BKKBike09

16.326 I don't take names and numbers, but I do see foreigners reading actual books from time to time. Japanese BTS users in particular (and not reading manga). While I would not claim that Caucasian BTS users are avid readers, I would say that they are much less likely to be staring at a smartphone.

You almost never see any Thai person reading an actual book on the BTS. I'd say 95% are staring mindlessly at their phones. Some may be reading an e-book but mostly it just seems to be social media. On the Tube in London you still see a fair number of people reading actual books, but it's a dwindling number.

Surely the key point to make for anyone wanting to get rich via crypto / markets / commodities or whatever trading is that if you're going to do it yourself (rather than via a broker or a fund or whatever) it requires a full-time commitment to identify the opportunities and make the most of them - as you appear to be doing. The future of crypto will indeed be more adoption for real world use - but at the cost of more regulation and much less volatility (opportunity). In this transition period, I do think that there's opportunity to make a lot of money from BUT that requires full-time focus. And I can see there being the mother of all crypto crashes along the way. In the meantime as a speculative long-term investment, who knows? A lot of people who bought in a couple of years ago and held on - or who spend all day every day trading - have made and will make a lot of money. Good for them notwithstanding that a joke meme coin with a dog on it can be treated as an investment opportunity - and make serious money. And that's before we get into the whole ethics of billionaires like Musk boosting or tanking a coin with a single tweet - which he can do because there's no regulation. And NFT 'art' ... don't get me started. However ... all that said, if approached purely from the basis of "can I make money from this regardless of my personal views" (after all, one person's NFT could be another's Damien Hirst Pickled Sheep - I think it's worthless but if someone else thinks it's worth millions and stumps up for it ...), then worth a punt if you can afford to lose whatever you put in. I bought some BTC, ETH and MKR earlier in the year and the portfolio value was up 60% at one point; today, despite the bloodbath last couple of days, it's still up 15% thanks to the ETH. I also gave some money (on a profit share basis) to a good friend who does this stuff all day. If the crypto bulls are right, in a couple of years I'll have a tidy sum. If not, I won't be on the streets.

I'm going by what CDC data says for the last few months. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status I suspect it's a question of 250 being a figure for all deaths since start of pandemic vs how things are now. Many more people were likely to die at the start because the virus was unknown, treatment options were more limited / less well understood, there were no vaccines etc. Nowadays there are much better treatment options, there are vaccines and, to be blunt, probably a fair number of people who would have died if they got Covid have already died. It's misleading, I feel, to focus on death rates from earlier in the pandemic. However you cut it, the individual risk of dying from Covid can now be greatly reduced. Government should focus on real time death rates to inform policy.

1. I was responding to a post that stated the rate at 6:100,000 (citing CDC data) 2. Here's some more CDC data along the same lines. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status

Interesting data. Below is data for influenza deaths in USA. Averaged out across all age groups (as per the CDC stats above, that's basically 7 deaths per 100,000 for influenza vs 6 deaths per 100,000 for Covid even in the unvaccinated. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1127799/influenza-us-mortality-rate-by-age-group/ Covid is clearly a serious health threat to specific vulnerable groups but from the way data is often presented, you'd think it was the Black Death.

Ah, the temperature scanners! I think I'd change 'largely redundant' to "complete and total waste of time'. They're like those ridiculous plastic face shields that some people wear. Make sense in an OR or a dentist's chair; pointless in a department store. There should be a TV sweepstakes for who's recorded the lowest temperature on one of those scanners. 29.3 C for me.

I've had 3 x AZ (1 in UK in mid April, 1 in TH in early July, 1 in UK in early Nov). I wanted a 'complete' vax cert from one country hence the 3rd shot in UK. That was before Omicron but guess I can count it as a booster. Didn't have any reaction to any of the shots. I did catch Covid here in late September but it was very mild. I also read an article recently that cited Dr Clive Dix, former chairman of the UK Vaccine Task Force, when stating "The AstraZeneca adenovirus vaccine scores well on cell memory and may ultimately protect better than messenger RNA jabs such as Pfizer-BioNTech, now that we are relying more on this second line of defence. He believes the UK should have stuck with AstraZeneca for mix-and-match boosters." [Article is here but it's behind a paywall: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/12/23/prof-lockdowns-apocalyptic-omicron-claims-undermine-faith-vaccines/] Who knows. I don't care whether I catch it (again) if the vaccines provide good protection against serious illness. There's so little clarity around this, though, because so many studies talk about protection from "symptomatic infection", which runs the gamut from sniffles for a day to intubation in ICU. So 3 x AZ or 2 x AZ + 1 of something else? I suspect both options work well but I'm not a clinical virologist and I suspect the issue of a 3rd booster will soon be supplanted by the issue of a 4th, 5th, 6th etc booster ...

If you live in the Sukhumvit area, Soi 19 Dental Clinic / Dr Dusit (just down from Terminal 21). Excellent English. Not had any implants but a couple of crowns over the years. I don't know if he's much cheaper than the bigger places but I like the fact that his practice isn't industrial sized and I also have never had the feeling that he's tried to sell me work that isn't needed.

Spot on. The more detail emerges, the more rum the whole affair looks. Also seems like no-one is interested in hearing this guy's side of the events (his 'lived experience' as I believe we should call it this days). I can easily see a comms screw up at the original one-night hotel leading to him thinking he could leave and then panic after they realised they let him go but he was "positive" (if he even was; seems to me that arrivals since November are consistently testing positive at around 1:1,000 - something close to the 'typical' PCR test false positive rate [we'd need to know whether his original 'positive' test was positive on a single gene, or more than one: the former likely being genuinely false, the latter more likely to be genuinely positive]). CCTV from the hotel would be the most revealing: if he's clearly on camera sneaking out of a fire escape, would support him knowingly doing a runner. But if he's on CCTV at reception settling his bill and his bags with the bellboy, well that would be a different story. Let's see if the CCTV footage from the hotel is suddenly 'missing' or there was 'a technical problem and it didn't record'.

Where did I say it was her fault? It's not fine for anyone to be attacked. Nor was she 'asking for it'. Nonetheless I stick to my observation that for a young woman - okay, any woman - to be alone on a subway platform at 4 am might not be the best choice. Here's hoping they catch the scumbag. She was on her way home to Queens after seeing Daboyway, a Thai American rapper, in concert. At about 4 a.m., she was grabbed from behind in a chokehold, dragged along the northbound platform servicing the D, F, N and Q lines, thrown to the ground, punched in the face and robbed of her purse at the 34th Street Herald Square station. https://news.yahoo.com/lucky-alive-nypd-looking-suspect-230907503.html and elsewhere if you can be bothered to look. Kentish Town for me, chief. Deffo some places there you don't want to be walking around on your own late at night. Canal side walk anyone?

Women should be free to go where they want, when they want, and wear what they want. However, common sense might also suggest that an NYC subway platform at 4 am is not the best place to be for a young woman in a short skirt.

Not a lot, unless they're predominantly young and otherwise healthy. People die all the time. Unless I know them personally I don't dwell on it. Roughly 10,000 people die each week in the UK from all manner of causes.

I agree completely as regards the deceased but she must have caught it from someone and, being 78, probably didn't get out much so most likely from one of the relatives who attended the subsequent funeral. If there was risk involved, it would be from one of them.

A 60-member with 16 Deputy Chairmen chaired by the Deputy Transport Minister. Why Transport, not Min of Fin? Transport is Bhumjaithai: if BJT (Anuthin, Saksayam et al) want it to happen, probably more likely now than at any time in the past.

The beneficiary of the insurance policy is a leasing company, so I'm sure one of the reasons he's in a flap is because he's still on the hook for the car payments. The insurance company citing the numbers is a bit rich: the full number is ZEF67NHC000182063 with that middle 'H' incorrectly recorded as 'I I'. It's clear it's a simple error. His next port of call should be the Office of the Insurance Commissioner.

I've used MedConsult (Sukhumvit 49) three times now for pre-travel PCR. Highly recommended. Gets cheaper every time: now THB 2000. OP also asked "what if you test positive". Short answer is "nothing good". Given current Omicron panic almost certainly would result in enforced hospitel / hospital quarantine for a visitor without a permanent residence in Thailand (where you could home quarantine). Extending visa wouldn't be a problem I expect since the person would have official medical documents showing they had been quarantined. Changing air ticket would depend on airline. One of those cases where the right travel insurance could be a good investment.

I'm perfectly aware that you can be infected and asymptomatic. But I was talking about going maskless after 2 negative PCR tests and probably 5 negative LFTs in the 6 weeks after catching covid, having previously been fully vaxxed two months or so before catching it. And while in the UK I also did a weekly LFT (and got a further jab in early November). Surely we can agree that, in such circumstances, the chances of me catching covid again and giving it to anyone else during my month in the UK in November were as close to zero as they could be. In such circumstances I chose to go maskless whenever and wherever I could: you likely would not, which is completely up to you and would be sensible if you are over 50 and / or have any existing co-morbidities. That's what I would do if I was in a high-risk category for Covid. But I would not expect everyone else to wear a mask.

PR holders also: 1. don't have to bother with the TM30 nonsense (because PR holders go onto a standard blue Thai household registration book) 2. can (in normal times) register to use the e-gates at Suvarnbhumi which, if a frequent traveller, can be a big time saver. 3. if buying a condo, don't need to get the Central Bank letter stating that the funds were brought in for that purpose (which form is needed for repatriating said funds, unless things have changed recently) PR is a hassle to apply for and is expensive but it offers a great deal of security to holders once obtained e.g. lose your job, don't need to worry about visa; get divorced, don't need to worry about visa etc. Plus id doesn't expire if you leave Thailand, as long as you come back once a year. That's unlike many countries (eg Singapore) where you lose PR if absent for more than X number of years.

Actually I was wearing a mask, where mandated, in Bangkok, which is where I caught Covid. I did take it off, of course, to eat in restaurants, which is likely where I caught it. Back to my original post: when I was in the UK subsequently I presented no risk to anyone and hence chose not to continue to wear a mask just to make other people feel 'comfortable'. You and I clearly have very different views on all this, which at least makes for interesting debate.

No. Let me make it simple for you. I said: "I greatly enjoyed spending last month in UK, going about my daily life without a mask. Since I was double-vaxxed effective early July, still caught Covid in late September (very mild symptoms), and had a further jab in UK in early Nov ..." Last month was November. I had positive LFTs on 23 and 26 September; I immediately self-isolated at home for 10 days. I then had negative PCR tests on 14 and 29 October. So me being unmasked in UK from 1-30 November presented zero risk to anyone, hence my lack of interest in wearing a mask simply to make other people feel better. Anyone that worried about catching Covid from other people should only wear a medical-grade N95/FFP2 mask, changed at least 2-3 daily, rather than a basic cloth covering or surgical mask pulled up and down numerous times during the day.

Spot on. Just as every death - regardless of cause - isn't an equal tragedy on a societal level. The death of someone in their late 70s who's lived a full life is far less tragic than the death of a 5-year old from, say, conflict, malnutrition or malaria [U-5 mortality from malaria (2019) - est. 274,000 - https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria] Vaccination against Covid should be strongly encouraged by government, but not mandated - especially when long-term data on possible vaccination side effects in those currently at minimal risk of serious illness (healthy individuals aged under 40) is not available. There may be no significant side effects, but no-one can possibly know that at this point. I greatly enjoyed spending last month in UK, going about my daily life without a mask. Since I was double-vaxxed effective early July, still caught Covid in late September (very mild symptoms), and had a further jab in UK in early Nov, I really didn't see why I should continue to wear a mask simply to make other people feel comfortable. By that reasoning, since one can never know whether another person presents a risk, we will all have to wear masks for ever. No thanks.

In the case of Brits, in the past (pre 2018) it was required that applicants executed, in person at the Embassy, a Declaration of Intent to renounce UK citizenship if Thai nationality was granted. It was (is) a criminal offence to make knowingly a false declaration but, as has been pointed out, intentions can change for many reasons. Nowadays the Embassy will not witness this declaration but instead issue a mail order letter which basically says "this person has said they'll give up their British citizenship but UK doesn't care and won't stop him/her having two nationalities". Again, the Thai authorities may not care, but this is making it clear that the embassy expects the person won't do it, so maybe making it harder for the Thai authorities to turn a blind eye. In the past the e-gates of course meant that one never had to deal with an immigration officer rifling through a passport looking for a visa. In these Covid times, however, the e-gates are out of action. This won't be forever and indeed the immigration officers likely don't care, but leaving on a brand spanking new Thai passport with no visa stamps would make it obvious a second passport was being used if on a direct flight to a country where Thai nationals need a visa. Hence flying to, say, UK, via Qatar, or some other country that offers visa free entry for Thais, might be an idea to consider. Thai nationals - those who were born Thai - can hold other nationalities. But naturalised Thais are not allowed to do that, under present regulations. Luckily for Brits, if born before UK Nationality Act 1981, it is allowed to reclaim citizenship if forced to renounce it for the purpose of obtaining a second nationality. It's a drawn out process, but it is an option. Basically any applicant for Thai nationality would be well advised to bear in mind the - however remote it may be - possibility of having to give up one's original nationality.

I arrived yesterday afternoon. The documents asked for at SVB were passport, boarding pass, Thailand Pass and PCR test. I had paper copies but some other people only had e-copies. Really quick process. From leaving the aircraft to getting in hotel car was about 25 minutes. Qatar flights from both UK and Doha were full (Economy). Check in at LHR took two hours ... docs required there were passport, Thailand Pass, negative PCR test, Hotel Booking, Insurance. Again, you can use e-copies (I forgot to print the insurance letter).

That's interesting. I think that's updated UK guidance because when I left start of November, it was very clear that Sinovac / Sinopharm weren't approved in UK. It also didn't say anything about mix and match of country programmes: when I filled in the Passenger Form for UK it only allowed one choice of country for where you had been vaccinated.