wolf81

I think one possible solution could be if Thailand would use trucks to retrieve leaves and such for farmers, perhaps even give a small amount of money in return. The leaves could then be used to make compost, perhaps even reselling the end product. Might offset the cost of all the sickness caused by the dust. Basically looking at the problem in a more pro-active way, instead of just telling farmers to stop burning, which they will likely ignore anyways ...

Some people (Deists for example) believe in a creator, but not necessarily in a personal God as in Christianity or many other religions. I am kinda in that camp after reading the book The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. I don't believe the universe was created by coincidence, but at the same time I am not really sure if a personal God exists. However, I am also not going to rule it out. Here's some interesting argumentation in favour of Intelligent Design:

There's such a thing as a bad dog though.

Lets just hope he will never crack down on massage parlours then ...

It's not clear from the Bria lab website, but do you know if one can visit an office of this company in CM for a health check-up? The website seems to suggest their clinic is in Bangkok.

Yes, but aren't we all? What makes this hansum man different from the rest here? Perhaps the lady has dark skin - that might give her an inferiority complex and less status in Thai society, while Westerners might find it quite striking. Anyway, without a photo or more info, we can only guess.

Since I'm 40 years old, I feel it's prudent to do a yearly health check-up, both for me and my girlfriend. It seems many people thought Sriphat hospital in Chiang Mai is of good quality, so I wanted to check the prices of health check-up there. But I was kinda shocked to see that for age group 40-50 years old the recommended check-up costs about 13.000 THB for men & 16.000 THB for women, see here: https://sriphat.med.cmu.ac.th/th/package/detail/26 (sadly page not available in English) I wonder, do people think this price is reasonable for what you get? Any other recommendations for hospitals and clinics in Chiang Mai that can do a good health check-up? I guess my main concern would be to detect blood clots (since my father, grandfather & aunt all had strokes) and early cancer detection - not too concerned about the rest. My girlfriend actually recently discovered a little lump in her breast, but according to the doctor in the village hospital it's not a concern. Still, it seems good for her to do the mammogram from now on yearly. Any advise is welcome.

In Chiang Mai there's not been much rain last couple of weeks, at least not in our amphur (Chaiprakarn). Perhaps during rainy season in Chon Buri it's a good idea to temporarily relocate if you can afford it and if the weather bothers you so much? I only lived in 2016 in Chon Buri, but I kinda liked the occasionally heavy rain pouring. Usually it lasted for only a short time, say half and hour and then it'd be gone. Made the air nice cool just after the rain. No idea if the rain you're experiencing now is different (e.g. pouring all day or something like that).

Cash provides privacy, a little inconvenience can be a good trade off. Don't need to have governments looking out for every small payments you do (e.g. a bonus for a massage lady or a gift to your children). I also don't really believe the argument that electronic payments increase economic activity. More money in people's wallets will increase economic activity, but electronic payments by themselves will not add money to people's wallets.

When I wear my relaxing shorts outside, my gf sometimes complains that people might get a hit of my package size. I think it's no big deal - certainly it's just normal shorts from a European perspective. I think people can hardly see anything, but perhaps there's more to it ... I might be more careful with what I wear outside the home, judging by these comments.

Thailand has plenty of nice plots of land. I think it's wiser to look elsewhere.

When I went to Koh Chang last year, didn't experience any itching. Staff also didn't give us any protective oil, so perhaps it's seasonal. We were at the beach of the Centara Grand resort there.

Well, me, my GF and daughter got COVID 2 times. Yeah, it's a bit like a bad flu, lasting longer, but we survived. First time none of us had vaccination. Second time my girlfriend had 2x Pfizer. I think she recovered a bit more quickly than me, but I think in general she's a bit healthier than me anyway (me working indoors behind desk and she working often outdoors on the farm).

Still have to wear the st*pid mask in too many places.

Be careful what masks you and your loved ones use. It seems (at least in EU and I doubt in Thailand it's much better) that many masks actually contain too much titanium dioxide particles (up to 5x the safe limit) which is known to be carcinogenic. You don't want your child to breath this stuff in and out each day at school. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06605-w If I understand the paper correctly, cotton masks seem to be generally safer than masks made with polyester.

And many doctors (and some nurses probably) run a clinic or pharmacy as side business. I know the lady that delivered our daughter has a children's clinic that she works at, after finishing her work at the government hospital. It's probably great business. Many parents that had their babies delivered by her will probably visit her clinic when the child is sick. We do this anyways. Clinic provides quicker service than the hospital, so we prefer to visit her clinic if it's no emergency (since clinic opens every day 16:30 or so).

The Netherlands used to have a large company dedicated to production and export of cocaine, heroin & morphine in the early 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandsche_Cocaïnefabriek

We're in the process of building a pool. Not huge, 15 x 2.5 x 1.5 meter, but good enough for a bit of daily exercise. A few years ago when I lived in Pattaya, I would use the condo pool pretty much every day. It was a really nice pool (VT5) - I felt great. I've missed having a pool ever since moving to the sticks. So I am quite sure once we have the pool, gonna use it 1-2 times every day. Actually I am building my home office next to it, so I can just relax a bit in the pool if I am bored with my work or need some thinking.

You got that quote wrong. Its "beauty is in the eyes of the beer holder".

Seems in my village most people are not too worried for COVID. People seem to mostly wear masks in shops, crowded markets and such. Which I believe people mostly do for the sake of other people that might be scared. Since cities are more crowded in general compared to villages, I can understand why many people still choose to wear masks in the cities. I hate masks, but wear them any crowded areas where I see many Thais wearing them. I don't want Thai people feel bad about foreigners. Though otherwise I wouldn't bother.

Since short-time rooms are found pretty much anywhere and everywhere in Thailand, I would guess it would be easy to pick-up people for short time fun pretty much everywhere. You might be surprised how many short time rooms can be found even a remote village as the one I'm living in. There's also lots of HIV going around my area. I guess that's the other side of the coin ...

Perhaps as a point of reference, even though I live in a different province (Chiang Mai) ... In our village we can buy 5 rai of farm land (suitable for fruit trees and such, not rice) for about 1.3 million THB. A lady with money problems want to sell. Both me and my girlfriend though it was a good price, but we don't have the money right now, as we recently bought a smaller plot of land adjacent to our house, so we can make a nice garden. We do kinda live in the sticks of Chiang Mai. However, from what I understand land in Chiang Mai might be more expensive compared to Isaan.

Yeah it's really sucky. I never finished my studies and mostly learned software dev on my own. However, I would not be able to apply for any of these visas. Many Western companies are happy to pay me a nice income and these companies are most of the time not really interested in education. Past experience, Github profile, StackOverflow profile, projects completed in my own time and such seem much more useful.

As a remote dev it should be quite achievable to reach 80k+ USD. I am a remote dev who earns quite low compared to US standards, but I would be able to get 125.000 USD if I would work full-time. However I work about half of the time, so I make maybe 60.000 USD per year. Software dev is still good money if one can work for Western companies.

I think the 300 THB entrance fee is ok, provided it's all used for costs involving foreigners. E.g.: uninsured foreigners that need to go to hospital. Just remove the idiotic COVID insurance instead. That would help much more to attract foreigners, I think ...