gearbox

Mu GF tells me Seatran is cancelling the cards for the time being, so not possible to book a car in advance for specific date/time...really inconvenient. Many times we go and come back the same day, if we have to wait in the queue it would shrink the time we can spend in the mainland as sometimes the wait times are 2-3 hours.

I would say fairly accurate, as far as I remember I had some sort of refund only once. However duty + vat + shipping in many cases adds a lot, if possible it is usually much better to buy from Amazon overseas/home country and bring it in Thailand as a baggage. Overseas you may be able even to get free shipping with Prime trials. Unfortunately no amazon.co.th any time soon.

"Nothing to declare"

If travelling in and out best is to bring stuff with you as check-in baggage, I brought a few months ago things which were probably 250k+ in value, went triumphant via the green corridor. Just make them look used and never keep the original packaging.

Which anti-Westerners, most of the people commenting here are from the West. The West is in gradual decline and tries to prop itself with coups and wars. Our ever declining quality of politicians are turning our economies into "service economies", nations with ever increasing quantities of financial engineers, divorce lawyers and other categories of people who have close to zero value in strategic competition. Look at Mr. Dementi, a nation of 340 millions can't find anyone better? In Australia Paul Keating was the last good politician, ever decreasing quality since then.

You are allowed keep your head above the water and even can learn to swim, but don't try to become a world champion....these are the rules ???? https://kendawg.medium.com/how-the-plaza-accord-helped-the-us-destroy-the-japanese-economy-b4b24c20a9af

When my Crocs broke a few months ago I got a pair from Tesco for 120 baht, still going strong, now travelling in Europe with them ????????

The oil and gas were marching up well before the war in Ukraine. The war just added a bit extra.

I can't generalise but I ordered quite a few times items from AliExpress way exceeding the 1500 baht limit, all came through without any customs holds. Amazon already calculates the duty and taxes in the purchase price.

The American "rules based order" is set of principles and rules designed to keep the vast majority of the world forever at the bottom of the food chain. The Chinese villains are attempting to break these rules because they don't want to manufacture cheap t-shirts and thongs forever.

You don't specify whether you need a pool for doing laps or just splashing around. Lap pools are scarce in Thailand. During covid times there were packages to use the hotel facilities like pools but I'm not sure if these are available now. Some were including drinks in the price, I remember Anantara in Koh Phangan offering this in Feb 2021. The prices are not cheap and if they charge you for kids too it would be thousands. Call Anantara in Samui (there are 2 of them) and see if they offer something. I vaguely remember Anantara in Chaweng had something at 1500 baht pp, but may be wrong about the price.

You can extend it with a few extra choices like "I don't have 800k for visa"

This is short term issue, longer term issues would be like this one below and growing: https://merics.org/en/short-analysis/made-china-electric-vehicles-could-turn-sino-eu-trade-its-head Once the Chinese squeeze them from the markets (as the Japanese and Koreans did before), it would be interesting where they would find money to fund the poor countries lining up for membership.

No worries, Albo says we are going to be a superpower soon: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/albanese-aims-for-superpower-status-in-global-energy-transition-20220711-p5b0sq.html

There are the no 1 polluter, one would expect that, it is the global factory and there are nearly 1.5 billion of them. However having 1200GW generation capacity by 2030 only from wind and solar is a lot, considering that all sources of generation capacity of US are 1115GW combined. "In 2020, the pandemic year, installed electricity generation summer capacity [14] in the United States was 1115.68 gigawatts (GW), up 16.57 GW from 2019."

From the airport to Ark Bar is around 3km, so you are guaranteed to be ripped off, but there is no competition at the airport. The other way around you can bargain it to 250-300 baht. Sometimes when I arrive with a carry-on I just walk to Chaweng ???? The petrol has increased a lot similar to everywhere in the world, filling up a motorbike is approaching 200 baht, it was nearly half before. Diesel is capped a bit but there are no taxis running on diesel afaik. Many ingredients used by restaurants are way higher now, the very popular chicken breast in Makro us nearly 50% up compared to year ago. Veggies are way more expensive than before. Fruit which is in season like mangosteens or rambutans right now are keeping more or less the same prices as the last year. From my observations the imported stuff hasn't moved that much so far, e.g olive oil is pretty much the same price. 320 baht for a whole fish would be average price for average quality sit down restaurant. The retirement extension is still 1900 baht.

There are mobile cart vendors with tiny small kitchens offering popular Thai dishes for lunch like Papaya salad, Pad Thai and noodle soups. Their customers are 99% Thai and the dish price doesn't exceed 50 baht, if anyone tells you higher price they are ripping you off. There are pretty much none of them on the Chaweng beach road, but there are few on the road at the lake running parallel to the beach, they are there for an hour or two until they sell out their stuff. What you get would be lower quality of food, no big fresh shrimps in the Pad Thai or soups, stuffed with MSG, but if not a foodie good enough to fill in the tummy. I've eaten from carts quite a few times, never got sick, but friends of mine visiting wouldn't go near them even if you paid them.

I haven't seen Pad Thai on Chaweng beach road for 50 baht across the whole stretch of the road...it would be 80-100 baht for lower end restaurants with small frozen shrimps used, and up to 200 baht at the good quality restaurants. For cheaper options you need to take the road away from the lake towards Makro at the roundabout near Central, there are many cheaper Thai restaurants, but depending where you stay you may need to pay for taxi to get there and the cost of your Pad Thai may double. Another option is the market at the lake near Central, but they don't do it every day. As phetphet mentioned it they refurbished the market near Thai international hospital, it is cheaper than the market at the lake or the Fisherman walking street, but is quite further from the beach. It is open every day. For good restaurant just look at the Google or TripAdvisor rankings near you (afaik both have "near me" option), many restaurants have menus online or someone took a picture of the menu, you can see what's available without the need to go and look around. Avoid asking Facebook groups for recommendations, as usually you'll get "recommendations" from either the business owner or their staff. Usually the restaurants attached to hotels are poor value wrt price and quality, I very rarely eat at the hotels I'm staying.

China is a world leader in renewables and is likely to be the first big country drastically reducing dependency on fossil fuels: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-30/china-set-to-double-last-year-s-record-solar-panel-installations The Chinese don't want dependency on foreign oil and gas, Russian or from anywhere else.

The Die Welt article is there, go and look at their web site, but it is in German and behind a paywall. No need to post Sputnik sources to imply that the Russians somehow fabricated this. And the article claims the talks are "secret" so one wouldn't expect government press release.

The Ukrainians may reject ceding land for peace, but Die Welt reports about secret negotiations between EU and the US to end the war with diplomacy. I highly doubt the Ukrainians are invited to these talks. The West can force Ukraine to cede land if self interest dictates it, and the Ukrainians may be left high and dry. The electorate in the EU wants the war to end.

I didn't post that link to clarify and "distribute" blame about who started the war, it is obvious that the Russians invaded Ukraine. There seems to be some obsession who is to blame, the cooler heads reason what can happen from now on, not to play the blame game. And the outlook is not good any way you look at it.

Well, the Ukrainians themselves think that NATO/US has contributed to flaming this war: https://dimitrilascaris.org/2022/07/01/poll-finds-most-ukrainians-believe-ukraines-government-nato-and-the-u-s-bear-some-responsibility-for-ukraine-war/ The war is wrong, all wars are wrong, but here we are, the war is there and can become quite dangerous for everyone. As the article points there is no favorable outcome of this war due to one of the countries having the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world. No bar stool talks can change that. The longer the war is going the worse it would get, if the Russians keep winning the Ukrainians will lose more territory, if the Russians start losing the risk of nukes being used increases a lot.

Ignoring the propaganda noise from both sides and applying some abstract thinking, the reality is really simple. The Russians at the moment are winning slowly. If they start losing, then there is a pocket full of nukes. Pocket full of nukes is undeniable reality, and that's the point the author makes. Imagine a war between US and Mexico and the Mexicans start getting upper hand. Would the Americans use nukes to change the course of the war? They did it once already in WW2.

If nuclear weapons are used it won't matter at all who started it, the outcome would be disastrous. Even if only Russia uses nuclear weapons without any strike back from the west, this would still ruin the world for generations. People tend to forget that these two countries were under communist rule for many years. The human life doesn't matter much there. There are probably tons of crazy heads behind the scene at the Russian side. Hardened ex communists taught from the cradle that the only thing important is to win.