khunPer

It's been little confusing, is the talk about $50,000 Covid-insurance, or a proper $50,000 health insurance..?

8th November Samui +33 new cases (workers camp = 29) Phangan +5 new cases Koh Tao, no new cases 9th November Samui +3 new cases Phangan +22 new cases Koh Tao, no new cases

The health insurance problem is not when you are 63 years old, and might even still do some well paid work, the problem begins when you pass 70 and 75, then the annual fee begins to rock so even a modest coverage can cost a relative fortune. As OP mentions i, talking about a modest life-style up Isaan, where retired people surviving an often better life than in their home country on a tiny government pension, they cannot afford the often needed 100,000+ baht a year to pay for even a modest health insurance. Many retirees in that income level will hardly be able to match the 40,000 baht monthly transfers needed for an extension of stay based on marriage. You can for example look at a Dane with basic government pension (Folkepension), which pays around 30,000 baht per month on present exchange rate, and even with a small extra mandatory work pension (ATP) on top it will only add between 3,000 and 5,000 baht extra per month. Just 100,000 baht insurance fee per year eats more than 8,000 baht of the monthly budget, which can easily be 25 percent of a low level retirement income. ????

"a monthly pension check does not arrive from the "nanny state" it comes from your previous employer. " Depending which "nanny state" you originates from. My "nanny state" pays life-long government pension without the need of ever saving a single penny yourself, or even being employed, or paying anything to additional mandatory work pension - which is small, but comes as extra - and social security and healthcare is free. It's all paid for by the present taxpayers...????

The cheap government hospital where I live has a tennis court, free and healthy to use...????

It was calculated to around 3,500 baht per year for migrant workers a few years back, so more likely 7,000 baht - or there about - might fit for a farang in basic government hospital care, VIP-room etc. would be extra. However that would also be excellent for many foreigners, then you can choose extra insurance or savings on top...????

Seems like many of us old-fashioned generation had next to nothing sex-education in school. There were two pages about sexuality in the biology book when I attended school, and it was in what equals year-8 or 9 international, or M1 or M2 after Thai system, i.e. early secondary. Back in the early 1960s - and I am Dane, only a few years later Denmark became famous for freely both written- and pictures pornography, and sexual live shows that people from abroad, even from USA, traveled to watch - almost the whole class looked forward to how our male biology teacher would manage those two pages. When we finally reached that part of the book in second half of the school year, the teacher said: »The next two pages you can read yourself.«???? We young teens learned about it the hard way by clumsy experience - once a girl was very interested in me, however she must however have been inexperienced as she later told me that felt sorry for me, because my tool was "the wrong way round"... - Sexuality was not a subject being talked about, and if a young girl (by accident) got pregnant, she would often be sent away to somewhere in the countryside, so family didn't loose face, and the child was quickly adopted. Only very rarely it was heard about sexual abuse - my mom had however once warned me about it when when I was around 8-10 years old - it probably might have taken place, but not being spoken about, and certainly hardly reaching the news. There were actually a number of grown up men interested in children, both boys and girls, in the otherwise bourgeois neighborhood I lived in. I've meet some of them - three times to be precise - but they never managed to abused me, and I never talked about it. Only once I heard about a case in the neighborhood, a very kind man, a caretaker in the apartment block, who us children liked. It's my impression that it's not more dangerous today, it's just more spoken about; and the cases reach both authorities and the news. I often have the impression that Thailand today, or a few years ago, in many ways is like Europe - and probably many Western countries - was 50 to 70 years ago. An "amazing" mix of modern time smartphone lifestyle, and old-fashioned lifestyle, pretty much as I both remember it from my childhood in the 1950s and 1960s, and from what I've read about from that time. In my opinion it's pretty much up to the parents to also educate their children - it's not only a job for the school - but I might think in a different way than some others...???? ????

Probably because some "free-spirits" are those not paying tax, or whitewashing something...????

I would think that it depends of which instruction the international sender has given (I'm talking from previous experience as exporter). However, most international senders might not wish to carry the costs of a return package and will just waive the package, especially if it's prepaid or of insignificant value. Likely international sellers would not send COD, but if it's a COD consignment, and of value, the internationally sender might tick the option for the parcel to be returned and accept to pay the return costs.

Yes, some products became cheaper...

7th November Samui +3 new cases Phangan +9 new cases Koh Tao, no new cases

Worth to look at the numbers over a little longer period, due to the Covic pandemic where consumer prices and inflation were very low a year ago, so just bringing the it up to "normal" inflation might relative looks like a huge price increase; economic experts prefer 2 percent annual inflation rate. Looking at the Thai Consumer Index the figure is 101.96 (let's say 102) per 31st. October. Last year it was 99.55, while end of 2018 was 100. So looked in that perspective 102 is not bad, it's 2 percent consumer price increase over nearly 3 years, whilst if looking against price index level in spring 2020 it's more than 5 percent consumer price increase...

6th November Samui +4 new cases Phangan, no new cases Koh Tao, no new cases

I will tell you by experience about five years from now...????

If you have an extension of stay that is transferred from your old passport to your new passport, then the transfer-stamp will have a line with your old passport number in your new passport...

Isn't it recently eased a little bit with how strict the job description in the work permit is, so you actually can do more, or extra work? I remember that I've seen articles and posts about it within the last few years.

In principle, if you are teaching online English to Thai students from Thailand, to my knowledge you need a work permit. You cannot obtain a work permit as individual - i.e. self employed online teacher - you need to either be properly employed in a school or company, or form you own company with the requested registered capital and number of thai employees.

From the article... Mr Tanee also acknowledged “some issues” with the system, which he said was mostly due to “external interferences”. Many thanks, I learned something new... Next time I make a script error in a web-page code, I can just say that faults are due to external interfaces...????????

What seems to be quite confusing is, if the $50,000 so-called "health insurance" is the former $100,000 Covid-19 insurance, just reduced to half coverage, or if it means a real health insurance - i.e. cannot be a travel insurance if are living permanently in Thailand - such an insurance might be almost impossible for numerous elder expats.

My local Makro has lots of imported beer, but it's not priced in same level as Cheap Charlie's local variants, but what is real beer might be of course be a matter of taste, rather than price...????

The rule was that you could not buy less than 10 liters of alcohol between 2 pm and 5 pm, as 10 liters were considered wholesale for restaurants and bars, and like. Two crates of each 24 pieces of .33 beer would do it...????

5th November Samui, no new cases Phangan +14 new cases Koh Tao, no new cases

"Privacy" is not a word in the Thai dictionary, everybody knows everything about everybody...???? The Thai Law for "Rent of Property'" in English translation is HERE. Often the advice is, if you cannot agree with a landlord, simply to "move on".

4th November Samui +12 new cases