RSD1

Thanks for the positive feedback. 👍🏼

LDL is a hoax if it goes a bit over 130, say as high as maybe 160. But when it gets above 200, it's no longer a hoax and it can start causing damage and inflammation to arteries.

Oh bob, still whinging and moaning about other foreigners and everything else in Thailand. Cmon honey, you need a new shtick already.

I realize you were referring to retirees and not Japanese expats working for Japanese companies in Thailand, but I had figured by now that quite a few of them had retired here too. Though it seems I was wrong and the foreign resident retiree figure you gave is nearly spot on, plus there was likely even some drop off during and after Covid. I just read the following: As of 2021, approximately 52,040 foreigners were residing in Thailand on retirement visas, up from 10,709 in 2005. In 2018, Thailand issued nearly 80,000 retirement visas, marking a 30% increase from 2014, with British nationals making up a significant portion of these visas. A 2016 estimate indicated there were 68,300 foreigners over the age of 50 holding long-stay visas in Thailand, reflecting a 9% increase over the previous two years.

It all depends on how big their tax liability might be. For some it could be small, but these probably aren't the bigger spenders and earners either. The ones with the larger sums, who would be paying a lot more tax are more likely to leave. If you read through all the posts on this topic, you will already see a few people who mentioned that they've already uprooted and are happy to spend their money in other countries, and not just to other cheap places like Vietnam and Cambodia. Some of them are heading back to Western countries as well. Presumably, these aren't the ones who are on small fixed incomes and who do have other options to leave.

30 years ago, I remember hearing a figure that there were over 100,000 Japanese residents living in Thailand alone. Perhaps that number has grown since then. Add to that all the new Chinese runaways and the numbers there could be large too. And this is not even counting retirees from Western countries.

Interesting if that is true. But also, if you have interest earning bank accounts or equity investments overseas, then you often need to provide the overseas financial institution with a local TIN. Perhaps people with pink cards just provide their Thai ID numbers to overseas financial institutions in those instances. So I wonder what happens if those financial institutions eventually start sending income statements and tax documents to the TRD under all those foreigner owned Thai ID card numbers.

Good and bad. Hard to generalize. Once somebody moves to Thailand full-time, they usually buy a vehicle or two, which is a large purchase and often carries large import duties. Some also buy condos. These are all large sums that go into the economy. In addition, people above the age of 50 may spend a lot more money on private healthcare in Thailand over the next 20 to 30 years. They may also leave a sizable inheritance to a younger Thai wife, which then also eventually gets spent within the Thai economy.

Well done. Have you checked your lipid profile since going on this diet? I did Keto once. My LDL went from 100 up to 212 in about six weeks. Very dangerous. That was the end of that high-fat diet experiment. Also, the reason that you possibly lost weight was not because of your dietary changes necessarily, but the fact that your caloric intake decreased to a considerable deficit when you cut out all the carbs. That means that you probably could've continued eating carbohydrates, just less of them to reduce your calorie intake and you would've lost the weight just the same and then blood pressure would've fallen also from the weight loss just the same. Also, you might want to check your thyroid hormones to make sure that that's all working correctly too: TSH, FT3, FT4.

Got more bread than I can use up in a lifetime and it's all green!

Anyone who has a pink card already has a Thai TIN whether they like it or not. The 13 digit ID number on the pink card is also your TIN.

Speaking of Wise, they caused me an embarrassing situation today and a big waste of time. I paid for something in a shop to the shop's Thai business bank account. Money shows in the app that it has been delivered. It was even transferred from Wise using the same bank as the shop. So it was a total in bank transfer. Money doesn't show up in their account though. Then the shop spent an hour on the phone with their bank trying to locate the missing payment. Eventually I gave up because I was getting tired of the awkward situation and so I paid the shop a second time using a local bank transfer so that I could leave the shop and I asked them to refund the second payment to me once they receive the Wise payment. When I left the shop I planned to get in touch with Wise once I got home. After I was at home, I rechecked the app and now the payment showed up with a different status and that the shop would be receiving the payment in their bank account within another 12 minutes. I was planning to call the shop and ask them to please recheck their account balance again, but then the shop messaged me to tell me they got the money and would be refunding my local bank transfer to me. It all worked out fine in the end, but it was a huge waste of my time and the shop girl's time and a somewhat stressful situation, not to mention I ended up making the payment twice as I didn't feel comfortable leaving the shop without knowing that they had surely received payment from me. This made me think twice about using Wise to transfer any business payments ever again in the future that need to be received within a timely manner. The app did tell me the funds would arrive in seconds when I initiated the transfer and then gave me confirmation that the money was successfully in their account. This whole Wise screw up sent me on a wild goose chase, when in reality the shop didn't receive the money from Wise until about 3 hours later and not within seconds as they promised. A strong word to the Wise!

I'm actually surprised how many people either misunderstood or didn't really read my OP and think that I have any interest in carrying any form of cannabis with me onto a commercial flight, which clearly I don't. My question was only about whether or not it's a good idea to be fully baked when sitting onboard a long, boring commercial flight. It had nothing to do with carrying anything with me onto the plane or in my luggage to another destination, as stated. If I do decide to do this before a flight, I would only take a little bit of edible cannabis-infused oil with me to the airport in a syringe. Then, once I've gotten my boarding pass, I would swallow the oil from the syringe in a restroom stall, discard it in the rubbish, and then proceed to go through airport security and then onto immigration. So nothing illegal. I would be on a full stomach before I ingested the oil in order to delay the onset of the effects as long as possible. That should give me hopefully close to two hours time before the buzz starts coming on. By that time, I'll likely already be on the plane. And then the effect of it will last about 5 to 6 hours, during which time I will only be speaking briefly with flight attendants about food. And by the time I reach my destination, the effects will have fully worn off. So I won't be getting off the plane in a state. If anything, I might be a bit groggy while I'm standing on the line to pass through immigration at my flight destination. I'm barely going to talk with anybody the entire time, nor am I going to display any unusual behavior. If anything, it will help keep me relaxed while others on a flight are doing annoying things around me. So it sounds like it should be a good way to fly, the only real question is how baked should I get? I've gotten the dosing on my oil dialed in really well, so I know exactly how much I need to take, depending on how high I want to get. Something I'll decide upon on the day of a flight, depending upon how I'm feeling as I head to the airport.

Agree. Thanks. 👍🏼

He's still here. Never left in fact. You just need to look a little harder for him.

"Passport Bros" is just more clichéd jargon inspired by the Roganification of the young male population. You put the word "bro" into anything these days and men think it sounds like something cool that they want to be a part of. Meanwhile, Passport Bros is just a new name for the longstanding Mail-Order Bride concept. The whole idea has been around for decades already. It's certainly not a new phenomenon. So I wouldn't waste any time digging any deeper into it.

At 72 finding a younger woman that is "into you" could pose challenges. I think it's better to accept that than to continue spinning your wheels. Sadly, I think women in their 50s and 60s are often probably looking for men younger than their own age too. So I think it comes down to accepting what is possible. You could probably take a pill and then pay for one and that might work better. Less grief too for sure when you rent.

Sounds like a death sentence. If it came down to that I rather pay to bump uglies for an hour with one in her mid to late twenties. You'd feel a lot better afterwards baking one inside a unit that still qualifies as a sport model rather than a worn out old sedan with flat tires.

Who is the nonce with the fake veneers?

Maybe it's because he has a soggy wifey and a happy toasty. 😂

Sounds like you're on a proper sh*t hole tour. None of those stops sound particularly enticing to me. I think the beauty of winning the game of life is being able to avoid those kinds of places once you have a bit more cash to travel in more comfort. All the stops you mentioned are on my "no visit" list. I'm perfectly happy to die and say I never went to any of those places. These days, when I travel for two weeks or a month to somewhere, I only choose places with temperate climates, good food, easy transport access, and comfortable accommodations. This rules out a lot of parts of Southeast Asia, central Asia, northern Asia and Asia, in general, except for the first world Asian countries. Personally, I think bucket lists are overrated unless they are well thought out and you really know what you're setting yourself up for. Checking off a box, just for the sake of checking off the box, IMHO is often overrated in hindsight. But sounds like you're having a good time, so I'm glad you're enjoying yourself anyway.

The key to those 7-Eleven Toasties is that you have to remove them from the plastic bag and tear open the paper sleeve as soon as they hand it to you, otherwise it turns soggy from the heat and the moisture being trapped in the bag. Once they turn wet and soggy, they're no longer edible, but so many people end up eating them that way because they don't know how to avoid the disastrous outcome. Having said that, though, I much rather eat a soggy cheese sandwich than be forced to have a go with that misses of his who isn't winning any beauty contests.

Sounds like only the finest sh*t holes for you. 😂

I wouldn't trust any food product from China. There are dozens of tea plantations there in the north growing Chinese tea. I'm sure you can find all this stuff up there in Chiang Mai being sold in local shops. No need to order from China and take a risk.

I'm actually not an English tea drinker myself, but I'm familiar with the Twinings brand. I much prefer Japanese green tea and occasionally drink some Chinese oolong tea. What is that stuff? Just English black tea? And why do you like it?