buick

remember this guy, said things would be worse in october and beyond. go ahead and take a look who bought into his forecast and who did not. there were alot of buyers !! i was not one of them. just putting it out there to show the gloom and doom folks didn't get it right on this one.

more good news on the 7 day avg death number. sept 10: 221 sept 17: 172 sept 24: 127 today: 125 (edit, this is a one day number not the 7 day average) next two weeks will be very interesting. will we get below 100/day or will the relaxed restrictions lead to a higher number.

you are in good shape for the buriram to BKK leg via nok air. i can 100% guaranty that one (passport only). going bkk to buriram appears to be proof of vaccination only (shown at DMK). this is what the nok air people in buriram told me (nok air person was a very good english speaker). and as i noted, i didn't see any nurse staff stalking people in arrivals/baggage room. nurse did take my temp when i entered the terminal, that is the only nursing staff i saw.

i think what is happening here is the western media fixation on fear/crisis combined with high vaccination rates for older people. older folks are vaccinated so far fewer deaths in that group than pre-vaccine. meanwhile, the death number on the younger folks is about the same. and honestly most of the fear/crisis i've read has had to do with hospitalization or long covid for younger people (say under 40), not so much the death number. there absolutely must be fear/crisis in the western media and it is justified with tailor made 'proof', which is laughable upon review. but many people read the stuff and believe it to be 100% true. and then repeat it to others and then suddenly we have this 'lie' that becomes 'true'.

i completed my trip to buriram. i ended up getting a car service to drive me there from BKK. the SUV had a plexiglass shield of sorts separating the driver compartment from the rear passenger section. i flew back on nok air and the buriram to bkk flight required nothing. just the usual passport. i asked them about requirement for dmk-buriram and they said proof of vaccination was the only requirement. did not need a RT-PCR test. i don't go to the departure lounge until i see the arriving passengers walking into the arrivals/baggage claim. i sat by the arrivals area and did not see a group of nurses ready to take you to quarantine so it is safe to fly to buriram from DMK. good luck with your travels.

the above is an excellent list. i've wanted to try several of them (london steak, swan sports, paddy's, osteria) but haven't quite made it. and quite a few i've never heard of but sound good/great. i will make a better effort in the coming months. i feel hungry already !!

we are now below 150 on the 7 day avg for the daily death number. last time that number was below 150 was August 2nd. the high was just above 250 so we've come a long way down (40% decline). it would be great to see some sub 100 numbers coming in soon. we will be dealing with this virus for quite some time but as long as the death numbers remain relatively low (say sub 50), hospitals have capacity, and people continue to get vaccines, we can start to have a semi normal life again. i'm not ready to charge into a packed bar and spend 5 hours in there drinking beer, eating food and watching sports. but i will be ready to enjoy food and beer at an outdoor venue once the beer ban has ended.

i think you can do ok on 55,000thb/mo. i live in bkk and spend alot more than that but much of it is for travel within southeast asia and back to USA once or twice a year. if i just look at the bkk specific spending and don't include the 'waste' at cowboy and nana, that amount doesn't look all that bad. pay 10,000thb/mo for rent and then have 10,000thb/week for food/drink/utilities/etc. that assumes you do have some savings to rely on for emergencies. edit: i've gotten used to cooking my own food due to the current 'conditions' and that really keeps the costs down.

they got vaccinated so things got under control. nothing to do with their testing program.

there are a couple of ponds or retention basins ? i'm not exactly sure. but they do show up on google maps. and there are paths around them so you can take a walk. this is eastern side of the city i believe. i've walked around them a few times. not bothered by any soi dogs and such. and plenty of thais on the paths doing their thing. there is a restaurant right next to one of these ponds, it has had different owners over the years. not sure what it is now. but it isn't a bad spot to sit down and have a beer and watch the people go by on the paths. maybe the menu looks good and get food also.

is the UK considered a successful model for fighting this virus ? certainly not if the measure is deaths per capita. they are top 25 in the world in that category. so their testing program didn't exactly win the day (or the year !!) for the country.

i've been a regular visitor to buriram for the last five years, as often as twice a month. i go to relax and get away from bangkok so i'm not all that interested in things to do in buriram. but i have had decent tacos at what used to be harley 288, i guess it is now known as AfriKa. i was last there in july 2020 so name change since then. but the menu appears the same, tacos still available. i didn't see mexican food anywhere else. i usually eat lunch somewhere inside the Robinson complex. pick up some beer at the tops market there. i've been to bamboo bar a few times, they've had live music at times. muang pizza is worth a try, i haven't seen the dutch owner in awhile as mostly done delivery. book n bed is a decent restaurant, not quite a steakhouse. but i've had many steak moo's at their outdoor table. i thought about playing golf a couple times and went to the local golf course, i think the expats play on tuesday and friday. if you play golf you could join that group and meet some people (i never did play). the guys that i talked with at harley 288 seemed friendly enough (expats) but now i'm not sure if the owner is still the same and maybe the clientele has changed. there was an italian place that seemed popular with expats, i spent some time at a seafood restaurant next door and while there i thought 'i wish i was at the italian place right now' (i hate seafood !!). maybe some guys know the place i'm talking about. they've also got the walking street market thing that goes monday and wednesday ? i can't be certain as i've been away from thailand for a year. i just got back in july. i am in buriram right now though. will update if i see anything exciting.

good to see a death number below 150. we had a couple 300+ days a few weeks ago. the 7 day daily average topped out a bit above 250 and stayed there for almost two weeks. but now we've had several sub 200 numbers and a few sub 150's. the 7 day avg is about 170 now. hope the declines keep coming our way and we get a chance to open things up and see what comes next !!

agreed. i was higher end and the food was great. choice of thai, western, indian, japanese, and 'dietary'. plus within each of those groups was a vegetarian option. i'm a meat eater but i did opt for a veg plate a couple times. so that is 10 choices. as an example one dietary selection was a grilled chicken breast with broccoli. a western i got was meatballs with marinara sauce with broccoli and cauliflower. i skipped the indian but alot of the positive reviews on tripadvisor were about the indian food (hotel has an indian food restaurant). the other thing was the generally large portion sizes. i had leftovers from almost every meal. so plenty of snack options if i got hungry btwn meals. had a full kitchen so no problem storing and reheating food. i had a one bdrm apartment with a balcony, 16th floor. everything was generally new inside (fraser suites sukhumvit soi 11). plus had the treadmill i mentioned in earlier post. i remember reading about one place near the airport where the person got adjoining rooms and the second room included a treadmill and some workout stuff, balconies in both rooms. i think having two rooms is a definite plus and big windows. i had floor to ceiling windows all along one wall in the living area and two walls in the bdrm. i really didn't feel 'confined' at any time. i know that sounds strange and unbelievable but it is true. the time flew by and i enjoyed it. i'd do it again without worry assuming i could get the same place.

that is how i felt, no matter what answer i got, it could change over night. my hotel here in buriram was adamant that i had to show my bkk ASQ papers. i made it clear that i'd done that in july and they had no relevance to this trip. but three different people on the phone confirmed these papers were requried. when i checked in, no one asked for these papers. and as i noted early in this thread, nok air was difficult to reach over the phone. i can't wait on hold more than 15 minutes or so. plus, i can't count on what they tell me anyway !! i did go through a police checkpoint on the way to buriram from bkk but i didn't see many cars being stopped. for a 9 hour drive, i'd suggest you spend the night somewhere. that is too long for me. good luck with journey. maybe we can use planes next month.

i returned from USA in july of this year. i had the option of the sandbox but chose bangkok ASQ. i figured not much would be open in phuket and i wasn't really planning to sit on the beach. so i would have spent most of the time at my hotel/resort. i'd rather be in ASQ for a day than spend a day traveling HKT-BKK. so that negated one day of my ASQ in bkk. i also didn't really want to fly via europe or middle east, i was on the west coast of USA. i think that is how one had to fly to get to HKT. i figured those airlines would be fairly full of people, taking people from USA east coast, europe, etc... to HKT. i flew asiana from seattle via ICN and the plane was empty. barely even noticed the boarding process in SEA and ICN. happened so fast with so few people. another consideration is how had life been prior to the ASQ. i'd been holed up in a room/condo/hotel for so many months (over a year really !!), i'd gotten used to it. going out daily to get food was kind of a hassle at times. spent several months in las vegas and not alot was open so getting food was problematic at times. especially on weekends. i stayed at the fraser suites sukhumvit soi 11. paid extra for a treadmill to be put in room. the food selection was great and the time flew by. i really enjoyed it. i'm sure some of it was i expected the worst so it felt great with such low expectations going in. it was not cheap though, 72,000thb plus another 6,000thb for the treadmill. i was spending 1,000USD/wk for lodging in vegas (not gambling much) so the ASQ cost wasn't much more than that and it included meals. edit: i started off paying 500/week in vegas but the rates really spiked in april/may/june.

my extension expired on may 31, 2021 and i returned in july this year. i went for the visa exempt option, mainly to avoid having to mail my passport to the consulate in Los Angeles for a Non O. i already had the funds in the thai bank. after quarantine was over, i went to CW immigration in BKK and did the 'change visa' process to get the Non O. i go back for the one year extension next month.

i took a car, rather than deal with the flight situation. it is too difficult to get info at this point. i went bkk to buriram so only 5 hrs, not too bad. it was nice to be out on the road after being confined to my room or immediate vicinity of such for most of the last the last 18 months. there was a plexigas separator btwn the driver area and back seat of the SUV that i rode in. that was a nice touch. i'd like to fly back to bkk and i'm going to give it a shot. we'll see what happens. leaving in 5 days.

looking at reported cases can be a bit misleading and not show the true 'curve'. no country is able to report an accurate number of their cases each day, month, etc... deaths is a more accurate measure, while those can be hidden, still more accurate than trying to chart cases. the death charts for india and indonesia both look alot like thailand although thailand has only just turned down. i'm sure people will say india hid their deaths and that may be true but it just means the bell type curve went up higher, still came crashing down after a fairly short period. these things tend to last 2-3 months. i have seen a few from last winter that lasted longer and did not crash down, more gradual (italy for example, 4-5 months). so there are outliers.

OP - i understand the frustration with the airlines. i've tried to call nok air to get information and they don't pick up the phone. i wait on hold for 15-20 minutes, that is all i can handle and hang up (twice a day, every day for a week). i also sent two emails and no response. as one poster noted, it might be best to go to the airport. that is what i'm thinking of doing. good luck to you on your efforts.

i submitted my COE items to the consulate in Los Angeles and it took 11 business days. i submitted the items about a month before my travel would commence. i assume they give priority to applications that require (or request) a quicker turnaround but only a guess on that. this was mid june 2021.

we've seen several days of less than 200 deaths over the last week, that is encouraging. still have alot more deaths to go as the curve comes down. and of course we could see another wave but hopefully the vaccines will help if/when the next one hits. as it stands now, thailand sits 91st out of 155 countries in terms of deaths per capita. expressed as death per million residents, thailand is at roughly 200. if the death count doubles from here and the country gets to 400 (when this is generally over), they'll manage to be in the back half of the 155 countries. hope we've seen the worst of it but you never know. i thought this thing was nearly done and then delta showed up. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

it is a nearly useless number but alot of members on this forum live by it. we have no way of knowing how many infections are out there. you can run massive testing programs and still not really know (unless you do it the china way). testing helps when the virus first hits but once it is widespread, it isn't that critical.

that relatively low death number looks good. but we know the monday figures are usually lower than the rest of the week. let's hope we can see deaths under 200 several days this week. of course there will be an increase in cases due to the relaxation of the lockdown restrictions. but maybe the death numbers will remain below a 7 day average daily number of 250. that would be a good sign. alot of people have been vaccinated over the last few weeks and while that doesn't help much on case counts it can help alot on the death numbers. if all we had was cases, this would be a 'normal flu', so cases don't mean much. the deaths are the obvious problem.

i think the issue is bangkok to surin/buriram rather than surin to buriram or vice versa. that's only a guess, no personal experience. i'm planning to travel bangkok to buriram soon and still not sure if i'm going to fly both ways or pay a car service to drive me to buriram and fly back. a friend in buriram came from lopburi to buriram two weeks ago and was told to isolate at home by the boss of the moo baan (plus take a test) but it isn't a strict isolation. more of an honor system thing.