bendejo

They don't have to take it, they are the State Dept, they can simply cancel it regardless of where you are. Isn't that how Snowden ended up in Putinland?

Another is Tello, which may be slightly cheaper than Mint and has a good reputation. The important thing when installing one of these SIMs is your phone has to be UNLOCKED. This unlocking business is a topic all its own, my guess is it may be easier (and cheaper) to have this done in LOS. Bear in mind N America uses different carrier frequencies than other parts of the world http://allworldcellphones.com/gsm-frequencies-list.htm If you care to delve into this stuff, here's a good place for such discussions www.howardforums.com

A halal MacDonald's right there in a flesh district, gotta love it.

As Chairman Mao said "know your enemy."

For app. 15 years I used Earth Class Mail. I had an account with Citi, and a few credit cards. I moved around a lot and did not have any foreign addresses. In all that time I did not have any accounts with non-US financial institutions, nor did I ever get anything other than a ordinary tourist visa in any country (opting for a run to the border vs immigration dept red tape*). I managed to get by without hassle regarding not being in the US, even had two occasions that involved interacting with the IRS (which were legit misunderstandings). I never saw the CMRA acronym before this thread, but I detected that post 9/11 there was suddenly an awareness of what was not a "real" postal address; for years I had a one-man consultancy with a private mailbox company address, never had the issue come up. I can't recall the details, but at one point ECM needed a certified document and I had to hunt down the Malaysian equivalent of a notary public. I just realized your 60 day deadline expired, I hope things worked out. * Argentina will issue an effortless 3 month visa to a US passport upon entry, but extending that, well, it'll take a lot of days in Buenos Aires waking up at 5am to get downtown to take a place in line, and hopefully you will get to the counter by closing time. Malaysia also did the effortless 3 months at the border for US, but once for the heck of it I went to check out a visa extension: they wanted local references, bank guarantees, probably more but I didn't read the last four pages -- a day trip to Sadao or a cheap AirAsia holiday in Indonesia much easier.

Around 10 years ago Warren Buffett bought a large piece of North American railroad infrastructure for something like US$50 billion. I suspect part of his motivation was to prevent the continent from becoming part of the Belt & Road initiative. I was in South America when Evo Morales became president of Bolivia (first person of indigenous origins to hold such position). A few days after the election China sent a jet to fetch him and fly him to Beijing to meet The Big Boss. (As an aside, I did not see mention of this in English-language media, but it did come up on CNN en Espanol.) Your comment about China owning other countries indirectly is spot on. I'm anticipating what will happen in Africa. The dirt-poor people who work the mines for pennies a day are going to be more angry at the foreigners than at their own corrupt moghuls, and at some point they could be piling up the Chinese corpses. Will be interesting to see if China sends in military/police/advisors to solve these problems.

We had a discussion in here about this at one time. It grew out of one member having a misunderstanding with his Thai missus about television scheduling. It seems to many people tomorrow does not begin at midnight. Stupid farang not know today tomorrow same same.

Is this the Russian band Kutcherpeckeroff?

It's like a bunch of these great minds have cloistered themselves away for a non-stop brainstorming session on how to revive tourism, and these ingenious ideas are continuously being sent out. Someone send them a copy of the movie Jurassic Park, see what that inspires.

Ah yes, very popular expression over there: "ha-ha, only joking!" It what they say when they get caught red-handed.

And it wasn't that long ago that some Indian chap said he would be opening an adult nightlife center in Pattaya specifically catering to this sort of tourist. Anyone heard of any progress on this scheme?

If only there was a rail link

Anyone else recall 10+ years ago when a Hong Kong crime movie made the international news because it had a scene where the bad guys cut off a dead man's finger to use in this way?

Flying the kite with Pornhub on his cell phone.

Ah yes, the Indian lads, who make an effort to check the doors of hotel rooms to see if they are locked unlocked. I was in the Pattaya Burger King on Beach Road. At a nearby table was 5 Indian lads. One of them was continually going out and coming back. They started getting loud, their speech indiscriminate, and yes, something like this was being negotiated: seemed the runner had struck a price with a girl plying her trade, and he was now trying to get her to agree to including his four friends. I had thought this sort of thing was just sarcasm until I witnessed this myself. Many years ago I lived in India, and on more than two occasions my neighborhood friends would try to get me to hire a girl. I had thought they were just pimping, but looking back now, it was probably also about sloppy seconds (and thirds, and . . . ). After witnessing that in Pattaya (and learning how common it is) I get the impression these chaps get off on seeing each other in action.

Improper toilet training, lack of attention from mother, and undersized genitalia is really what these protests are about. Air ventilation? At an intersection?

Chong Nonsi? A little too close to the IDC for me, thanks. ????

Yes, good work. Especially appreciated that bit about Academies.

Strictly IMO, I think it's possible Thailand may shed it's image as the VN War era R&R fleshpit, and from Emmanuelle (the movie that brought the ping-pong ball show to the West). Of course there will always be red-light entertainment available, goes without saying. If this health emergency goes on for another year or more, it will be a blip in the sex work business, with girls who never had the option of heading to Pattaya for some quick boom-boom cash, and the pros moving on to find another way to get through life. No johns means no janes. Used to be if you went to the tourist office at the airport when arriving they'd load you up with glossy printed guide pamphlets, and the most heavily-offered activity was the hiring of companions. Image your granny seeing that in the place she was considering retiring to! But a word about recommended retirement destinations. Have a look at some of these "best places to retire" articles and you'll see they are generally pretty subjective or trivial. E.g. retirees get free admission to museums; gee, that's great, but is that worthy of being the #3 reason? Free medical insurance for retirees sounds great, but they may not mention the medical equipment is a few decades out of date, and second-rate to begin with.

https://therecord.media/bangkok-air-confirms-passenger-pii-leak-after-ransomware-attack/

Currently have an Asus, since 2014. Never had a laptop last this long before, they usually go sideways at around 3 years. Full disclosure: I haven't moved it around very much, the others mentioned below got a lot of road time. HP used to make solid laptops, and did cost more than the others (no problem if the company is paying for it :). Had to deal with Compaq in the 1990s (the employer's choice) and hated them, always up against something proprietary, Then Compaq bought HP's PC division, and I expected them to keep HP's sterling reputation. BZZZZZT! Bought a HP/Compaq laptop and when it died I was glad to replace it. Probably the goofiest experience was with a Fujitsu. Sometimes it wouldn't boot. Between the tropical heat and air con rooms condensation would build up on the CPU, I mean I'd take off the back (bottom) and the CPU would be wet! Can't count how many times I had to open it up and let the chip dry out. Eventually the USB bus fried itself and I sold the thing for parts at Panthip, I think I got 300b for it. Had a Sony Vaio, it was probably the only one I traded off because it became antiquated. But it ran ok for what it was at the time. BTW, I learned in the 1990s that Sony had terrible (TERRIBLE!) customer service for consumer gadgets, maybe that's changed, dunno. Had a Toshiba. After about three years (to the month!) something between the screen and the on-board graphics card went bad. Did a little web searching when it happened and found out this was a known flaw with that model. Not known by me when I bought it, unfortunately. Turned out the HDMI to an external monitor worked. Coincidentally, had a Toshiba television in the 1990s that died within a month of the three-year warranty running out: funny that. I don't keep up with these things until I need to buy one, so can't recommend currently. I'm curious about MS entering this market -- before this their only hardware was mouses and track balls etc, but they were OEM'd from Logitech.

Hearing these stories about how when the president of Afghanistan was leaving the country and he had so much $$$ it took more than one SUV to transport it to his jet has got me wondering how the current status quo in LOS keeps their $$$ from being accessible to seizure. Mr T was a smart guy, my bet would be he had it stashed far and away as soon as he got hold of it. I wouldn't expect this lot to be as savvy: if anything, they'd probably get some expert to handle that stuff. Uh-oh. How many stories of wealthy celebs/VIP-types etc have ended up penniless due to thieving accountants, investment managers etc (rhetorical question).

Sounds like you didn't grow up in LOS. Here it's "when the going gets tough, hide!" (or in a vehicular mishap, run!) PM vows to spend rest of year rebuilding the Thai economy and the country In Sim City?

Versus his eyebrows look like something that died? 555 Perfectly matching set, though.

Instead of making it sound like an ultimatum, they should state the required mask will be distributed when boarding and all passengers must wear it (exceptions will arise, cor). Raise the ticket price by US$0.05 to cover the financial burden of it. As Martin Yan says "not a big deal!" AA has always been pennywise. I used them lots in the past, no traumatic experiences, but I hated the way they tried to trip you into buying things when doing web booking.