Khyron

If you have an address in the states, I found Schwab bank is really easy to do trading with. There are no foreign ATM fees, and all forex transactions are comped back to you. It is mostly an online only bank, I applied without being near a branch. Others here have worked with them as well.

We just shelled out to raise land about 6ft, it is approx. 7/10 of a rai. Land was very low, not rice paddy, just family vegetable farm that had not been used for 15 years. 10 wheel trucks, 4 days, 644 loads. Trucks were full, we made sure of that. The dirt was from a former tree farm, so it was decent stuff, no rocks. SIL made the deal at 210B per truck, it was a guy she knew for a while who told her to say we paid 200B, just to get the deal from someone else. The final bill was just over 135k, including the tractor guy. We are happy with it.

This is a great discussion. What I will probably end up doing when we move is to keep my existing cell phone number which is already used as the primary for everything. Figure out a way to keep it as a wifi number (I have Mint now; they have an international roaming and/or wifi phone plan) and keep doing what I do now. The other phone plans that are being thrown out there are something to look into. I really remember only calling the bank in the last 20 years for something I can't recall. Everything I can do online via data, not voice. I have two banks/brokerages and will consolidate them to one. That way it will be easier to access everything. This is how I hope it should work, YMMV.

Seems like Xi and his cohorts are twisting Cha Cha's arm to try to get one so they can "inspect " it. F-16 would be a much better plane for sure.

Thanks for the detailed reply. The land for our house is being filled as I type, but it will be a few years to go before we build. I forgot to mention, I would have a bevy of batteries to keep everything going but keeping them topped up on the grid is an idea I didn't think of. Crossy's drawing makes it all clear. Appreciate the welcome.

I really liked the comment about how the work up north was seasonal, so the workers are as well. That kind of made sense, then I thought about the people in the village over the years. My wife would be considered a workaholic, her brother is very driven as well, having two farms, one is almost 200k away from his home. that is the way they were brought up. A significant amount of the neighbors are hardworking as well, but the kids I see, holy <deleted>, no motivation at all. Most of our nieces and nephews have this hard-working gene, but most of the other kids........

One way I have thought about an off-grid system, is to have the A/C connected to the solar, and everything else using PEA. This allows the most energy consuming device to be off the grid. When you have a brownout or blackout, have the whole house set up to be switched over to solar until such time the PEA is running again. When the mains drop out, you would have sensitive devices on a small individual UPS's, they would protect them from brownouts as well, which are much more damaging. Switching everything over to solar, would of course, allow life to go on. Switching could be automatic, or manually, using a large amperage industrial disconnect, relatively inexpensive and would last decades. I believe the above described system would allow solar to be used without interfering with the PEA, as it is totally independent. Getting deep into it, possibly programming a good PLC to detect a phase loss and energize a large contact, doing the switching automatically. I am open to suggestions, as I am a lowly Industrial mechanic and not an engineer. ????

We would also hope that this is one of many changes coming up, doing away with the physical paper and using computer records for multiple things. There is going to be a day (maybe already here) that the old "sticks in the mud" at the government agencies that are against modernization are getting retired and the younger, more worldly people are being put in charge. Also, the person who's relative had the monopoly on printing the TM6 may have moved on or something...????

Hello, Long time lurker, (5+ years) but will retire sometime in the future, hopefully to LOS. Been with my wife for almost 30 years, she is from the Phu Wiang area. Currently in California, we go back for a month every couple of years. Hopefully it doesn't get Farang unfriendly in the future.

I had to comment on this. Long time lurker, first time poster. Anyway, I was looking at a website called flightradar24.com last week, it is a real time view of all aircraft in the air around the world. Poking around LOS, i noticed a RTA VIP jet take off from Phitsanulok airport, I think it was a Beechcraft Kingair. It went straight into Myanmar and when it turned north reducing altitude, it turned off its transponder. The airport it landed at was Heho, it was reported on the ground for a few hours at least before I lost interest. They have to keep the transponder on for the commercial aircraft flying in the area. I also saw HIS 737 do touch and goes and land at Phitsanulok. My wife thought they exchanged cash to pay for the future incursion. flightradar24.com is an interesting site for aviation geeks. I will do a proper introduction later.