simon43

... and her attacker(s)?....

That stress could make you ill....... This is a situation which many of us face/will face as we get older. If the insurance premium is too high now, think what it will be like in 10 years from now. What can one do? One option is to return permanently to your home country if it offers free medical care (eg NHS in the UK). But if you have a Thai wife etc, then that kind of relocation is probably not an option. The other option is - as others have suggested - to self-insure and also to accept the temporality (is that a real word?) of our life. We are all mortal, and medicine/hospital care cannot make us immortal.

Happiness in my life started after my 3rd and final divorce 🙂

Well, yes... and no! is the crime rate in london going up or down In 2024/25, London's crime rate was 106.4 crimes per 1,000 people, a slight increase compared to 105.8 in the previous year. London's crime index is considered moderate at 54.6. Some crime types are seeing reductions: Knife crime down 18.1% Residential burglary down 17.7% Theft from the person down 15.6% Personal robbery down 12.8% However, other offenses are increasing: Possession of weapons Rape Drug trafficking Shoplifting has substantially increased in recent years, reaching over 95,240 offenses in 2024/25, compared to approximately 46,000 annually before the pandemic.

From what I recall, the company that I mentioned will consider new insurees up to 100 years old....

Contact WR Life for an insurance quote. I am 66 years old and pay 5,700 baht/month for $500,000 annual cover, including $10,000 death benefit (for a decent wake etc). My premiums never increase because I never have claimed... WR Life have some good and bad reviews. I have no idea if they would pay out if I made a claim 🙂

^^^ Harsh but true. RIP

Thailand has always been my place to relax between teaching assignments in Myanmar. But having recently reached UK state retirement age, I decided to establish my 'relaxation' base in Luang Prabang (Laos), where I used to be the boss of the international school. TBH, day-to-day costs are comparable to Thailand, but I prefer to interact as little as possible with officialdom, and the Thai 'retirement' visa rules and requirements, 90 day reporting, Bangkok Bank KYC rules etc, just don't sit well with me.

Considering that the UK has one of the lowest pension amounts in Europe, what went wrong?

^^^ Sadly, the 'taming' of the Tatmadaw will never happen in my lifetime....

Interesting. The medication in the eye drops affects the muscles which hold the eye lens. Relaxing those muscles would cause the lens to be thicker and thus refract light that enters the eye more than a thinner lens. Tightening those same muscles causes the lens to be thinner, thus refracting the light by a smaller amount. In a person with normal vision, these muscles that hold the lens 'pull' the lens by the required amount to focus the light at the back of the eye onto the retina. Alternatively, you can use the 'Mr Bean' solution 🙂

.. and if it had been prostate cancer and I did nothing? Sure, many prostate cancers grow very slowly, and I might die with prostate cancer, not from it. But there are also fast-growing prostate cancers, and I wasn't going to take the risk of doing nothing, since I'm not ready to die yet in agony - I have important (for me) things to do in Burma. As to curing PC, why do you say 'no way to cure it'? If it's still inside the prostate then cure is highly likely. Even if the cancer has spread, life can be prolonged by medication/radio-therapy etc.

Well, if you're talking about my suspected prostate cancer, you cannot diagnose prostate cancer from an MRI. The doctors at Bumrungrad were exactly correct - the MRI seemed to indicate cancer growths, but the only way to be sure was to have a biopsy, which they advised, and which I had in the UK, and happily that biopsy found only benign calcium growths. As to the $$ for the MRI, I had to pay that out of my own pocket after my insurer declined to pay! So no incompetent doctors at all - your post is completely incorrect! Very competent doctors in both Thailand and the UK. Only the cost that you quote is correct 🙂

TallGuyJohninBKK, thanks for being the poster who cites relevant and peer-reviewed medical articles to support your stance on this and many other medical matters, as opposed to the 'loony', tinhat articles that the antivaxxers cite 🙂

They claim to work abroad, but I know from personal experience that the OTP SMS message that is sent to your registered mobile phone is not received on mobile networks in Laos and Myanmar, even with data roaming activated. I asked Bangkok Bank to deactivate this OTP requirement but they refused.....

I used the 'entitledto' website to see what benefits I would be able to claim. I guess that as a pensioner the HB amount is higher than for those not claiming the state pension. So of course, one could - for example, rent a flat at 900 pounds a month, but only have to pay about 300 pounds/month towards that rental.

Yep, basically the majority Burman government broke the Panglong agreement to grant autonomy to the ethnic groups (Chin, Shan etc), leading to more than 75 years of fighting....

I finally got a new UK passport (my old passport was completely full with Myanmar and Laos visa stamps). To get this new passport in a hurry, there was only 1 way; jump on a plane, fly back to the UK, visit the passport office, collect new passport, fly back to Bangkok/Laos! Very tiring flights and $$$...., but at least my passport is sorted for the rest of my life. I also had something else to celebrate! The software company that I use in Pakistan to manage my Android 'Teacher Simon' app (for helping Myanmar students to learn English), has completed this app for Apple devices (IOS), and I'm testing it now. This cost almost a 4-figure USD sum, but money well spent IMHO (I was surprised at how many monks and teachers had iphones....).

I read that many displaced villagers are building new bamboo houses right next to the Chinese oil/gas pipes that run through Myanmar. This is because it is a location guaranteed not to be bombed by the military junta....

Top bloke President Trump! Unfortunately I just returned from a quick visit to the UK, so I won't be able to cheer him. Can Trump rid the UK of that oaf Starmer as well?

Nope - they don't do that. If I want help with accommodation costs, then I would have to rent a property.

Thanks. I got back to Laos yesterday and slept like a log, after the 14-hour flights to/from the UK. As to those who downvoted my post, I guess many of them are from a younger generation than myself, and therefore have little/no experience of what the UK used to be like in the 60's and 70's. But TBH, I have been out of the UK for too long! Of course many things have changed, and personally I feel that many things have not changed for the better. When I flew into Bangkok yesterday, and then onward to Laos, I felt like I was coming home. I'm used to living in these regions of the world and I'm used to the good and the bad. I guess I'm just too old to enjoy the UK of 2025!

Buying a house on benefits? Not sure where you got that idea from... I don't think the UK social welfare system helps people to buy houses! After investigation, I found one big flaw in my idea to move back to the UK - the availability of rented properties. While the welfare system will contribute about 600 pounds/month to rental of a property, the properties that were within my price range were tiny, in disadvantaged regions etc. Even those low quality properties had many people 'chasing' to rent them, typically 50 or so different rentees. This was not the UK that I remember....

Judging by the appalling examples of transliterated Thai in this thread, all you need to do is to copy some of these suggested pronunciations I I can guarantee that almost all Thais will avoid you....

Many Brits do call out/condemn any religious people who prey on the innocent. It's nothing to do with skin colour at all - look at what some dark-skinned Catholic priests have done in Africa etc. No-one is above the Law. Don't forget one of the important views of Islam - it's OK to have sex with underage kids. Don't forget Aisha, but of course he did wait until she was 9 years old before he had sex with her.... Don't forget the Muslim grooming gangs in the UK...