DiDiChok

Unfortunately, this is a recurring theme about it seeming to be a good and profitable idea to supply items to expats. Sadly, it is not and this is proven by the number of startup failures. It is not possible either to defend the idea from competitors, to do something that they cannot or to do something in a better way. These aspects are fundamental in protecting the profitability of any business. I have bought from these startups quite a few times now but they are never in exstence long enough for me to be able to place a repeat order. All seem to fall prey to copycats supplying the most profitable items cheaper, low order quantities, storage problems, import duties, supply chain complications and staffing problems. It does seem quite a shame but then most items are now available on Lazada and other shopping channels. The OP does not say where he is, only that he is in "Thailand". But Chiang Mai has half a dozen "RimPing" supermarkets, the one I go to being in the "Kad Farang" market which should give you a clue. I nearly fainted when I first saw the high quality fresh meats on sale there. To sum up, I suggest you continue to ask around and buy specialities when you can. There is no long term solution to the supply problem that I have found.

Well, it's not ridicule because this happens to me as well. I usually suffer when supping the nice soup only to find that it contains enough MSG to fell an elephant instead of the maximum 1 gram per ten kilograms of weight. Penicillin and Nutrasweet (Aspartame) have exactly the same effect too. I now don't have any of it knowingly but I still get caught out. Who would put MSG in marzipan? The Thais did & felled me.

If you'd got the latest Honda City RS like I have, you'd know that you can start the car from your mobile phone without unlocking the doors or rendering it drivable, so that it's nice and cool when you get in it.

I've used "Mai Pang" mtorcycle rental in the Jomien Complex for year and years. Always very good & insurance if you want it.

Vivian "Viv" Nicholson (née Asprey; 3 April 1936 – 11 April 2015) was a British woman who became famous when she told the media that she would "spend, spend, spend" after her husband Keith won £152,319 (equivalent to £3,600,000 in 2021) on the football pools in 1961.[1] Nicholson became the subject of tabloid news stories for many years because of the couple's subsequent rapid spending of their fortune and her later chaotic life.

I went to St. Peter Hospital right in the middle of the pandemic in 2021 with bad cataracts. I was nearly blind on one eye and they sorted me out over two weeks. I can now see in the distance perfectly and can also read without glasses again, and I'm 74. I was so pleased with them and went because so many in my local village had been sorted out there. It sounds like the OP's problem was resolved as best as possible. I agree that most Doctors in Thailand seem to give you far too many pills and potions in my opinion, but I always take them all. While the money grabbing theory is plausible, I do think there's a bit of a "scattergun" approach going on. Sort of "We can see there's other things that are not as good as we'd like, and so we'll sort those out as well", so I don't complain. I always feel better afterwards, which is the main point of going to see Doctors really.

Read the book that should have come with the bike. It tells you how to turn off the "oil service" light by pressing a combination of buttons on the hamdlebars. All newer Honda bikes are like that now. Google the service manual if you haven't got the book. Back street bike fiddlers change the oil but don't know which buttons to press, whereas Dealers do.

Atterberg??? Would that be David Attenborough?

I had tri-focal lens implants because of cataracts back in 2021 at St. Peter's. All my astigmatism and other focussing problems got corrected in one go. I can now thread a needle, read four inches from my eyes, use a computer, read a newspaper and see in the far distance without glasses and I'm 74 now. I'm well chuffed with the result and no longer have to deal with opticians. Cost? Well, to sort out my problems was ฿230,000 in total for everything (both eyes and all out-patient treatment) and I don't begrudge a satang of it. I had thick lenses, astigmatism and poor eyesight since I was seven and now can see everything clearly and only need nice sunglasses. If you look on their web site (Google St Peters Hospital Chiang Mai) and they quote per-eye starting prices of ฿48,850 for mono, ฿68,850 for mono foldable and ฿98,850 for multi focal. With something as important as your eyesight, I can't imagine anyone not wanting to get everything sorted out properly in one go. If I'd known in full beforehand how good it was going to be, I'd have sold my soul to the devil to get the result. How did I end up at that hospital? I asked the elderly (like me) in my little village where they went and what they'd had done. My advice is to bite the bullet, find the money for them to do the best job for you and really enjoy the rest of your shuffle along the twig. I know people who've now had this same implant surgery in their late forties, which the hospital does under the name "Prelex". Slightly off topic, I was astounded to find someone who had discovered a German contact lens that uses the same multi-focus technology. He hadn't got cataracts but now doesn't need reading glasses any more. Technology is moving on so quickly these days. You never know what's just around the corner.

I'd say that a total price including outpatient checkups of ฿315,000 to ฿335,000 is around ฿100,000 over the top but it does depend on the treatment being provided. I paid ฿233,020 for both eyes in Chiang Mai and I can now read again without reading glasses and see in the distance better than I have ever done before. All my astigmatism was corrected and that required more to be done that just inserting the new intra-ocular lenses. They called it "SuperSight surgery" and they weren't wrong. I have never been so pleased with anything medical before, and this was all done in the middle of the pandemic. I'd suggest that the OP goes with whoever is recommended by lots of people. I asked around in my local village and it was soon clear from what I call the "Grandma mafia" who run everything, that I should go to the same place as all the Grandmas and Grandpas had done. So I did. You could say that I have never looked back . . .

The really good thing about Thailand is that there are plenty of rules either to choose from or to ignore. Makes me smile every day.

I've found that the eVisa site is a bit "sticky" now and then after certain questions, but does proceed after a short delay. Most infuriatingly, the error messages are either obscure or non-existent, so you must look at what you've submitted again and again. When it doesn't move on you must check really carefully that you have answered all the questions so far in full and that no error messages have appeared. Then you stand a chance of submitting the application.

This logic is what I call the "Eat s**t, 100 trillion, billion, milllion flies can't all be wrong!" argument.

Oh dear, I do feel for those suffering, but I think the problem may have been misdiagnosed (see rhyme at end). I suspect that as most of you do not have anything to do with three phase systems, you are unaware of the problems that come with these supplies. You are quite happy that individual houses and street lights are on different phases and never have a problem. Everything is quite all right as long as everyone either takes current from a phase and it is returned down the neutral or uses phase to phase power. But computers and other electrical "switched mode" devices put a whistle on the wires. Low voltage power supplies are often of this type as it means a transformer is not required when supplying low voltages. I take it that you do like the new low wattage street lights? Anyway, this "whistle" gradually undoes any screws holding wires to connections. In an office environment with multiple computers in it, someone is usually deputed once a year to go round and tighten up all the little screws. To alleviate the problem nowadays since there are multiple low voltage lamps everywhere, clips are used to hold wires in connectors instead of screws. Now, what happens when someone is taking power from live to neutral on one phase, but then the neutral's connection to its transformer is lost? There are three phases but only one neutral, so when the connection to the transformer's neutral is lost you get phase to phase current flow at 415 volts between your phase and what you thought was your neutral and not the 230 volts you were expecting. The current may be quite large as well. So everything goes "boom" and everyone wonders why. This causes great consternation when this fault is intermittent as it may well be because something heats up and causes the fault, only to cool down and restore normality. People are already saying that there are voltages between earth and neutral that are sometimes quite large, so the problem seems obvious to me. Street lights (like houses) are often very sensibly wired to the phases in order going along a road, to even the load out on each of the phases. Someone should get all the neutral connections checked right away or at least tell someone in authority about the problem before someone gets killed. This is why you should use double pole switches on mains supplies and not just a single pole isolating what you thought was the live wire. I think the rhyme goes like this: "Little boy, big pliers, playing with electric wires. Big flash, loud crash, little boy reduced to ash".

Back in the days when Gold was ฿8,000 for a ฿1 chain, I bought a lovely ฿2 rope one. I had it for many years, but then a Katoey said to me "You are good Falang and generous but you is walking safe deposit and it dangerous". So the next day I sold it for ฿25,000 and have never bought any since. Good advice. I just hadn't realised what I had been doing flashing it around.