impulse

Caffeine is minimally effective on narcolepsy. I used to stop, get a cup of joe, then take a nap before I could drive more. It works okay if you're tired, but that's not the same as narcolepsy.

I won't be coming back as long as there's a risk of being involuntarily quarantined. With 25% of Covid tests being positive in Thailand last month, I can't see how the restrictions will protect anyone. Tourists are probably safer to be around than the locals. And if they were going to force tourists to buy Covid insurance, they should have mandated that it cover all treatment required by the gub'ment, including asymptomatic quarantine. Would have been easy to do as a condition of offering the product in LOS. Regardless, I'm as concerned with losing a large portion of my precious holiday time as I am with quarantine costs. They need to go back to the way it was... Get a wild hair on Wednesday, book a cheap flight and a room and and be on a beach (spending money) by Saturday. (Edit) Source: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Thailand/covid_positive_rate/

The issue being, of course, that the money will come from thousands of taxpayers who did nothing wrong. She should be held personally liable if she broke local, county, state or federal laws. Not the taxpayers. I understand qualified immunity if she made a judgment call in the absence of governing law. But not if she violated the law.

5 minutes after she proposes an amnesty for her father and aunt.

True. Unless you've actually experienced narcolepsy, you're not in a position to judge anyone who's afflicted. We're the same people who do a head bob during long, tedious meetings... Got plenty of rack time the night before, but our brains work differently. Sadly, the most commonly available preventative in Thailand (that I'm aware of) is Yaba. Other, more refined treatments are generally expensive and only available through a hospital pharmacy. On the routes that I frequented in the USA, I knew every rest stop along the way. Because I probably napped at every one of them at one time or another.

Where does it say it was the van driver's fault? Just because he was over the legal limit doesn't mean he caused the wreck.

I agree with that. But I think the most important takeaway is that throwing your leg over a scooter is 50x as dangerous (per mile) as fastening a seatbelt. And though helmets are a good idea, you cross the safety Rubicon when you choose a 2 wheeler, not when you decide whether to put on a helmet or not. Even with a helmet reducing your risk by 40%, it's still about 30x as dangerous as a car. So I chuckle when I read scooter drivers bashing anyone for not wearing a helmet. That's my recurring PSA, and if one rider reads that and decides to buy a car instead of a scooter, or even takes a taxi instead of a motosai, I chalk it up as a win.

Here’s the simple math, using UK gub’ment figures for 2020 UK had a total of 985 deaths, between cars and scooters in 2020. I’m neglecting bicyclists, pedestrians, etc. 618 of those deaths were in cars, at a rate of 2 per billion miles, meaning there were 309 billion passenger miles by car. (618 / 2) 285 of those deaths were on scooters at a rate of 106 per billion miles, meaning there were 2.7 billion passenger miles by scooter. (285 / 106) Total passenger miles in the UK were 312 billion (309 + 2.7) , with less than 1% of them being by scooter. If 75% of the UK were forced by economics to ride scooters (as in Thailand), 234 billion of those miles would be by scooter (312 x .75) and 78 billion miles would be by car (312 x .25) At a fatality rate of 106 per billion miles, that would be 24,804 scooter deaths (234 x 106). Add in 156 car deaths (78 x 2), for a total of 24,960 deaths if 75% of the UK miles were ridden on scooters instead of safely ensconced in a car. That's a lot. The linked article by the UK gub’ment goes into reasons those numbers are, as you indicated, “reductive” But given the preponderance of scooters, Thailand really doesn’t do that bad per mile compared to the UK. Which is about half as dangerous (per mile) as driving in the USA. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-road-user-risk/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-road-user-risk-2020-data BTW, I stand to be corrected on the simple math...

What astounds me (specifically about Thailand) is that, with something like 20% of the tests being positive, anyone thinks letting in tourists -and their money- will make things worse. Back to the data, do you have any trending to show how the pct positive has changed over time?

Good information, but I'd sure like to see the new cases as a percentage of actual tests. It's quite possible that changes in restrictions forced more, or fewer people in to get tested. For example, when the US gub'ment sent out hundreds of millions of free test kits to households. What a great way to keep the fear going... More tests = more cases.

Understood... But your own experience would have to be added to the experience of millions of others to be a meaningful statistic. Typically, deaths in developed nations are recorded per billion km. That's a lot of driving. I, too, have seen some absolutely crazy driving in Thailand. But I also noticed that Thai drivers take it in stride and are much better at defensive driving to avoid getting killed by the crazies. They have to be good at dodging crazies. Or they don't last long. But I contend that's due to lack of enforcement, not a paucity of skills. My evidence for that is all the falang I've seen going native and driving like wild men, because they can get away with it. Lack of enforcement, not lack of skill.

Looks more like 50:1 in the UK, which doesn't speak highly of all that extra training and testing of UK scooter riders. That's on the basis of passenger km driven, not on population, nor on vehicles registered. Looks like those Brit scooter riders have a very poor attitude/ behaviour to be killed at a rate 50x higher than those with seat belts, a roof and lots of steel. Maybe they should take some lessons from Thai scooter guys, where appx 75% of the vehicles are scooters and appx 75% of the deaths are scooter related. That seems pretty close to 1:1, if they both drive the same number of km. Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-road-user-risk/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-road-user-risk-2020-data Edit: Of course, I'm being flippant about it, and way oversimplifying. But my point is, what do you figure would happen to the UK traffic fatality rate if economic conditions forced 75% of the drivers onto scooters like in Thailand? It would be catastrophic. And not because of driver skill. But because scooters are crazy dangerous just on statistics.

Given that the majority of the vehicles on Thai roads have 2 wheels, and studies (Oz and USA) show that a scooter is 20-40x as dangerous per km driven, I don't think they're doing bad. In the USA, about 4% of the vehicles are 2 wheelers. And most of them are weekend, fair weather hobbies as opposed to everyday transport in all weather. If economics suddenly forced 75% of Americans onto vehicles that are 20-40x as dangerous as what they drive now, the results would be catastrophic. You'd have 18 times as many scooters at 20-40x as dangerous. The math is pretty simple. The question is, on a per km basis, how dangerous is driving a car with doors, a roof, seat belts and lots of steel compared to "back home". I doubt it's that much worse than the UK or especially the USA. Throwing in scooter fatalities skews it though.

well if you are going to go there.. why not make it a ONE day week! yay! stupid economics for everyone!! A lot of companies do 10 hour days, 4 days a week. Others do 9 hours a day and half a day on Friday. You can't get 40 hours in one day. Seems like it would be pretty simple to change the minimum wage from a daily rate to an hourly rate and have things come out even. Saving on commuting time and costs.

But you'll be broke... Scotty Kilmer's mule laughs at people who buy German cars and has them serviced at the dealer.

True indeed. But it does make Biden a hypocrite. And very hard to take seriously...

More to do with the millions of foreign funsters coming to Thailand to participate in the world's biggest water fight. Spending their wet and sweaty tourist loot. Nothing wrong with that. Any more than the massive spend-a-thon that Christmas Xmas has become. Oh, and letting the locals blow off some steam after a couple of very tough years isn't a bad idea, either. Even in if means getting wet when you don't want to.

Just curious... Did they come in Kingston packaging, undamaged? I bought a fake Kingston SD card in Chinatown and found that the Kingston blister package had been sliced open to remove the original and replace it with the fake. It was a tiny slit in a discrete place. At the piddly price I paid, I suspected it was fake, but I wanted to test it to see. Since then, I never buy reduced price SD or USB chips. Edit: The only way to figure out it was fake is to load it to its advertised capacity. But that's a time consuming ask for a 256Gb. Mine was just a 32Gb and it still took some time to overload it.

Quite possible that cross border nookie is the town's entire raison d'être. With the other 90% cleaning the sheets, feeding the girls and their customers, counting the money...

I think it's more a statement of the sorry state of enforcement in Thailand. If you did that stuff "back home", you'd be paying fines until you gathered enough points to lose your license. That's supported by 7 years of watching foreigners in Thailand going native when they know they won't be held accountable. And they know better. They had years of driving in the nanny states.

What's that? A threesome with someone taking a breather?

Please let us know where Lazada touched you and how it made you feel. Is there a doll for that?

All of which could have been prevented if they actually started prosecuting war criminals who invade sovereign countries under the same pretense that Putin used to justify invading Ukraine. Like Bush, Cheney, Blair... If they were rotting away in prison, ya figure the next war criminal may think real hard before invading? Because Bush, Cheney and Blair are out walking around, Putin thinks he can act with impunity. He's right.

I'm not telling Thailand what to do (as if that were possible). I'm simply a consumer telling Thailand what's keeping me from spending my holiday loot in Thailand. They can do with that information what they choose. They can keep flattening the curve, but now that vaccines are widely available and hospital space isn't scarce, all that's doing is prolonging the economic hardship. The recent Johns Hopkins study says 99.8% of the deaths are still going to occur, even with lockdowns. Just over a longer period.

If you're kicking around the idea, this is a good place to come for input. But you'll often get 2 diametrically opposed answer from many equally credible posters. Before you pull the trigger, consult an attorney. Thai laws exist within an ecology that makes tiny details matter. Trying to decipher them from an online source is risky. I'm kind of curious about the idea of signing a usufruct with your wife. I thought, for legal purposes, you and the missus are considered a "family unit" as opposed to 2 separate entities, and that would be like signing an agreement with yourself. Easy to sign, tough to enforce if your Dr Jekyll disagrees with your Mr Hyde. Maybe someone will weigh in.