Heng

Anyone know the 'rule' if Thailand was the original departure point? I'm okay with 3 week+ holidays but would be nice if we could take shorter trips as well and still come back to the 1 night in 'PCR test wait.'

Another guerrilla warfare tactic, if you don't want to go through the trouble of buying pigs and chickens, etc. and becoming a farmer... Just buy several 55 gallon plastic drums and bury them up to their openings near (but not so near as your neighbors can sabotage them) and simply fill them with water. Instant mosquito breeding facility and should limit the patronage of nearby open air karaoke restaurants. This is a suggestion from my Thai-Vietnamese wife. Guess this type of mindset is one reason why they won. You'll have an increased mosquito presence as well, but I'm assuming yours will have more standard insect protection like screens and bug zappers. Remove or fill in said barrels after you've won.

Binance and use their P2P function as your on/off ramp from/to fiat. Yes, you'll need to be verified but Binance verification in relatively 'shallow.' Basically a selfie and a copy of your ID or passport for tier 1 $50K USD (per day) withdrawal/deposit limits in fiat and 100 BTC withdrawal limit in BTC per day (so don't transfer more than $6 million a day). ????

Exciting times.

Well, to their credit, they have refined the art, especially with the improving surgical/aesthetic/hormone therapy tech available to them. Even as a Thai (and thus should be able to easily differentiate), sometimes I am only 95% sure either way, some of it may be due to my own aging and deteriorating eyesight. At one point I was going to help develop a spectrum based point system (if she sits on your lap right away +1 pt., if you detect a scent that brings you back to your high school locker room days +1 pt., etc.; higher scores = 'you're more likely to be hanging out with a....') but got sidetracked into other hobbies.

What a day.

At some point, most of the naysayers probably 'listen' to themselves and realise that they sound like someone who is trying to talk people out of using ATM cards or air travel. Just remember that it is still tech though. One day it'll be likely that we (or maybe the next generation) will be laughing at things like the "secure" 2,048 BIP39 word list. Can you believe that they thought it couldn't be cracked by my kid's ****** phone/communicator? When folks like Saylor say that they'll hold BTC (Defi's grandfather) for 100 years, I think in confidence many would admit that this particular iteration (not where it's headed as a whole) will have a sweet spot (just IMO) of maybe 20 years, of which we have already consumed half.

Not spouse related but I can't recall the last time I heard of anyone (some single some not, none married to Americans) I know here not get approved for a US tourist visa, including during the Trump years. All of the 10 year variety it seems, is there no other kind? They don't do shorter time span visas?

Triple vaxxed, but will not get another dose unless they (enough various countries where I want to go) enforce it via travel restrictions....for instance 'you must have been vaccinated within the last X-XX months for your vaccination cert. to be valid.'

Not exactly free out of the gates, but definitely better than just a few weeks ago. Feeling really positive about all of this. ????

VPN. And if you're going to be paranoid (or cautious), use an external drive. If the sticky rice hits that fan, just dispose of with a hammer... it was clearly just a bunch of holiday photos from a really bad vacation. Not me of course. I heard a couple of farangs talking about it.

There will be a list surely, but you can likely assume that hotels that are currently SHA or AQ hotels (if you want to shop around before the official list comes out) because of their connections will still make use of those same connections to be one night PCR testing wait hotels.

It's not quarantine because we changed the name. If it got us out of War War II war reparations, it'll be fine this time as well.

Yeah, that's a pretty good first post. Not quite on par with the classic 'how much dowry is appropriate' first posts, but still good.

Of course institutional players will manipulate the markets, that's their business. With a lot of cryptos it'll be even easier considering the relatively narrow floats involved.... not to mention how easily spooked (at least in the short term) the millennial/gen Z crypto base is in terms of price action.

Plenty of shops are open now where you can exercise and only risk communicable diseases.

^yeah, that's pretty much all you need right there. The various Thai embassy websites are more like Banksy 'interpretations' of a what a consular website should be (let's randomly put what people need in different places with no uniform site design). As of today: Thai nationals just need an AQ booking and COE. Oh, be sure to negotiate with the AQ hotel you book at: specifically, that if they want your business, they have to agree to refund the difference if the quarantine rules change in your favor. When we flew in, the quarantine rule was reduced from 14 days to 10 days for vaccinated Thais... the hotel (within their right) said no refunds, but you're welcome to stay the full 14 days. ????

More likely someone just playing stock games. I doubt Dhanin cares what the gossip is. They (the Chearavanonts) make an effort to maintain their heritage and have never hidden that. Pretty cool to be the #1 listing on Google when you search for your first name. Even the most powerful person in the world (Putin) can't do that.

Yeah, it seems like just moving towards something like fingerprint + ID/passport would be more efficient and accurate.

The one place that has asked to see my vaccine certs was the Hai Di Lao hotpot restaurant at Central Rama IX. They were fine with photos of our US CDC cards. I probably should have told them that it's actually customary to ask to see IDs as well to at least check to see if the names match, maybe next time.

May as well throw in STD testing while we're doing the other compulsory stuff since we're going for a more wholesome market.

Most of the complaints are comparing the rules to a literal handful of countries with more lax restrictions. By and large the 'you're welcome with a bunch of hoops and asterisks' countries are in still in the majority.

A lot of folks kind of forget about their bank balances and are a bit vulnerable to this kind of skimming (either by debit/credit card skimming scams or sometimes folks in the bank themselves). I'd suggest old school bookkeeping (even as just shorthand... maybe cut off a zero or more so it doesn't interest anyone) on a whiteboard or notepad in addition to SMS notifications so you kind of have it on your mind and will be more likely to notice when something is off.

Okay, then it's this. Thanks for the info.

It's a basic law of the jungle. You need to establish dominance in these situations. Without injuring anyone so you don't get in trouble... just sweep everything off the immigration officer's desk and firmly say 'no photocopies!'