JustThisOnePostOnly

And this is after the wreckage to businesses here caused by covid. I'd be absolutely livid. The people just went through so much already. Give them a break <deleted>.

At least your leaders are merely incompetent. Ours are actively working to destroy the country. I'll take incompetence over maliciousness any day of the week.

So shocking and just so, so sad.

Yes, at like 4:30AM and with announcers screaming into a great big sound system that could be heard in Trat and this went on for hours.

Some of that might've been caused by a storm a few weeks back; one of those ships slipped its mooring and was beached.

I think I tried both at different points; after seeing the first require the U.S. phone number, I went on to the next. Never completed either application of course, but obviously they remember the mere effort. I'm used to being treated like a second class citizen by the banks while overseas, it's just startling to see the same mentality on display by a government that, after all, expects me to pay taxes while overseas.

I went down this rabbit hole once more and followed your advice about the U.S. address but, alas, the site rejected me because the information I gave didn't match what I had given previously during my first attempt. I'm guessing I tried to use my U.S. mailing address before and that messed it all up. I already have an appointment with Manila where they call you up at a specific time and date and they even sent me a confirmation letter. I only made this last effort at signing up online based on explicit instruction contained in that letter that signing up online was still possible and even preferable, and only to call them to cancel the appointment should the sign up be successful. The takeaway: I will never, ever be able to get an online account at SSA because of this flawed first attempt. I gave the address that they were previously using to send me correspondence, and the address which I use to deal with the IRS; a perfectly reasonable choice and indeed, my preference, given my lifestyle of moving from one place to another. But no. No, the government knows better. Got this one all figured out, they do.

Only if you have a working U.S. phone number and apparently things like Google Voice or Skype don't pass muster for some complicated reason.

Ultimately, the measure of how safe something is is best made by its successful history.

120 baht, read again. Another pointless post from you.

This could be amazing.

People in that bracket are better off with the Elite visa, imho.

AirBnB is opening up the Phils. Stay away from the big cities, be adventurous and book a room somewhere out in the boons.

In all cases marijuana was not being ingested. You couldn't infer my meaning?

Maneerat quoted me the least expensive price of the three I surveyed, but ended up using an agent just to put together the paperwork.

What a pointless post.

This of course assumes that I have no experience with using Bangkok Bank cards in other bank ATMs, and that that experience didn't leave me without a card. How fun would it be to lose my only Thailand card at the tail end of 40 hours of travel and with only 120 baht in my pocket?

When I landed at Swampy a couple of months back I was shocked to learn that the THREE Bangkok Bank ATMs out front were out-of-service. Had to use a U.S. card for hey-I'm-in-a-foreign-country cash, taking the account under minimum balance and not just costing me a lot of money but hassle too with the bank. Saw a few out-of-service BBK ATMs here in Pattaya too. Not a good look.

Understood. Removing the smoke may not but the modality of inhaling vapor is very new to the human experience. That's my only point. I'm not saying it's harmful. I'm not saying I wouldn't do it. It's just that, being so new, we can't say for certain what the long-term outcome is, because lungs are just that complex. There's a very good chance our species has already undergone the adaptations necessary to handle mj smoke. People conflate mj smoke with tobacco smoke all of the time and the two couldn't be more different AND we have the medical research that shows that. Sorry to be so strident, but this is a pet peeve of mine. Marijuana gets legalized in the U.S. and suddenly we see all of these other activities, and I don't know and have no reason to suspect that vaporization is harmful and should be in the same category as, say, butane explosions and cookie overdoses, but dammit we have a safe form of consumption and it's called SMOKING and it works every time. If it's not broken, don't fix it.

You've got maybe twenty years of history with vaporization now greatly complicated by covid versus the thousands of years of smoking with no recorded fatality. And especially with the potent strains we see today where even the tiniest puff sends you into the stratosphere and which greatly mitigates whatever damage smoke may cause, the right choice today is the bong.

Still too early to say that in my view. One of mj's greatest attributes is how long mankind has been using it and with no ill effect. That consumption has been primarily by eating it or smoking it. The manner by which it is ingested needs to be taken into consideration when evaluating that track record.

Para Surfing is not the same thing as putting on a parachute and being dragged by a boat. This is where you have some kind of surf board and control the parasail by hand. Often seen on Jomtien, though not as often as the other kind. I do think though that the level of difficulty may out it out of reach for many people. Also you need a lot of wind, so not every day.

Makati has actual sidewalks. And cabs can get around in Makati pretty well. Touch EDSA though and say goodbye to the evening.

The queue looks scary right after lunch but it gets consumed pretty quickly; my last visit I was in line for maybe 10 minutes.

We've received permission to discuss this provided the talk is limited to the plant and doesn't refer to extract. So... my very brief foray into the world of buying pot in Thailand found me at a coffee shop in Jomtien today selling grams of flower with labels like White Widow, Indica and Sativa for 500-600 baht. That's for one gram. 500-600 baht. I was thinking more of paying 500-600 baht for maybe an eighth of an ounce. I'm not looking for face-melting stuff. Just basic weed, ya know? Ideally, this would be from some source here in Thailand and the same product would always be available and for the same reasonable price. I'm guessing that the coffee shops aren't going to be the ones who fill this niche. And now that it's legal, we should start seeing more wholesale operations springing up, yes? So tell us about one of those if you've found one.