The Cipher

Damn. I just read in the news that SCB bought a controlling stake in Bitbub? Wild. Didn't see that one coming.

Ah <deleted> it. I'm gonna do it. It's ok to disagree with what someone else has written, but try and do so articulately or at least wittily.

Sure, I take your point. Value is definitely relative to an individual's perspective. And from my perspective at least, I really do think Bangkok offers good value as a second home base. Vibrant city, lots of things to do, diversity and quality of many of the amenities exceeds Vancouver, and all of that for what I consider to be excellent value relative to the other cities that I'd considered as a second home (Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore). Sometimes I wonder if the different perspectives on Thailand here are just largely due to differences in personalities and lifestyle preferences.

I can in Canada. Which part of Canada are you from? As a Vancouverite one of the things that I've always found best about Bangkok was the great real estate value. Even if i just considered a simple rent-to-rent comparison, the same amount of money would get me hilariously more in BKK than YVR.

You've still got almost a couple decades on me, heh. But glad to hear you're still spry! I generally disagree with a lot of the opinions on here, but it's nevertheless been really interesting learning from the lives you've all lived. Like an interactive window into a world I don't usually get to see.

Don't let boos from the cheap seats get you down. It's just a bunch of bitter old guys lol. For what it's worth, I generally agree with your assessment of Thailand. The value for money you receive there is very strong. I've started splitting time between Vancouver and Bangkok and try and live equivalently-fun lives in each. Value in Bangkok is way better. Just have to adapt parts of your life/routine to maximize the relative advantages of the location you're in.

Thanks Salerno. Rare to see a written response to my posts from you, but the info is appreciated.

I apologize for being blunt about this, but you're wrong. There are some spectacular properties in Thailand and they're up there with anything you'd expect to find internationally. Many have prices to match, which could explain why they're relatively less explored in the mass market. I specialize in hospitality and casino investments as a day job, so I hope I'd know what I'm talking about here.

Hey just wondering - does anyone have a list of approved hotels and related guidelines for the 1 day quarantine adventure? I'm in the process of submitting a visa application to fly in early December and have booked a flight. Now just trying to figure out that hotel requirement. I kind of wonder if it's better to wait for closer to the date in case regulations change, but also prefer to give them ample time to process visa.

Nice to see a rare positive take on here. Thanks for sharing.

These posts are misleading. You're calculating daily change in net worth rather than cost per day. Using your method anyone who is running a surplus would have negative living costs per day, which makes no sense. More accurately you're spending ฿2,070 per day, or an average of ฿62,963 per month. And you're offsetting those costs with gains from investments in lieu of other income. If, for whatever reason, your investments decreased in value, ฿10.86/day wouldn't see you through and can't be thought of as a generalization of what's possible.

It always amuses me when members of this board accuse me of not thinking through my positions or assume that they have insight that I hadn't previously considered. I don't have too much else to add on this topic now other than what I've already written on this thread. I could detail the math and logic of my position in the context of the global marco and also break down the fundamental presuppositions behind different Covid viewpoints, but I don't have confidence that doing so would meaningfully aid audience understanding at this point. There's no way you could know this, since I'm just an online anon to you, but one thing I take some pride in is that my courage is not in doubt. It's only via the struggle that we overcome our fears, and only by seeking to achieve despite the knowledge that we might fail that we actualize as people.

I shudder to write this to a normie audience but...I would handle it like a man. The same way I handle everything else in my life. And if, despite my best efforts the outcome was unfavorable to me, I like to think I'd have the wisdom and composure to place my loss in the context of the wider interest of society. I've said this multiple times, but I'm comfortable with the nature of this game of life in which we are all participants. I am aware that this is an exceedingly rare outlook in today's society. It strikes me that our current situation is due as much to a lack of courage as anything else. So many people are scared of the virus despite its exceedingly low morality rate, and so many more are frightened of the vaccines despite their even lower mortality rates. When did we become a society of people frightened of a 99%+ survival rate in vaccinated populations, or the 99.9% survival rate of the vaccines themselves? Our leaders have neither the courage to truly reopen, nor the courage to mandate vaccination if that is indeed a tacit requirement for full reopening. This comment is aimed at nobody and no 'side' in particular. But I am deeply deeply disappointed about what the Covid crisis in general has revealed about so many of the people who inhabit this world with me.

Ok sorry that comment was a little harsh. My bad.

Why tf would I lie about being vaccinated? I've already written about my rationale for getting vaccinated elsewhere. Specifically that it's a low effort action with that is highly likely to confer additional protection against Covid. In addition to that, in Vancouver where I currently am, gov policies make it impractical to live life without being vaccinated. I literally have no reason to lie about this. If I were anti-vaccine I'd have no problem just taunting you about my vax status and then calling you a p-ssy for being scared of a 99% survival rate. Is it that hard to understand/accept that although I might be vaccinated myself, I just don't care if anyone else is vaccinated? Like, I meet people all the time at work meetings and just by generally living day to day life and their vaccine status doesn't even register in my mind. Built different. I actually don't really care if vaccines are made mandatory. It doesn't affect me at all. I just want life to return to normal like immediately. And think it's stupid that even after two years of this so many people continue to view Covid through the scope of their feelings rather than their brains. If vaccines need to be mandatory in order for life to normalize, make them mandatory. If not, then I'm not going to pretend like we can't just tank a structurally higher death rate for an interim period. Just do something that will result in immediate normalization. All the weakness I see around me is disgusting.

Respectfully, I'm pretty sure it isn't me that's missing the point here. Basically my point is that there is more than one viable path forward in dealing with the pandemic. And the optimal path isn't necessarily the one that minimizes deaths. That last sentence is uncomfortable for many people to accept but is critical to understanding the case I'm making. I think people should get vaccinated too. I've said as much many times. But if they don't, I don't see any reason to continue holding up society for them (or anyone). The risk of Covid to the integrity our overall societies is miniscule at this point. At what level of risk or vaccine saturation would it be acceptable to drop all restrictions? This question needs to be answered to avoid an ever-moving target. "60% vaccination, no 70%, actually 80%, in fact - let's just keep restrictions in place until we've hunted down the last hermit and shoved a needle in their arm." If you understand the risk/reward tradeoff on a societal level, you will understand why I am so against continued restrictions despite being broadly supportive of vaccination. Also - regarding the media, I'm not blaming the news for the problems that we're having so much as I am the general public's poor data comprehension skills (as evidenced by the fact that we are having this conversation). Think about it like this. Every night for almost two years now the news has been steady blasting case counts and death counts as numbers devoid of context. 100 new cases, 1000 new cases, one million total deaths. But what do those numbers actually mean? The context is critical. I'm going to repeat that. The context is critical. I'll spare you a whole data science lesson, but basically - when it comes to populations that number in the billions and an event that happens over time, it's helpful to understand numbers by thinking in percentages and trends. Unfortunately this isn't something that gen pub really seems to understand, and our media orgs and politicians made absolutely no effort to aid in that understanding. I don't think there was any behind the scenes grand plan for this. I just think that it was simply in the interest of media businesses (record eyeballs) and politicians (perceived low death counts are a political opportunity and perceived high death counts are political suicide) to not take the difficult but more optimal path and explain the context of these numbers to the populations that they supposedly serve.

Yeah lol. It's pretty obvious a lot of posters (1) aren't car guys; and (2) are relatively clueless about manufacturing trends in general. Auto supply chains are so complex now, especially for newer cars. I'd wager that pretty much every new car that rolls off the factory has critical tech manufactured in China - or at the very least Northeast Asia - regardless of the marque's country of origin. Hint: Think computer chips, sensors and screens. Way too many opinions driven by national zeal rather than actual solid info.

Yeah the discussion is getting circular. I think we should just tie it off for now. I'll chime-in in the future if I read something that I feel strongly about enough to clarify/opine on. Feel free to ping me with an "I told you so" if the asset class goes to zero. Zero, mind you, no victory laps for random crashes ????. I just cleared another bout of working abroad with my firm, so I expect to be in Bangkok from Dec through March next year. Can always hash this topic out over a beer at that time. I'm actually surprised at how easy it was to get them to agree this time. Somewhat unrelated, but I'm still pretty determined to have a night out with the average AseanNow forumer (not saying that's necessarily you) to see Bangkok through their eyes. Huge point of fascination for me.

I don't believe in any grand Covid conspiracy theory. The virus is what it is. The news sensationalized it -> causing general populations to panic -> and then governments locked down because pandering to frightened populations create political incentive for opportunistic politicians. A lot of governments (as evidenced by Thailand) are aware that travel needs to normalize at some point. But the residual fear in populations makes that kinda hard in practice. No government wants millions of deaths on their watch because even if that might only be, for example, 0.06% of population, every politician is aware that gen pub is going to focus on the raw number and not the rate. Just look at how hard it's been for me to get anyone on here to think in percentages. Allowing scary-sounding death rate numbers is political suicide for any politician - particularly those facing the ballot box. And I could take this opportunity to eviscerate the sacred cow of democracy, but I'll save that execution for a different time. Anyway I do understand why and how we got into this never-ending mess. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Yeah sure. Ideally they'd get vaccinated. But if they just don't want to, they just don't want to. I don't see any reason to hold society up for them, it's their choice to make. Why are we being asked to bend over to save people who don't even want the help? If they live, they live. If they die, they die. There's no fallacy, I just bluntly don't think saving every life is the priority that clearly a lot of other people seem to think it is.

After having to register for my third vaccine passport in the last month (this time with gov-mandated authenticator app!) I have decided to go on a (probably ill advised) rant. I'm a pro-vaxxer. I got vaccinated and generally encourage other people to do the same. But bluntly, I believe that it's every individual's choice to get or not get the vaccine. We need to just accept that and open up. Like, 100% open up. If they die, they die. If they pass it to a vulnerable person and the vulnerable person dies, they die. If they pass it to me and I die, I die. The ongoing disruption of normal life at this point is ridiculous. Like, it's legit insane. On a percentage basis, Covid has always only killed very small amount of people. As we learned more about the disease, that rate declined. And as vaccines rolled out and continue to roll out across the world, that rate has declined further. At this point we are looking at rates well below 1% mortality in fully vaccinated persons. Please don't @ me with "bUt MiLliOnS oF pEopLe." If you want to say that, all you're really saying is that you don't understand percentages and you're bad at math (among other things). At some point during the pandemic, society seems to have collectively decided that its overriding imperative was to prevent Covid cases at all costs. All other considerations be damned. As far as I'm aware that was never debated at any point, and the logic of the premises underpinning that idea never came under scrutiny. Most people aren't even aware that it's a values judgment rather than a fundamental truth or necessity (if you understand this, try and explain it someone and watch their brains contort in any attempt not to process. You might even see it in responses to this post). People were scared, and that made restrictions politically expedient. The result? This single minded obsession with minimizing case counts regardless of the proportionality of measures taken to that effect. At this point we're still seeing panic of single digit deaths per day. In some parts of the world determined to stick to a zero Covid policy, we see mass restrictions over even a single new case. Like, are you serious? Does it not occur to people at any point how absolutely disproportionate measures are now to risk? Many countries (with vaccine saturaiton 70%+!) are still maintaining abnormal measures affecting day to day life, to say nothing of high barriers to international travel. It's unbelievable. How much inconvenience are we going to have to endure before we just nut up and get on with it? Like, if you're a person who genuinely thinks Covid is still a big deal, what specific rate or number would be the threshold at which you would no longer feel that arduous measures were warranted? Have you even thought about it? Because I'm betting you haven't. Ok rant over. I feel less frustrated now. As you were, lads. Carry on.

Yes.

I legit can hardly believe how addicted to alcohol/nightlife this board is. I enjoy a night out as much as the next bloke, but if you can't have fun without alcohol involved...time to take a loooong look in the mirror. I spent the first 9 months of this year in Bangkok. Had a great time when alcohol was permitted; had a great time when it wasn't. Hope you have a blast on holiday as well!

I have mixed feelings about this comment. On one hand, yeah. The local-oriented places are way more ???? and there's no way they'll die. Gf and I haven't been clubbing much since Covid but we did make it to TopOne earlier this year and were pretty blown away. Easily up there with any other club experience we'd had anywhere in the world. And I do realize that's not a scene that's really accessible to this board demographic, so I can understand why it's often overlooked here even though the quality is so much 'better.' But on the other hand I also think that the red light bars and related bustle give Bangkok part of its unique character. There's an authenticity to the aesthetics and the atmosphere of the red light districts that I feel would be a shame to lose. But on the other hand I've only ever visited the RLDs like twice, so maybe I'm talking out my αss and romanticizing something I know nothing about. Also definitely possible. I do wish that Bangkok would lose some of its seedy rep and I do wish that the expat mix would move upmarket a bit. But I also hope it can achieve those things without losing all of the rawness of its charm at the same time.

Population of USA is approx 329.5 million. 700,000 gone equates to a loss of approx 0.21%. Even doubling that number wouldn't clip the 1% mark. Large proportion of deaths were among people no longer in the workforce also. Ergo, shortage of workers due to direct effects of pandemic doesn't pass the sniff test. Yes. Yes, but at the same time, it does strike me as a little strange that tolerance for choice is in such short supply. Especially with vaccine saturation what it is already. Covid wasn't particularly lethal to broad populations at any point, and so we can intuit that mortality rates among the fully vaccinated have gotta be well below 1% at this point. I do wonder when the fuss will die down. Based purely on logic, it should've died down long ago. Although I agree with it, this take is ironic because the exact same sentence could've been used to justify a zero restriction approach to Covid from the jump. I would've agreed with a zero restriction approach too. ????