xylophone

I can sort of sympathise with you, although I am not desperate to stay in Thailand, however similar to you, it offers me the best lifestyle I could imagine on my pension and assets, certainly more then it would in NZ or Oz (I have relatives there). Again, like you I do feel comfortable here and knowing everything around me in Patong, does give me a sense of comfort as I tend to be a creature of habit these days. Like you have said I could probably live somewhere else, but at the age of 75 this year, would I really want to? And just to add something to that, I have been "under the weather" with a bad sinus problem and I went out yesterday for the first time for a while to get a manicure and pedicure in my local shop, mainly to give them some income rather than anything else, and the lady owner, said that if I wanted anything I could telephone her and she would get one of her girls to go to the shops to get it for me.......likewise the same from my friends girlfriend, so not sure that I would get the same sort of support elsewhere.

Interesting point you make, because one definition of religion is: – "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods". So it could be argued that those who worshipped the likes of Thor and Odin were also religious in their own ways, and this idea of religion became hijacked and made into powerful and money spinning business by the appointing of a "one and only God" to be worshipped. A great business model was introduced and many "organisations" have made fortunes out of it.

The heading is: "You still think you can live on less than 50k a month?"............ Well to be honest, I never thought that I could!! I budgeted for twice that amount before I moved here, and I am there or thereabout at the moment, and would be well under if not for the price of my red wine. I don't eat out much, as I enjoy cooking at home, and I do cook some Thai food as well as Indian, French and Italian, so my cooking "skills" (and I use the word skills lightly) suit my needs, with the occasional meal out at a friends restaurant. When I read forums like this I really do wonder how people manage, and good on them if they can, but not for me I'm afraid.

I don't have a UK bank account, as I left the UK in 1984 and of course I don't have a place of domicile there either, so that option is not open to me.

I'm definitely going to have to look into this again, and maybe the fact that your pension money is paid into Citibank Ireland is the difference, because thinking back I do believe that Citibank UK handle my pension transfer to Bangkok Bank, and charge £20 – – going to have to explore this, and thanks for your input, and I will let you know the outcome.

For what it's worth, I thought the same about the Siam Reap!

Oh well, it looks like I'll have to explore this avenue again, although last time it was tedious, but I'm pretty sure I pay £20 a month for every transfer and I'm not sure whether it is converted to baht in the UK, or when it gets to the bank here! There was a mixup in the early stages, and that set the scene for lots of telephone calls and emails, so perhaps I'd better revisit that scenario again.

That's an option I would love to explore, so is there anything I should know about it, because the options I explored all included a fee charged either by the Bangkok Bank UK, or Citibank (who do the transfer apparently) or indeed the bank here in Thailand.

As I recall, that's the option I use at the moment, however I do think that £20 is a bit expensive and I did investigate other options a few years ago, but deigned to leave it as it was. However "transam" states that to pay the UK pension into a Thai bank costs nothing, but I don't recall the that being an option a few years ago, unless things have changed?

Yes it was recommended by a Dermatologist here and it worked for me.

Part of the "built-in obsolescence" perhaps – – something that was mooted about techie stuff a few decades ago!!

I believe it's got a lot to do with the "anti-money-laundering laws" which are now being implemented in financial institutions around the world, and the reason I say this is because a short while ago I received a message from my NZ bank telling me that if I lived overseas I could not conduct share transactions on their share trading platform, which I had been doing for 15 years or more. I had to be residing in NZ to be able to do that, and just a few days ago I got an email from the New Zealand Lottery Commission (Lotto) stating that they were updating their terms and conditions and needed much more information with regards to my NZ bank account, and also my place of domicile. If I wasn't domiciled in NZ, then I could not play the NZ lottery (online) and as I do have some credit in it, I will use that up and cancel it – – never really won anything anyway!

I bought a new Sony Bravia 49 inch Smart TV about 2.5 years ago and although it's okay, I've not been over-enamoured with it, mainly because the settings/menu aspect is not that easy-to-use/understand. A friend of mine who bought a similar TV for his mother here, has said the same thing, and he's a bit of a tech whiz! I am "sort of looking around" for a new TV and it has to be no bigger than 50 inch, and so far I like the look of the LG range, although TCL, who my tech wiz mate derides because they are made in China (I don't think he realises that a lot of the inner workings of TVs these days are made in China) and these have good write-ups by magazine folk who test TVs. I see there are a lot of specials on offer at the moment from TVs launched in 2021, so may have another look around shortly.

Bangkok Phuket Hospital.

IMO, pure greed as far as the private hospitals are concerned, and I got a wake-up call on this when I had to go to see the doctor yesterday about my terrible sinus problems and the fact I hadn't had more than a couple of hours sleep a night for a week. I was a total of six minutes in front of the doctor where she poked a light up my nose and said that I had congestion (no kidding) and a slight infection and said she would give me a prescription for some tablets, which she did, and when I got to the payment counter I looked at the bill and it was just over 5000 baht, which was a helluva surprise. I asked for the checklist of items and noticed that the Augmentin prescription came to 1400 baht, so I told the cashier that she should remove that item from the list because I could buy the same tablets locally for around half the price, which I later did. So that's one hell of a markup on the tablets I already knew about, and as I didn't know the price of the others, and I was feeling lousy, I just paid the remainder and went. I have health insurance for the inpatient costs, but all of the others I pay myself, so I was extremely annoyed at this rort. Plain and simple GREED.

I watched it the other night and thought that it was decidedly average and a little bit "muddled" in places, although the special effects were brilliant. An evening not altogether wasted!

I am a Kiwi and have lived in Phuket for about 16 years and had up until just recently, travelled back to NZ on a number of occasions, and of course I have still got many friends over there. As a country, I thought it was brilliant, having emigrated from the UK in 1984, with great scenery and people, and some fantastic restaurants, not to mention vineyards, and when I decided to move to Phuket, it was an extremely hard decision to make, but I could see the writing on the wall and thought that the cost of living was going to be horrendous in the coming decade or two, and as it turned out, it was! I also needed to get out of the "rat race" and help heal a health problem, so Phuket loomed large. So I cashed up and moved here and after living well here, I still have more than the original lump sum I had kept in NZ, so I'm set for the rest of my retirement. I would add that NZ is a fantastic place for a holiday, in the summer season, and the food and restaurants are superb, and if you are reasonably wealthy/well off, then it's a great place to live – – if you aren't, then you will struggle.

Managed to find episode five of, "The Old Man" and have been disappointed with this and the previous one, in fact it's becoming such a drawnout talkfest that it no longer holds my attention, so I may give a miss to downloading the next two or three episodes. IMO, Such a shame because it started off so well.

I would say that your first line is on the mark, and although one can't tell a person by just looking at them, IMO he seems to fit your description very well. Not only that, it looks like his mother dressed him for the trial.

To get back to the original heading, "do you believe in God and why" I would ask, "which one?" One of the Norse gods perhaps, or Roman or Greek gods, then of course there are the myriads of other gods around the planet to whom various peoples have "prayed", and then there are people/races and those who have existed alongside of these beliefs and don't really believe in a god per se, but have lived long and happy lives! But if you are a Hindu you have a choice because in Hinduism there are said to be 330,000,000 gods – – take your pick! The sooner we come to understand that the "God delusion" is real, then the sooner we can stop squabbling about "religion" and get on with fixing other things in the world.

Both of these comments are correct and I've had it happen to me on many occasions, so now I'm very wary of slowing down/stopping at pedestrian (zebra) crossings for fear of getting shunted from behind, or seeing a car or motorbike whiz past me and kill somebody. Furthermore, I had to go to Bangkok a couple of months ago and a friend assured me that to cross a busy road I should use the pedestrian crossing which was controlled by the red light, operated by the pedestrian – – so I did, and I also waited until a few cars had stopped to let me cross, then out of the blue a utility truck came blasting through on the outside lane and nearly took me out! No amount of lights, buzzers or similar will work when drivers haven't been taught how to use these things, and many of them don't even have a licence, and when you add sheer stupidity and ignorance to this, the mix is deadly.

Decided to seek out a few old movies to watch after seeing a reference to one, the first one being: – "2010: The year we made contact". This especially as the reviewers said it was a vastly underrated sci-fi movie, however I thought it was pretty average compared to the "Space Odyssey" movie of 2001! Got me onto searching for others of this ilk and I uncovered one called, "Silent Running" starring Bruce Dern, and it wasn't a blockbuster, but it was entertaining enough. Finally I decided to visit one of those I have in my catalogue, and it was the best of the lot and it reminded me of why it was such a good movie after watching it a second or third time in its life, and the movie was: – "Legends of The Fall". It was a bit of a tearjerker in its own way, something I never considered when I first watched it, however IMO it is still an excellent movie.

Hey Steve, Thank you very much for your positive feedback, it is much appreciated and I do enjoy the write-ups after my trips out to Bangla and surrounds, and you probably have seen me "belting out" a number or two in Red Hot, as I do enjoy it, even though occasionally I hit a "bum note" or three......however as Neil Young once said to another band member who commented that he had played a "bum note", he said, "yeah, you get that"! I didn't write anything up on my last trip out on Friday, mainly because after that I got sick with something akin to a cross between an allergy/sinus problems/perhaps Covid again, and felt under the weather for about three days or more, however I seem to be coming right now. Friday night was the night I met some friends at Blue Beach Restaurant and bar and had a delightful steak, which I believe the chef must have marinated for a while before he cooked it, because it was sublime. However that was the evening when a storm blew up and really did belt the rain down, along with strong winds and luckily enough there was enough shelter at the Blue Beach and the awnings kept out the rain and most of the wind and I was surprised how strong they were because they stayed intact throughout a real hammering. Of course staying out of the wind and rain meant drinking more red wine, and then more, and by about 10 PM it had quietened down so I and two friends wandered up Bangla and surprisingly enough there were quite a few people around considering the weather we just had, and although the bars weren't full by any means, they weren't deserted either. Of course we ended up at Red Hot and I did manage to sing three numbers which went down well despite the sparse crowd which was unusual for this place as it's one of the more popular places. I have noticed a few more small restaurants opening up around the place, with a couple in Soi Sainamyen, as well as another bar in Nanai, and there is some more activity small restaurant-wise in Rat-U-Thid road. I suppose the BIB are looking to top up their coffers because just a couple of days ago about five or six motorbike cops were stopping scooter drivers at the junction between Bangla and Rat-U-Thid and asking for god knows what, because I saw them handing out a few tickets, especially to a couple of Indian couples on bikes who were wearing masks and had helmets on, so perhaps it was a licence problem? So on the one hand Patong is encouraging tourists from India, whilst at the same time managing to supply the BIB with a source of easy income – – go figure. Certainly, for the low season, Patong is looking livelier than I've seen it for a while, so perhaps it is clawing its way back out of the "recession" and everything else that has been thrown at it, and I hope so for the sake of the small business owners, especially those who have tried hard to make things work. However I don't have a lot of sympathy for those who have opened small businesses without what would seem to be a "business plan" or for want of better terminology, any idea with regards to where the business is coming from, foot traffic, parking and other things which can make or break a small business.

Ah, such lovely descriptive prose which could be applied to many others of Republican persuasion!

Regarding a VPN......if anyone is interested, I thought I would be ready to go with the Cyberghost VPN in order to watch the All Blacks play Ireland on Saturday BUT it was not to be because with that VPN installed the download speed was far too slow, so far too much buffering to be able to watch successfully, and despite efforts to speed it up, they came to nothing. SO, I bit the bullet and downloaded and installed Nord VPN on a months free trial so that I could cancel it if it didn't work, however it worked a treat, so I will keep it and will not bother with Cyberghost any more (I've had it for a couple of years on the other laptop and have got my monies worth I think). Nord is great!!!!!