tjo o tjim

Looking at tourism where I live in the US, it pretty much dropped off like a rock once the summer holiday season ended; hotels were around 80% before and 20% after. Normal seasonality would be about a 50% drop. I assume things for Thailand will be similar, with the next two months pretty slow and picking up in December.

I doubt it will be cheaper. Really what I want is an LFP based UPS where the battery will last 10 years, but that gets tricky. I think if I can move all my networking and IT equipment to one location I can at least eliminate two units, but the rest of the units are needed mainly for brief interruptions. A centralized UPS likely causes more problems than it solves.

I had a brief (<20s) outage yesterday, and two UPSs that support a total of 150W of computer equipment burned through an extra 80W x 12h to recharge the batteries. Batteries about 14 months old. I need to look into the no-load losses on these things and figure out a better option. I know lead-acid batteries have bad self-discharge and round-trip efficiency, but since I have at least six of the UPSs scattered around the house it might be time to take a look at better options.

In my years of visiting and living in Thailand I have gone to an immigration office once. I plan my trips to avoid it now; no reason for the added hassle. These days I could use a 60 or 90-day visa exemption, because getting a visa is too much of a pain for a vacation.

My perception was that there was about 20% of normal tourist numbers last month. I would be surprised if it doesn't grow to ~30% for peak season. 10MM might be a stretch, but 8MM seems reasonably possible. The problem for Thailand though is that most people are not staying long enough to offset the flight-constrained reality. There were a lot of large groups of young people that were in Thailand for 7-10 days as an example.

It's a shame Rail in Thailand has taken so long to get ...not much better. Bangkok to Chumphon should be less than 3 hours by train, Surat Thani 4 hours. Instead it takes about 3x that time. Also a shame they don't have a passenger/auto train where you can load your car for the trip-- I can dream.

Just make sure to check the wiring when you replace it! For LEDs you can get flicker as well if you have some wiring problems or poor installation. Don't just replace with an LED tube in the existing fixture.

DC accent lights? Beyond that, not very useful today if they only ran two pairs. (My house had 4-pair Cat5e wired to RJ11's which I was lucky enough to be able to convert to RJ45's

I think of a typical UK system using trunking-- a 3x3 to 5x5cm wireway that they put a bunch of wires into for the main runs, and then they might branch off with conduit going to a device. A typical US system will have multiple conduit sizes instead of the trunking/wireway, and junction boxes as needed to split things up. Most of the Thai metal conduit work I see is a bunch of conduits, often doubled up because they did not have a bigger size, and with more LB fittings than you can imagine in order to go around beams. Essentially it is planned the exact same way that they would plan surface-mounted wiring. The art of doing a nice conduit installation is planning everything out in advance so that it is no more complex than required for the job. Looping around a beam every 3.5m when advanced planning would yield a sleeve through the beam is one example... but there are also other ways to route things where you don't need the complexity. The connectors are where things go wrong with conduit work here. The more you have, the more wrong it goes.

They have only really had proper UV-cured plastic boxes for the last ~15 years. Look for a label saying that they are suitable for outdoor installation.

Looking at the OP's two sample pictures is exactly why I would not use metal boxes in Thailand. First off, stamped galvinized boxes are not that good embedded in a concrete wall. Second, and arguably more importantly, is that if you aren't using the right fittings you are just making a mess that is hard to work with down the road. I find it amusing that US-style conduit work is becoming so much more common in Thailand. Unfortunately they generally are doing it wrong and a UK-styled trunking system would provide so much more of a practical solution. Now, there are cases where you might have exposed boxes that a metal box would provide a better end product... but it likely should be a cast box and not a stamped box, and I can guarantee you that they won't have all the proper connections.

My recommendation, primarily for servicability, is to have all fixed appliances on dedicated circuits, and a separate circuit for the countertops... two if you are feeling wild and crazy. You don't need it for the loads, but it makes things like repairs (or energy metering if you so desire) that much easier.

Well, that would kind of rule out online banking too... I do remember discussion of this a long time ago though, and there were some odd rules on the books.

First time back since the pandemic and I was really surprised by it as well. I always felt like one or two people out of 50 in a suitable place for remote working were reasonably active before... but this trip it was more like 4-5 out of 20. (I was also quite surprised by the big group tours with young westerners... and just how much stuff they were packing into a day!)

Of course they are... but when four fingers on one hand matches just stop... especially on leaving the country.

Any idea what is going on with ferry cancellations from Lomprayah? Told the Friday morning boat is being cancelled and I heard several others have been this week. Seas don't seem that rough.

I would generally say that digital nomads are in a different category than expats. Housing stability is much more important, and cost of transient accommodations is less critical for a resident expat. Many things are much easier in Mexico, Portugal, and Spain compared to Thailand in that regard; can't really speak to the other countries. A few places that used to be high on these lists have become less stable recently (Costa Rica and Panama come to mind)... but then again crime/homicide is way up in much of Mexico. Personally I would pick Thailand 8 times out of 10... but I can see how a few things would really take disproportionate energy to resolve.

I know it is a little bit more expensive... but boy I would recommend going for a PoE camera (active not passive) to future-proof the setup. Cat6 being larger wire size does also reduce the power losses.

The only network wiring in my house (except a little bit of fiber) that isn't 5e is what I use for outdoor cameras. The shielding does seem to improve the performance for those units, so I went with shielded outdoor 6a. The stuff is hard as h3ll to get in tight spaces, but it is stiff enough that you can "push" it a bit rather than just pulling which can sometimes be helpful. My issue is resolution; some of my outdoor cameras are 4k60.

How is hiring going though? That appears to be a current challenge.

Part of the issue is that Europe flights became quite expensive ~6 weeks ago, and Thailand was still reasonably cheap. Last man standing, I guess. Oh well, happy to be back.

Holding physical gold is a pain in the rear for any significant value. For that reason I can imagine a significant percentage of holders of gold would consider bitcon. I might actually buy some Ether if it drops to ~$700... but it is playing around money and not an "investment". (The eventual switch to Proof-of-Stake makes it more interesting to me. Proof-of-Work is just a pointless waste of energy and limits the platform's flexibility.) All that said... most people are poorly equipped to securely hold cryptocurrency for long periods of time, and would be ill-advised to put money in it.

It was far cheaper for us to get to Thailand than Europe from the US. Tourist destinations seem relatively busy given the limited options for them.

You might want to do a test run of using cable tray (of any form) for moves/adds/changes. For something like a (home) lab or workshop it works ok, but you do need to do proper wire management to keep it viable. They work best when they are not very full, and I would recommend the center-supported tray if you do go that route. Center support is easier to lay cables in rather than trying to pull them through. Anything with covers is going to end up with the cover sitting on top of the ceiling tiles after a couple rounds. It is really a pain to remove and reinstall them. I'll offer up an alternative that may help you meet your needs: zone wiring. Put a zone box in each room with a hard conduit to wherever your "hub" is, one for power, one for low voltage. Use the zone boxes to splice or cross connect (for ethernet or fiber), and be ok with things downstream from the zone box resting on the ceiling tiles or a simple hook. This makes it easy to re-wire an individual room or area. I've gone that route for my house (~500m2), and I have 4 zone boxes up and running with two more planned. (I'll have something on the order of 80 network drops when everything is said and done.) I like zone wiring because an area that you want to change is rarely limited to a single system, and I find I rarely upgrade a whole system at once. The latter situation is where cable tray or an equivalent really shine.

The trip was fairly last minute, and getting the tourist visa is a hassle in that time frame.