TallGuyJohninBKK

It wasn't doctors or the drug manufacturers who basically took pseudoephedrine off the market back in the early 2000s... It was governments and law enforcement because they found, correctly, that it was being used as a supply material by meth makers. That part I can understand.... But the bad part is, at least originally, the best they could come up with as a replacement was phenylephrine, which was ALWAYS useless for me and many other sinus sufferers.... Yet for years it has remained the default non-prescription sinus treatment ingredient for OTC medications, providing little to no help for many sinus sufferers but racking up a whole lot of money in sales. Hopefully this will help lead to a return to better access to pseudoephedrine, including to the newer formulations that supposedly cannot be easily used for meth.

I think... what you're meaning is that recent studies have found that the REPLACEMENT drug that the authorities came up with to replace pseudoephedrine, when it was heavily restricted because of the meth epidemic, is and was never really effective as a sinus medication.... Pseudoephed was always very effective for me as a sinus medicine. But its supposed replacement, phenylephrine, was absolutely useless! And now lately the medical authorities have finally admitted just that: Popular OTC medicines for colds and allergies don’t work, FDA panel says Updated 6:37 PM EDT, Thu September 14, 2023 "(CNN) — Phenylephrine, a popular ingredient in many over-the-counter allergy and cold medicines, is ineffective in tablet form, an independent advisory committee to the US Food and Drug Administration agreed Tuesday. Phenylephrine is the main ingredient used in products like Benadryl Allergy Plus Congestion, Sudafed PE and Vicks Sinex. The ingredient is considered safe to use; that was not up for debate. But many doctors have questioned phenylephrine’s effectiveness for years." https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/12/health/phenylephrine-tablets-ineffective-fda-panel-says/index.html 16-0 vote by the FDA's advisory committee against phenylephrine... And the sad part is, doctors and drug stores have been telling sinus sufferers for years to use this medication as a primary non-antibiotic medication, when they pretty well knew, because patients were loudly telling them, that it was essentially worthless. To the tune of $1.8 BILLION per year just in the U.S. "These products generated nearly $1.8 billion in sales last year alone, according to data from the FDA that was presented to the Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee on Monday during the committee’s two-day meeting."

In the U.S. in recent years, after they made pseudoephedrine very hard to get over the counter because of the meth epidemic, things finally eased up some when the drug companies finally came up with a version that supposedly cannot be repurposed into meth. So the last couple times I was in the U.S., it was easy to obtain from the regular drug stores without a prescription just by providing your ID. I wish that same formulation would become available in Thailand, and thus enable the medication to be returned to regular OTC drug store access as it used to be. But so far, haven't seen any indication of that occurring here.

When mixed in with a sterile saline solution, it inhibits bacterial growth.... including bacterial infections in your sinuses.... My former sinus doc in the U.S. recommended it when I was having repeat sinus infections that eventually stopped being treated well with antibiotics... And to my surprise, it actually has worked very well... I haven't taken or needed any sinus antibiotics for years. Once or twice a day sinus rinse with the warmed xylitol solution. I use a Nipro 50 ml syringe with a special sinus tip on the end. I use about 2 cups of sterile (boiled and cooled) water warmed in the microwave, combined with about 8 teaspoons of xylitol dissolved and mixed in, along with about a teaspoon of non-iodine salt to provide the saline component.

Until the U.S. or U.K. bank contacts the person informing them that, based on their online banking usage with foreign IPs, they appear to be living in a foreign country and as a result, the bank is going to be closing their account. Or, the bank suddenly locks the person out of online banking access, after seeing multiple foreign IP log-ons and they presume that someone nefarious is trying to hack into the account.

The other problem you run into with DNS workarounds is while they MAY work for the streaming services a person might want to use, they're not going to work at all, AFAIK, for the other NON streaming things a person might still need a VPN for, such as home country online banking access and similar stuff... So at least in my experience, you end up needing some kind of VPN regardless.

That's a standard marketing deal in the VPN industry... Offer discounted plans to get new first-time subscribers in... and then when the initial plan ends, they auto renew people to their higher priced standard plans. I do the same thing as you mention... 1. ALWAYS turn off/disable "auto-renew" where it's allowed to do so (some don't allow it!). 2. And, I tend to keep TWO different accounts for each service I use with different email IDs. So just before one plan expires, I'll then subscribe to a discounted package to the same VPN with the other lapsed email. Then repeat next time with the other email, etc etc.

Various of the major VPN providers are getting better with their software applications these days...as regards your comment above. Typical nice features the better VPN providers are offering in their software these days include: --split tunneling, which allows you to select individually which apps you want to go thru the VPN vs which ones you want to go thru your regular ISP. --automatic launch on boot, meaning the VPN will launch and connect to a chosen server when the device is turned on. --automatic kill switch, which will disable your internet connection if your VPN connection drops suddenly for some reason.\ and of course Wireguard protocol connections, which is a faster and simpler successor to the longtime standard Open VPN protocol. etc etc etc.

I saw an ad from them a few days back, a provider I'd never heard of before, so I took some time to check and inquire.... Curiously, on their ad, they have in big letters at the top of their graphic "NETFLIX" as one of the services they claim to unlock. But then down at the bottom of the ad in small print, there was a footnote saying "No U.S. Netflix access." They also seem to fudge a bit on their various supposedly enabled channel listings, as for the U.S., I noticed several that they claimed were free to access just by subscribing to GetFlix, when in reality, several of those (Acorn TV, Hulu, and Philo among them) in fact require paid subscriptions to the services themselves. Note: the graphics above are from their product listing on the 3rd party software site StackSocial.

In Thailand, I don't think there is any particular age profile of guys who are willing to financially support a younger Thai GF on the side.... It happens Thai-to-Thai all the time. The "sugar daddy" term is a western one, not a Thai one. Thai university students, I'd imagine, like to go to coffee shops and food places around their schools, where anyone who wanted to could stop in for a bite or a drink, etc etc. Or maybe you'd want to visit the university library (assuming the school allows it) sometimes for some reading... Also depends on your home city. Up in Isan, probably pretty easy to find. Down in Bangkok, probably gonna take a bit more work.

Sounds like you want to be hanging out around your local Thai public university, or even some of the private ones, depending. Lots of potential sugar-seekers in those locales. I never found that to be a problem, back in the day. Young women like to be taken out to nice places. Young women like to be the object of attention and affection, and often enjoy a bit of athletic exercise in bed. And young women enrolled at universities often have tuition or student loan bills to be paid.

With COVID, there are anti-viral medications like Paxlovid and Molnupiravir that, if given shortly after the onset of a COVID infection, can greatly reduce the risk of serious symptoms. And with the flu, while I don't believe doctors can cure the flu, they can treat the symptoms with medication to make you feel better and lessen the impact of symptoms. September 26, 2023 Paxlovid linked with reduction in COVID-19 hospitalization, death "Nirmatrelvir/ritonavir, or Paxlovid, was associated with a significant reduction in 30-day hospitalization or death among previously uninfected patients with COVID-19 who were not hospitalized, researchers found. ... According to the study, patients prescribed nirmatrelvir/ritonavir (NMV/r), or Paxlovid, within 3 days of COVID-19 diagnosis were compared with IPTW-based untreated controls." https://www.healio.com/news/infectious-disease/20230926/paxlovid-linked-with-reduction-in-covid19-hospitalization-death

That also can be an issue with some streaming services, which when you sign up, they note your original IP address and its geolocation... And then down the road, if you change the IP address and/or location too many times, it can create problems. Hulu with Live TV from the U.S., for example, only will allow 4 IP address changes on your account per year... And after that, they'll only allow you to use their service with the last and final of the 4 IPs you registered on their system. And at that point, you're locked out of being able to use their service with any other IPs for the rest of the year.

I have other VPN providers I find to be more effective for the things I want to do...including because Strong is based in the U.S. and subject to more intrusive data laws there. But, I keep a Strong subscription because, when I originally signed up with them, customers got essentially a free subscription to the Cloud backup service SugarSync covering 250 GB of content at no extra price. Strong and SS are owned by the same parent company. But I checked today, and all mention of SugarSync is now gone from the Strong website... And customer service, in chat, told me they're continuing that past SS benefit for continuing Strong customers, but no longer are offering it for new Strong subscribers.... ????

I use both Amazon Fire TV and Android TV streaming devices at home. These days, even Amazon's app store has VPN apps from most of the major VPN providers... And the few that Amazon might not have are certainly available directly from the Google Play Store...and likely can be sideloaded as well onto Amazon Fire devices. I think what the above Google comment is getting at is that some individual television manufacturers (as opposed to streaming device makers) have their own company-specific app stores that often are very limited and often have relatively out of date apps, because the TV manufacturers aren't focused on keeping them up to date.... That's a good reason to avoid relying on TV manufacturers that insist on using their own app stores instead of either Amazon or Google.

And a lot of the free ones have bad reputations for tracking their customers internet usage in great detail and selling that data onward to various private parties, thus compromising users' privacy. There's often a reason the free VPNs are able to be "free." Because they're getting paid to "sell" their customers.

Dunno about that... One of the disadvantages of various "Smart DNS" services is that they'll only work with the specific streaming services/providers enabled/configured by that DNS provider... Whereas with a traditional VPN, which gives you an IP address in a particular geo-location, that's going to be recognized as being there by ANY and ALL providers a person might use, regardless.

I've had a Surfshark subscription for some years...and it's soon going to expire and won't be renewed... Because at least in my experience, their connections do a very poor job at avoiding "VPN error" blocks from various major U.S. streaming providers like Amazon Prime Video, among others.

I like Nord and use them a lot these days.... Their connections are reasonably fast and typically do a pretty good job of unblocking various streaming providers without drawing VPN error notifications. But one thing I find annoying about them, as someone who is pretty particular about what exact VPN server I'm connecting to for various purposes, is that they don't label all their servers by location/city names as is the prevailing practice in the industry, and instead just label their servers with 4 or 5 digit number designations, which isn't especially transparent.

Express VPN long HAD a reputation as one of the best VPN providers in the market. Then a couple years ago, they were bought out by a technology company with a dubious past... Not so sure anymore.... They also tend to be one of the more expensive VPN services out there. "In 2021, ExpressVPN announced that it had been acquired by Kape Technologies, which also owns CyberGhost VPN and Private Internet Access VPN, among other privacy and security companies. In a previous incarnation, Kape was an adware company called Crossrider. In 2023, concerns arose after news broke of layoffs within Kape's properties, including its VPNs." https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/expressvpn I had a subscription with them for some years pre-Kape, but ended up dropping it a couple years back when my use of their VPN was increasingly recognized and blocked by various streaming service providers that I use.

I like them and have used them for some years... They're one of my main VPNs among several I subscribe to. And yes, I've also found their support to be quite good.

Only for COVID deniers and anti-vaxers.... The rest of the world knows and understand that actual COVID-related deaths have far outpaced the official count of 7 million since the beginning of the pandemic, according to numerous different sources. April 19, 2022 Global COVID-19 Death Toll May Be Triple the Reported Deaths "More than 3 times as many people may have died around the world due to direct and indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic than officially reported, according to an estimate of excess mortality by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Whereas global reported COVID-19 deaths for the 18 months ending December 31, 2021, totaled 5.94 million, the authors estimated that 18.2 million people died because of the pandemic." https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2791213 That was thru the end of 2021. And then the same kind of estimates updated to current times: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

From a farang friendly area perspective, I'd say the Phuket and Hua Hin / Cha-Am areas, right on the ocean, have probably about as little (lower levels of) seasonal air pollution as you're going to find in Thailand. Yes, there may be some more obscure areas that might be less impacted by the seasonal burning. But note I prefaced my comment with the intro, "from a farang friendly area perspective." CM and UT (along with BKK) definitely wouldn't fit the request you make above... Phuket and HH at least are going to come closer, and Phuket actually looks better for 2023 than HH. A lot of the seasonal burning originates in the north, both inside Thailand and in adjoining countries, and then is blown inland and southward by the prevailing winds. Southward of BKK is going to tend to be better. But you don't want to go too far south in Thailand, otherwise you'll run into the seasonal burning that widely occurs in Indonesia and then is likewise disbursed by the winds. Phuket: https://aqicn.org/station/thailand/phuket/municipal-health-center-1 Hua Hin: https://aqicn.org/station/@121969 For some reason, early 2023 in Hua Hin was a whole lot worse than the comparable period in 2022:

I'm not recommending any particular place to live. But among the Isan cities mentioned, based on my travels there, I'd think that Udon Thani probably has the higher relative share of English speaking/understanding Thais... though by no means universal there.

Here's the summary air quality readings of key indicator PM2.5 for CM for thus far in 2023: Purple is hazardous, red is unhealthy for all Orange is unhealthy for sensitive groups. And for 2022 and 2023: The pollution levels, and periods of impact, vary some year to year depending on the weather, general economic/agricultural conditions, local burning activities, levels of (un) enforcement by local authorities, etc. etc. As you can see from above, the pollution levels during the early part of 2023 were considerably worse than the same period a year prior. https://aqicn.org/station/thailand-khua-mung-รร.บ้านปากเหมือง-ต.ขัวมุง-อ.สารภี-จ.เชียงใหม่