Editor;
Re: Where the baht should be pegged (PM Mailbag Friday, 25 April 2014) – I have to say, as an Englishman sending money to his Thai partner, on a fortnightly basis, to take care of our two kids, the current exchange rate makes me want to kick the person/persons responsible for fixing it, up and down the street.
Bad enough that everything is now written up in Russian, on nearly every billboard around Pattaya. Because the English speaking world, to a large extent, has been ostracised, due to the ridiculous (and false) strengthening of the baht.
Basically the value has been taken out of taking the long flight over to Thailand, as most farangs money no longer stretches far enough to make the holiday viable. Going over to the ‘land of grimaces’ with £1,000 in your pocket, for a 2 week holiday, will no longer make you ‘a king’, as it once did.
The country and all it has to offer is still there, but its all at a price now, which is terribly saddening.
My own personal thought on the whole exchange rate issue, is that somebody, somewhere (and to be fair I’m not smart enough to figure out how) is absolutely raking it in, by keeping the baht higher in the currency markets than it should be! I can feel it in every pore of my skin.
So congratulations to those people for lining their pockets; pity about the rest of the population up in ‘the sticks’ being in abject poverty, though.
Happy Chappy
