CygnusX1

One’s in the past, the other’s in the present and future.

If you’re in Thailand 180 days or more in a year, you’ll be a tax resident of Thailand, and have to file a tax return and possibly pay tax, depending on your situation, double taxation treaties with your country etc. Hundreds of pages of discussion on this forum.

It won’t be long before even those tourists with flights home that don’t go anywhere near the Middle East will be stranded in Thailand when there’s no more jet fuel for commercial flights. I’m booked to fly to Thailand next month, and on to Europe a couple of months later. If I do make it to Thailand, which is looking less likely by the day, I could be stranded there. It wouldn’t be a problem, except that I’ve carefully calculated my annual stays to be less than 180 days to avoid the new tax laws.

Gold star for the Thai government. Way better than Australia’s pathetic 36 days for petrol and 29 days for jet fuel. Gives me hope that if I can just manage to get to Thailand next month, there’ll still be enough jet fuel for my flight to Europe in June.

So, you don’t reject anyone’s religious belief. You’d then have no problems with the mass sacrifice of prisoners of war and children under the religion of the Aztecs? I don’t think any philosopher worthy of the name has FAITH in his or her world view. I’m sure that just like any proper scientist, they accept that their view might not be the correct one, and would be the least likely of all people to claim that any other view must be heretical and therefore rejected.

We’re discussing whether speech describing the fear of Islam as being rational should be banned or not. Broadening the discussion to one of free speech in general doesn’t seem to be going too far off topic, but it’s way too far off topic to be discussing the rights and wrongs of Israel’s recent actions. Plenty of other multi page discussions on that in the forum.

I’ve always despised this ridiculous idea of ‘hate speech’, so no, criticising a religion should definitely fall within any definition of free speech. Defining what should be free speech has never been easy, but examples of banned speech should be things like defamation, clearly and directly threatening speech, and obscenity (though the definition of the latter has obviously greatly changed). Very recently in an Australian state, a protester was arrested for wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “From the river to the sea”. Although I loathe and despise such people, I’m outraged at his arrest, as it’s clearly an attack on his right to free speech. An interpretation that it’s threatening speech because it implies he’s calling for the destruction of Israel is drawing far too long a bow (and I’m a strong supporter of Israel). Those lovers of ‘hate speech’ laws should be very careful, as this stupid invention by the Woke can so easily be turned against them. Not a US citizen.

A few days ago I booked a Thai Air flight to Europe as insurance in addition to the flight I had already booked via Dubai in June, and was pleasantly surprised by the low cost. Thought I had all bases covered, but I’m now wondering if there’s going to be enough aviation kerosene for any commercial flights by then.

The Thai police can’t be expected to continuously monitor every Indian wearing a gold chain. At least this type of theft isn’t regarded as a trivial crime not worth investigating, as in some European cities.

Just yesterday I booked a flight with EVA in early September from Vienna to Bangkok. I did it directly on the EVA website, with no problems at all, and the price was about the same as last year’s flight for the same route and time. So maybe you were unlucky or I was very lucky, you just have to keep trying.

Of course leaving Dubai is one thing, flying to Dubai is quite another. Given that most passengers on Bangkok to Europe flights via Dubai just transit Dubai, I wonder if it’s possible for Emirates to replace those flights with direct to Europe routes. I’m sure an A380 has the range. I’m booked on Emirates from Bangkok to Rome via Dubai on 4 June. If I were smart I’d book another flight on a direct route, but I hate the idea of booking a flight that I don’t intend to use, it’s not the money, just doesn’t seem the right thing to do.

A couple of hours ago I booked Vienna to Bangkok direct with EVA for early September. I was a bit panicked because I thought that with nobody booking flights via the Middle East, direct flights might sell out even that far in advance. The price was about the same as when I flew the same route with them last year, around the same time. I can confirm that you’re allowed 2 checkin bags, each 23 kg, so with my single suitcase of 15 kg I should be fine.

Also see a podiatrist, you might have flat feet as I do. Professionally fitted orthotics have greatly reduced my knee pain. You can see the difference in the soles of my old shoes - instead of being worn and squashed on the inner side, there’s now even wear across the soles.

I was there from mid December to early February, swimming and long beach walks most days. Sand was always pretty clean.

The ‘blue bottle’ familiar to Australians, and known elsewhere as the ‘Portuguese man o’ war (actually a siphonophore rather than a jellyfish, and also a colony of organisms) is a different species, Physalia physalis.