suzannegoh

Thanks for chiming in, this thread can be closed now. There’s a law that every pizza thread must have a an Italian, someone who “knows pizza” because they’re from New York, and someone who cooks their own pizza at home. Until your contribution we were lacking the last one.

No, they are not. This is just an attempt by political rivals to portray Move Forward as being puppets of the Americans.

In a social setting, I was told by a Thai doctor who works at a private hospital that the so-called “30 Baht” medical plan for Thais doesn’t cover MRIs for patients with known or suspected cases of cancer and that the plan only covers old generation chemo drugs because they are cheaper. He gave specific examples of limitations of the plan as being that since the only chemo drug available in Thailand that is applicable to brain cancer is Temozolomide, which is wildly expensive, that the only treatment offered under the 30 baht plan for patients with a brain tumor would be surgery and radiation. And in the case of a woman having breast cancer, he claims that the plan would pay for a mastectomy but not for reconstructive surgery. Overall he was painting a picture of the Standard Of Cancer Care under the 30 Baht plan being about on par Standard of Care in the West 50 years ago. That doctor clearly has a vested interest in discouraging people from going to a government hospital but he isn’t our doctor, we were just speaking in generalists about the healthcare systems of different countries. Is what he’s saying at all accurate?

I can’t at all agree that healthcare is a plus when retiring in Thailand, it's more of a reason to stay in farangland. Though it seems like most people on social media think that the medical care here is grand, I’ve had some alarming experiences with Thai hospitals. And since you’re not going to be able to take advantage of whatever healthcare plan your home country has for the elderly, you’re going to have to pay cash for your care and you’re likely to have trouble getting privately underwritten medical insurances after a certain age.

The underlying visa is not necessarily different, both an non-Imm O and an an non-Imm OA need to be renewed annually and can be renewed on either the basis of retirement or marriage. The difference is that when you renew on the basis on marriage you only need to have 400K Baht in a Thai bank instead of 800K, you can get work legally, and you don't have to buy medical insurance from a Thai insurance company. However there's a bit more red tape when renewing the marriage visa.

Who are the foremost experts in Thailand at diagnosing and treating breast implant-associated Anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL)?

OK, but what I was wondering if it's difficult to exchange Kip back to Baht or USD as you are leaving Laos, while still in-country.

What's the concern with having excess Kip when you are ready to leave, is it difficult to exchange Kip for dollars or baht as one is leaving Laos?

I gave me a different answer: "Dick Cheney, the former Vice President of the United States and Liz Cheney's father, is known to have accidentally shot one person. This incident took place in February 2006, when he was hunting quail on a ranch in Texas. Cheney accidentally shot Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old attorney, while aiming for a bird. Whittington was injured but ultimately recovered from the incident."

CNN showed the video too.

Do you think that the pathology in Thailand is more reliable for the big cancers - lung, brain, etc?

That's a good point about Moh's outcomes being dependent upon the quality of the pathology. I had errant pathology here in which they were apparently unable to distinguish between Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC) and Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC). And then I had a recurrence after having that cancerous skin removed by Wide Excision, despite the pathology saying that the the margins were clear.

Dr. Rungsima at Siraraj Hospital in Bangkok does Moh's surgery but I don't know anyone who has been treated by her.

However if you're only talking about bringing in small quantities for personal use, handcarrying medicines into Thailand usually goes unchallenged.

Are Thai rice farming methods better than Western ones?

Waste of money, half of the tests in those packages have no diagnostic value.

Me either, but I've seen European tourists do that in Italian restaurants in Thailand, and wash it down with Chang beer mixed with Sprite.

In these forums everyone says that pharmaceuticals are cheap in Thailand but yet in every case in which I've had prescriptions filled both in the US and in Thailand it's been much more expensive in Thailand. Some say that that's because I've been going to private pharmacies in Thailand and that "everyone knows" that you should go to a government hospital to get cheap drugs but I haven't investigated that yet.

20 years ago there were people griping that Chiang Mai wasn't what it used to be. And 20 years from now there will be people reminiscing about the 2020s as if it was Chiang Mai's golden era.

Depending upon what type of account it is, there could be other explanations for there being only transactions initiated from abroad, but it's understandable that it might trigger a letter being sent asking for verification of your address. If I was creating an algorithm to detect customers that might have moved abroad, accessing the account only for foreign IP addresses is one thing that I’d include in it.

From what I've heard before, all that Fidelity does if they find out that you're living abroad is restrict you from buying (but not from selling) mutual funds. That wouldn't be the end of the world. And as I said, it doesn't seem like Fidelity trying very hard to catch people. The only ones that I've heard of (except perhaps for you) having their accounts restricted were people who told Fidelity that they had moved abroad or had taken absolutely no measures to spoof their location. Seems like they are taking a "don't ask, don't tell" approach - though of course that could change if the Feds start leaning on them to better "know their customer".

They might have tools for that but it doesn’t seem like Fidelity tries very hard to catch people. I’ve tested my VPN the best that I can to make sure that there are no leaks but I regularly use a Fidelity ATM card from Thailand and I’ve been doing that for 14 years without them saying anything about it. It seems like it should be pretty obvious from the ATM withdrawals where I am living. If you, or anyone else here, has specific knowledge of howwhat tools banks detect your location when you’re using. I’ve tried to anonymise as well as possible using https://whoer.net to find vulnerabilities. Certain things that might tip off a bank are obvious, such as not turning off your devices “location services” but whoe.netr looks for a lot of more subtle things too, like DNS leaks and whether the time zone on your computers matches the time zone of your IP address.

With or wiithout a VPN?

Before you started using TeanViewer, what was it that tipped them off that you were outside of the United States?

Why not just use a phone as a hotspot?