simon43

Good Heavens! I didn't know my brother was visiting Bangkok!

Difficult to tell my side of the story when all my emails and FB posts etc are blocked by them lol! Anyway, life goes on 🙂

My kids and ex-wife broke off all contact with me, even blocking my e-birthday cards and FB posts on their pages.. 😞 It's not possible to mend a broken relationship when the other party is the one who broke it! BTW - please ignore my post about the contact details of the visa agent. It was from another forum, not AN!

Well, I certainly won't have to live rough/on the streets 🙂 But I prefer to spend my retirement in a reasonable location in the UK, rather than some squalid Muslim-infested place (I was born/brought up in Leicester, so you can maybe understand my take on this).

Also! The post with the visa agent information was removed by the mods 🙂 Can the poster please send me a message with these details? Thanks.

Lol, wish it wasn't a typo! I will receive about 874 pounds/month.

I found food prices, gym, mobile internet very reasonable when I visited 2 years ago. Accommodation was expensive, but 1-bed apartments can be had for around 450 quid, depending where you live. In any case, I have already checked that I will qualify for housing benefit. HB is not an option for the local authority to pay or not pay - I am eligible to receive about 192 quid a week on top of my state pension because I have no savings to speak of.

To correct you, I can get NHS treatment immediately I set foot on UK soil, as I did 2 years ago when I returned to the UK with suspected prostate cancer (happily not found). I returned on day 1, registered with local GP on day 3 , got hospital appointment by day 5, attended hospital on day 8 🙂

Thanks for all these useful comments. To reply to some: @Negita43, I can only afford private hospitals if my private medical insurance pays out, and they do not cover ongoing, long-term (lifelong) treatment. I live in a rural area of Thailand - the hospital is very basic. @Keeps/Xylophone, since leaving the UK, I have paid into the NI system for most years (I missed a few around 2003). I have 29 years of contributions which is about 880 pounds a week. If I didn't want a state pension, then I would not have made voluntary NI contributions when I was overseas. I realise that the UK has changed, but a 3-month visit to the UK a few months ago to Blackpool did not really shock me. Food prices were fine for healthy fresh food, but expensive for processed krap. I used to live in Somerset, (within 2km of Dunster 'Luttrell' Castle that my ancestors once owned!). Minehead town nearby has beach, supermarkets, Butlins and lard-buckets to stare at, so I should be fine. I was in Blackpool during the winter, and I found that so long as I had a thick scarve wrapped around my mouth, then my lungs were not irritated by the cold weather. My lung condition will never improve, but I can slow any deterioration by protecting them from air pollution, cold winds etc. When I was in Blackpool, I visited the charity clothes shop and picked up some a brand new thick winter coat for a few quid! I have checked benefits that I can claim if I rent a private accommodation, and (to me), it seems very generous, doubling my monthly income! Having lived in Burma, Laos etc for many years, I am somewhat 'streetwise' when it comes to minimising bills 🙂 The NHS is excellent, despite many problems. This lung illness will no doubt finally kill me off at some time (from pneumonia etc), but I would rather die in a UK hospital with some form of medicine/oxygen mask etc, rather than all alone in my Thai house or with the crazy neighbour trying to shove a Vicks Sinex up my hooter 🙂 The other sensible option that I can consider is to move back to north Phuket (Nai Yang), where both my Thai ex-wives live - they have their small airport hotels. I would not intend to live with them - cutting my wrists with a rusty bread knife is much more favourable! But if I were ill/needing help, then they would both rush to help, if only to call the ambulance. Modern 1 bed apartments in the village start from about 10k baht/month, and that's certainly ok for me.

I've lived the last 23 or so years full-time in Thailand, Laos and Myanmar (mostly in Myanmar). I'm single, (having divorced 3 times over the years!). My ex-wife and kids in the UK disowned me yonks ago. My 2 Thai ex-wives keep in touch, but of course their lives have moved on. I have an elder brother in the UK who does keep in touch. I'm currently just retired at 66 years old, relaxing by the sunny beach in south Thailand, and enjoying a low cost-of-living lifestyle. Why on Earth would I want to return to the UK? The problem is my health. As I have mentioned in posts in the health forum, I have an incurable (but manageable) lung condition. Most days are great, some days are <deleted>e.... I know that as I grow older, my illness will certainly not improve. It may stay the same or it may deteriorate. I am very concerned about my welfare if I stay in Thailand. I do have private medical insurance. But that really is intended to cover hospital treatment for serious accidents or diseases such as cancer etc. It's not intended to pay for long-term medical care. Will it even pay out if I claim? Who knows! If I return to the UK, then I will receive my index-linked state pension. I will also be eligible for state assistance to pay my rent, council tax etc, such that so long as the accommodation monthly rent is not more than 600 or 700 pounds, then I'm doing fine with money for food, heating etc. Some might say that the NHS is in a mess, and that I will get no help from them, but I disagree. I used the NHS and GP (doctor) services and was treated quickly and politely. I think it was a novelty for them to treat a professional white male lol! I previously lived in rural areas of the UK and would hope to do the same. Minehead (Somerset) is somewhere that would be practical for me (by the sea air, local shops, walking etc). I used to live in nearby Dunster (home to the famous castle which is also known as 'Luttrell Castle'). My ancestors owned it until death duties stuffed that in the 1950's... Nowadays, a modest studio flat in Minehead would be OK, and a realistic solution. I still have my online teaching income, and I can continue that in the UK (teaching my Chinese students in their timezone is fine). But at some stage I will no doubt have to end that work and rely on my state pension, but with the housing benefit also (the online calculator informs me that my basic state pension will be about doubled by the benefits that I can legally claim). What to do, and what to consider?

True that Isaan Lao is not a written language, but most Isaan folk will use Thai script to write Isaan words, since it's easy to show the correct tones etc.

In other words, the shops that sell unhealthy, expensive krap food.... 🙂

Surely if you want to avoid unnecessary comments and wasting your own time, it would be advisable to read this (fairly short) thread. I mentioned in several posts that I exercise every day for the past 25 years by brisk walking of 5-10km. But thanks anyway for your advice 🙂

If you read my posts you'll see that I brisk walk 5-10km every day for the past 25 years 🙂

It's impossible to know what you're trying to say because you're using crappy transliterated text..... can you not write in Thai or Lao or Khmer?? Simon (Thai, Lao and Burmese speaker - and writer! Sorry no Khmer)

I'm like the OP, retired, use my Bangkok Bank debit card to pay for Lazada/AliExpress. I have never used a card to pay for goods in a bricks and mortar shop, nor ever been asked to pay other than with cash....

I just got up this morning after a very peaceful sleep, no coughing, no mucus blocks. Oxymeter reads 85%, it's going in the bin!!

My lung capacity is normal. It is not my alveoli but my bronchi. Bronchiectasis affects breathing out more than breathing in. So I breath in totally normally, but sound like a steam train as I exhale 🙂 Been like that for 25 years and has never got worst over those years, (except when I have a lung infection, such as now). My oximeter currently tells me that my oxygen level is 87%..... I feel totally normal, I think it is telling porkies! I might pop down to the local pharmacy and see if they have a unit to compare it against. If it really was 87% I think I would be lying on the floor and struggling to breath 🙂

I should upload another weather map! Just now from NOAA-19, with rain intensity shown: On July 27th, the Russian cubesat UMKA-1 will transmit images of children's drawings with a space theme. Normally, the pictures are submitted by Russian school kids. However, and because I'm in contact with the satellite control centre in Moscow, I asked if they would agree to transmit images submitted by young students at schools in Myanmar (Burma), where I was a science teacher until the Mandalay earthquake. They agreed! 2 students drew pictures and these have already been sent up to UMKA-1 by the satellite control centre, ready to be broadcast on July 27th. Certificates will be sent out to these 2 lucky students. AFAIK, this is the first ever time that Myanmar has been involved in a space project, albeit in a very minor capacity. That satellite actually has some low elevation passes over my location on the 27th, but I'll try to grab what images I can. In any case, other enthusiasts all over the world will receive the images, and these receptions are usually uploaded to the Libre Space Community website and Facebook Cubesat group.

Sorry! I forgot where I parked it 🙂

Actually, it's an interesting scientific question as to how the oxygen gas is extracted. Very basically, the gases are pushed through a membrane with tiny holes in it. Oxygen molecules are smaller than nitrogen molecules, so pass through the membrane, while the nitrogen molecules are too big to pass through 🙂 Now some clever chap will point out to me that according to the Periodic Table, nitrogen gas atoms have 7 protons, whilst oxygen have 8 - so oxygen atoms are bigger yes? Actually no, because the larger number of protons in oxygen atoms means that the atomic force pulling on the electrons (flying around the outside of the atom) is stronger than for nitrogen atoms, so the oxygen atoms are physcially smaller. Science is a wonderful subject 🙂

Yes, that is another option!

The machine sucks in the air, extracts the oxygen component and then feeds this via thin tubes to your nose for breathing in. So it sucks in the air at a rate far more than your body would inhale, thus enabling the 'concentration' part. (With my scientist hat on...): Bear in mind that air only has about 21% oxygen in it and most of the rest is nitrogen, which we don't need. Even when we breath out, our exhaled gases still have about 15% oxygen! Thus, you can see that we really don't need much oxygen to be healthy and normal, so a little extra oxygen into your body can really help.

Thanks for all your comments. I have had pneumonia on many occasions over the past 25 years, including a week in Bumrungrad for a severe pneumonia infection (which probably did most of the bronchi damage). I know with my body what the first symptoms of pneumonia feel like and I'm happy to say that I've avoided pneumonia for the last 15 years or so. I am uptodate with my pneumonia (2 types) jabs, also Covid and flu. It's important for me to minimise any health risk 🙂 Probably my oximeter (which cost 200 baht on Lazada) is .. er what's the word? Oh yes krap!! I never feel faint or light-headed - the shortness of breath is due to the damn mucus blocking up my airways 🙂 BTW, my lungs themselves are fine - hence I can briskly walk 10km every day without getting short of breath, (even with chronic bronchitis I start short of breath but after 10km it hasn't got worse. Finally, I do various 'huff' breathing techniques that are recommended to loosen up sticky mucus, plus take some medications for the same purpose. Last evening, I had to abandon the 3rd of my hourly online science lessons 'cos I had a coughing fit. Tonight, I turned off the air-con and ran my steam humidifier for the 3 hours. It was like sitting in a Turkish sauna!! But my lungs were much happier and no coughing 🙂

They seem to be about 4,000 baht on Lazada. Regardless of what the oxymeter reads, the fact is that I do get a little short of breath during a flare-up, and Dr Google suggests that use of an oxygen concentrator can certainly be an aid at this time.