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 ...

3 hours ago, GammaGlobulin said:

But... 

 

Nothing 

Zip 

Nada 

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: 

6 hours ago, Captain Monday said:

For attacking 10 people. the beast should have been destroyed years ago.  There is nothing such as a bad dog, only bad owners. When an attack occurs  people who keep a dangerous dog should be punished as if they committed the assault themselves. Prosecuted for grievous bodily

injury with a deadly weapon, murder, or attempted murder as appropriate.

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

10 hours ago, proton said:

I think we all know he was a former massage parlour boss by now!

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

On 1/22/2023 at 9:21 AM, DrPhibes said:

Ram Hospital, about $800 USD for endoscopy, colonoscopy, ultrasound of abdomen, chest x-ray, and blood work, very reasonable compared to the states. There were a few blood work items that were not included but Bria lab in CM has a very full menu of diagnostic tests that are much cheaper than the hospital.  Good if you know what your looking at for the reported results.  For blood clots, depends where in the body you have concern.  There are blood tests to rule out certain clots, some parts of the body can use ultrasound, some parts require CT scan with contrasting dye.

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.

20 hours ago, swerve said:

Explanation: he's a hansum man.

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).

Quote

Sanook chose to focus on the comments of people; many were women who wanted the camera to pan right to get a better view of the recipient's "package".

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.

On 12/5/2021 at 10:21 AM, Tofer said:

I never had that problem in Koh Mak, only Koh Chang, where they sold the protective / treatment oil at the hotel check in.

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.

13 hours ago, Kwaibill said:

We got covid. Didn't much care for it. Might not have made it without my jabs and reduced viral load due to mask use.

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).

12 hours ago, Fairynuff said:

For those of us living in Thailand I think it’s pretty meaningless. (My) life is as normal as it was before. For Thai people generally on a day to day basis I don’t see how things will change much either.

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

15 hours ago, brewsterbudgen said:

Absolutely - and stop forcing kids to wear masks all day in school!

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.

Quote

TiO₂ particles were not observed in cotton fibers (Fig. 1d), in meltblown non-woven fabrics (Fig. 1f), and in some of the thermobonded non-woven fabrics (Table 1).

49 minutes ago, foreverlomsak said:

Most if not all state hospitals run a "clinic", and also there are also clinics in local areas for them to go to.

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).

1 hour ago, plus7 said:

The times are changing or better to say "its returning"

Once Britain exported tons of opium to China...

Morphine, heroin could be bought in pharmacies...

 

 

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.

19 hours ago, Photoguy21 said:

If they want to wear a mask then they should. I took a walk this morning, no mask and 99% of the Thai people I passed wore them. I dont think you can expect anything else considering the fear they have been made to feel.

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.

2 hours ago, hughrection said:

They insist on a masters degree. 

 

So, if you earn a boat load of money - no masters - no can hab. ????

 

Ridiculous requirements from people who have no idea. Just for context - Bill Gates - No Hab Deglee.  ????

 

 

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.

13 hours ago, Adumbration said:

I have been here a very long time.  I knew only a handful of people who where working remotely here and were on more than 80K USD.  One guy was in charge of spinning up any new server deployments for Philip Morris.  He was on circa 250K USD per year and used to rent the villa next to me and work from a 600 baht supercheap particle board table while sitting on a 150 baht plastic chair.

 

Most people working in the internet - website space are not pulling down 80K pa.  And if they are they are in a crucial or management role and therefore (mostly) not allowed to work remotely.  As one example I knew a guy here who was a game animator.  He recently landed a job managing a team who is building a game that will be available in the Metaverse.  Players will be rewarded in Crypto.  A prerequisite to accepting the new role was working in (the Australian) office.  Two billionaires are staking the game development and they paid this guy (and his Thai wife) to relocate to Oz.  Company house and visas provided....and paying for his wife to attend univeristy for post graduate studies.

 

There are handful of people who can qualify for this visa (and actually want or need to live in Thailand for 10 years).  I could be wrong (I am more often than not) but I don't think there are going to be millions.

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.