JackGats

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.

Yeah, that's the kind of games Agoda plays. It always tries to trick me into paying in euros. And when I force the payment in baht, Agoda jacks up the baht price without warning, so it tends to be a lose-lose situation for me. Apparently it does so because in their small print, there's a provision for a fee if the local price is in a currency different from your credit card currency. I've tried to circumvent all this by paying with my Thai debit card but - lo and behold - Agoda rejects my Thai credit card. So with Agoda I'm screwed whatever I do. That's why I've booked on Trip dot com more often of late. Although usually a tick more expensive than Agoda, Trip doesn't play games and is always cheaper than Booking dot com. Note that Booking dot com doesn't play games although the mother company is the same as Agoda's. From what I understood this is because Booking is subject to EU regulations while Agoda with head office in Singapore is not. EU regulations do not allow additional fees to be added at the last click.

Happens to men all the time. But only matters when it happens to a wymmyn. Worse even, when it happens to a man he will nonetheless get called a predator.

Approved at EU level then. Because if I remember right for example Sweden and Belgium don't recommend it for over 60. It might be difficult finding a physician willing to breach the party line in such countries. This disease is a new ballgame as getting it once does the reverse from giving immunity. We are not out of the woods yet.

Ok, anyway it seems it is not recommended for the over 60 years old who never had dengue. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893923000583

I never had much luck with Thai avocados. They never seem to ripen as they should. They grow darker and darker until they become pitch black and hard as stone. I don't see any other use for them except as cannon balls. Until such time as I purchase a cannon on Lazada I'll skip buying avocados in Thailand.

Qdenga is a vaccine for those without previous infections. I wonder if it's worth getting.

A "big" online escort service for foreigners worthy of the name has never existed in Thailand that I know of. Just a few websites with a handful of mostly 10 year-old pics. Funny how the police here is regularly reported to crack down on "notorious" outfits that no one has ever heard of.

Isn't the canal connecting two oceans? If so how can there be a lack of water? I thought that the ice caps were melting and the oceans were rising. Now the oceans are drying up.

The Shingrix vaccine is over 90% effective.

I could never finish a Dickens novel (not for want of trying). Dickens' characters are unconvincing, his children characters come across as though they were 60 years old. His writing is unwieldy. His humour is lame.