eBay’s top Chiang Mai sellers and their SE Asian seller management team met at the Chiang Mai Holiday Inn yesterday (23 Feb 2009) to exchange information about the marketplace, its policies, and current sales performance.

Presentations were also given by international courier DHL and a new service for sellers to manage their multi-national sales marketing – Global MerchantRun. PayPal SE Asia also attended and presented information. A buffet style dinner was provided by the Holiday Inn for early arrivers.

Of the 30 or so sellers in attendance, approximately half were foreign expatriates resident in Chiang Mai and trading from here. This is a stark contrast to the eBay team’s last visit to Chiang Mai, in 2006, when they held a seminar for all levels of buyers. That earlier meeting was predominantly Thai attendees with only a handful of foreigners. Could this disparity in ratio be indicative that Thai sellers are not succeeding on the platform?

Having moved house, the law in Thailand says that foreigners must advise the Immigration Police of their new address within 24 hours of the move. The same time span applies to even tourists moving from one hotel to another, although usually the hotel takes care of that.

TOT’s mistrust of its subscribers is causing foreigners in Thailand to pay unnecessary costs, receive continued billing long after requesting service termination, and is leading to loss of property rental deposits.

Foreigners renting property in Thailand, a country which prohibits all foreigners from land ownership, are subjected to prejudicial policies and serious levels of punative charges when subscribing to the Telephone Organisation of Thailand’s (TOT’s) ADSL broadband internet service.

News reached me over the weekend (24th/25th January) of a British expatriate found murdered in his home in a gated community (with 24 hour security) late last week.

Unfortunately, the news arrived whilst we were in the midst of the heavy end of relocating the business and household and I’ve not been able to prepare a full story yet. I hope to do so during this week.

We’re still unpacking at this end, but at least we’ve been able to have a full afternoon and evening at that, and the new office is up and running, with only the accounts-archives and similar to be de-boxed and shelved … still can’t find my stapler though – ever noticed how staplers always go missing when there’s a change of staff or location?

Rice cuisine around the world has several constants, which may have appeared due to the nature of the grain itself. Possibly they appeared due to movements of peoples and the migration of recipes, but whatever happened, travellers are sure to find familiar fare if they stay with the world’s most eaten seed. The most obvious [...]

I was told a long time ago that part of the reason Thailand is called “The Land of Smiles” is not because so many people smile so much of the time, but because Thais have over 1,000 different identified smiles, each for a different situation. After almost a decade living here, I reckon I can [...]

CHIANG MAI, 7 Nov 2008 – Twice a year, Thailand manages to amaze me. It’s the same event every year and that it still manages to grab my attention, in my tenth year of living here, is testimony to how dramatic it is.

Those events are what I call the “winter switch” nights. Let me explain …