QuantumQuandry

Whether you agree or not, I stated my reason in the first paragraph. You didn't state ANY reasoning. You can't be "accurate" when you are just refuting something with no reason. You might as well have said "No, you doo doo head" for all the meaning your post had. Please try to have some reason you are disagreeing next time, though I won't be responding to you any longer, either way.

Thank you for clearly well thought out and reasoned reply.

But who said it has to be your home country?

Yes, she was illegally working in a bar, doing illegal work for an employer that illegally employed her and then, at the end of that chain of illegality, a customer (perhaps unknowingly, perhaps not) committed an illegal act by participating in it. *If* he wasn't aware of it, I consider this to be like going to Powermall and buying a TV, only to be arrested because Powermall sold you a stolen TV. If he was aware, of course, it's a different matter.

So...Mr. "Swift"...have you considered that some of those girls who look 21 might be 17?

If this is what happens when you smoke too much, I am going back to excessive drinking.

Not to pick on you because everyone does this...but are you not doing the same thing, adding to the divisiveness, by taking a negative stance on a forum against a politician you don't like?

The very first paragraph of this thread: "Donald Trump has nudged ahead of Joe Biden in national polling for the 2024 presidential election, a survey published on Saturday revealed, a day after the US president branded his predecessor as “despicable” at an event in California.". As a slightly-right leaning moderate, my view is that both sides of the aisle, and particularly the media, have created, and feed on, the dissention between two sides. Personally, I don't want to hear about how bad the other side is, from anyone. I want to hear a solid plan for our country from each candidate and I will judge for myself which plan I like better. No more than that. No less than that. Let your plan speak for itself.

"as if"? You might be the only one that thinks that it was literally designed to target expats. It can be a stupid/nonsense tax and affect expats, even if it's not targeted at them. At home, paying taxes gives me some benefits and at least some of my taxes go towards things I use. Paying taxes to Thailand does jack <deleted> for me but eat up time and money. It doesn't matter whether you call this proposal a new rule or a new interpretation, it didn't exist before, whatever it is. Bad comparison, anyway. Why compare it to my home country when I already chose to leave there? Compare it to similar options. Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Cambodia, Columbia, Brazil, etc.

Following with interest. The big limitation, for my purposes, with the Amity treaty, is that it doesn't let you own land. Would love to hear more about startup costs and the work visa thing, though :) Other than being able to work, is a work visa better than a retirement visa? Obviously has downsides in terms of paperwork and investment.

Totally, I am tired of farangs pretending they aren't farangs and eating spicy <deleted> that I am not made for and causing every Thai person to think I want everything 'native', instead of being appropriate for a farang :) Ok, tongue in cheek but there is a point here about not getting upset when not everyone wants to do 'Thailand' the way you do Thailand. I think pineapple on pizza, mayonnaise on fries and ketchup on steak is disgusting but hey, if that's how people want to eat it, I am not going to let it bug me.

Couple other options: 1. P2P 2. Don't need to move to another country, just cash out in another country. I don't know where you are from but if you had a bank account in another country, you could cash out there and then Wise money into Thailand. Depending on how the new rules work out and what your other income is, may not get taxed that way.

I don't want to whinge about whinging so let me just say... I completely, 100%, enthusiastically and empathetically support the right of all nationalities to whinge...any time and anywhere. Provided, of course...that I am not there.

Ask how much 'free' money the government will pass out for people to piss away on crypto and you will have your answer. Note: this is not a political rant, the last cycle was tied to exactly this.

Protein + cocaine will give you energy. Hint: It's not the protein.

At best, it's debatable and won't apply to most people. Nothing against protein powder but it's best application is simply convenience.

It's fairly simple, imo. (Sufficient protein from food) > (Sufficient protein from food and powder) > (Not enough protein) Protein powder is to help you get enough protein, which can be hard for some people to get through their normal diet, due to time constraints or laziness. If you can get enough protein by eating whole foods, that's optimal. But if you can't get enough protein that way, protein powder is better than not having enough. And most people don't get enough because the target number for a gym rat is higher than you would think.

Is Penang actually cheaper than Pattaya, per the list?

Yes, there is a reason. Not sure why you think it's the lawsuits, though... "Pfizer (PFE) stock continued its 11-month decline in November after its third-quarter sales missed expectations amid waning demand for Covid products." : https://www.investors.com/news/technology/pfizer-stock-buy-now/

If he does what people have suggested (turn off power and see if the meter is still running), then it's a much quicker way to see if your power is getting siphoned somewhere, I think.

Absolutely. But what I am not going to do is...refuse to use sidewalks

How do you do that? Would be good to have that option. No but she has a long term visa. Iirc, there are 3 tiers of pricing, there. Thai, resident foreigner and tourist foreigner. Also, it was a gastroscopy only, no colonoscopy. She is Asian but I am not sure that mattered. That was one of four downsides, to us. The other 3 were 1. Location was a 45 minute drive away. Not a big deal, in itself, but it was exacerbated by; 2. Bureaucracy meant we had to go there 3 times before we could even schedule the endoscopy. This was the worst part. Better part of the day spent there for a total of 4 days to get the endoscopy. We knew we needed an endoscopy as we had seen other docs before but we weren't allowed to just schedule an endoscopy. We had to go through their process of GP -> Internal medicine -> GI specialist -> Endoscopy. 3. Lack of English spoken by all staff, other than the doctors (not such a big deal w Google translate, though). Doctors spoke English well enough. That said, it was like an eighth of the price of BKK-Pattaya and otherwise, everything was ok. We met a Filipino nurse there that was super nice and the staff was patient with our google translating everything. Can't really comment on the skill of the performing doctor too much but there were no complications (or findings) from the endoscopy.

Sorry, edited a typo. Was ~3500, not 2500.

Girlfriend had an Endoscopy done at Queen Sirikit naval hospital, near Pattaya, for ~3500 baht, iirc. Done by a gastro-intestinal specialist. Only downside was that we had to go through 3 docs (GP first, then Internal Medicine and finally the G-I doc) to get it and it took months to schedule it. Can't beat the price, though.

The report didn't mention that (though there might be more info on the actual disk, not sure). Had some stuff about kidney stones, lots of other stuff that looked 'normal' and, on the gall bladder: "GB is normally distended, with containing a 2.9cm gallstone. No thickened wall of GB. No pericholecystic fluid.". And then at the end, it says: "Impression: A 2.9cm, gallstone without evidence of acute cholecystitis. Suspected a 7mm calyceal stone at mid part of left kidney. No hydronephrosis of both kidneys. Few small benign-appearing cysts in both kidneys, size up to 1cm.". So yeah...looks like my body loves to make stones.