onebir

50 minutes ago, Tanoshi said:

The post you quoted was mine and I merely explained how the Non O-A Visa works in practice - not the requirements to obtain it. or Thailand's entry requirements.

Sure - I misunderstood

Actually the plastic inserts from some Chinese piao yi bei (飘逸杯) "tea pots" suit making coffee quite well.  They have a valve that retains the water until you press a button, then it flows down through built-in mesh. If you stir the coffee/water mix just before pressing the button, the coffee grounds are evenly suspend and your coffee pours out more or less immediately, so grind coarseness has no impact on brewing time And, since they're plastic and have lids, the coffee comes out pretty hot.

In China you can get them for $1-2; I couldn't find them selling on Lazada though. Popped inside a slightly larger cup or mug, I think they make a lot of sense for travel.

Relative to a drip filter, the only quality minus I can think of is that the inner mesh, which is really designed for tea leaves, is quite coarse, so some finer grounds goes through. They're also not very robust.

3 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

A OA visa requires health insurance. And now the covid 19 insurance valid for a year to enter the country.

Dang, the post I was quoting seemed to imply not - thanks!

5 hours ago, Tanoshi said:

O-A Visa now, because of the reluctance to keep any funds in a Thai bank account.

Possibly dumb question: there's an O-A retirement visa with no mandatory health insurance? (Presumably covid insurance aside ATM.)

49 minutes ago, Maybole said:

Today, I have got 4 of the same Newsletter, at 0322,0322,0324,and 0324. It is a recurrent problem but I would rather have several copies then none at all

Only 3 here

34 minutes ago, bangon04 said:

Surely the real gas masks needed in ChiangMai are more effective at reducing virus transmission than the cloth masks used in other provinces......

"ChiangMai double-masking": one for Covid, one for PM

8 hours ago, adammike said:

After googling the upside down method,naturally all things aeropress started popping up.One was the aeropress world championship (Google it at your peril),they printed the recipe's! Of the top four and all of them used the paperfilters one used two,and they all really gave them a good wash first.just saying. 

Actually putting the two filters (both paper or metal over paper) should boost the pressure a bit, but the espresso standard is 8 bar. 6 bar in the cheaper hand-pumped espresso machine works ok though. (I got one  recently & it does make decent espresso, but involves a lot of assembly & cleaning.)

22 minutes ago, adammike said:

Ha ha, I had to Google that, I will try it tomorrow.It also explains that pre soaking the paper filter removes the paper taste that some complain of. 

????

Yeah, I kind of stumbled across it too. "Upside down" you can let the coffee brew as long as you like without it dripping through, and the metal filter's less trouble to place correctly. Works better all round.

8 minutes ago, adammike said:

No,I am not travelling for obvious reasons and plan to try the metal filter when I do,I also still have some paper ones left to use up first.

Fair enough; mine was supplied with both, but I ditched the paper ones when I started using the Aeropress "upside-down".

1 hour ago, Susco said:

It's all in their head, because a good coffee depends on the ingredients you use, not the appliance

Seems to me both are fairly important, and some coffee makers make it easier to get decent coffee from mediocre beans.

The water is also very important but according to a podcast I can only hazily remember, it's not just the pH, which you can check with a simple meter, that matters, but the mix of minerals, so it's a bit hard to adjust for.

1 minute ago, Nkpjed said:

So you have an alcoholic German teaching English.  You can’t make this <deleted> up.

Provided he can, mai pen rai!

1 hour ago, adammike said:

The aeropress with paper filters give the cleanest brew and easy to clean,good for traveling.

Have you tried the metal filter?

20 minutes ago, mrfill said:

A vote for the Viet coffee pot here. Buy lots - they're cheap and bend easily...

 

I have one too, but the coffee takes ages to drip through. By which time it's coldish. Or if you put in too little coffee, the water goes through too fast.

For Vietnamese style coffee, in cafes where a low cost implement is needed for every cup sold, they seem perfect. But I don't use mine much at all. (Maybe I'm not using it correctly?)

Worth checking out an Aeropress style device; the extra bit of pressure and ability to control the brewing time help & they're actually pretty easy to use (especially with a metal filter).

13 hours ago, Destiny1990 said:

Very hospital people, with decent English skills.

Got to watch out, or you'll get hospitalized...

5 hours ago, webfact said:

If just one million people from that group move to Thailand, each spending 100,000 baht per month or 1.2million baht per year, that would generate 1.2 trillion baht per year for the economy.

If just 0.000001% of pigs could fly, it would rain 200g of bacon/sq km after thunderstorms.

19 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

The made the decision for them after I wrote my post. The are allowed now if you have been vaccinated more than 14 days before you apply for your certificate of entry.

Ah ok, thanks for clarifying!

On 3/28/2021 at 3:27 AM, ubonjoe said:

It is 14 or maybe 10 days dependent on where you are traveling from. There is no 7 days yet.

Any idea why some ASQ hotels might be listing 7 day prices, eg these ones?

I got seven just now, seems too many to just be a misunderstanding...

30 minutes ago, ThaiVisaCentre said:

The cheapest package for 15 day is 26,000 THB from what we remember.

But it makes sense because the cheaper hotels cannot reduce their prices as much as the more expensive hotels as majority of the cost for the cheaper hotels is probably ASQ Hospital related.

Ah, well still a ~15% saving then. Hadn't thought about the ASQ hospital costs - good point!

It could also be that the cheaper hotels are taking a bit longer to offer 10 day packages?

It looks like the cheapest 10 day ASQ packages are about THB21-22k, within a few k of what the cheapest 15 day packages used to be?

8 hours ago, tifino said:

find a pharmacy that sells Metamucil or Fibrogel.

The Fibrogel usually available there as a 10 sachets pack... 

 

I think these are just branded versions of psylium husk, which should be pretty cheap.

On 3/29/2021 at 10:18 AM, webfact said:

was told at a meeting held at Phuket Provincial Hall on Saturday (Mar 27) that the average income in Phuket had plunged to B1,900.

From what???

Quote

Father Wilhemus Tulak, a priest at the church, told Indonesian media that the suspected bomber tried to enter the church grounds on a motorbike, but had been stopped by a security guard. Ten people had been wounded in total, some of them seriously, he said.

It would have been many more if bomb(er) had exploded inside the church.

7 hours ago, webfact said:

The need to scrap dual pricing was again mulled publicly last year, as officials highlighted aspects of Thailand’s tourism industry that should be overhauled as part of its post-COVID-19 recovery.

Next up, triple pricing.

(Sign me up for the  "Cheap Charlie" tier.)