impulse

Maybe if the BKK elite quit taking away land they've been farming for dozens of generations...

I think that's a wake up call for many foreigners who wouldn't consider 140K (equivalent) to be the lower end of the market back home. Between the outrageous taxes on new cars and the low cost of labor to keep them on the road for a long time, used cars just cost more in Thailand. I paid 150K for a 20 year old pickup that would have sold for less than $2,000 back home. If I'd known I'd be in Thailand as long as I ended up, I'd have bought a newer, nicer truck. But I wanted something I could resell without losing my butt if my contract ended abruptly.

Pre-Covid, there was a period of years when I had no clue how long it took for bags to be delivered to the carousel. I was in the immigration queue with thousands of tourists, occasionally well over 2 hours. I was just pleasantly surprised that my bags were still on the carousel when we finally passed immigration. Then onto the taxi queue, which could easily go another hour and result in a white knuckle trip in a clapped out car with a bad clutch and a yaba addict at the wheel. That was just the nature of flying into BKK. So in answer to the OP question, yes. Normal tourists accept that kind of nuisance. In their droves. Otherwise, the queues wouldn't have been so bad.

Lots of the OP sounds like a pretty typical international travel experience in the cheap seats, even before Covid. Some go better, some actually worse. United out of the USA aspires to do that well. But I calculate the cost difference per hour to upgrade to a nicer seat, and grin and bear it. I've done all kinds of unpleasant jobs in my life for less than $100 an hour.

You don't figure that being 10,000 km away from the war exonerates them from any war crimes?

Gotta say, I'm a little surprised that they're offering Covid extensions to tourists that entered Thailand as late in the game as 2022. Not that I have any energy one way or the other, and Thailand sure needs the tourist $$$.

The UK approved it in November, the (US)FDA approved it (EUA) in December, 2021. Australia's contribution seems to be limited to buying the stuff. Developed at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, funded by the Defense Threat Reduction agency. Abandoned by Emory due to "mutagenicity" risks. Licensed to Ridgeback Biotherapeutics who partnered with Merck to bring it to market. Here's the best part: In September 2021, Merck signed a voluntary licensing agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) that allows MPP to sublicense molnupiravir and supply the COVID-19 oral medication to 105 low- and middle-income countries. The cost of the initial purchase made by the US government was about $712 per course of treatment, while treatment with generics in developing countries can cost as little as $20. Our (US) tax dollars paid for its development and for that, we get to pay 35x as much as other countries pay for generics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molnupiravir

So are you volunteering to hold them down while someone injects an experimental vaccine that they don't want? Or take away young people's right to earn a living until they knuckle down and take a shot which hasn't been evaluated for long term side effects? I got vaccinated. As soon as it was practical. But it was a personal choice. I wouldn't dream of forcing it on anyone.

I can't think of a much better incentive to force your enemy to fight even harder before considering surrender.

In Donbas, it's impossible to tell because of the propaganda on both sides. In Crimea, 2 separate western companies did surveys a year after the annexation and both found over 80% of Crimeans wanted to stay aligned with Russia. Not hard to extrapolate that to believe it may be the same in Donbas. That doesn't justify what Putin did. It just puts it into a context. If you don't understand the history, you can't possibly understand what's happening today, or find solutions to it. Or you can believe only that propaganda that caters to your pre-conceived notions, based on hundreds of Rambo and 007 and Red Dawn type movies... https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/03/20/one-year-after-russia-annexed-crimea-locals-prefer-moscow-to-kiev/?sh=62e97ce0510d

It's never too late to prosecute opposition candidates. Not unusual to see them go after them for stuff they did 15 years ago.

Quite often, when I think I know who the good guys are, it turns out they're just turds with better spin doctors.

Perhaps I misread the OP. I thought he was back home, trying to get into Thailand. That's different than looking for an extension within Thailand. Here in the US, the vast majority of our companies' travelers simply give their passport to their travel group at work who send it to the best agency for the country they're trying to enter. Nobody takes company time to drive 3 cities over to the appropriate consulate hoping they have all the paperwork they'll need. It's all done via FedEx. When the agency receives the passport, they inform us of any discrepancies or missing documents, then they do the legwork. After I did it that way for decades, I got spoiledand I usually continue the practice on my own dime. On more than one occasion, they have saved me the headaches that the OP appears to be experiencing. It's not free, but they earn their fee. I Imagine a passport goes missing occasionally, but that's not catastrophic if you're in your home country. Still, I've never known anyone who's lost one. Edit: I think the most frustrating part about Thai Pass is that even old salts who have been coming for years are thrown by the new and ever changing rules. What worked last week may not work this week, and may not even be required next week. Agencies keep up with that stuff, for a living.

Free air conditioning.

Yeah, but then we'd also lose a bunch of expats around the country. The ones that claim their bike is safer because you can hear them coming from 3 miles away.

Just for giggles, I went to Hotels.com and looked up 5 star hotels in Phuket. They ranged from $28 a night to $1900 a night for availability mid April. I suspect the OP would get more useful recommendations specifying a budget, and/or a priority list of exactly what he's looking for.

Practice. And more practice.

If your gauge of Thai politicians is how corrupt they seem, you're not in sync with the voters who simply want to know how well the masses and their families are doing. That's why Thaksin would win in a landslide, and why they won't let him back. It's not because he's corrupt. They all are at that level. His crime was letting too much trickle down to the masses.

I got spoiled many years ago when traveling for the company. We just gave them our passport and they hired a visa agency to do all the legwork. It was a couple of hundred $$$, and they'd tell us what documents they needed, what we lacked, etc. They'd wait in the consulate queues and deal with the frustrations. So after I started traveling on my own, I still tend to use visa agencies when it's anything but a visa exempt. They only get paid when I pick up my passport with the visa in it, and they know what they're doing... I'm not advocating it to everyone, especially if your process has gone swimmingly. But sometimes, it's worth it to suck it up and pay a pro to solve a problem.

Hard to figure out the etiquette here... Is victim blaming okay or not?

You didn't answer the question. How long since a foreigner died by bomb or insurgent? How many a year? Based on numbers, are you more likely to die falling off a high balcony, or by bomb or insurgent? Because I've read about a dozen of those stories since I first came to Thailand in 2011. I don't recall a single incident where a western foreigner was killed by insurgent violence in S. Thailand. To the OP, take the train. Enjoy the journey. Stay on lower floors in Thai hotels to more than offset any risk. Or go wild and get a room with a view.

When was the last western foreigner killed by a bomb or an insurgent in South Thailand? Your odds of falling off a high balcony in Pattaya are much worse. Malaysian foreigner, maybe. Because a lot of the Malaysian visitors participate in the type of businesses that make them targets.

From the CNN link: ...babies who had paternal metformin exposure also tended to have parents who were older and of a lower socioeconomic status, which may play a role. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. And whether another Pharma is coming out with a new, safer and more expensive alternate. I luvs me a good wingnut conspiracy theory, following the money. Edit: Or as I call them, "spoiler alerts".

More of a shot over the bow than a crackdown. I suspect they're threatening to put sales online as a way of telling the middlemen that the prices have gotten out of hand. Seems they have to rein them in occasionally. Things get better for awhile, then prices slowly creep up again. It's the circle of life.

I hope you accidentally left out a word...