known international brokerage houses such as Merrill Lynch, for example.

Large well-established brokerages are unlikely to go bust, but small ones could, and if they did and were holding your money at the time, you’d have little legal recourse against them and could lose a substantial proportion of your capital.

There have been many cases of forex dealers and bullion traders disappearing overnight, taking all their investors’ money with them. (Hong Kong is notorious for this.)

Scams feed on greed
A large number of investment schemes promise a considerably higher return than can be regarded as "normal".

These are often accompanied by such enticing phrases as "100% guaranteed" or "supported by leading banks" or "will earn you 10 - 75% per month."

These comforting phrases are all designed to stimulate your greed and overcome your prudence and common sense. The objective is to induce you to part with your money, which you may never see again.

Scams are commonplace, and tricksters rely on the fact that many investors desire high returns and low risks but are unfamiliar with fraudulent practices.

Investments which appear out of the ordinary beg common sense to intervene, but all too often that is not the case. Fraudsters and confidence-tricksters rely on the fact that their offers sound very enticing, and appeal to the greed in all of us to make money quickly.

A scheme which is available "only to a select few" or is "a ground-floor opportunity" should set off warning bells, but too often doesn’t.

Warning bells
Some of the sophisticated-sounding investments that one sometimes comes across include Standby Letters of Credit; Bank Secured Capital Enhancements; Prime Bank Discounted Guarantees; High Yield Guaranteed Investments; Secured Investment Trading; 40 Weeks Guaranteed Return Investment Programs; Prime Bank Discounted Letters of Credit; Bank Debenture Trading Programs; Prime Bank Guarantees of 106%; Leveraged Capital Trading Programs.

If you are considering investing into any of these, first ask yourself whether you fully understand exactly what this investment is (most people don’t), how it works, and really how secure it is. If you cannot obtain clear and satisfactory answers, it’s probably a scam.

If your investment will be held in a "Joint Venture Account" or "Safekeeping Deposit Account" or "Protected With Buy/Sell Agreements", you should also be wary.

If you’re asked to provide a Bank Comfort Letter, Bank Letter of Commitment, Letter of Intent, or Letter of Authority, be careful what this will enable the holder to do.

For example, if you are asked to provide authority for some third party to access your bank account - often with the comforting story that this is to remit the gains on your investment - you might find it suddenly emptied...

(However, a specific bank instruction letter to remit a specified amount from your bank to the bank account of a major internationally-recognised investment institution is a totally different matter, as is providing that same institution with instructions to remit the proceeds of your investment back to your bank account.)

The Nigerian Invoice Trick
A scam which has been around for years but amazingly still catches some unwary people is the now famous Nigerian invoice trick.

An entrepreneur receives a letter out of the blue from Nigeria, typically on an official-looking letterhead, claiming that the writer has access to millions of dollars of the former-government’s money which he needs help to get out of the country, and would the recipient please provide a blank letterhead and company invoice to enable this money to be sent overseas, in return for which assistance you will be paid a commission of over a million dollars - and to make transferring this commission easy, please provide details of your bank account, thank you very much.

Many people have fallen for this, and had their bank accounts promptly emptied, with of course no recourse.

Other scams have involved ground-breaking inventions which need capitalisation to get going (although some of these may in fact be quite genuine); shares in gold mines which later turned out to have been salted to produce enticing assay reports (there was one such case in Indonesia not long ago); housing or condominium developments which are located in places the investors are never likely to visit, and which never get built... (Much swampland in Florida was sold this way some years ago, but the same practice continues in other places, and a few pretty pictures of proposed developments which will produce a "guaranteed return of at least 25% in the first year" still catch unwary investors!)

People can’t see the wood for the trees
Timberland and forest development is another one. Asking you to invest in fast-growing trees (which can’t lose because of the world demand for timber) in out-of-the-way places (which you’re unlikely to be able to visit), may in some cases be quite genuine investment opportunities for some people who want a medium-term investment that sounds good at the dinner table.

After all, to mention casually that you’ve just bought a forest in Ayrshire sounds much more sophisticated than telling your dinner companions that you’ve just taken out an offshore insurance bond!

However, the con-artists have caught onto the snobbish appeal of this type of investment, and even enforce this by mentioning "important" co-investors or partners in the venture who are often public figures (whom you are unlikely to be able to contact to check the truth of such claims.)

Common sense would tend to indicate that if the potential investment were that good, and rich or powerful public figures were indeed involved, why do they need your comparatively paltry investment?

But common sense isn’t too common, unfortunately - far less common than greed, it seems.

Rich and powerful people rarely fall for these scams; they are financially secure already, and don’t need to take the risks inherent in acquiring wealth quickly.

For the rest of us, security of your investments should be of paramount importance, and the risks of any investment carefully considered in light of the potential return.

If you are considering investing into a scheme which indicates it will produce an above-average gain, consider the risk of losing your capital. If it’s an amount you can afford to lose, then by all means go ahead - with your eyes wide open and without rose-coloured spectacles.

Otherwise, stick to schemes you can understand, check, access and control.

If you have any comments or queries on this article, or about other topics concerning investment matters, write to Leslie Wright, c/o Family Money, Pattaya Mail, or fax him directly on (038) 232522 or e-mail him at [email protected]. Further details and back articles can be accessed on his firm’s website on www.westminsterthailand.com.

Leslie Wright is Managing Director of Westminster Portfolio Services (Thailand) Ltd., a firm of independent financial advisors providing advice to expatriate residents of the Eastern Seaboard on personal financial planning and international investments.