khunjeff

15 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

Cordons and suitcases were replaced with evenly-spaced chairs at check-in counters, where immigration and airport staff and cabin crew lined up to register for the vaccines

So the airport is not being "converted...into an immunisation centre" at all - people who work at the airport are simply getting vaccinations at their workplace, just as happens at companies and businesses everywhere (when vaccine is available). Slow news day, I guess.

12 hours ago, Sheryl said:

My broker (AA) has confirmed that the KWG policy will cover Field Hospitals.

So that is 2 that will:

Krungthai Panich Insurance

KWG

 

And we still don't know re Dhipaya.

And will these cover foreign retirees without work permits? The advertisements I've seen all say that you must have a work permit to be eligible, though I have no idea whether that's really what the policies say, since a huge number of Thai companies seem to assume that there are only two categories of foreigners in Thailand: those with WPs, and tourists.

https://www.vfsglobal.com/en/individuals/covid-test.html

22 hours ago, niebla said:

Past practice was that there was a way to convert a tourist visa or even a VOA to a Non Immigrant O visa. It wasn't cheap.

I converted from a visa exempt last year. The fee was 2000 baht, which seems perfectly cheap to me.

18 minutes ago, charliebadenhop said:

From what I have been told more than once-

 

If you go to give blood, you will get a free Covid test prior to giving your blood.

I've donated blood four times at the National Blood Centre since the pandemic began, and have never been given a Covid test - only a questionnaire about travel and symptoms. I'll be going again in a few days, so we'll see whether that's changed.

2 hours ago, canopus1969 said:

Are there many domestic flights between 10pm and 4am out of interest ?

"A total of 26 flights could be affected by the new travel restrictions: 11 departing from Don Mueang Airport, eight from Suvarnabhumi Airport, four from Phuket Airport, two from Hat Yai Airport and one from Chiang Mai Airport."

https://coconuts.co/bangkok/news/thai-airlines-urged-to-halt-red-eye-flights/

3 hours ago, Curt1591 said:

Instead of filling hospitals with people that simply test positive, why not utilize nearby hotels that have all but shut down? Save hospital rooms for sick people. Win-Win!

Why give hospitals all the money !?! 

Partially because the private hospitals lobbied the government for assistance after their cash flow from overseas medical tourists had dried up - that's certainly the motivation behind the over-medicalization of the ASQ process, in which 99.3% of people never test positive for the virus and have no need for the mandatory 24-hour nursing service.

1 hour ago, scorecard said:

Multiply by 2 jabs ...... serum for approx. 160,400,000 jabs needed.

The AZ vaccine is currently not recommended for use in people under the age of 18, so that number can be reduced by about 20%, but your basic point remains valid - their plans seem to greatly underestimate the number of doses that will be needed.

17 hours ago, webfact said:

"The vaccine, produced by Thais for Thais, is expected to be used next year"

17 hours ago, webfact said:

The home-grown vaccine candidate is being developed by state drug maker, the Government Pharmaceutical Organization (GPO), with Mahidol University's Tropical Medicine Department and an American non-profit

4 hours ago, webfact said:

The vaccine program is a cooperative venture between the GPO and the global health non-profit unit PATH. The inactivated virus vaccine prototype has been developed from the actual virus delivered last year from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and the University of Texas; the virus was then disabled, losing its ability to cause the disease.

 

Prior to the human trials, this vaccine prototype was tested for toxicity in rats which took place in India, as well as tested for its effectiveness in triggering an immune response in hamsters in the United States.

I guess their definition of "home-grown" is somewhat different from mine.

3 hours ago, PGSan said:

This ‘life-expectancy’.  Is that also in the USA?  Is it ‘at birth’ or ‘at 64’?

 

PS: a mere 14 years post-retirement is an incredibly short time!

That's life expectancy at birth - life expectancy at age 65 for men in the US is about 83, and almost 86 for women. So yes, right away that's a fairly major problem with their calculation. But if you look at this more as a comparison among various countries than a specific savings goal, it's still moderately useful.

https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-65.htm

1 hour ago, ThailandRyan said:

Possibly a faulty charger chord, or a low quality fake one.

Yeah, all of these cases that I've heard about in Thailand have involved cheap after-market Chinese chargers bought online or in markets.

59 minutes ago, Kaoboi Bebobp said:

I messaged an Irish pub out here at Phra Khanong. The reply to my message, which came in less than a minute,  said they're serving normally from TODAY. They said "We’ve had the police come in and tell us we’re allowed to sell."  Cool. And Richard Barrow was right.

I went for a walk this afternoon and saw that happy hour signs were back out at several restaurants near me, and a number of bars had reopened as well. Others remained closed, though, but I have no idea whether that's because they weren't able to notify staff in time or because there's confusion as to what is actually allowed (this is in the Thonglor police district).

7 hours ago, rooster59 said:

Flights from Betong airport will at first operate on just two regional routes, namely the six times a week Hat Yai - Betong service of the winter schedule starting in October; the flight is expected to operate using a 86-seater ATR turboprop aircraft, with a flight time around an hour.

 

The other route planned is the Phuket-Betong service. However the airline will need to consider passenger loads on the Hat Yai - Betong route first.

Kind of surprised that Bangkok wouldn't be one of the initial destinations, but who knows.

Anyway, the place should certainly have an airport - I used to go there relatively often 20+ years ago, and it was a pain to get to from pretty much anywhere.

The comedy never stops.

2 hours ago, natway09 said:

Chaeng Wattana Immigration will want to see an up to date lease agreement unless

something has chaned in the last 3 months

Of course individual officers often ask for different things, but no one has ever asked me for a rental contract or any other proof of address during my four retirement extensions at CW - only a map to my building the last few times. A lease was specifically required when I converted a visa exempt to Non-O.

Despite what I wrote above, I do always bring along a copy of an updated lease "just in case". Like the OP, I've been going month by month since my original one-year lease expired almost four years ago, but my building manager has always been happy to print out a new (non-binding...) page showing a different expiration date that I can stick into the lease, just to make things easier.

18 hours ago, ubonjoe said:

You can make an appointment for Chaeng Wattana online here. http://203.151.166.132/immigrant_queue/booking/

You can also apply for it online and make an appointment to pick it up (maybe it is working??).

https://extranet.immigration.go.th/qrepsonline/online/queue/REPSAction.do?cmd=term

Of course UJ is correct, but I would also mention that the re-entry section at CW is very empty these days, so I wouldn't worry too much about having an appointment or not. I was there with a friend a couple of weeks ago, and there were no people at all waiting for that service (the C2 queue, if I recall). My last re-entry permit there (in June) took less than ten minutes from start to finish, as opposed to the 2-3 hours that was typical pre-pandemic.

If you've had any transaction of any kind on your account, just put your book into one of the Passbook Update Machines available at every branch and it will add entries to reflect exactly what is in the bank's computer records. I also don't understand how the guy in the Pattaya scam was able to print out realistic looking bankbooks with fake information, but I feel quite confident that no such person would be able to make the bank's automated systems print false numbers into certain books. It appears that his victims only updated their books with him, and never at a counter or in a machine.