dddave

I'm no great fan of Starbucks but it's not just about the coffee there. Starbuck's are usually spacious and well appointed with enough fairly wide-spaced seating to sit and have a conversation with a friend or associate for however long you want to stay. I agree Amazon's coffee is pretty good for half the price but seating is pretty sparce and hard to come by: the one close to my residence has one table with 2 chairs and a counter with 4 stools, hardly a place to hang-out. My point is that at a Starbuck's, you are paying for a lot more than the coffee, you are paying for the ambiance.

LAZADA has a lot of varieties. I bought this one, really sturdy. https://www.lazada.co.th/products/aibg-djd-i3346014941-s12408513796.html?

That area is a very dense condo area with probably 10 foreigners for every Thai, mostly Russians so don't expect many cheap Thai places. "Coffee Be Original" on Soi Wat Boon has excellent Thai food as well as western at reasonable prices. There are several seafood restaurants just South of the traffic light that are OK and reasonably prices. I live close by and most casual Thai restaurants are found in side sois off Soi Wat Boon. If you care for good bratwurst, the German bar at the corner of Soi 10 and 2nd rd. is very good.

I take that bus frequently and that is the only additional BKK to Jomtien stop I've experienced. i have never experienced them picking up passengers at any other stop BKK bound after departing Jomtien.

Netflix certification allows 4K and HDR which is immaterial if using older 720 P TV's. You might also consider a mini-pc. There are windows-11 mini PCs with great specs for watching TV and normal internet browsing, YouTube and Netflix. For example this mini-pc from Lazada would work very well. https://www.lazada.co.th/products/geekom-mini-pc-mini-air11-se-intel-celeron-n4020c-nuc-11-mini-computers-with-fan-coolingup-to-28ghz-6gb-lpddr4128g-ssd-desktop-windows-11-pro-support-4k-uhddual-wifibt42gigabit-ethernet-i4871547293-s20400690342.html? Actually, with your older TVs, you could probably get by with some of the even cheaper used office mini-pc's with VGA graphics. and windows 10. https://www.lazada.co.th/products/acer-veriton-n4640g-i5-gen6-mini-pc-i4831860551-s20788104352.html?

It has never occurred to me to check my condo router for being used by others in my building. How does one go about it?

Unless he has millions of Baht to grease many hands, his only option is to book a flight out of the country, check-in, go through security and hopefully be allowed to pay the overstay fine of B20,000 and accept a 10 year ban. There were reports recently at Phuket Airport of overstayers being arrested before they got to Immigration, perhaps tipped-off by a check-in employee but I have never heard of that at BKK. What your friend needs to realize is that he could face an indeterminate incarceration in an IDC if arrested and they are very unpleasant places.

This is 2nd hand. A friend with similar issues, paralyzing back spasms, sciatica and meralgia was being told by several orthopedic doctors that surgery was the only option. He kept digging and somehow found a Physical Therapist who was what one would call a minimalist. She worked with him on a variety of exercises: strength, flexibility, motion, resting. Her focus was always finding the minimum amount of exercise that provided relief. Everything was done slowly and easy and not getting aggressive about the number of reps or testing the limits of motion. She stressed allowing and encouraging long term healing of joints, bones, tendons, muscles. Not to aggravate then further but to just do the minimum to keep them flexible and maintain strength and motion. He said it was actually difficult to maintain such a minimalist program as it was in his nature to push himself but it seemed to work so he kept up with her and was amazed at how successfully it turned out. His back spasms meralgia and sciatica attacks went away and have never come back. He was able to totally avoid surgery. This was nearly 10 years ago and AFAIK, he's still doing well. I guess this kind of follows the "less is more" school of medicine but worth thinking about.

10 years ago, Pattaya Police busted a Colombian gang doing the same thing. Household goods have a huge resale value in South America. The gang would pull up to a house in a truck, tell security and the neighbors that the family was moving and clean the house out. The load would go straight to a container and then to S. America when it was filled.

OP here. Too late to edit the original post. My friends condition has rapidly deteriorated in the last 24 hours and at home care is no longer possible. Thanks.

Thanks for pointing that out. I was unaware of the onward ticket requirement.

A friend is in end stage cancer, perhaps weeks. He would rather spend his last hours in his Condo than in a hospital room. His sister and his girlfriend are with him and both are quite capable and knowledgeable but for him to be able to remain in his condo, he really needs a qualified palliative care nurse available though perhaps not full time. Does anybody know of any such nurses or medical professionals in the Jomtien/Pattaya vicinity who would be qualified to assist?

Nah. He's white.

Thai Police are pretty good at subduing crazed individuals, Thais as well as foreigners. I've recently noticed a number of incidents on the news where Thai police use long poles with wide, forked ends to fend off aggressive people and pin them against a wall. Much less harmful to all involved.

Can do the shuttle bus Don Muang to Suvarnabhumi, then the Pattaya/Jomtien bus from there. First floor, near door -9

When the same happened to me, I continued to get unordered CODs, the value of which escalated. Took about six months for them to figure out I wasn't going to bite.

Appears they are implementing more stringent security protocols. Ad blockers and VPNs running in the background seem to cause problems. No problems so far with the app but the website won't clear my Bangkok Bank debit card transactions. My US based debit cards clear without issue. They seem to be asking for sign-in verification more often on the website. As I mentioned on another similar post: Much easier to get discounts, especially free shipping on the mobile app than on the website.

Pre-internet, my VCR/DVD players were my primary sex partners. Every video store had a back room. Prior the VCRs, practically every city had a block of "Porno Shops" with racks of porno magazines, books and 8mm film loops. Porn is nothing new. Just different delivery systems.

More than 10 years ago, a Western couple with similar desires started a "Swingers Club" in Bangkok and discreetly publicized it. However, nothing erotic stays discrete for long in Thailand and it didn't take the BIB long to stage a very visible raid on a party, news cameras in tow. Politicians and Thai social media went wild condemning the Westerners perverted pleasures and high bails were paid and heavy fines issued. Thailand may seem sexually open but it is not. They don't like anything that looks out of the ordinary. It would be impossible to keep things quiet and discrete. I suggest you do not go public in any way, just keep it between friends.

If OP is staying in a hotel, usually the front desk can furnish you with a copy of their immigration report when you checked in. This will satisfy the TM-30 requirement.

Maybe more than 10 years ago, a Thai woman poster a hilarious cartoon video on YouTube explaining all the nuances of Thai female gay relationships. There were "Dee's" who are ultra feminine, always beautifully attired and made up. The Dee's were usually supported by a jeans clad, wallet on chain "Tom"..It was not unusual to see this style couple wandering the aisles of Siam Paragon or Gaysorn Plaza. The video also defined other strata of the gay world in a really funny way. I just tried to find it but couldn't. Does anybody here remember it? It made quite a stir at the time. This video explains it all, pretty much everything OP wanted to know, and more!

An obscure "Gotcha!" I encountered on a US sourced laptop, nothing to do with import or customs, Just a cheap HP bought at Walmart in US and carried to Bangkok in my hand baggage. When I went to set up my Bangkok apartment Wi-Fi, the new laptop wouldn't connect, didn't even see the network. All my other wi-fi connected devices: mobile, desktop computer, TV box were connected and operated normally. Long story short, after 2 days of frustration I discovered the obscure problem. The US Government reserves certain wi-fi channels for it's exclusive use. I forget which ones: 11 & 12 perhaps? Most computers sold in the US have these channels blocked. It happened that when I had set-up my router, it had randomly assigned one of those restricted channels, which are unrestricted in Thailand to my apartment network. Once I changed the network channel the new laptop connected without further issue.

In a friends similar case, in a car hit from behind by an uninsured motorbike, the Police did mediate between the parties and he did get actual repair costs but nothing above that. He was surprised at how fair the police actually were.

My friend was hit by a car in Pattaya and subsequently died after 6 weeks hospitalization. He had an active travel insurance policy "Good for $500,000 coverage" The roadblocks that insurance company put up to paying anything was amazing, like demanding professionally translated daily medical records and all charges within 24 hours: a virtual impossibility. When all was said and done, of more than US $100,000 medical expenses, they agreed to reimburse his family only $20,000 and they had to threaten a lawsuit to even get that.

It's been happening to me on the Lazada website when using my Bangkok Bank debit card but not my US card which goes through no problem. No problem with either card when using the Lazada mobile app. BTW, much easier to get discounts, like free shipping on the App than on the website.