BoganInParasite

RIP Joe. I rarely left a visa threat till I saw your post on it.

From 2,200 to 3,200...aircon 8-10 hours a day atm, normally none, just fans.

Had a strong wind, rain and some hail storm on Thursday late evening near Pua in northern Nan province. (Plus a 5.5 hour blackout. Sleeping was sticky.) Then last night starting at midnight we had ninety minutes of lightning/thunder storms roll through with heavy rain for at least thirty minutes. Believe or not but green shoots appearing in the brown and seemingly dead malay grass already. Been the hottest, driest and most air polluted of my five summers here.

Received my new Australia passport yesterday and immediately went looking for the stamp or note in it. Nothing. But then the wife gave me a separate envelope also received with the one containing my passport and it contained a signed and stamped letter from the embassy confirming old and new passport details. Quite perplexed as to why it would not be in the same envelope as the passport and just a bit thankful we got it. (Maybe 30% of mail we know has been sent to us is never delivered.) Anyway will be heading to my local Immigration office to attempt the required visa/stamps transfers in the next few days and will update again if I encounter challenges. If no update, went okay.

Had two Australian banks request this as well. Told the first one I'd prefer to close my account and did so. Told the second one to take a running jump because I had no taxable income in any country. Turns out there was a flag I can tick in their system so I did so online and have been hassle free since. One of my least painful bank interactions of the last decade or so.

Hope we can get a few storms to settle the air down. Worst air pollution I've seen in the upper Nan River valley in the five years I've lived here. Today particularly bad.

Coming home from Nan yesterday and driving north on the 101...passed through a village with an abandoned and overgrown school. There was a large team in there clearing it and burning the material in half a dozen fires on the small playing field at the front nearer the 101. Heavy dark smoke billowing into the sky. <deleted>. Visibility yesterday in the upper Nan River valley was about 700 meters.

Had the same from the local office head back in 2018 on the home visit. He asked the wife in Thai and she relayed it to me. I then told him ever so politely that it would not happen, ever. Said it in English directly to his face and told the wife not to translate it since I knew he understood and could speak English. He was also insisting I convert to a retirement visa in a few years. Took the opportunity to explain to him it was not required and not ever going to happen. He managed to humiliate himself in the office a couple of years later but that's another story. Noticed on my last office visit for the 90 day report there was a new head listed.

Was reading elsewhere their 787s have become particularly unreliable. This coupled with a management focused on financial return above everything else and that they and the Qantas group as a whole gutted the operational expertise during the pandemic and you have half an understanding on why things are as they are. And BTW, in a previous life I was in a key role at QF to ready the airline for the JQ sales and operations launches.

Not quite. Best effort was getting only a couple of hours a night for five days while preparing a huge technology bid in the upstairs office of our chain smoking Greek partners in Athens. Slept slouched with my head resting on my arms on a desk. Also, no showers during that time. Finally slept in a bed from about 2:00am on the Saturday morning. Took days to recover.

Upper Nan province, no rain since early October except for an unexpected (and unforecast) very heavy hour or two long downpour one morning in mid-January. But the cooler mornings have persisted to now and the days have been mild. Overnight and maximum temps look to be going up 3-5 degrees from next week. Particularly bad air this year though.

Recall at one stage Hinze was referred to as the minister for everything. He collected a few of them, most concurrently.

Don't underestimate how devastated the Chinese economy is and the severe impact it has had on the disposable income of the folks that once travelled abroad.

This is my fourth smoke season in Pua, northern Nan province. This is the earliest I've seen really bad air here with several days already of not being able to see the other side of a narrow valley. Yesterday it was possible to see the airborne haze above the road only 25 meters from our house. The Nan valley seems less impacted than most of the rest of northern Thailand and even with our recent bad air I can see other parts of northern Thailand with monitoring station readings 2-3 worse than our nearby stations. The mind boggles. Still we have not yet had a day like a couple of years ago when on a drive to Nan on the 101 the visibility was about 200 meters and the whole sky was a glowing dull yellow.

We get a lot of recyclables because of the wife's homestay. Prior to COVID we would rock up to the local recycler about every two months and get 30-60 baht for the load. Then a couple of kilometers up the road the wife would blow it on fried banana. Then during COVID we saw the recycler was accumulating massively because for a time they could not transport it across provinces and down to Bangkok. No doubt their cash flow was suffering as well. So we started just giving it to them and have continued to do so. When they spot us backing in it is all hands on deck and the two folks I've come to understand are the husband and wife owners are all thankyous and wais. Not too many other places you can feel like a king for such a small amount. BTW, we still go get the fried banana.

I'm sure they announced something similar 2-3 years back.

You are quite right. That place does actually have a direct booking rate of 500 baht for a single guest in own air-con room with private bathroom. If the guest has previously stayed the rate is 460. Previous guest staying three or more nights the rate falls to 420. Highest guest rated accommodation in Nan province with more than 40 reviews on each of Google, Booking & Agoda. Only English style breakfast in the northern part of the province and best Thai breakfasts in Pua.

And your point is?

Pua Tranquil Vista Homestay is close to both #1256 and #1081 and biker friendly.

Based on what I'm seeing in the supermarkets I'm thinking that six is missing a leading one.

Thai Lovelinks site 15 years ago. A nurse who swore off Thai men after learning her long time Thai boyfriend was a prolific butterfly. Never met him, but occasionally wish I could thank him for his reprehensible behaviour.

January is the month the wife usually gets two or three European groups (well couples) at her homestay. She had a German, UK and French nationals bookings, presumably resident there, booked for the last ten days of this month. The last of the three cancelled last night. All were online third party bookings so we can only presume this fiasco was the genius of it. Quiet end of the month appears imminent.

Was asked for the same by the IO chief (in English) at the initial marriage visa home visit in front of the wife and two lesser officers. I politely but strongly rebuffed him. He tried to be a bit pally as we the exited the IO office a bit over a year later having got the next extension in the passport. Politely let him know I'd prefer to not have anything to do with him. Have not seen him last three years, but he is still there. Have paid the usual Cert of Residency 'fee' of 500 baht a couple of times though, without complaining. Apart from that my local IO is pretty easy to deal with and wait times are negligible.

So this is not part of their everyday work routine?

The 34th of never I'm thinking.