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It reminds me of when I was a child back in the UK and helped work on a farm.  When the swill was tipped into the trough all the pigs came clammouring and pushing to get their fill.  So idiotically crazy.  I have been without any of my loved red wine I like with my meals for over a month now but I am deliberately being sensible and waiting till later this week when this stupid panic  oigs to trouhg like rush ends. 

Mind you I thought the ban on alcohol was really stupid and ognorant anyway particularly after the songkran week where at least there was some semblance of reasoning to ban the sales of it during that single week.  But there were already laws about social distancing and gatherings of more than a few people anyway so why did they not just invoke that law rather than banning the sale of alcohol ??  As someone said earlier why did they then not ban liek BBQ charcoal and BBQ foods too??  Sorry but it was ridiculaous IMHO.  Sometimes I despair at how ignorant Governments can be and no not just here in Thailand  as some of the moaners seem to claim but the far more gross stupidity and corruption we see in Washington and indeed London Governments too is even far far worse.  

4 hours ago, lee b said:

Of course I want things to be relaxed and things to start reopening, I just hope they don't rush into it to quickly. If they do there could be a high possibility of cases rising again and then we all go back to square one.

 

I dont want to go through this lockdown again when it seems the county has done so well so far. This is my worry, but again am I worrying to much or has all the bordem blitzed my brain?

I agree with not overtly rushing it but I disagree with bordem blitzing your brain.  On the contrary the extra free tiem can be spend exercising  your brain and finding many interesting studies an dhomebased pursuits.  Try learning Chess or I think better still study and learn to play Go ( I am personally studying and practicing to attain Shodan level at Go).  Maybe try watching more good films, TV series or documentaries at home or leaning to say play a musical instrument better or indeed even from scratch or seek out and find some new music to listen to that you had not heard before both classical and rockl/pop whatever is your fancy (I love both classical and rock).  Reading more, researching more facts on the internet, taking interest in other things going on in the World like Spacex achievements and their near future excciting plans by following them on twitter or yourtube.  Etc etc etc.  Heck I never get bored and neither should you as way too much to do and occupy our minds even more so than socialising IMHO.

Just use your enforced home time more valuably and usefully.  Heck as you get old one day socialising or touring may become physically difficult or impossible, so what are you going to do then without many diverse other interests??  Just get bored and die hmm ????

15 hours ago, waders123 said:

This is typical China propaganda. Keep throwing money and ideas at different people/governments and hopefully the propaganda will stick such as this statement: 

"THE VIRUS DID NOT START IN CHINA; CHINA IS THE GOVERNMENT THAT WILL SAVE THE WORLD FROM A VIRUS THAT THE WEST IS RESPONSIBLE FOR."

 

Oh! Oh! LOOK!!!!!!   I just saw a pig fly by my window on the 27th floor of our condo building too!  People are, in general, smart enough to see through this BS.

 

Hoping when this is all over and the dust has settled governments of the world again condemn China's government for allowing unsanitary ways of doing business and pressure them to join with the rest of the civilized world a more sanitized lifestyle.  Wet markets and spitting has got to go.

How totally misinformed that is.  I highly respect China for its responsible and efective actions in curbing the spread of this virus.  I think sadly for the good folk of the USA that the extreme Capitalist nonsense there and lack of affordeable or better free medical care will result in far more deaths there and possibly a terribel reulting sporead of this virus there.  So yes once the dust has settled I hope the world does condemn the USA (not China) for the lack of free medical care and available cheap or free necessary drugs and vaccines when they become available (already well in development (yes you guessed it in China where people come well before profits) . 

The USA of all people should have such a sensible free at source medical system there (similar to the UK or what we truly had in the UK before Thatcher !!) in the richest nation of the World, it is disgusting that they do not IMHO.  Only chance of putting that right is to ensure Sanders gets selected and then elected as a much needed decent US preisdent who puts people before greed and excess profits. Yes all people should have a choice but NOT simply just purchasing power !!!

On 3/23/2020 at 2:34 PM, darksidedog said:

It's great in retrospect to be able to see the sense in shutting the stable door, while you still have a horse, though he is simply uttering what many of us have been saying for nearly two months now, that Thailand should have had a strict immigration procedure in place a long time ago. Keeping the arms open in welcome for so long to save tourism numbers, was bound to have consequences sooner or later.

I didn't see any scientific evidence above to back up his claim this is a different strain, so hope he has that at least partially wrong.

I have read in a New Scientist recent article that there are indeed two strains of Covid-19 an S and an L type with the later one (L I believe) being seen in Europe right now.   However the article said that there was absolujtely no evidence to suggest that that there is any difference in the severity or lethality between either strain. I am not sure that it is okay to post the link here so I will leave folk to Google search for it.

Also there is strong evidence (see a detailed article on today's BBC.CO.UK site) that this virus like other Flu and Cold viruses does not propagate very well in hot humid climates but of course can be caught from close contact with infected persons.  This is likley why we see a much slower spread of the virus here and in other similar tropical climate countries than in the cold wintertime temperate climates.   So some positvie news for us here in Thailand but spare a thought for our friends and family stuck back home in the winter climate who are far more at risk than us here. 

We must all of course still take sensible precautions against unnecessary exposure from those already infected, many of whom may not yet even know that they are, so avoid crowds and uneccessary travel and stay at home if possible, especailly important for those over 70 and the weak and already ill folk too.  All well published advise but no harm in repeating these more sensible easy to comply with guidelines of course.

4 hours ago, Canuck1966 said:

70 is more like 7000..... at least

Well do the maths and you will find that with a population here without toruists of about 63 million that is one person in every 9000.  Would you really think of winning a bet on a horse race (if it were legal here) with odds of 9000 to 1 hmm ??  So sure take some easy non intrusive precautions but for goodness sake put it in perspective as it is not a reason to panic, at least not yet and hopefully will not be at all, but lets wait and see how this pans out. 

That is my personal opinion anyway but of c ourse up to each and every one of us how we should act and change our lifestyles over this scare.  Until the figures gets to say less than 1 in a 100 and is thus then truly an epidemic, I will not panic or change my lifestyle and I say that despite that I am in my mid 70s too so in a higher than average risk group and still truly have a lot of good living left in me, I hope.

Anyway take care and just be sensible and I wish you all avoid this nasty bug.

57 minutes ago, marcusarelus said:

Do you have out patient to 40,000?

No I don't and do not particualrly want it either.   I assure you to add outpatient cover to my insurance plan is very exepnsive as I explained and would mean rarely would you have a no claim year witrhthe nice 10% bonus back.  As I said outpatient costs are pretty small usually no more than about 400 Baht.  If I need a non inpatient single day procedure like say a colonoscopy I get pre authorisation from my insurance company which if the doctor says is a necessary procedure they approve and reimburse me up to the maximum cover for that procedure plus 80% of the excess too, so usually is fully covered unless I use the expensive private hospitals where I would usually incur some excess out of my own pocket and get reimbursed. 

For inpatient claims they pay usually just about all and without my paying up front and having the hassle to claim it back afterwards.  However, once again unless it is an expensive rip off private hostpital, they usually pay all less any rare but usually small excess, which I have to pay of course as per the policy schedule.    

I've been very satisfied up to now with my health insurance policy and looks like from this thread I do not need to add the unwanted and expensive outpatients cover now.  I do though agree it would be better if there was a National Health Insurance scheme which would be much cheaper than private insurance and just cover for state hospitals or certainly limit any private hoispital charge to no more than the state hospital equivalent charge for whatever the treatment you have. 

2 hours ago, robblok said:

He says he can pay for it but still puts up a gofundme. 

 

Just curious why does he not go back for free treatment ?

Absoutely correct.  It is waht I would do if I was as unfortunate as he is.  A no brainer really.

The first thing I did when I retired and arrived here in Thailand back in 2003 at age 57 was to immediately take out health insurance cover with the then BUPA Blue Cross, (Now Aetna) who guaranteed to cover me for life by taking out my policy before I was 60.  Absolutley stupid not to do that for anyone intending to retire and live here.  Even so my cover would not fund all that is required for something like chemotherapy or heart surgery, as I only get cover for say the first 500K Baht or 1 Million baht depending on your level of insurance cover (and mine costs me over 70K Baht a year which is as much as I can afford) .  So something major like serious cancer then I would have to return to the UK where I worked and paid my NHS stamp all my life and indeed still pay UK income tax on my pension.  

I would only consider donating to such a Go Fund Me appeal if the recipient was really broke and could not afford the air fair back to the UK and also had no family or friends that could help support him.  I have little spare cash for such expensive airfare but would first ask for help from my family and friends if I really needed my airfare covered, and then would probably stay with family over in the UK whilst having treatment (and pay them for my keep too of course).

I wish this guy all the very best and hope he gets on to the road to recovery promptly and as painlessly as possible.  None of us are invincible and all subject to getting these diseases especially as we get into our final years.  Enjoy your life whilst you can is the best advice anyone can give you and hope that is for many many years yet to come.  You can help that by avoiding known life shorteners like smoking tobacco and excessive alcohol drinking. 

If you must smoke use e-cigarettes but they are stupidly illegal here and I believe the only country in the World that has such a stupid law.  Fortunately I gave up all smoking 36 years ago and now drink very little, so do not need e-cigarettes.  Despite the stupid law here, e-cigarettes are as we all know, and by the scientific evidence too, far far safer than tobacco.  However, as guests here we do need to obey the laws of our hosts of course, even silly ones such as this, as that is of course essential. We should and can though help fight to try and get this astonishingly silly misguided law changed ASAP, but I leave that to all those adversely affected by it.

4 hours ago, HHTel said:

Not so.  I get some tax free income (quite legal)  plus over taxed by some companies requiring me to claim tax back from the Inland Revenue.  

But for 99% of us with just our pensions income to decalre for the income confirmation requirement it will serve such a useful purpose adn easily too.  I accept of course there will be some anomalies but suggest these will be the exceptions rather than the rule.  Personal;ly I do nto even have to complete a tax retuirn as I only have my two pension incomes, one state and one from my old employment wiht no other assets outside what I have here in Thailand.  I know many legally living here with Spouse or Retirement VISAs who are in the same boat and never been any problem up this bloody UK Embassy disgraceful decision. 

Surely even in your situation your Inland Revenue tax files hled on their servers should be able to confirm you have sufficient income if indeed you could show the Embassy such income confirmation documents before.  It would not be difficult for the FCO or any other Government department, including overseas embassies, to be able to set up an easy system to secuely access, even as read only, such inland revenue data.    

17 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

I can't speak for the UK, but for the U.S., there are VERY few and limited options for Americans to make international fund transfers to Thailand without paying not insignificant bank international transfer fees -- both on the sending end in the U.S., and then on the receiving end by the Thai banks when they handle currency conversion.

 

And this just so happens to be coming at the same time that one of the most popular and economical international transfer methods used by Americans -- the Bangkok Bank NY branch ACH method -- is shutting down that service next April because of banking regulations.

 

 

Well you are being ripped off especially these days with fast efficient almost free digtial money transfer methods.  Clearly the UK banks are either well ahead of the US ones or they are not ripign their customers off to the same extent.  EIther way if I was a US bank customer I would be complainign loudly and clearly and questioning more.   My sympathy to you guiys then for beign so robbed by these bloody crooked banks.  

19 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

You seem to missing the point that lots of folks don't have their pension payments deposited into Thai banks for a variety of reasons, and instead have them put into their home country accounts.

 

Lots of entities won't do direct deposits into foreign banks. And, even if the pensioner wants to do the transfer themselves, doing an international wire into Thailand every month just to satisfy Immigration is likely to cost hundreds of dollars in banks fees per year.

Well not actually correct nowadays.  Transfers are very cheap or even free today.  For example using Barclays Bank in the UK with their Internet Banking service you can transfer Sterling direct to your Thai Bank Account for free with just a flat £8 charge levied by the Thai end of the transfer, and this is for whatever amount you want to transfer up to a very high limit I believe that is far in exces than even the highest of normal UK monthly pension income.

Yes it used to cost a flat £25 or more plus bank charges this end, but those days have ended now using Internet Banking. With the expanding mainstream banking use of highly efficient Block Chain technology (as used with crypto currencies) money transfers across the World are becoming virtually free and almost instantaneous. 

26 minutes ago, lvr181 said:

Remember Governments across the World are there to SHOULD serve the people and that should never be the other way around. But some Governments are not, in any way, interested in that concept.

Indeed and you see that in many Western corrupt Governments these days, particulay in the hypocritical so called homes of democracy nations like the USA and UK, which so often now simply ignore what the majority of the people want and elected them to do.  They are now also practicing the most obnoxious unacceptable, agenda driven, corrupt censorship practices too in mafia style cooperation with some of the big corporates like Google, Facebook and Twitter etc,  Makes many of us ashamed to be a Brit or an American these days !!!  Personally I am very happy to be here retired in Thailand irrespective of a few of the rules we don't necessarily agree with, but for sure accept that we have to comply with and can live with of course. 

So who decides what is fake news?  All too easy to brand something fake news simply on political or false censorship grounds often to protect those controlling such censorship from unsavoury and criminal activity that should clearly be exposed.  Take the appalling censorship on Facebook and Twitter of Alex Jones on the Infowars site, which I and others may not always agree with, but hey that is a rightful freedom of speech issue of course.  Personally I loathe ALL censorship amongst adults, though free speech that deliberately and directly incites violence and/or exposes non adults to adult material, is an essential, sensible and responsible control of course.  

However we falangs are guests here in Thailand and I am sure like myself we  all overall love living here with  our many Thai freinds too.  So as guests here we of course really must and should comply with the rules of the house.  Whether or not we actually agree with some of those rules is irrelevent, as it is not our country, but of course there should be no harm in expressing constructive criticism sometimes, especially where things could be improved wiht positive changes, especially for the quality of life for the ordinary good Thai people's here.  Remember Governments across the World are there to serve the people and that should never be the other way around.

Love your thumgnail icon Sydebnolle.  Bloody brilliant L & H   Love it ?

Well when I first moved here to Thailand way back in 2003 I was told by many respectable legal advisers and accountants, and indeed by a very helpful senior Thai immigration officer, that using a limited company with Thai nominee shareholders was the most popular, and recommended best way to go for a retired farang to own his home here with a minority share holding but still with juristic control of the company.  It was clearly indeed sound advice at the time and was a very popular way for retirees to buy their own home here, and indeed why not ?  The law changed some years later and they clamped down on nominee Thai shareholders, as to why I never understood what the problem was when just used for owning your own single retirement home with small amounts of land.

However I must say that the law is very crazy about farangs, especially those retirees who are good for the Thai economy, in understandably wanting to buy and own a small amount of land here (say up to a Rai or even half or quarter of a Rai is surely more than sufficient) for use as a personal retirement home.  Surely this would have no real impact on Thai's losing land to foreign owenrship as the amount of land involved, if restricted to a no more than needed land size and only one such residential plot per farang, would be so very miniscule and the benefits to the country would be very postive too.

So I ask the Thai Goivernment to consider allowing farangs, at least those on long stay retirement visa's who want to make their homes here,  to be able to buy up to a pre defined limited small amount of land on which to build ( or with already built) a residential house on for their personal use.  Just one such plot per farang and only for those on long stay visa's like retirement or even maybe long term work permit holders and of course Thai spouse visas holders too.  

This would encourage more retirees to move here to Thailand and stop all the crap, costly and time wasting of Thai authorities having to look for loopholes and then all the policing of trying to stop such harmless loopholes.  To me it seems a no brainer so maybe someone could explain why this has not been put in place already and why it should not be put in place now.  Good for retirees and others too and good for Thailand if carefully restricted and monitored.  More retirees here means more foreign exchange comes into the country, promotes jobs, helps businesses here prosper and absolutely no valid reason why this is not allowed to happen ASAP ?????????????????? 

Sure I can support and fully understand that strict controls and clamp downs on greedy farang property developers must be kept in place and strictly policed too.  

Just to add that I find this crass ignorant and bloody stupid in the extreme.  It is a well knwon fact that e-cigarettes are far far less harmful than tobacco and indeed has not secondary smoking effect on others in the same room or location.  For goodness sake the Thai Government should truly get real on this and use their brains before their wallets and think about PEOPLES' well being not Baht !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

I generally love this country and it's people and choose to live here as a guest so of course I fully respect the laws here, but hey come on now this particular law regarding e-cigarettes is surely total rubbish !!! Peoples' health is surely the primary goal here, so lets help those trying to quit the dangerous and highly addictable drug called tobacco by encouraging not outlawing the use of these e-cigarettes as a far far safer alternatives and as a great help in breaking the damaging to health smoking habit.    

Personally I thankfully do not smoke tobacco or even use e-cigarettes, but if I was a smoker (as I once was over 30 years ago) then I would certainly switch to e-cigarettes in respect to my health and work to then give up the habit entirely. It would be one case where I would feel my health matters more than complying with a silly law that is unfounded and unworkable IMHO and does nothing to protect innocent folk from beign the victims of crime as laws should be doing.  

Stopping this daft law outlawing e-cigarettes is a no brainer way to help millions of folk give up the dangerous tobacco drug.  I am sure lost tobacco revenue can be recouped form other taxes like higher ones on tobacco and other harmful legal drugs like alcohol, sorry to say that as it won;t be popular with many but it is being real;istic and sensible IMHO.

This is simply my own personal opinion and one I feel I want to openly share, as I am sure is already shared by millions of other folk, and I would safely guess most ordinary decent Thai folk too will agree too. An unwanted and unfounded law imposed on decent Thai people that needs repealing ASAP.  

Hmm I though a UK national, who had lived and worked in the UK most of his workign life, got a death grant for his widow of I think £2000.  That is more than enough to pay for a Thai cremation and the wake afterwards though would be a bit short for a UK funeral and wake.  Okay might take a few weeks to come through to the widow here but I am sure a friend or family could lend her enough for the cremation until she gets the UK death grant a few weeks later.  

Does anyone know about this UK death grant, how much it is and if it is, as it should be, paid to a Thai wife of the deceased. All assuming that the legal Thai marriage was originally notified to the UK authorites, which most of us do anyway, well I did as normal practice when I married my Thai wife some years ago.

Anyway RIP to the family he has left behind. Very sad one so relatively young.

Amazed at so many negative comments here ????  Certainly most my US friends and contacts are absolutely delighted that Clinton did not win and that is what most of us should be celibrating now.  We have far more hope now of all of us surviving longer without a nuclear war that would in the end be caused by a totally meglomaniac, arogant and insane Hillary Clinton.  

Certainly I am not a big lover of Trump with my being more closely aligned with the original more people friendly Democrat party of old, but I do admire his more up front honesty even if I do not agree with him on many issues.  Personally I have said from early this year that the Democrats should have selected Sanders for their candidate, but then again he showed just how insincere and weak willed he was in the end, very disappoining for me and so many of his supporters who with no other sensible choice voted for Trump in the end.  Dr. Jill Stein IMHO would have been the most sensible and honourable choice for US President.

Anyway democracy has chosen Trump.  However I have to say that the US electoral system, like that in the UK, is still deeply flawed with it truly needing a state by state single transferrable vote AV electoral system to ensure a true 50%+ majority acceptance (yes the real true democratic majority will of the people) in each state to make the final decision as to who gets their Electoral College votes. Anyway under the US electoral system that is of course in place, we now have to all grow up and accept the result of the peoples' choice and give Trump a real chance to show that he can change many things for the better and start to put an end to Washington corruption.  Only time will tell.  

At least he has pledged to overturn the massive Washington corruptions and stamp down on the wicked undemocratic lobbying from Wall Steet, the armaments industries, foreign rogue nations like Saudi, and other loathsome big destructive corporates that have been feeding the Clinton foundation and their personal massive mainly criminally obtained wealth of which has been totally against the public interest. We will soon start to know if he is a man of his word and works hard to fulfill his election promises.

Well done USA, you finally saw sense and most of you used your brains by denoucing Hillary Clinton if nothing else.  IMHO you should have chosen Dr. Stein, but as she was given hardly any media coverage it was of course unlikely, and thus Trump was the only logical choice left for most folk of course.  It was actually of little surprise to me that he did win, as surely we could all feel the vibes and see the massive following he had.  Mainly I am so pleased he at least has kept crooked Hillary out of the Oval Office, as that would have been a frightening nightmare for us all. 

On 16/09/2016 at 3:14 PM, SgtRock said:

 

You have not familiarised yourself with the rantings of General Juncker over the last few days.

 

In particular has grand speech of 2 days ago.

 

Onwards to full Monetary and Political Integration.

Indeed I have my friend.  BUT that is not the point.  I personally have no problems with monetary and political union in a properly set up and TRUE DEMOCRATICALLY run EU where we the people make the decisions via our representatives as to how the EU is run. That would also demand a proper democratic electoral system such as AV and/or PR with NO unelected voting members in any such EU parliament.

As that is unlikely to happen then I am very happy that the UK voted for Brexit.  So now all the UK need to do is to restore true democracy to the UK by bringing in an electoral system that does not allow any elected MP into power before he attains more than 50% approval of his constituency electorate much like Australia for example. That will mean that future Governments are not in power with a minority voted support as they are now (This current UK Tory Government only attained 36.7% of the electorates votes in last years General election and therefore should have no right to rule us all !!!) . Until then no way will I personally accept that the current UK Government (nor similarly minority elected past ones) has a mandate to rule as indeed we already know the EU certainly has not !!!