Dustdevil

31 minutes ago, Denim said:

 

1 Egg on white toast with a thin slice of ersatz spam and half a cup of Nescafe chaser.  Yummy.

Nope, it was two eggs, two slices of bacon, one or two slices of toast, jam and some black tea. Maybe all you naysayers go to the tourist joints in the Old City. And I was paying 50 baht for a full dinner (just water for drink, though) down southeast on Changklan Rd.  near the Park Hotel. I went down there for dinner because one of the family cooks was the sexiest and most beautiful girl in town and she actually liked me. Now that's what I'm talking about--who needs life in the West? Or so I thought, until I realized CM is Cancer City. (Now, I'll admit, the classic American breakfast has an addition to the eggs, toast and bacon: a tall plate of pancakes or waffles and a load of maple syrup. But we'll leave that aside. It's really a 1950s relic. I don' t know how they packed all that in.

On 4/1/2020 at 7:39 PM, Logosone said:

Look we're talking about a family here with two adorable kids. They can't live in a one bed apartment, And in Chiang Mai why would you rent a condo when houses are so cheap? Plus you really need a pool in 40 degree heat. And look what happened now all the condos are closing the pool and gym facilities while those who rent a house with pool can still enjoy their facilities. You get what you pay for.

 

The same applies to food, an American breakfast for 30 Baht is totally impossible in Chiang Mai. It's just not feasible. Tell me where you get an American breafkast for 30 Baht. I've had American breakfast in Chiang Mai and paid substantially more than 30 Baht.

 

A sandwich for lunch? Are you pulling my leg?

 

Okay, 60 Baht for a nice Thai dinner at a food court is possible, but you forget the drink! Plus dessert. And you're already at 105 Baht. Now times that by four for the Wiseman family!

 

I can tell you shopping is not much cheaper than Germany, if anything quality food is more expensive in Thailand. Housing, you get more for your buck, but is still expensive.

 

So clearly this Wiseman family will have great expenses and I understand their financial concerns if they only have 20,000 GBP or so.

Well, my last time in Thailand/Chiang Mai was two years ago. I hopped over to the small cafe across the street from Puwanon Place (just off Huaykaew Road, less than a quarter mile northwest of the city center) and had a full Amer. bkfst for 30 baht, indeed.  A sandwich for lunch at home--why not? That's what I've always had--at most. Who needs a big hot meal for lunch? I don't. I'd just get fat. As for dinner, who needs the beer and dessert? If you've lived in Asia you soon learn to live without dessert. You are westernizing the Thai residential experience. I stand by what I said, as a single person, but, yes, in 2018 prices. Have they gone up so much? Breakfast doubled now or something?

11 hours ago, 4MyEgo said:

So of the 20 deceased, 10 had pre-existing conditions which is a basically a death sentence if your unlucky enough to get Covid-19.

 

Not good news for those of us who have pre-existing condition/s.

 

Not going anywhere and not allowing any visitors

 

Highly unlikely for at least a year

 

Just got to stay in as much as possible and wait for a vaccine, i.e. if it will give us (those with pre-existing conditions) a break to go back to a normal life.

 

 

We may be waiting in vain for a vaccine; hard to tell. HIV was a novel virus and no vaccine has been found after 40 years. Those two viruses are not like influenza. But I hope I'm wrong.

2 minutes ago, Oxx said:

The quoted death rate has two major flaws:   (a) not knowing the total number of individuals infected because of inadequate testing (as others have mentioned, and (b) failing to recognise that some of those infected but not yet dead may well still die.  In other words, it's fairly meaningless.

 

The simple percentage appears to be based upon something close to Sunday's reported numbers.  23 dead, 2,169 cases.  23/2169*100 = 1.06%

Correct. These cases are what Donald Rumsfeld would call the known unknowns. Current stats based just on confirmed cases are meaningless, particularly because many who have already died were never tested.

Yes, well, the known mortality rate in Spain is 10%. In the U.S. it's increased from 1.5 to 3% of what we can see, but the actual rate is far higher because a lot of people have died at home or in hospitals from pneumonia not even knowing what was wrong with them.

16 hours ago, recom273 said:

Yes, agreed .. I usually avoid them at all costs .. but the guy that came on Monday was cool, he knew straight away why I wasn't getting the speeds - the fibre terminal was out of date and would never reach 1000/1000, but as far as the helpline was concerned, I upgraded my package then I should have got the speeds.

 

He sent me to the shop to pick up a new router ( I wasn't allowed in the shop without a mask ) and the sent the wife away with a brown box and "we can confirm it is in bridge mode" which it wasn't .. and then I called them to come and set up the router in bridge mode.

 

Another tech turned up, and then called the shop to find out why I had been given another bit of kit that wasn't capable of reaching 1000/1000 - the answer was "well we didn't have the right kit, so we fobbed him off with something to keep him happy" - He explained to them that they couldn't treat customers like this .. I was really impressed.

 

He then called around, drove to another shop that was closed, and returned and plummed it in, while I was working in my office.

 

When I checked the speeds through my mesh network via ethernet, I wasn't getting the same speeds as he was getting direct from the 3BB router, so I opened a ticket late at night.

 

The network team were on the phone the next day, an hour later, both the techs were sorting out their router so that my router could output the same as theirs - they didn't have to do this, they could have just walked away .. but I was really impressed, so much so I bought them lunch.

 

My advice with 3BB is don't be fobbed off, make the helpline operators life hell, ask fo the ticket number, chase up every query until you get the result you are looking for, the people you want to speak to are the people hidden behind the frontline staff, but reaching the trick.

And technology is supposed to make our lives easier.

17 hours ago, KhunBENQ said:

Just used their test site:

https://speedtest.3bb.co.th/

(you used the same?)
All other results won't be interesting to 3BB!

 

Numbers are about OK (898/495).

All wired.

I don't have a mobile/WiFi that could come anywhere close to these numbers.

 

What you can do: check the properties of the LAN/ethernet connection.

Does it say that it is indeed a Gigabit connection?

How to? Depends on your OS.

 

I know that is not of much practical use.

But well it was just a 100 Baht more.

Best I get is youtube Video downloads at about 400 Mbit/s (depends on age and type of video, some are much slower).

Nice to have and I prefer watching with VLC much over the web player.

I never watch anything on a phone or a computer except when traveling. I download video files onto external hard drives, also flash drives, and plug them directly into the 60" TV, which also has a sound bar with woofer. Prefer a more cinematic experience. If I'm traveling, I use the excellent MX player on phone and 10" tablet. It works far better than VLC on those devices. The latter muffles the sound, for one thing.

17 hours ago, lopburi3 said:

This is probably not the best time to be testing internet speeds as everyone is at home and using.  In USA almost impossible to even upload these days as so overworked (even with sites such as YouTube using lowest quality for video).  That said using 200/200 from True and currently have 221/228 (true speed) and 223/219 (speedtest net) here in Bangkok.  As said will be much lower if going outside of Thailand.

That's a broad and misleading statement. First, I assume you're using your phone as a computer? Second, I live in an apartment complex that has 1gb fiber optic included in the rent, which in practical terms, the end-user (my) download speed is 250-270 mb/s on my laptop, and something over 100 mb/s on my amazon tablets. Some people with older hardware need to buy a dual-band adopter. When I had my old laptop it supported only the lower band and 100 mb/s but with the dual-band adaptor 250 mb/s. Now with a newer, SSD laptop, high band is the default mode and as I said, 250-270 mb/s using apartment complex's fiber optic. That's wifi speed, by the way. I don't bother with ethernet connection because if I do, it knocks out my smart TV's streaming capability.

12 hours ago, Logosone said:

 

Well, this poor family will have to, since they seem to be running out of options. But I can understand they are running down their savings the way they are, life in Thailand is not that cheap. Not much cheaper than Germany.

 

I just don't understand the lack of sympathy for a family that did nothing wrong. They got a job before they came out. They got into diffficulties through no fault of their own, only because of the global lockdown of the economies. It was not their fault. A man is deprived of his livelihood and there's no sympathy for a whole family in trouble?

 

They're your own people, British compatriots, What a strange attitude towards this nice family.

I can get a reasonable apartment in Chiang Mai for 10k baht (or less). Utilities including internet probably 3200 b. or so. American breakfast at a small local cafe for $1; a sandwich for lunch and 50-60 baht (under $2) for a nice Thai dinner in one of the open-air restaurants (in non-coronavirus times)...and you call that "not much cheaper than Germany"? That's absurd.

15 hours ago, Logosone said:

No, but I don't believe the figures coming out the UK either. Even Sir Patrick Vallance doesn't. He said the real number of cases is ten or twenty times higher. And Neil Ferguson said peak infection time is about second week of April. 

 

Could get ugly in the UK.

US medical authorities (and my excellent physician) suggest five to ten times the known infections in the U.S., which didn't handle the onset of the virus any better than the UK.

15 hours ago, Logosone said:

With two rents to pay? 75000 Baht? I'm in Chiang Mai, I easily pay 140,000 Baht. A house here costs 35,000 if it is of any any quality with a good pool. Even with a a cheaper house that'd be 60000 Baht alone, add university fees, food, I spend 30,000 Baht on food alone every month. Do you live in a rural villlage or something?

 

I'm not talking about Thai families, I'm talking about European families living a lifestyle they are used to.

I see lots of okay flats in Chiang Mai (suitable for one person, admittedly) for 6 to 10K baht.

15 hours ago, Mister Fixit said:

You really don't know your visas very well, do you?

Visas on Arrival are for 15 days and are for 18 countries and people can enter any way they like AFAIK.

Visa **Exemptions are valid for 51 countries and are for 30 days, extendable for a further 30 days on payment of 1,900 baht.  There is NO SUCH THING as a 30 day Visa on Arrival.  

 

It is plain from reading the OP, had you done so properly, that these people are British.  The newspaper article was from a Devon paper and Devon is a county in the south west of England.  That means, by employing just a smidgen of brain power, that they will almost certainly have come in on a standard 30 day Visa Exemption which for some reason they seem to have paid well over the odds for to get extended further.

It's possible that they may have come in on a 60 day tourist visa, but unlikely given they could have extended that easily without need for an Embassy letter.

It reads to me that they have extended their Visa Exemption once, then have extended again with a letter, meaning that this seems to be their third extension.  After that, well, who knows?

 

I attach a document which explains the visas available to citizens of other countries.  I suggest you study it well so you get your facts right in future.  It's dated 1 May 2019 so less than a year old, so should still be accurate.  

 

 

 

No such thing as a VOA for 30 days, but there is obviously a visa exemption scheme for certain nationals allowing a 30-day stay.

15 hours ago, bangkokbonecollector said:

and trust me, don't sell property back in the UK when you come to live here. Rent it out and use that money to live on until you are properly secure. That way you always have a home to go back to if it doesn't work out!

I did that while working in Dubai--renting out my two houses in Houston (one of which was paid off). Lesson One, though: always sell your furniture; never include it in the rent. Lesson Two: nine out of ten renters will trash your house--dog pee under the baseboards, filthy walls, all three toilets in one house broken; big dent in the garage door because they didn't know how to drive; in one case failure to pay rent resulting in eviction; shall I go on? A better strategy would have been to either (1) keep the house empty and hire a property manager to keep it and the lawns in good condition, or (2) accept only professional tenants with exceptionally high credit ratings.

The guy's already in his 40s--kind of old to be a naive backpacker, a permanent (British) beach boy. But genuine beach-boy / girl backpackers don't usually have a spouse and two infants to worry about.

16 hours ago, 19DL86 said:

???????????? Comedy Gold on the appropriate day 555.  This has to be a joke.  Right!!!

From the opening line with "immigrated" instead of migrated, it's just absolutely tosh.

 

Some great one liners, "Chinese whispers" 555 try Chinese sneezes, more like it.  We feel like we re "living in a bubble" - No sh** Sherlock?!?! No way is this beauts name WISEman and the son Ifor, 3 = I for free...... Lol

 

Some research might not have gone a miss, prior to jumping off a cliff edge, hey?

 

Do you use "migrate" to mean emigrate? Migration normally refers to people or herds of animals moving to another area regardless of national boundaries. An example would be the Syrian and other refugees heading on foot or by boat to Europe. Emigration refers to legally leaving one country to live in another. Immigration = legally arriving to live in a new country. Well...I suppose if this family arrived legally but then planned to stay illegally and permanently, it was a form of migration.

15 hours ago, mike787 said:

Girls only care about cash...what we look like never matters.  

To answer your question, i had a haircut yesterday, barbeer is still open.

I know a very beautiful and Chiang Mai University-educated girl (majored in English) who had the same attitude, only more mean-spirited and entitled.. VERY entitled brat. Of course, with her looks and perfect figure, she got a job with Air Asia--but ground staff...probably because her English wasn't up to the standard of flight attendants. Well I hope she remains unemployed for a long, long time. karma and all that.

How's it working out? Not too well over here in the Pacific Northwest. Since I live alone, that means self-haircutting. I look....like a douche now.

In Idaho liquor stores are considered essential services, same as grocery stores. Looks insane at first glance but the reasoning is 1) Prohibition has been done before in the U.S. and all it did was encourage gangster-led bootlegging. 2) There's no reason to force alcoholics to go through DTs. Since booze is not a prohibited drug, people have the right to taper off it properly under medical supervision and social support. 3) The Idaho liquor stores are state-owned, and taxes go to the state, of course. In an era when people are spending far less (this is a fact, not an assumption of mine), the state needs all the sales taxes it can get. State tax is 6%. Imagine all the cars nobody is buying now.

13 hours ago, ukrules said:

The alcoholics won't be happy with this one, there will be big problems from this.

 

Making people stay at home is one thing, preventing them from having a little drink while sitting in their home with absolutely nothing to do is something very different.

 

 

Some will get DTs and some would even die. I say "would" because prohibition always results in gangster-driven bootlegging. A dumb, thoughtless decision.

30 minutes ago, waders123 said:

LOL, and don't forget the sidewalks! Grin

Not too many walkable sidewalks in Thailand, although the worst I've ever seen in a big city are in Saigon.

9 hours ago, Antonymous said:

To avoid the air pollution right now you'll need to go well south of Thailand.

 

All of north and north-east and parts of central and west Thailand are shrouded in haze at this time of year. I have calculated from published population stats that 34,344,664 permanent residents of Thailand (so not including expats or tourists) are currently enduring the heavy pollution. That is half of the population of Thailand (69,344,664 in 2020).

 

Imagine if everybody followed your lead...

 

 

You won't find Malaysia much better--especially when the Indonesian farmers start burning their fields and forests every year. Smaller fires dot the Malaysian landscape too.

1 hour ago, justin case said:

can MIGHTY USA not hint to immigration to stop the madness ?

 

the best blabla, free for thai and mega expensive for non-thais even living here full time...

I don't have a clue what you mean in either sentence.

On 3/21/2020 at 4:00 AM, crazykopite said:

With the new regulations imposed Medical certificate and the Corona insurance tourism in Thailand is going to sink faster than the Titanic and it’s the Thai people who are going to suffer not the idiot who thought up these new measures. There are currently around 6,000 Thai students in the U.K. wanting to get home where are they going to get their Corona Free medical certificates from as the doctors are to busy trying to saves lives of those who are suffering this terrible virus .Thailand should do the same as the U.K. has done and send military aircraft to the U.K. to pick up their citizens there is no need for a stupid meaningless certificate place them in quarantine when they get back to Thailand.

Six thousand Thais in US universities as well. And normally a third-million mainland Chinese. I won't deny that some of them will hear racist remarks and also there are a few Youtube recordings of Chinese being attacked on subways or buses.