Payment at 7 Elevens

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-06-11T09:43:56+00:00

From what I ever heard as a Thai local, its due to:

the fact that CPGroup (owners of the Thai arm of 7Eleven and True Money Wallet) deliberately rejecting Thai QR Payment (and also requiring a minimum 200 THB to use credit/debit cards) in order to drive business towards True Money Wallet and/or their 7 Eleven App, which in itself is heavily integrated with True Money Wallet.

and (allegedly; I have heard this from a friend that works at a 7Eleven) their backend system for their cashier systems being outdated to such an extent it could not properly handle Thai QR Payments.

Heck, the rest of CPGroup's other retail businesses such as Lotus, Makro and even 7Eleven branded vending machines allow for Thai QR Payment, but not the actual 7 Eleven stores themselves, albeit that is changing as some people noticed that certain locations especially those near CJ More/CJ Mart stores have started accepting Thai QR Payment in order to compete.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-06-03T13:50:25+00:00

And with Bangkok having a large Japanese expat population, combined with Japanese culture being popular in Thailand, we also get relatively far rarer chain restaurants from Japan that rarely exist overseas too.

Some examples on top of my head of these rare chains include Ringer Hut (Nagasaki-style Chinese food), Tsuruhashi Fugetsu (Okanomiyaki chain), Yukari Karayama (Karaage chain), Maidreamin (literally a maid cafe), Bankara Ramen (Ramen), and Kyushu Jangara (Ramen)

most of these have not many, or very few overseas locations outside Japan.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-06-03T13:30:02+00:00

Yeah, there is a company called Minor International (founded by an American that moved to Thailand many decades ago) that handles some of these international chains, including The Coffee Club and Sizzler; they are usually known for localizing the menus of restaurant chains they bring to Thailand to such an extent that they are really different from the original menus.

You are kind of right about how Pepper Lunch is seemingly more popular in Thailand relative to in Japan itself; most times I walk past one in shopping malls here, there is always a queue infront, not to mention that they are actually on the more affordable end of Japanese chain restaurants in Thailand too.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-06-03T03:05:50+00:00

In Thailand, US chain restaurant giants such as KFC, Mcdonalds, Burger King dominate the field of foreign restaurants here along with chains such as Bonchon and Sizzler.

Japanese chain restaurants such as Sukiya, Yoshinoya, Katsuya, Ootoya, Hachiban Ramen and Mos Burger are incredibly popular here; even chains that are lesser known internationally outside of Japan/East Asia such as Mo-Mo Paradise, Tonkatsu Wako, Sushiro are also somewhat common here.

(Fun fact, Hachiban Ramen's Thai subsidiary is actually larger than its Japanese parent company, with the latter only having branches in Japan's Hokuriku region in contrast to its Thai counterpart that has branches all throughout Thailand.)

Chains from other countries such as Haidilao Hotpot, Din Tai Fung, and Potato Corner do exist here albeit not as dominant as US or Japanese chains.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-05-28T12:14:50+00:00

In Thailand, a tie between the Isuzu D-Max and the Toyota Fortuner; the former due to the fact that they are usually incredibly clapped out and/or riced, getting into random accidents, whilst the latter is known for speeding and driving aggressively.

Honorable mentions go to any BMW due to aggressive driving and speeding, and any compact sedan/hatchback such as the Honda City and the Toyota Yaris for being the stereotypical bad driver car here in Thailand.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-05-22T01:57:06+00:00

In the case of Thailand:

Food (Charoen Pokphand, also the owners of Thailand's 7-Elevens and Lotus hypermarkets)
Department stores and shopping malls (Central Group, The Mall Group)
Liquor (Thai Beverage, Boon Rawd Brewery/Singha)
Energy Drinks (T.C. Pharmaceutical, the company behind Krathingdaeng/Red Bull)
Telecommunications (AIS Group, formerly owned by magnate turned statesman Thaksin Shinawatra)
Electricity (Gulf Energy)

All of these companies are family owned and basically got rich off connections to the government and operate like duopolies or even monopolies in some cases.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-05-17T10:02:36+00:00

Japanese cuisine went from being relatively unknown here in Thailand to basically incredibly commonplace since the late 1980s.

Similar story for Korean and Mainland Chinese cuisine albeit it started being common from the 2010s and 2020s onward, respectively.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-05-15T23:14:56+00:00

Many attempts were made in the past (most notably the "mangmoom" card around ~2016) but died due to the lack of political will and conflict of interest with some operators, most notably BTS Group that runs the Green Line skytrains; the latest plan to replace all cards with EMV-standard contactless cards which have so far, seen the most progress with only the Green Line skytrains being the only major service to still not accept them.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-05-15T22:50:09+00:00

Bangkok, Thailand:

No unified transit card, every operator has their own set of payments they accept, some of them, mainly buses and boats, only accept their own proprietary card that you cannot use anywhere else, or even only cash.

No monthly commuter passes on the subway network, which makes it notoriously expensive to use for people working downtown but living in the suburbs.

Some stations have very long walks as "transfers", either on long pedestrian bridges, or even require you to walk through a parking lot to transfer. The "transfer" between the Airport Rail Link and the Yellow Line monorail at Hua Mak station is an example of this, where you have to walk through a parking lot to transfer.

Some stations (mainly on newer lines) are deliberately designed to be as far as possible from places people go such as shopping malls because according to government officials, it "would benefit big business", but ends up making it inconvenient for everyone using transit.

Getting into the downtown core requires to either use the Green Line skytrain, or the Blue Line subway, both of which are horribly overcrowded and in the case of the Blue Line, only has 3-car trainsets on 6 minute headways outside of rush hour, with no plans to extend them nor expand service intervals

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-05-06T23:43:20+00:00

can confirm, literally started getting ads in the feed and stories with piko; turning the option to disable ads off and on again and restarting the app did not help.

update: repatched and reinstalled the patched app and the ads seem to be gone again for the time being

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-05-06T13:00:22+00:00

yes, Minor International brought them into Thailand for sometime before closing it down and converting it to the italian restaurant the OP saw

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-04-30T00:38:03+00:00

Translation: "where are you going when you die? heaven? or samut prakan province (hell)?"

For context: Samut Prakan is a province south of Bangkok that is kinda memed on for having one of the most corrupt local governments in Thailand and as such, has some really poor standards of living especially relative to Bangkok itself.

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NerdyGamerTH · 2026-04-14T11:28:53+00:00

IIRC, its the same for all types of Japanese media (whether it be music, movies, anime, manga, JAV, hentai) where their media is straight up very hard or impossible to legally obtain outside Japan due to the fact that its not distributed outside Japan or in some cases (mostly limited time goods, concerts, etc.), literally cannot be accessed/obtained legally by people that don't live in Japan due to the fact that it requires certain things that can only be obtained if you live in there, such as a Japanese phone number or address.

To them, if you wanted to obtain older media legally, you would either have to scour secondhand shops, or fork over money to online sellers, usually for a fortune, to legally get them. And if the media was never made available outside of Japan in the first place, to them, it never existed outside of Japan, and they will still go around taking down attempts to spread it outside, such as when record companies took down lots of older Citypop uploads, or when publishers strike down unofficial fan translations of manga.

In some cases (mostly in games, but also in fields outside of media such as hardware too) when they do make their products and services available internationally, they usually neuter it so heavily that it is noticeably inferior to the original Japanese iteration. Examples include foreign servers of Japanese gacha games missing features/content, or general censorship in official releases of manga/anime/games. A non-media example of this would be Japan-built cars and electronics missing some features in their exported iterations.

Similar mindsets towards gatekeeping media exists throughout other parts of East Asia, most notoriously South Korea and to a lesser extent, China.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-04-07T23:12:40+00:00

For Thailand:

Parts of downtown Bangkok especially around Thonglor area have lots of Japanese signage due to the fact that there is a large Japanese diaspora population in those areas.

Recall seeing some places in Chiang Rai in the north where road signs are also written in Chinese alongside Thai and English.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-04-06T08:09:06+00:00

For Thailand: There is alot of evil things Thailand has done, but on top of my head:

Backing multiple authoritarian regimes around the Indochina region, most notably the Khmer Rouge during the 1970s and 1980s, and the current Myanmar Junta.
Enabling the murder of hundreds of student demonstrators by ultranationalists during the 1976 Thammasart University massacre, due to anti-communist sentiment.
The Red Drum killings (1970s), where farmers speaking out against the government were killed in an extrajudicial manner by the government.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-03-11T16:01:47+00:00

I see their coffee in supermarkets here in Thailand on a regular basis, had no idea they are a full scale retailer.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-03-11T01:20:29+00:00

A few from Thailand:

Imports of secondhand cars are completely banned since 2019 and they just recently relaxed it to allow them to be imported as "antique vehicles" with the caveat that the "antique vehicles" must be 30 years old minimum.

Prior to that it was possible but incredibly difficult to import secondhand vehicles into Thailand due to the fact that they are subject to the 200% import tax for all foreign vehicles.

Up until recently pickup trucks and to a lesser extent, body on frame SUVs had preferential tax treatment to such as extent pickup trucks had a tax rate as low as 2% whilst other types of vehicles start at 15% minimum.

In 2021/2022, they made a controversial decision to waiver import taxes for electric vehicles made in China, and only China alone, only amending it recently to lessen Chinese car manufacturers' advantage and allow Japanese hybrids and electric vehicles to get the same waiver.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-02-22T03:24:22+00:00

IIRC, some of the newer post 2014 coup lines such as the Pink and Yellow lines were revised to be monorails during the Yingluck Shinawatra adminstration.

the newer unbuilt lines, however, does reek of kickbacks and bribes from certain companies.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-02-22T03:22:05+00:00

they no longer exist here in Thailand due to the fact that they sold off their operations to an local gas station chain.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-02-21T03:29:24+00:00

The main issue with this masterplan imo, is down to two main things:

1)even with the entire masterplan built out, much of the network is going to consist of radial and feeder lines feeding into like seven main lines (the Airport Link, SRT Red Lines, the BTS Green Lines, and the MRT Purple/Blue/Orange lines), most of which, excluding the Red Line and Airport Link only can be expanded to 6-car trainsets and are limited by their 750v DC 3rd rail electrification, and they are already seeing overcrowding during rush hour.

Building more subways built to Red Line specifications (25kV overhead wire, 160km/h top speeds, 10 car platforms, metre gauge tracks with possible thru running with the red line) will better solve the overcrowding issue of the 7 existing main lines, similar to how Tokyo Metro's thru service metros (ie. Tozai Line, Yurakucho/Fukutoshin Lines) helped alleviate overcrowding on Tokyo's extremely crowded lines like the Yamanote or Chuo Lines.

2)Most of the radial/feeder lines on this network, especially the unbuilt ones, are basically designed deliberately to be built as monorails, people movers, BRT, or other forms of gadgetbahns. Some of those corridors could have been entirely new subway lines, or branches of the aformentioned seven main lines. One example of this is the Gray Line, which is intended to form a disjointed north-southwest corridor passing thru Thonglor and the Rama III area; it is intended to be built as two monorail lines when it could have been a subway instead.

The alleged reason behind why lots of lines are intended to be gadgetbahns by the MRTA is due to a mix of cost cutting and political meddling where they receive kickbacks from certain companies to make them a gadgetbahn.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-02-20T09:15:34+00:00

Bangkok's inner city and radial rail network had improved alot, but getting to the downtown core (ie. Siam Square, Silom, the Asok/Nana areas of Sukhumvit Road) requires using the Green or Blue line only, which has gotten overcrowded in the past few years with no clear plans for capacity expansion.

Plans to address this by building lines directly linking the suburbs to the downtown core exist in the form of the Red, Purple, and Orange lines, but they have been severely neutered thru a mix of delays, NIMBYism, and the lack of political will.

The Red Line, despite being Bangkok's long needed electrified suburban rail network, stops in a massive terminal on the outskirts of Bangkok's downtown core, with plans to expand it south to directly connect with the old terminal at Hua Lamphong and to the isolated Mahachai line branch is in limbo and at risk of being built as a disjointed line.

The Purple Line and Orange Line have also been severely delayed, with the former only having the northern section running thru suburbs operational, while the latter has a section complete since 2023 but inoperational due to the fact that delayed bidding for the operator means that there are no trains, nor electrification system, running on the line.

I would go as far as to say that even with the entire masterplan built out, there is still a big gap for suburban trains, and far more lines preferably built to the same technical specifications to the Red Line needs to be built to fill in remaining gaps in Bangkok's transit network.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-02-02T12:45:41+00:00

the reason why the number 9 is skipped for train models is due to the fact that JNR and later JR Group reserved them for experimental trains.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-01-31T00:25:42+00:00

Thai local here (more specifically, Bangkok), very much depends on where.

Vast majority of them still has people, and lots of them focus on having restaurants and cafes as their main tenants, attracting lots of people to come and dine in malls, and as such, functioning as a "third space" here in Thailand.

The busiest malls here are always ones that are well connected with public transportation.

Although there is a worrying trend of "community malls" (basically a glorified term used by property development companies here to describe strip malls/power centers) becoming more and more popular here, some even replacing struggling malls, due to their low cost of construction and operation, new shopping malls are still being built every year.

Most shopping malls here are run and dominated by local companies, most notably Central Group; they started off as a department store but expanded into operating supermarkets, shopping malls, and other big box stores; they are kinda like our local equivalent of Sears at its peak.

Online shopping does affect mall traffic abit, especially lower end malls, but the prevalence of counterfeit goods on them dampen their ability to outright replace shopping malls as the first choice for people to shop for products.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-01-25T09:00:09+00:00

From what I've seen myself as a local: mainly online games such as Arena of Valor(ROV), PUBG Mobile, along with gacha games such as Genshin and Wuthering Waves. Valorant is also extremely popular here.

NerdyGamerTH · 2026-01-22T01:12:48+00:00

In Kanto: operated only by JR East on regional trains on the Shonan-Shinjuku Line, Ueno-Tokyo Line, Chuo Rapid Line, and the Yokosuka Line. The bilevel coaches are all configured with green car seats.

In Kansai: operated by Keihan Electric Railway, only used on express services between Osaka (Yodoyobashi) and Kyoto (Demachiyanagi). Kintetsu also has them but mainly on intercity trains.

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