JackGats

Surely you mean "all yoghurts in Thailand". Any supermarket in Europe stocks several brands of yoghurts without sugar and the labelling is clear. The taste is a challenge if you're accustomed to sugary yoghurt. Breakfasts in European hotels will feature at least one bulk yoghurt where it says something like "nature", which means nothing added. One or two other yoghurts will be available but even they will not be revoltingly sweet. They will mostly be with added fruits (like cherry) which of course contain some form of sugar by themselves. Their texture will be much like the "Greek" yoghurt sold at a gold prices at Tops or Villa Market. EU countries have been waging a low-key war on added sugar for decades now, with mixed results. Thailand has not even begun yet.

Difficult to tell since they are so overloaded with sugar you cannot taste any real yoghurt (slightly bitter) aftertaste. However, their texture alone is suspicious. They have the oily texture of face lotion or shower gel. P.S. Sugar should be the big issue in Thailand, not crystal meth. Sugar is the elephant in the room. Meth is the mouse everyone wants to be chasing around the room.

A major downside of living in Thailand. Sugar in everything, even in "salty" food (salt mixed with sugar and/or chillies for maximum addiction). Fake yogurts (milk of sorts, with a thickener and plenty of sugar). Meat skewers dabbed with sugar sauce. Even breakfast buffets in good hotels seldom have sweeteners available (deemed too expensive I guess).

90% of the population in the US has sugar-and-fat use disorder. This includes symptoms like pork-bloating, developing fat bulges around the waist and neck, wheezing, having to walk with a perambulator, diabetes, impotence, heart failure, early death.

Not all apps work with OTPs (sms-TANs). When they do it is probably safer to have the sim on another phone as the likelihood that someone hacks both your devices is small. This also applies to emails (use for example gmail on one phone and get recovery OTPs on another). The trend now is for banking apps safety to rely solely on the biometrics of the phone.

Yes, relearning science, or even learning it for the first time if you never did before, is a nice way to keep those brain cells in shape. I regret not doing it as intensely as I used to owing to learning Thai guzzling so much of my free time. I try to practice Thai listening using science courses so as to kill two birds with one stone. Suitable vids are not easy to find as most have disturbing background music.

At least here they write "16-year old student", not "16-year old child" like they do in the paedohysteric West.

Stay slim? Do they? Compared to the US maybe. Not compared to western Europe. I'm talking about the younger Thai generation. Lots of fatsos nowadays.

This is what I get when I try to upgrade a Star Alliance flight with Royal Orchid miles. When I wrote to them about it they replied with all sorts of arguments about classes and unavailability.

It is now an airline to avoid. I wish I had switched to Miles & More back then instead of believing in the Thai Airways myth.

I have accrued loads of miles on Thai Airways (Royal Orchid). No way to use those miles. No business tickets available on miles. When I try economy class it's the route I want that is not available, or the "class" within the ticket, whatever that means.

I stopped writing reviews on Agoda and Booking because they only got published if they were positive. My negative reviews only appeared for me (when I was logged on) but they were not visible for other viewers. This deceitful practive took me some months to notice. This was not the case on Tripadvisor though. Tripadvisor published my review (as well as other's I presume) for all to see in the order they got written. This must be said to Tripadvisor's credit. Tripadvisor remains the only platform on which reviews can be trusted to a certain extent. Note hotel reviews everywhere are fundamentally flawed: reviews by customers who paid for a top-notch room are thrown together with reviews by customers who booked a basic room. Different customers are reviewing different rooms that have little in common. IMO any review should start by stating the room rate that was paid.

Indeed. One and 2-star reviews are written by the competition while 4 and 5-star reviews are written by the venue itself. I'd go for mid-range reviews, ie 3 stars, paying special attention to which shortcomings are listed. Note that in Thailand some people give 5 stars and then go on to write a scathing review. They do so to hedge against getting prosecuted for a negative review. This makes sites like Tripadvisor more confusing in Thailand than in other countries. My advice for review writers in Thailand would be to do exactly so. Since bad reviews are illegal, give 5 stars, then write away. Soon readers will catch on and learn to heed only the content of the reviews. And the Thais will have what they want, wall-to-wall 5 stars.

Why only 30 days? I guess there's some element of reciprocity at play. Some countries (like Brazil) give country A 90 days if and only if their people are also given 90 days by country A. Tit for tat. In fact Thailand has been generous in not insisting on 100% reciprocity. The question should be: why doesn't the US and the EU grant Thais 90 days? Thai women are no longer eager to trade sex for money in the West like they did, so the sexual trade-union (femihags) in the US and the EU now have little to fear from Thailand.

I got my passport stamped with the LTR visa yesterday in Bangkok. There's not much to report. Easy and no stress. You get chaperoned by a BOI employee through the whole process. Two things worth mentioning that came up in this thread: 1) You can pay cash. You will be led to a counter that says "only digital payment accepted" but obviously some exceptions are made. The customs officer has a banknote counter on his desk. 2) The BOI employee confirmed I could do the one-year reporting at a local immigration office and not just in Bangkok. The visa stamp looks rather unglamorous and to a layman it is not 100% obvious what the dates on it imply. I hope it will not raise eyebrows with airline employees when I check in with one-way tickets to Thailand. All the same, mission accomplished.

Speaking for myself (selfishly), I don't like this. There are enough hordes coming already.

I asked for the part where it says the form is only valid 1 month to be rephrased to something less ominous. I asked for explicit mention that I was covered for life. The certificate also said I was covered for no less than 50k. So the standard form as it stands will probably not do.

This sounds to me like the usual traditional Ella Fitzgerald shouting. When I visited Guinea Bissau a taxi was playing wonderful music I was surprised to learn was Gospel. He found the CD of the songs for me, as they (uncomprehendingly) were unknown outside Bissau. This time of song, harmonic, cute:

Why does the choice have to be between a man who is too old to run and a man who has discredited himself while in office? Same as the presidential election in Brazil where they re-elected a convicted high-school drop-out thief for the 2nd time as alternative to the populist incumbent.

Don't marry her. Don't get her pregnant.

Most Americans want Trump found guilty. What then if the non-most (49.9%) want him for President? Trump is no more dishonest or violent than other politicians. Every lie of his can be twisted into a crime if there is a will to prosecute and some flimsy element of male sexuality to go on. Boil a criminal saga out of trifles like hiding an affair and being a sore loser at an election. It's not like Trump commanded terrorists or had more fraudulent business dealings than the norm, but the laws are so cancerous nowadays they can be used for anything.

So that handwritten line is the famous cancellation of your existing visa by the OSS (instead as by the issuing Immigration as should be the case in circumstances other than the LTR).

Could it be that hotels have an agreement with the platforms that they are not allowed to mach? Like if they matched and Agoda & Co got wind of it, Agoda & Co would withdraw their custom, which would be worse for the hotels than miss out on a few walk-in customers. Platforms have become the bread and butter of hotels.

Of course. Easy peasy. Only Agoda then doesn't give me their initially advertised baht price. They add a percentage to the initially advertised baht price some point before I send the payment on its way. So I'm back to square one as though I was paying in euros. Another thing: sometimes I stumble upon an Agoda bargain price on Google (ie not on the Agoda app nor on the Agoda browser website) and then proceed to try and book at said Google bargain price. But Agoda refuses to grant me the bargain price. Agoda profiles customers and tailors prices accordingly. They have me down as a good payer and deny me bargains. I've booked prices on Agoda through a friend of mine whom Agoda have in their system as a cheapskate. He gets the Google Agoda bargain price for me. Often 20% cheaper than what Agoda (app or browser) are willing to give me.

Deleted my post because of duplication.