LetsGoJoe

Oh for sure...never know when that ordinary massage may head for a sparkling twist & turn! 😁

I've had to do this recently, this option was explained to me by an Immigration officer in CM. You can stay a total of 6-months without the bank-drop. This involves thinking with your feet; leaving Thailand (Laos for example) pay 2,000 b, turn-around and come back to Thailand, then after 1-month go to Immigration and get the 2-month 'visiting Thai-family' visa (1900b)....and repeat the cycle again one more time. After 15yrs of non-'O' 1yr visas I was forced to compromise my visa bank-funds due to the effects of pandemic. This can in the least buy you some time while you wait for things to align for your 1yr.visa. I'm heading back to The Great Woke North for 6-mons and will try and get my 1yr. non 'O' marriage visa there as opposed to sending 400,000B to my BKK account and being charged tax (?) on that. * A minor detail; the 400,000b has to arrive in your Thai bank from outside Thailand 2 months before applying for your visa. Cheers & Good Luck

So why has Sweden suddenly become the crusader of 'cash-protection'? A few months back a book became available for free-download to the public domain called The Great Taking, by David Rogers Webb, a very dark prediction of what may come to pass in the global financial markets, in the not so distant future. This book has apparently seriously spooked the investment & portfolio management world. The author is an American who moved to Sweden and bought a small farm. In 2011 he had a meeting with the Swedish Minister and State Secretary for Financial Markets outlining the disturbing patterns arising in the financial markets and the apparent sinister objective being pursued. Connecting the dots now, I have to wonder if this 'cash-protection' scheme from the Swedes is directly or indirectly related to the author and his book..? It's a disturbing read, recommended to anyone who is concerned about protecting their financial future.

The Swiss are really making the news lately.....not in a good way either.

I went to a Cannabis Symposium is CM recently where a big player in the industry was giving a talk on the pending change in regulation. He says it will happen and would be at least 1yr for any sort of implementation to begin. This guy (American) has 15 cannabis shops on Sukhumvit alone and said whichever way the regulation goes he is not concerned as he was originally set-up as a "medicinal" store front and still employs the key personnel.

I bought a pak(6) of 3M-KN95 masks specifically for the burning-season, inexpensive, comfortable and rated for PM2.5. So far, the breezy-conditions and perhaps the new "rule" of needing a fire-permit 😁 has been keeping the AQI at a fair level here in Chiang Mai.....so far.

No....you just smile and leave.

It's still been unusually chilly in the mornings here in CM, much like winter.....the days, however are definitely summer-temps but with clear blue skies....the "smoke-season" has yet to show up. strange indeed, but very pleasant....so far.

There's this line from one of Leonard Cohen's songs: "Everybody got this broken feeling, Like their father or their dog just died". ......my Dad just passed a few days ago at 95, my Brother is thinking of deferring the funeral to May when me and the Fam go back to Canada....."broken feeling"?......nope, more like "the ship just came in feeling"....Thanks Dad!!....I'll have more than one on you 🙏

.....or back to where he came from... The Great Woke North 😁

Perhaps a case of a Chicken trying to get to the other side of the road on a cross-walk.....not always an easy task on Beach Road.

Not only are there Chinese police, but Chinese police STATIONS in Canada!....not to mention the military as well. The world is their oyster....it would seem.

Have you been to Tak?....a few years back I did a motorcycle trip; CM-Mae Sot -Sukohthai-CM, took a nice back road off the 105 that ran east, parallel to Hyw 12 from Mae Sot. Beautiful green and lush mountains all around for many kms, then suddenly, what appears like a lunar landscape, yet mountainous, opens up in front of us. As far as the eye can see are denuded hills - it was jaw dropping,we had to stop to take it in. The sheer Hercules hand & foot machete labor involved in the forest destruction of whole mountain-sides was impressive to imagine. As we continued to ride through this area we only saw a hand-full of hills that had active crops on them, the vast majority appeared to be abandoned or rendered infertile after likely only a few crop rotations, which assumed to be mostly corn. We saw people working the harvest, sacking and rolling bundles of corn down the hillside to a fleet of waiting trucks. So who's responsible for this age old slash and burn farming practice? None other than the Hmong, who are well know to be the most systematically environmentally destructive Tribe in the hills. They are not all poor and squalored. Many are very well organized and financed by big corps. such as CP to grow the crops on scale that they want... the environment be damned. The area we rode through that day is only a fraction of the environmental destruction in Tak province, and it continues as they are forced to move to the next mountain as the top soil is quickly exhausted of its nutrients. So the clearing and the burning follow suit. The Hmong are not solely to blame, they are only availing opportunity handed to them from Big Corp. and made possible from the blind-eyes of the gov. and local forest management - Corruption 101. This just reflects one of many issues that contribute to the overall poor air quality. With agriculture taking up 49% of land-use in Thailand the AQI problem is not likely to be resolved anytime soon....or later.

Chiang Mai has become infamous over the years for obvious reasons, but to be fair look at a fire map or have a peak at the AQI of other provinces, it becomes obvious that not only is the entire upper-half of the country a smouldering fire-pit but the neighboring countries as well. If the CM Gov. were able to completely stop man-made burning within the province, CM-city, being in a basin, would likely still fill-up with smoke. There are numerous places like Pai or Mae Hong Song for example that are by far consistently worst than Chiang Mai, they are not on the international radar as is BKK & CM. In short, the burning IS far worst in Thailand than indicated from the PM2.5 in CM.

As an avid motorcyclist for decades here I have come to refer the Toyota Commuter vans as 'Death on Wheels'. A relatively new scourge on the hwys are the hopped-up Iszuz pickup trucks that transport farm produce - very aggressive drivers.