Enzian

So if I have my visa renewal funds in a FCD account (no deposit insurance) and the dollar gets especially high against the baht and (without knowing the future of course) my bank allows me to change those dollars into baht and simultaneously open a baht account with them, would I then have deposit insurance?

Twice a week I visit a friend who is barely able to walk; he lives in an old service apartment building. There is a security box guy outside that pays no attention, and I can go right to my friend's door and knock. I hadn't thought about this topic, but I guess the point is that every building is different.

Way back on March 11 khaosodenglish.com had an article that said that expats would be covered along with Thais by the universal health care program, but not necessarily tourists. I unfortunately know a lot about public and private hospitals here, and I feel rather confident if someone on long stay goes into a public hospital with a positive reading they will be treated free. Private hospitals, I would like to hear any experiences people have had to date.

2 hours ago, ChipButty said:

She's been around the block

On Sukhumvit couple of nights ago there was an obvious hooker with a shirt that said in big block letters ANYTHING. And I'm sure there will be a lot of anything when this calms down, but it would be wrong to take advantage of another's distress... but I tip well...

So I walked through the Din Daeng market again tonight after two days and the large central area is starting to fill up again with stalls, would think people are coming back. Everyone still close. Walked back through the neighborhood and people in the sweat shops are sitting 3 feet apart and 95% are not wearing masks. Less traffic on the streets, but if you didn't know and someone told you the city was in crisis you'd wonder what they were talking about. 

As they say in the business world, it is better to be lucky than smart. Thailand has been lucky (and maybe a little bit smart, on occasion). And to be clear, I don't trust the gov numbers, but I do give credence to the almost innumerable anecdotal reports that people are just not dropping like flies around the country.

I've been monitoring the nighttime behavior at the Din Daeng market on Thanon Pracha Songkhra near me, and while half the food stalls in the center have disappeared (probably on orders), that still leaves a few hundred, and people are still gathering there and milling about elbow to elbow in the evenings. If the word were out that lots were not coming at night because sick, everyone would soon know, and behavior would change much more than it has. But for better or worse, they are still there. 

Get a 90 minute soapy. Fly to CA to see the grandchild I've never seen in person, if CA is still there.

Then reschedule that flight to Rome I had to cancel, if Italy is still there. If Italy isn't, make something up.

5 hours ago, Lingba said:

they will pad the fees in other ways

That more or less assumes that in the end the hospitals themselves will have to absorb the costs, but I would think that the government will have to indemnify the private hospitals. Does anyone have real information? And by the way, I'm not poor and don't mind paying some incidental costs, the hospitals have to survive also; though that statement may lend me some insults.

No coup

No (bat) soup.

I know, it doesn't really rhyme.

Well, I have a membership card and number for Bumrungrad going back to November 2013, so I wonder if they could turn me away. I've certainly spent a lot of money on myself and my long time girlfriend there.

Yep, hang 'em on the balcony in the Thai sun--the Thai sun probably being the reason we're not all dead yet anyway.

This factor of the spread of infectious diseases from one population to another is fascinating because it is also on the list of factors that came together to effect the extinction of the neanderthal species around 40,000 years ago, not accidentally the same period that homo sapiens started moving into western Europe in large numbers. 

It is also interesting that Wikipedia accepts the general consensus that the "second" black plague, which hit Europe starting in the middle of the 14th century and kept on sporadically for over 300 years, started in China and spread to Europe along the Silk Road. 

I will repeat that had the situation got physical, a riot if you will, and people got hurt, it would be first line news around the world, it would affect subsequent tourism here, and could even endanger the present quasi-military regime. This is a portent of things to come around the world, so it is more significant than this one incident. Governments do not want social order to break down. India for example is notorious for these sorts of things, and I've seen reports to indicate it is already starting there.

I'm from Berkeley and I've seen a lot of standoffs between police and large groups. Often a point comes when the group makes it clear that they are willing to have their own blood shed, that they will step it up a notch where real harm will occur, they are that angry, and they mean it. I can see the "general" not willing to take that step, since they have everyone's IDs from the manifests, and can track them down later one by one. To manhandle all of them so no one got hurt he would need hundreds of soldiers, and hope to hell no one made a mistake, so impossible.

11 minutes ago, ravip said:

Who cares a Bat where it is made, as long as the price is right and the quality is OK?

Some people will care, and some won't. For a long time most (myself included) have taken the attitude implied in your question, but it is possible that might change. It makes a statement, like spending more for an electric car. But I tend to agree that there is realistically in sight no form of direct retaliation that will satisfy those of us who are enraged by this whole mess. But it is a process, and I will watch for something to emerge. 

Giant Made In China sticker on everything that comes from there? No little hidden labels. Then we all have a choice.

The state of India with the most cases at present is Maharashtra, where Mumbai is the large city. Present temp 31 C. India has a lot of northern regions where it even snows in the winter; this will be something to follow, but I'm sure we will be hearing of developments.  

They are shutting much earlier than 9:30. Last night, Saturday April 4, I was able to take the sky train from Thong Lor to Sukhumvit at about 8:45, but when I walked down to take the escalator down to the metro station they were telling people that the last train had left. My phone said exactly 8:50. After a few minutes I was able to get an ok taxi to take out to my Din Dang Rd location. So anyway, it will probably be better to think in terms of 8:30 rather than 9:30 for the last trains.

I can't go back to northern CA because it is much worse there and will be for a while, and at the moment my son there, who has not been tested but who has a degree in Public Health, is pretty sure he has it. I don't want two years of this but then I think of John McCain who spent 6 1/2 years in the Hanoi Hilton and other prisons and think what a wimp I am. I have a friend who did 8 years in San Quentin and is a good member of the community now. I think with occasional female contact, which might not be impossible to arrange and still be safe, I'd be reasonably comfortable. I worry more about the poor of Thailand and what they may be facing, and what they may be forced into. One more thing: there are things in my life I didn't like and was putting up with out of inertia; those will change.

Isn't the most important line in the speech for us in the second paragraph, which states in English: "as all patients with this virus are considered as emergency cases, there are 3 government funds that will be used to pay for their medical expenses, namely..." etc., etc. This seems to say every patient, not just every Thai patient, and as hard to believe as it is, it seems to say all hospital expenses will be covered. So is the government insuring us all? Does anyone have more details? This by the way is not impossible, because at this very time the Thai government has been paying for the medicine used for my eye injections, and it's expensive stuff, and they know I have a US passport. The doctor told me, the government subsidizes it, period.

10 minutes ago, steven100 said:

free medical to foreigners  .....  are you sure  ???    i find that hard to believe but give me 25 seconds to consider further.   oh,  and what country is that    ??  

My girlfriend got free medical care in Italy last year; I stayed in a German hospital for a week once for no fee when discharged, though that was some time ago.

There are a great many good history books on the cultural struggles and learning curve (or lack thereof) Thailand has had with the practice and legacy of both western and what we may call asian colonialism (as with Japan in WW2, and including the general Chinese influence).  A recent one I recommend is by Wasana Wongsurawat; in the past few months I've heard her speak at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand and at the Siam Society. To be on the safe side I will not cite the title of her 2019 book but you can look it up in a second. The struggle has always been a matter of adapting to the "other" while at the same time maintaining one's own identity, thus the resulting love/hate relationship. 

Someone mentioned that China has a writer who received the Nobel prize in literature, while Thailand has not. But how many know that the following writers were considered but passed up for the Nobel prize in literature: Leo Tolstoy, Henry James, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges, Marcel Proust, George Orwell, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon. That prize is meaningless.

Around 8 pm I walked through the big Din Dang market on Thanon Pracha Songkhro. A lot of the stalls usually in the middle of that large space are gone, but a whole lot are still there, and that interior market path going away from the main street at a 90 degree angle is as full of food vendors and people walking close together as ever. I looked at a couple of still live fish lying in a dry pan gasping with their gills and hoped that won't be how I'll end up.

I've had to research a number of private and public hospitals for a condition I have, and I found they differ greatly. And doctors and individual departments/specialties differ. I know everyone generalizes that private are better, but it is not that simple and you have to do the legwork and even trial and error.