rickudon

Can you afford health insurance? Maybe when you are younger. As a UK retiree living on pensions, i have a fairly typical net pension of about 60,000 baht a month. At my age (72) health insurance would eat up a third or more of my income. It would require a drastic change in life style, and maybe stull would get priced out eventually. In 14 years health care costs have only totalled about 100,000 baht, mainly dental. I know several people who used to have insurance but got priced out. I do not know anyone who died because they couldn't afford to pay for treatment. I have some pre-existing conditions, but not anything life threatening except in the long term. So also makes insurance less attractive. Everyone i know who died either already returned to home country, died suddenly or were at end of life anyway. No suicides. It is a gamble, but health insurance is like the lottery, not many win....

Something bad has been happening to the Palestinians for a hundred years. When you get treated like that, eventually something was bound to happen. If Israel wants peace, it needs to address the aspirations of the Palestinian people, not impoverish them and slowly steal their land.

Maybe not related, but last month i decided to install a VPN for a.minor need. Then got 8 links stopped by my anti-virus in the next week. I then uninstalled the VPN and the attacks stopped. Are VPN's actually safe? Thid was a free VPN but supposedly with many millions of users. I have no need for a VPN normally, and doubt if i will use one again.

Average high in Udon Thani (30 year average) is 37 Centigrade. Obviously some days are over 40, but most are lower. My own memory over 14 years here is one year we had no temperature above 40, rest between 2 and 8 days. This year - average 40, most days over 40, lowest 38. So average high was 3 degrees higher.

My M-in-L is an extreme pruner, of the hack it faction. She has killed at least 3 trees and a dozen shrubs with her manic attacks.

Using Mke Listers very useful tax guide posted earlier this year, i am reasonably confident that i will pay no tax. I am over 65, married and have a child, on a marriage visa. I bring in 40,000 a month usually so would have little or no tax liability at that level. Also get a civil service pension which should be tax exempt in Thailand under the UK dta. Only issue is proving the provenance of where the money comes from, as i aggregate and recirculate income through 3 different accounts plus saving accounts (because in the UK i get preferential interest rates by doing this).

I am with True and it is a 150 baht a month package. Wife pays.....

I suggest you do some internet research yourself. The amount of CO2 may be very small, but it still has a significant affect. It is hard to completely separate the effect of CO2, because other greenhouse gases also tend to go up as it gets warmer (water vapour rises with temperature). If there were no greenhouse gases, the average earth temperature would be about zero centigrade. This article puts the effect of doubling CO2 levels since pre-industrial times as between 2.6 and 4.1 degrees centigrade. We are already half way there to doubling, and temperature is up by about 1.2 degrees so far . https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/climate/global-warming-temperature-range.html Volcanoes - insignificant about 200 million tons, compared to 24 billion tons from Mans activities. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/#:~:text=According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)%2C the,billion tons of CO2 emissions every year worldwide. I do wish people would stop writing crap, because they just do not know. And, currently there is a global coral bleaching event underway, not just Thailand, although level of damage is not yet certain.

That's the wife's contribution. i will stick to fish i grow myself.

The avocadoes leaves are turning brown - guess the April hot weather (average over 40 C) meant either just couldn't get enough water, or root rot has set in. You just cannot win! it was wilting so had to up the water level. Lime trees are doing fine. but currently little fruit and flowers. Lots of new growth though. Mangoes - big tree in the garden died - it was old but kept being heavily cut back because near power lines. 10 years ago lots of fruit. have one other old tree, sometimes pruned back (chain sawed) it is very variable in fruit production - some years none. Down on the farm have 5 mango trees, one from seed, no fruit yet, but growing big (maybe too big) other 4, grafted small trees, 2 have fruit every year, one other had fruit once, 4th was topped by invading buffalo soon after planting, has just one fruit first time. Many other mango trees in the village also no fruit. Do not know why. Wife had another plan - made a jungle spot and water feature with drip irrigation, to try and mitigate the heat. Actually done rather well AND she didn't give me the bill! (well not directly, but house keeping money always runs out before the end of the month). Must try and put some photos up but a hassle getting them off the phone. Dreading the next Electricity bill - hot weather and 2 freezers added (one for me, then wife got one to sell ice-creams in the shop). Trying to get an energy monitoring plug so i can work out the actual consumption of all the appliances.

Financial advisers ..... just parasites. Learn about how to invest from newspapers, the internet, books etc. Then only invest in larger, longstanding organisations, or otherwise it is just gambling. Have twice been given advice - first time was for a life insurance policy with benefits - was supposedly predicted to get me about 6,000 GBP after 15 years - actual was 2,000 GBP, would have made more in a building society ordinary account! Second time was in 2007 when i was made redundant, given a free consultation - he suggested i invest in various funds, for maximum growth. But interest rates were high, and i had heard rumbling about a bear market being likely, so declined. Two years later those stocks had halved in value, but my cash investment bonds were still paying 5% plus (i did have money in Iceland banks, but was careful to make sure they were covered by UK guarantees, and got my money back plus interest in full). UK tracker funds were hit, and although they recovered fairly quickly they then stagnated until Brexit. I dumped those as soon as i got back to pre-crash levels, and invested it in global funds which have done very well, making about 100% over the last 10 years (actually did best during Covid, as a lot was invested in Amazon and computer related companies, who did well with everyone working from home). FTSE has been stagnant for years, so FTSE trackers are currently a bad deal. Mutual funds in Thailand also give very poor returns, I am told. No way would i EVER accept advice in Thailand from a 'financial adviser'. Boomers.... were lucky enough to be a generation when wealth could be accumulated; their parents were just happy to secure a roof over their heads and food on the table. Our children now struggle to accumulate wealth. Student loans, extortionate rents and house prices swallow up that salary. Most will not be debt free before they retire.

Not the first leak at an ice factory in Udon...... a few years ago there was a leak and explosion which killed some workers. A couple of years ago someone wanted to build one next to our fish ponds, wasn't happy about that. Fortunately hasn't happened ...... so far.

Much easier to assess lack of intelligence. Just review a few Aseannow posts, easy to make a decision.

I was given a MAGA hat about 6 years ago. Guy Fawkes was looking a bit cold so i gave it to him.....

The rise is almost certainly due to one thing. Burmese people fleeing the civil war (provinces with increases mainly along the border).

Oh dear. The knuckle dragging conspiracy theorists have been having a moan. just a couple of FACTS. ONE. The average monthly global temperature has set a new record every month for the last year. TWO. The last 8 years were the warmest on record. (Actually 9, because it hasn't counted 2023) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/climate/earth-hottest-years.html THREE. Thailand related. April average Maximum temperature in Udon Thani was over 40 Centigrade. Before you bleat about that it is always hot, the 30 year average for April is 37 Centigrade. And they let these people vote? No wonder the world is a mess.

Realised i haven't been on here to keep up to date for about 2 months! Busy time. 4 hospital visits ( regular kidney checkups where due), dentist and clearing the rice straw pile left by the ploughman - i understand that the heavy work requires a contractor with machinery, but why does it then take me months to tidy up? They have no sense of pride in their work, just do the minimum and go. Then, wife had plan - always bad news! Her sister wanted to fence the back of her land, so we had to as well (not do, loss of face). Old fence was just a few concrete posts, all broken, and one or 2 strands of barbed wire still left in places. Also eucalyptus growing along the fence line That all had to go. New fence was a 50 cm wall topped with metal posts and chain link, 70 metres. But one thing leads to another .... land along fence line uneven, need to buy soil. Got round that by having a 2 metre deep klong built, the soil dugout was worth more than the cost of buying truckloads. oh, and provide drainage from sister-in-laws pond to ours rather than running across the surface. Also, klong will make a nice fingerling nursery for me...... Total expenditure ended up about 85,000 baht, only 50% over budget .... So far have spent 3 weeks tidying up the mess they left - not sure what i will do with the 2 tree stumps they left behind - they dug them up but just left them (probably about 100 kg each), so far work half done. Incredibly hot - every day this month 40 centigrade or more, can only work for an hour and take hours to recover. No way could i work like Owl. Ponds now at lowest level since dug out in 2019. Vegetable gardening this year has been disastrous, only reasonable crop was tomatoes, nearly everything else failed. Avocadoes - only have one tree left, and that nearly died last April when we were on holiday, no-one watered it. Experience tells me it needs water at least every other day this time of year. Now about 8 years old, 2 metres tall.

If a lady overnighted in the hotel room, would hide my money in a shoe....

We have a one rai rice field. After the rice harvest (done by an old combine harvester) we get barely enough rice to pay the man. It doesn't cut the straw. Wifey then gets a man to the plough the rice field (she doesn't really understand farming) which results in a one metre high pile of rice straw, roots and soil on one side of the field. Because it is dry season it doesn't rot down, and now the field is uneven. I could just abandon that bit of field and wait a year or 2 for it to rot away, but still have a heap of soil left which is uneven. So what do i do? Rake the straw out of the pile, and ..... burn it. I do dry it out completely and burn in small piles, to minimise the pollution and any local smoke issues. I would like to compost it, but it already has taken up a lot of my time (months!) and would need a lot of water in the dry season, which would have to be hand carried. Straw by itself doesn't compost well, need to mix it up ideally. Cannot bury it, dry season rice paddy is like concrete. I have now banned rice growing, to much hassle, no profit (actually a financial loss). Now what do we do with a rice paddy that floods once a year and grows lots of rank grass? Low cost/labour answers only please.

Please, do not send him back to the UK. Send him to Rwanda.

All the hydrogen enthusiasts - if you want green hydrogen, you need electricity. If you have electricity, cheaper to use directly than use it to hydrolyse water. (you need 50 KWH to make 1 kg Hydrogen). Then burning hydrogen will involve another loss of energy as waste heat. And the extra transformational steps mean that their are additional production costs. Currently, hydrogen as a fuel for cars would be about 3-5 more expensive than petrol. The new sodium ion batteries are the future. Cheaper, safer, less dangerous to the environment and longer lasting. Just not as powerful as Lithium ones.

Bitcoin mining will become uneconomic.

I find it ironic that when at school in the UK all our books were supplied free, by the school and collected up and reissued to the next year, while in Thailand you pay and throw away..... Oldest book i was issued was an atlas in the 1960's which was printed 30 years earlier - many countries had changed their names and borders since it was printed!

Should have thrown the book at them. All PAD members and protesters should have been prosecuted. I was stuck at the airport, and ended up having to sleep on the floor for one night and then spent over a week stuck in Thailand. My employer also didn't pay me for the time lost. Where's my compensation?

Sorry i hit a raw nerve on Porsche's, JB. I do find your posts on EVs, solar power and self sufficiency very interesting and educational. You have aspired and achieved what i just dream about. I am about 1% along on that journey and will never get even half way (not enough money and life expectancy left).