Lacessit

Strange. I thought Trump and his MAGA followers had the patent on hate. Lying Ted Cruz, Crooked Hillary, Gavin Newscum, Ron DeSanctimonious -the list goes on and on. "Poisoning the blood of our country" ring any bells with you?

My GF rides pillion. Adding a saleng means it takes up nearly as much room as a car, and can't be parked conveniently.

My son has a rescue dog ( small terrier ) which was badly traumatized prior to his ownership. Unsocialized, would attack any other dog irrespective of size. He employed a dog trainer who has the dog much better trained. One behavior which cannot be modified is her predator instinct. She is death on chickens, can chase them down in a few seconds. Outdoors, she has to be on a leash at all times.

Call centres are being taken over by AI. Today, I had a phone call from Australia asking me to participate in a survey. Age, size of my mortgage etc. etc. After a couple of attempts to explain I was in Thailand, and the questions were irrelevant. I twigged I was talking to a robot.

My pet peeve is the way Americans pronounce and spell aluminium. Lazy. Following that logic, elements such as sodium should be pronounced sodum.

Mengrai Labs in Chiang Rai does my blood work every 3 months, a full blood examination costs me about 1200 baht, including liver function. They email the results to me, which I forward to an specialist in Australia. It's the same as showing a pharmacist here a prescription medication, they will fill most of them with the exception of restricted compounds. I think most meds are more expensive in hospitals. All I did was show Mengrai labs a set of results from Australia, and ask them to run the same tests. I usually get the results back after 3 hours. The specialist in Australia has said Mengrai does a professional job. I would suggest Sheryl for interpretation. Mengrai flags any results which are outside normal range.

I will know it's time when I can't stay balanced. I am not Stirling Moss, I drive very carefully with constant threat assessment.

I first tried a scooter on a holiday in Vanuatu in my mid-forties, and enjoyed it. Fast forward to my retirement in Thailand. I started by hiring scooters. Then I bought a secondhand Yamaha TTX from a Brit. 23,000 baht, 9300 km. It now has about 29,000 km on the odometer. Has never let me down. Now in my eighties, friends and relatives want me to stop riding and only use 4 wheelers. I am dual licensed, here and in Australia. The Australian license was far more onerous to obtain. Thai competency testing was a joke. AS long as I can still drive with my GF riding pillion, I am not giving it up. I enjoy the freedom and mobility too much.

Agreed. I have tertiary qualifications, and can claim a number of creative solutions to problems in my field of expertise. AFAIK one of them is still in use 40 years after its inception. Having said that, my Thai GF is way ahead of me in street smarts and negotiating skills. I've known some highly intelligent people who were utterly miserable.

Don't worry, plenty still around to "take care" in return for financial support.

IMO he is extracting the urine, as his description fits Trump supporters to a T.

In a man, the ability to think with the big head before the small head.

I've proved AI to be wrong several times, or incapable of answering some questions. Gemini uses the cop-out " I'm only a language model".

It's only 1-2 hundred baht at any pathology lab. It's not done every day, most doctors are happy with a check every year unless the patient is diabetic.

The fasting glucose test may be all over the shop. The true guide is the HbA1c test, which measures how much glucose is attached to the red blood cells. Raspberry jam is not straight glucose. It will be a combination of sucrose and fructose. Sucrose is a compound, equal parts glucose and fructose.

I have had 800K on deposit ever since I first got a retirement visa, about 10 years ago. I did experiment with the 65K income method one year, and decided it was a PITA. I have enough in other Thai accounts to last me for two years without drawing any funds from Australia, where there are plenty of pre-2024 savings to draw on. Hopefully in 2 years time the experiences of others will be a guide. My next extension is November, again there should be more information available on this thread.

Premium Economy varies, some airlines the seats are not much better than economy. A couple of inches of leg room, better food, not much more. Air Asia used to have lie-flat seats in Business on the KL to Melbourne leg. Still too short to straighten my legs completely. Pre-COVID, there used to be some quite good deals for Business class, now the differential in price is just too much to justify the extra. I have flown First Class twice, on someone else's dime. That really is luxury travel.

Perhaps the strangest was a Spanish airline, in the days before smoking was entirely banned. I get to my non-smoking seat, after the plane takes off the people in seats in front of me and behind me are lighting up. I asked one of the flight attendants why. According to him, the smoke was distributed better. I remember flying business class with KLM from Tokyo to Amsterdam. 1990's. The Dutch really knew how to do good airline food.

Guilty as charged. IMO it beats being dumb as a can of soup.

And why is there no room in the overhead bins? Because selfish <snip> have occupied it all with oversize items.

So now you are saying no-one should believe what you post. You're a bit late with not sounding like a knob, the condescension in your first post saw to that. Don't you know when you're in a hole, it's best to stop digging?

In your first post on this thread, you stated I should travel in business class like normal people do. In this post, you seem to be admitting you are far from normal.

My aim for checked luggage is 17-18 kg, and I have a gauge for weighing it. I do this because several times I have observed a 1 - 1.5 kg discrepancy between my gauge and the check-in point. It's only one airline I am not going to name. The difference is in the airline's favor. I wonder how much extra money they make from that little scam.

Baggage is weight, the heavier an aircraft is, the more fuel it consumes. That's serious money. If airlines did not charge extra for check-in baggage, I could guarantee there would be morons turning up with 50 - 100 kg of crap. Privileges invariably get lost because people abuse a system. I don't mind paying for checked baggage. My carryon stuff is usually a couple of kg, light jacket, phone, powerbank and toiletries. I'm not sure what you mean by gate-checked baggage. Not a good idea if said baggage has lithium batteries, and why should I be giving up space allocated to me to someone who doesn't want to put their stuff where it should be?

No, I am complaining about oversize, overweight luggage which is put into overhead lockers, because some airlines don't have the spine to say no to the selfish gits who abuse the system and other passengers. The wheels are another indicator what's inside is too heavy to be "carry-on". If you can't carry 7 kg of belongings a couple of hundred metres, I recommend a program of diet and exercise.