paulbj2

I'm still sniggering about the Police raid on Pattaya's famous walking street. Allegedly they investigated with a thoroughness that would put Sherlock Holmes to shame and found nary a trace of prostitution anywhere!

I'm not sure that changing the electricity distribution system will change much else about walking street!

Anyway, Walking Street has a long ways to go to match this rat's nest in Chiang Mai!

25 minutes ago, Lacessit said:

The average Thai understands electricity about as well as I understand open heart surgery.

An aging aunt of mine when I was a kid demonstrated a commendable grasp of the fundamentals of electrics. She used to throw a hissy fit if anyone switched on a light when there was no lightbulb in the bulb-holder as she said "Don't do that - there's no bulb in it - all the 'lectric will leak out!" 

5 hours ago, KhunBENQ said:

Never rely on assumptions about circuit breakers.

Invest a few Baht for a voltage tester.

And test the voltage tester on a live line before relying on it.

Yes I was doing some minor electrical work on my place in Chiang Mai and so just switched the light off at the switch in the room. However, I NEVER touch any electrics unless I have checked with a volt-stick that they really are not live and hey presto they were live. The electrician who installed everything had put the switch in the neutral line rather than the phase! This was perhaps not altogether surprising as the whole house had been wired with single cables all of which were grey so un-colour coded. The electrician was clearly extremely gifted as he installed a non-waterproof mains switch for the extractor fan actually INSIDE the shower cubicle in the bathroom well within splash range of the shower nozzle. The circuits there were not protected by an RCCB so a mishap with the switch in the shower would likely have been terminal.

The first thing I did when I moved in was to get an electrician to move the switch out of the shower cubicle and fit an RCCB at the consumer unit.

20 hours ago, darksidedog said:

Yea, though I drive though the valley of death, I shall fear no (or little), evil, as I am in a Volvo.

I pray for everyone else of course.

You may joke but in a Volvo V70 this year, I have hit 3 wild boar and a deer and they just bounced off - no noticeable damage to the car at all! It was much less of a good day for the poor beasts involved!

6 minutes ago, Phulublub said:

But it is  not just deaths though, is it?  Are the hospitals overrun?

 

Even if there is underreporting, do you honestly think that in the era of social media (and when have you not seen a Thai with their head stuck in their mobile?) the Government could keep widespread infection a secret for ten months?

 

PH

I ran the death figures for the UK and from the freely publicly available death registration data, it's really easy to see that the British govt have been lying through their back teeth or rather manipulating the figures to make them look better. I would be very surprised if the Thai government haven't been doing the same. It is as Trump pointed out "if you don't test, you don't have cases". I gather testing in Thailand is at a very low level indeed.

1 hour ago, mark131v said:

My wife has just mentioned her mum and some other family members are very unwell with a cough and a fever, I asked if she was going to get a covid test done:

 

'no need because it's the cold season she always get's sick due to the cold weather'

 

That in a nutshell is the Thai response, nobody gets a test either through lack of finance or fear of being locked in quarantine rather than working

 

Hospitals are quick to blame covid type s&s as a cold, flu, dengue, pneumonia, anything but covid

 

I believe people who die are not routinely tested. That's the reason for low number...

I am no longer living in Thailand but I see loads of my western friends praising the Thai govt for having largely avoided the Covid-19 pandemic hitting Thailand. Personally, I'm not convinced that they have. I'm much more inclined to believe that it has been swept under the carpet. After all, if someone dies of pneumonia or a similar respiratory disease and you don't test for Covid - that's it they died of pneumonia! Given that there were direct flights to Chiang Mai until well into the pandemic, it would be astonishing if there had been no transmission of the disease AT ALL. Simply not believable!

The other thing that I find slightly worrying is when flights resumed, on the first flight out of Thailand, two passengers were found to have Covid-19 and when some guest workers were re-patriated, loads tested positive on arrival. If the level of infection in Thailand is as low as the government claims, that is statistically highly improbable!

I retired to Thailand in part because of the great international reputation of the medical services over there (in contrast to some other places I could have gone to retire).

Some years after moving there, I fell down a flight of stairs and broke a bone in my arm really badly necessitating surgery to plate and screw it back together. The op was done in an expensive private hospital in Chiang Mai. Some months later, I returned to my home in Luxembourg.

On the way home, the Thai repair job on my arm gave way; in Suvarnabhumi airport in fact, and I then had a 3 day journey back home  whilst being in absolutely unspeakable agony. I was booked on Sri Lankan Airways with an overnight in Sri Lanka, then I had an overnight on arrival in London before finally flying out to Luxembourg via Zurich on the 3rd day. On landing at Luxembourg, someone drove me directly to Accident & Emergency where they x-rayed it and told me it had re-broken (like I didn't know that), put some temporary strapping on it and sent me home. The next day I saw an orthopaedic surgeon who was very uncomplimentary indeed about the work that had been done in Thailand. This is extremely unusual in Luxembourg; there is a convention here that doctors never voice any criticism of other doctor's work even if it was done overseas. Eventually, I ended up seeing 5 different specialists; two of whom were of the opinion that it needed completely redoing as the original work was so poorly done. The one I saw most recently described the Thai surgeon as "an absolute butcher".

This, along with many other horror stories I have heard about medicine in Thailand, has rather shaken my confidence in Thai medicine and I most certainly will not be returning the LOS.

As a result of the extremely poor treatment I received, I will be mildly handicapped for the rest of my life, I experience quite severe pain if I stress the area where the break occurred and, according to the surgeons here, I will have a permanent weakness in the bone I broke due to the Thai surgeon having put way too many screws in it (which substantially weakens the bone)! The surgeon said there are 9 screws in the repair and, he said, "That's crazy! I would only have used 4"

No one could possibly ever say that Thailand, or  rather its government, have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, eh?

My experience of Thai restaurants (the smaller ones at least) is that washing crockery, glassware, cutlery and pots & pans in a bucket of cold water without benefit of detergent seems to be the norm and that is not exactly going to contribute much to germ free hygiene at all!

3 hours ago, Jimbo2014 said:

Wow - I would be suprised if thats the case but I wouldnt rule it out. TIT!

Yes, I too have been told that that is exactly the case! As most road deaths in Thailand would be caused by head injuries to drivers/passengers on two wheeled vehicles and head injuries are frequently fatal only several hours after the collision (so after a good long brain bleed), that would mean that you could probably safely double the declared road death statistics to get a true picture of the appalling carnage on Thailand's roads. 

On 11/3/2020 at 5:15 AM, darksidedog said:

Truly awful. The worlds most dangerous roads and it is getting worse. The absolute lack of road law enforcement has to be the number one cause, followed by the ignorance of what those laws are in the first place. Pretty much every road user out there seems to think they always have right of way and that things like traffic lights are a "suggestion."

Yes, I was threatened with murder by a Thai driver once (according to locals who heard what he shouted at me) - my offence walking across a traffic light controlled pedestrian crossing whilst the lights for him were red and for me were green. He was deeply offended when I shouted "Whoa!" when he accelerated down a tiny gap next to the kerb and got within millimetres of slamming into me. He pulled up just beyond the crossing and was ranting and raving; practically frothing at the mouth. I think he might have needed a rabies vaccine! I believe that was an example of that little known traffic law "Red means go even if there is a damned Farang in the way, it doesn't matter"!

Another place I used to cross a busy main road was a dual carriageway with a centre island. U-turns from one side of the carriageway to the other were clearly prohibited by a "No U-Turns" sign but dozens of scooters, mopeds and motorbikes used to do U-Turns even when there was a policeman on duty controlling the lights in the rush hour.  A motorbike doing just such a U-Turn nearly flattened me at that junction; he didn't see me as he was tapping out a text on his handlebar mounted smartphone whilst doing his U-turn! 

On 9/24/2020 at 2:21 PM, BritManToo said:

Oddly enough I hear France is about to lock up tight again.

Who gives a poop about Belgium?

On 10/24/2020 at 2:07 PM, Sheryl said:

No, because they have no way of knowing what a foreign social security scheme covers.

 

If you can get a letter from the Social Security describing your coverage and that COVID is included then fine. 

It's the state healthcare system ergo it covers everything without any limits (except that the bill for any particular item of treatment is only payable up to the maximum amount payable in Luxembourg for that same treatment; however if a hospital in Thailand is charging more than, they are ripping you off; BIG TIME!) and yes of course covid is including it's the Luxembourg state healthcare system there are no exclusions whatsoever!

On 10/23/2020 at 1:08 PM, tso310 said:

Agree with mjnaus. Just been on the site. 6400 THB for 90 days visiting Thai family. I suppose the question is will they only accept this insurance for the issuing of the CoE and not the cheaper alternatives. 

 

I am a resident of Luxembourg and part of their social security system. The Luxembourg healthcare system covers its subscribers worldwide and  so when I broke my arm really badly in Thailand and needed an operation to plate and screw the bone back together, I received a bill equivalent to 3600€. Upon returning home, I submitted the bill to the healthcare system here and they refunded 3350€ (not sure what the deduction was for but I was so grateful that they had paid the bulk of it that I didn't pursue it). That being the case, would they accept my Luxembourg social security card as sufficient proof of insurance?

Do you think it has dawned on the clowns running Thailand that without tourism, a huge number of people are going to be out of work and banging on the governments door for hand-outs, or rioting because they have nothing to eat.

Has the penny dropped that the Thai tourist is at or near tip-over point when so many businesses will have gone broke that tourism as it was in the past cannot be resumed because the number of available hotel beds and restaurants to serve them will no longer be adequate to accommodate them? I know of at least one restaurant that used to serve western tourists that has gone bust and I am certain that there are many 1000s more.

Oh and did I forget to mention that maybe, just maybe, Thailand is not as clear of Covid-19 as the government would have people believe. Two Thais tested positive for Covid on arrival at an overseas airport - 2 people out of an aircraft full - that represents an infection rate rather higher than has ever been acknowledged by Thai officials!

8 hours ago, vandeventer said:

Reuters) - Thailand has agreed to manufacture and supply AstraZeneca Plc's experimental COVID-19 vaccine in the southeast Asian country and other nations in the region, the British and Thai governments said on Monday.   

 

 Hang on, did you say EXPERIMENRAL VACCINE? At least try it on rats before you give it to us!

Don't panic, they ARE trying it, not on rats but on human beings and the results are: so far so good! One person on the trial has tested +ve for Covid-19 but as it's a double blind trial, no one knows whether he was injected with the vaccine or with sterile water. 

It's quite possible that we will all need to be vaccinated annually or even more frequently as the duration of effectiveness of vaccination against this virus is unknown. 

My favourite translation foul-up was not from Thai to English but French to English. It was the instructions on a French steel omelette pan. What the instructions meant (if you translated the French correctly) was "The anti-rust coating on the pan should be removed, using a rag soaked in alcohol, before use". However the translation was clearly done by a native French speaker with secondary school English and read "The anti-rust coating must be removed using a tampon soaked in burning alcohol, before using"

1 hour ago, Fex Bluse said:

Plus Thais look down on Indians. The Chinese beat the Indians in southeast Asia. Half of Thai culture comes from India (including the MOST SACRED Thai traditions), but 99% of Thais I've met look down on them. Funny people 

...and Indians in turn look down on black Africans. In Delhi, if you're black, Indians will scratch their armpits and make "monkey" noises at you as you walk down the street!

8 hours ago, Blumpie said:

A little odd???  

That's putting it mildly.  

I started a mathematics course online where the principal tutor was from India. In the end I had to give it up as I really couldn't understand the guy's accent! I'm a Brit and I spent 6 months in India a few years years ago so I am pretty familiar with Indian accents but some of them are really hard to follow. Apparently, Americans find the accent of the Indians who run the majority of telephone helplines these days, impossible to understand and I'm not very surprised.

Yes, I bought a Raspberry Pi from Europe and got royally whacked by the Thai customs - if I recall correctly, they hit me with a 1000 Baht in import duty.