PeteDaKat

12 hours ago, ChaiyaTH said:

It is 28 years if assuming 7% yearly returns on capital, which is acceptable to expect. Just get bitcoin already lol, or get creamed...

Good golly, yes. So many people so late to getting aboard Bitcoin. Talking about 7% returns, when Bitcoin in the last single year is up 477%. Many people are asleep at the switch. I just sit and listen to the others moan about the $->฿ exchange rate on the pension wire transfers. I don't talk about it much, because people don't want to hear it. So many extremely sour grapes.

The Q.E. is concerning with all the debt-backed money being printed at a wild pace by the US.

6 hours ago, SymS said:

It's Bitcoin Cash (BCH), not Bitcoin (BTC), and it's possible to buy fractions of Bitcoin. Now it's easy with apps like Coinomi wallet.

Before I also had around 0.4 Bitcoin (BTC) in my hard drive, but it failed and the backup as well, so it's all gone...

Yes, where $1 is divided up into 100 pennies, 1 bitcoin is divided up into its base unit of 100,000,000 Satoshi. Easy to buy small amounts.

Bitcoin Cash is much cheaper, around $725.

So sad you lost your coin. Is this a tragic boating accident?

22 hours ago, giddyup said:

but still cost around 200 baht for the cheapest model.

Am I missing something? ฿200, ~$6.50? The headline is why they are so expensive. If this is paeng gern bpai, I'd guess Airpods for ฿6,000 is out of the question.

4 hours ago, torturedsole said:

God's way of reminding you to backup regularly.  ????

I know he's in pain, but you said it before me. No Time Machine drive, not even a flash drive? That really makes for a very bad day. This post got me off my butt to plug in the Time Machine drive to update my backup and make a fresh copy of my Documents folder to my flash drive.

This is how I did it while I was away from Thailand for a year and kept my phone alive.

First have a Baht balance on your account.

Mao Mao Code cost is ฿30

I did it just now to test and the service works.

(Roaming ON before you leave the country) With AIS SIM in the phone, go to keypad and dial *500*9#, then Call.

In a moment, you'll get SMS notifying you that the baht was deducted from your balance and 30 days of validity added to your number. $1/month ain't bad.

You can do it repeatedly to max out to 1 year.

There is also https://mobiletopup.com/ that have all kinds of packages. One is 90 days validity for ฿25.

I used it while in US to keep my number alive. It was always fussy about my credit card, but they have links to Thai banks and you can pay with bitcoin and 7 other cryptos.

I saw the stipulation once again about the $100,000 medical insurance for covid to get in. What company in their right mind would write such a policy? What would the premium be? Enquiring minds... 

On 6/17/2020 at 12:32 PM, Henryford said:

It will be years before Thailand gets 5G. But if you want one now i would suggest the Samsung S10 5G, on Lazada now under 20,000 baht.

I was sitting in my Grab car at Chiang Mai CenFet. A billboard across the superhighway big as a highrise emblazoned AIS 5G!!! I didn't like the green. Perhaps you're a step or two behind?

If you work through the visa conversion process to Non-Imm O for retirement, once you get your local bank account with your proof of residence letter, you need to wire transfer the money into the Thai account from your outside home bank. The deposit must be stamped with FTT category or Immigration will see the money as invalid for the ฿800,000 one must hold. Bringing money in a suitcase will just be your play money, rent deposit money, etc., but will not be good for meeting immigration requirements.

10 hours ago, Elkski said:

I agree, all the top infected countries will not make it in 2020 .  If there is much spike in the 2nd wave from the first batch of countries, and I predict there will be, 

It is no longer an IF. US opened up too early because masks are Communism, or Fascist Science, I need to get my hair done, or whatever other bat<deleted> going on over there. In today's paper 19 States are seeing cases spike from everybody having a great time on Memorial Day. Woo Hoo! Hoist your beers in the air! Freedom!

4 hours ago, CLW said:

Regular post services from Europe have been possible only by surface during the last weeks and took accordingly about 6 to 7 weeks. 

It does seem the premium services are still quick but oh so expensive. A mailer with 2 envelopes in it costs $38.

I cheaped out and sent US Postal Service from Houston. One envelope. It arrived 53 days later.

On 5/19/2020 at 11:32 AM, simon43 said:

I currently receive 8% pa on my savings here in Laos with a Franco-Lao bank.

If you're getting 8% you need to give the bank's name and address so we can all go over there. That is insanely high. Bangkok Bank Fixed Account, akin to a CD, was 1.5% when I opened it. By the time a buddy opened one to hold his ฿800K it had dropped to 1%.

My US money market  just dropped to 1.25% thanks to the Fed printing $1M per second.

Pray tell how can they pay this sky-high rate?

Gobsmacked is right! Overly optimistic by leaps and bounds. Why are they even trying to come here? If they can even enter, they'll see about 14-day quarantine upon entry.

Hell, I can't even go across the line to another Province and come back without a 14-day homestay.

The Americans have been so belligerent and brain-dead, opening up as the the daily dead are still counted in the thousands, I'd expect a ban on anybody coming in with a blue US passport. Canada extended their ban of the filthy Americanss just now! Hanging my head...

10 hours ago, Trujillo said:

Bangkok Hospital: 3,500 baht (US$110)

 

RAM Hosptial: 6,500 baht (US$200)

 

Maharaj Nakorn Hospital: 8,000 baht (US$250)

Those prices are CRAZY CHEAP! The poor Americans pay north of $3,000. I'll take two, please!

On 5/1/2020 at 6:09 PM, Berkshire said:

This is a direct reflection of the sort of Thai/Asian women that YOU have dated.  I've dated literally hundreds of Thai women and have not seen this "dangerous" tendency you speak of.  It seems you attract the nutters. 

You change girlfriends like the book of the month club!

200 girlfriends over 30 years of pursuit is at least 6.67 girlfriends per year, every year! Doesn't word spread through the girl community that you are a player who won't commit?

On 4/26/2020 at 12:31 AM, White Christmas13 said:

Well you getting ripped of in any case, i pay 10Australian dollars for my haircut

which is just 5 English pounds I guess.

You must live in a completely different and cheap economy, to be able to get a barber to make a house call to cut your hair. In the last city I lived in, it was a trip across town to pay $30. Tell me where to go to get one of these super cheap and high quality haircuts!

Your biggest No-Go is #2. iPhone uses nano-SIM, not micro-SIM and there is one nano, not two.

All current iPhones are world phones #4, and support a long list of frequencies.

• FDD‑LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 29, 30, 66, 71)
• TD‑LTE (Bands 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 48)
• CDMA EV‑DO Rev. A (800, 1900 MHz)
• UMTS/HSPA+/DC‑HSDPA (850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz)
• GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)

11 Pro Max is the only one with a screen big enough for you.

On 4/12/2020 at 12:40 AM, timendres said:

In the US, RV-ing is a religion. And there is endless variety. A good choice. Assuming you have the option.

Not as endless as it once was because Covid has closed many national parks.

The bears are returning to Yosemite. Oh, and mountain lions... hungry mountain lions.

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/a31919987/national-parks-closed-coronavirus/

4 hours ago, Saltire said:

My wife has been doing this cleaning of banknotes for 2 weeks now, but she has always viewed banknotes as 'dirty' so I am not surprised.

Is a discussion about money laundering allowed on TV? ????

 

On a regular day money is filthy-nasty. These days the possibilities for infection bloom like a thousand star of death flowers.

I sat down and thought about not so much washing, rinsing and putting it out on the line to dry, but just kill and kill again.

So I took the spray bottle normally used to mist shirts before ironing and gave all the money a light spray, set the iron to Cotton Setting and got my money to sizzling like bacon on the ironing board. A few 100º higher than needed should be good to kill anything. It looks so nice and crisp!

But, does anybody know why so much money smells like dirty feet?

1 hour ago, Mark1066 said:

That’s not an announcement of a curfew, it’s an announcement that a state of emergency will be declared on Thursday...

Let me know what you find: I bet people are operating off paragraph 8 of the article I linked to:

Level 1 – general emergency situations.

No one may leave the home within the specified period. Unless authorised by a competent official. The current news says that the curfew will be specified at 19.00-07.00 hrs (7pm-7am).

9 minutes ago, TigerandDog said:

what curfew? I cannot find any announcement of a curfew for CM or anywhere else in Thailand. Please post the details instead of just making a statement that has not yet been published. As far as I'm aware a curfew is still under consideration.

 

How about this?

https://thethaiger.com/coronavirus/thai-pm-announces-emergency-decree-comes-into-effect-on-march-26

So where is Central Festival then? If it's the one by Highway 11 that's the wrong side of town for me and my bicycle.

21 minutes ago, nglodnig said:

 

Superhighway 11 and Kaeonawarat Rd. 118 Yes northeast side.

You bicycle at this time of year? You are a very hardy fellow. 

12 hours ago, tom in bangkok said:

Either of these are fine, but 1Password has a much better whitepaper so is more secure in theory. I also vaguely remember LastPass was breached a while ago?

 

A good password manager and 2-factor authentication (I recommend Authy) is basically the best you can practically do to protect yourself.

My Dynamic Duo is Bitwarden and Authy for 2fa. It's a tedious bore to go through all your passwords if you've used the same one on multiple sites, but evil never sleeps, so I've slogged through them and now have all unique passwords on my logins. And as the booger-men get every more clever and computing power increases, I've started increasing the length of my passwords, AND, changing them every 3-6 months. It's just another chore for the modern world, wash the dishes, take out the trash, change the passwords. Remember the good old days when 8 characters were enough?

9 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

Not sure about Edge. Some reports of it not working for 90 day reporting.

All you could do is try Edge but Chrome does seem to work and it is mentioned on the the online TM30 site.

Slight variations in the code even though Chrome, Brave and Edge are all Chromium based...

As long as there's a way to get through submitting the form, I'll be content with whatever gets me through the night.