richard_smith237

We’re left guessing what you mean.... You rent at 150cc motorcycle for 4000 baht per month ? You can buy a 2 year old motorcycle for 40,000 baht - (which pays for itself in less than 2 years compared to rental). Costs of motorcycle ownership are minimal - Tax & insurance is very cheap, maintenance cost is variable and obviously dependent on what can go wrong. Best thing about buying your own bike... being able to chose something with ABS so it has better safety.

Agreed... But even when being so careful... I’ve nearly been hit a coupe of times. Attempting to cross.. cars stop.... another is slowing, then seems to decide he doesn’t want to stop and you have to ‘jog’ out of the way.... The way drivers in Thailand gamble with the lived of pedestrians infuriates me. --------- I recall a few years back... At a pedestrian crossing... Ekammai in Bangkok - crossing with my Son (5 years old). Two cars heading north stopped... reached the central reservation, 1 car heading south (left lane) also stopped.... Then a taxi approached as I was about to step out from the centre, taxi was still 50m away but accelerating and was hitting his horn so I waited... I shouted as he passed, the taxi skidded to a stop.... I reached the pavement and saw the taxi driver getting out of his car... looking at me very angrily. I was with my son so didn’t want anything to escalate, but... for a moment there I thought he was going to come at me... The taxi driver, sensibly changed his mind and got back in the car. Crossing the road - it doesn't matter how careful and safe we are when there are lunatics on the road it can still be ridiculous.

I hope your friend makes a solid recover. Thanks for the follow up - Shocking that it was a ‘foreigner’ accelerating through the red-lights... some people just go native.... ... Can’t pay compensation... I wonder if his insurance would. Not stopping at lights - surely thats also a criminal matter.

How do you get into debt with a Debit Card ?... PromptPay ?... LinePay ? TrueMoney ????

This is clearly caused by that guy who caught a couple of parrot fish and the guy who bought the whale bones...... Its a good job the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources are right on top of this !!! ????

There’s a huge and growing ‘middle class / middle income bracket’ in Thailand... Many foreigners still thing all the Thai’s are on the minimum wage, working in Bars or as Taxi / motorcycle drivers - because thats all they are exposed to. Whenever we travel outside of Thailand we always see loads of other Thai’s... Japan is no exception, whether its a ski-resort or Omote-Sando... Japan also made a very smart move and allowed Thai’s a 15 days visa exempt entry, making it very simple for any Thai to travel there.

A neat little run around.... I’m tempted to get something like that as second car... A good Plan C... the Wife mostly uses the car and when I can’t (don’t want to) use the motorbike (rain etc) something small and cheap would be a good option...

100% no need for an agent at all..... Thai Elite deal with everything already.... why add a middle-man ?????

Or perhaps you just think it was Thai Elite.... A lot of fake-mirror sites around and agents masquerading as official 'Thai Elite’. Even the Op had the wrong web-site for Thai Elite.

The driver may not have noticed that they hit a pedestrian ??? Come on, you really think thats possible... someone would need to be extremely drunk to not to notice they’d hit a pedestrian... Those who 'Hit-n-run’ really need to face extreme charges... So much is wrong with the roads here, so few <deleted>’s given by those is positions of decision making power.

Don't be silly.... Road safety in Thailand cannot be compared to road safety in the UK. IF foreign bodies, embassies and businesses, chambers of commerce etc applied pressurise on the Thai government to face these issues it may cause sufficient lost of face to trigger those in positions of decision making power to care. The ‘it happens elsewhere’ does not make ‘light jumping acceptable’... and it happens here in Thailand a lot lot more than in nations with effective policing.

Funny. Why would I do this? I was checked last year and only after making a call to friend/police in BKK, the control was quickly over. Same for me a few years back (>5)... Taxi turning left onto Sukhumvit at Asoke Junction, coming from from Rama IV. The BiB saw me in the passenger seat, so pulled over the Taxi.. asked me for Passport. Nope !.. I didn’t have it... I showed them my DL... Nope, they wanted my Passport. It was about 6pm and I was heading out to see friends for a beer. The BiB asked me to get out, I suggested he waits and takes the call I’m about to make. I call my phone-a-friend option... he talks with the BiB who waves me on. What did the BiB want ???... nothing good, thats for sure. I suspected they’d have had me emptying my pockets, peeing in a cup etc... and then when they find nothing trying to fine me for not carrying a passport - I don’t play those games. That said - getting stopped and asked is extremely rare... But some poster seem to believe it doesn’t happen... Other idiots suggest its because of ‘appearance’ !!!.. (i.e. those who get stopped are dressed poorly etc) - they can’t see appearance in a taxi - they [BiB] just see a white face. The profile a Westerner / foreigners and think they have a chance to get some cash.. Well, they used to anyway until those pulling these stunts in that area were stopped due to bad publicity.

I use coffee culture Asia - Phuket based but ship all over Thailand. They too are sometimes hit and miss and an order can be delayed - but there excuses are honest and decent... i.e. been extremely busy and roasters couldn’t keep up etc... which at least means I’m getting freshly roasted coffee (which I let sit for a few weeks anyway). https://coffeeculture.asia/category/coffee-beans-in-thailand/# Of the Thai Coffees I quite like the Khun Chang Khian and its relatively inexpensive. I also like the Doi Chang Peaberry - but it sells out quickly.

I disagree... we need factual reporting without any possible sensationalism otherwise we don’t know what to consider exaggerated and what is genuine. IF those writing these articles are specifically focusing on Covid-19 they are presenting a potential bias - just report the facts without any ‘exaggeration or emphasis’. I know it's not going to happen, but we need to see cause of death in these reports. This man may well have died of a heart attack and just happened to have recently tested positive for Covid-19 in the past week... Equally so, he may have been perfectly healthy and Covid-19 caused respiratory failure and death....

Well... SARS-Cov-2 is the Virus of which there are numerous variants... Covid-19 is the disease the virus causes.... COVID in caps is simply a form of sensationalisation... surprised they didn't use bold too.

Why are you defending an incomplete article ? Wouldn’t you like there to be more facts presented in article such as this?.... something with greater clarification so we are not making assumptions to fill in the gaps. Covid-19 is a highly emotive subject, whenever there is insufficient information people are jumping to all sorts of conclusions.... - In this case your conclusion is.... ‘covid was the killer’ - In this case, my conclusion is.... ’poor article, missing key information' You have jumped to a conclusion, I’m suggesting that we shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions because the information is incomplete - the article is very poorly written to the point that its clumsy. You seem to be of the misunderstanding that I want the cause of death not to be Covid-19. You are wrong - I don’t care what the cause of death is. My whole point throughout this ‘side-discussion’ of ours is that I think the article is very poorly written, its missing on key facts, it opens the door to assumption - you have happily allowed yourself to be guided through the door and made your assumption that Covid is the cause of death. Either the author has deliberately opened that door to assumption or he/she does not carry out any research before putting ‘pen to paper’. This is why I think the report is at best, very poorly written, at worst, deliberately misleading with an agenda.

Did you also know, the guy who in little Pattaya beer bar who told you this really was special forces before he retired...

Its not just the Op who is interested in the answers to this question. Those in ‘other situations’ may also wonder what is acceptable. For example; it ‘may’ be acceptable to carry your home country Driving Licence (as long as it has Photo ID)... perhaps others have experience... hence, the discussion of what else may or may not be acceptable, why we should carry ID in the first place... Is it an Immigration requirement? or a Thai Law Requirement? exactly what are the requirements? is it a requirement to carry passport or just ID ? etc etc... OR... perhaps you believe this should have been a two post thread... the question and your answer, anything else anyone else mentions is not what you want to read.

The leading article quoted in the Op is missing key information - thats not denial, its fact. If the article quoted that they all had a cold or flu would readers be jumping to the same conclusion that a cold or flu killed these people ? I would like to see these articles presented in a far less clumsy manner and read something along the lines of... "xxxx died at age xx, doctors reported that autopsy results showed the deceased suffered pneumonia and respiratory complications brought consistent with through brought on by Covid-19... " Or... "xxxx died at age xx, although the deceased tested positive for Covid-19 doctors as yet have not confirmed the cause of death..." Thus, the denial could be yours.. its seems you ‘want' covid to have been the cause, because thats the conclusion you have jumped to. Meanwhile, I simply want accurate reporting that isn’t misleading. Wanting factual and accurate information is not a conspiracy, its not denial, its not an agenda... Is simply wanting the truth. Recognising that key information is missing such than an accurate conclusion cannot be drawn is not a conspiracy, its not denial, is not an agenda... Again... its simply wanting the truth. The article is not telling the whole truth - perhaps because the author of the article doesn't know the full story... In its current state the article is incomplete and misleading... The only conspiracy I could be accused of is wondering if the ‘incomplete reporting is deliberate’.... that accusation levied towards me would be a fair one, one I accept.

I guess thats possible, but they have mentioned the cause of death to be ‘complications due to covid’... ??? - the article has simply mentioned that the deceased had tested positive for covid and leaves the reader to place their own dots and then join them... If they could pin the deaths down to covid, surely they’d have mentioned more... rather than... they were found dead and tested positive for covid. Agreed... but that not the case here. I’m not suggesting Covid was definitely not the cause of death, I’m stating that testing positive for covid does not mean covid caused their death. The only way to know for sure that Covid was the cause of death is for doctors to perform test / autopsy and check for covid related mobility and not other unrelated causes.

Agreed... Cause of death was not know. They had Covid-19... thats a possible cause of complications leading to death - but there is no way of knowing that at all. Actually, they do... people have heard attacks or other complications... No its not, not at all... Covid is not the most probable cause of death, it's not by a long way. Over 600,000 people die every year in Thailand... most of them are not dying of covid (young or old). How many have died of Covid-19 ??? - the most probable cause of death of this man and other three others the article mentions is ‘some other cause’ not known. I’m not dismissing Covid-19 as a cause of complications which led to death. What I am saying is there is not enough factual information in the story to ‘jump to the conclusion’ that Covid is the cause of death (or cause of complications leading to death) - the article simply opens that [Covid] door and present the ‘assumption’ on a plate to its readers, some have bought straight into it. The conclusion you have jumped to is not based on any balance of probability it's a knee jerk assumption. There is simply not enough information to know what the cause of death was.

The manner in which this publication reports is somewhat like a ‘conspiracy site’... It states fact, but leaves the report open to assumption and conclusions where it could provide better facts which close out questions. The article reports on Four deceased people... a 53 and 73 year old couple, a 41 year old man, and an 80 year old man, all found dead - the article only mentioned Covid-19... nothing else... its very strange.

No, you don’t know that at all.... It's possible he died of complications from Covid. It's also possible covid had nothing to do with his death and the fact that he tested positive is coincidental. I think, like you, some people read this news and jump to the Covid conclusions immediately without thinking critically. Equally so, IF the article quoted that he’d been vaccinated 2 weeks ago, people would be stating that the vaccine killed him. The article has already ‘pre-loaded’ bias in some... the cause of death was never stated.

Occam's razor. He had covid. That’s not Occam’s razor - becuase having covid does not necessarily mean Covid is the most obvious cause of death. If the article had quoted... Security guard with Cold dies while at Factory Booth... would it be ‘obvious’ (Occam’s razor) that he died of a cold ??... or more likely something else ? The reporting that he was covid infected is somewhat ‘click-baitey’ and very clumsy, especially at a time when the mere mention of ‘covid’ can bring about so much irrational and emotional debate.... He died of something else and just happened to have Covid ? He died of complications directly as a result of suffering from Covid ? .... Which is it ?... both are very different... But - we most clearly have people who believe that because covid was mentioned in a report that he ‘died of Covid’.... Now.. Covid doesn't kill people, complications as a result of covid does (i.e Pneumonia etc)...