TallGuyJohninBKK

Ahhh.... the good ole' Thai tried and true "form a committee" to investigate response... Every time any part of officialdom does that here...which they invariably do without fail in response to public controversies, you can bet most of the time that's the last you'll ever hear on the subject from them. Though this one may be particularly hard for them to put to bed, as it involves infrastructure so widely and prominently used by the public.

Thai bank service at its best.... It's almost like, gee, they're trying to tell you that they don't want to be paying for physical branches and in-person bank branch staff anymore... Just rely on technology and their wonderful mobile banking apps instead! ???? ???? ????

Appears to be the name of the author of the original rewritten article on the source website... Which somehow got picked up and added onto to the end of the forum post's headline.

In the whole article, absolutely no mention of what's become of the proposed law, what exactly the current version would do, or when if at all it will be formally considered....

Hey, lose part of your leg and end up in the hospital.... And the answer is:

There's a big difference between what places offer "value" vs what places come remotely close to being, as the OP sought, "1 place to get everything." We probably do most of our shopping via Tops Online, because they come closest for us (vs. the others) to stocking more of the things we need and want to buy each week. But they also have serious problems with continuing to list items that have long been out of stock and don't ever get re-stocked. But even so, we end up supplementing that shopping with purchases with various other places using Grab or Food Panda delivery, including Lotus, Gourmet Market, Makro and various expat oriented bakery type places. Shopping here almost comes close to being a full-time job, just because there's no one place (at least for us) that reliably gives us everything we want (which includes a lot of expat oriented grocery products).

And you can't get too many farangs out of the bars! ????

Well, the club was said to be "famous" the OP report... So presumably it had been around long enough to attain that status of local "fame"....however brief that may have been. Maybe the OP report should instead have said "infamous," which would have given a whole different meaning to things. FWIW, Google Maps for the place only has one review (brand new), and all the posted photos were only from June.... And looks like their FB page was only created in April.

The wife and I were out and around yesterday, riding on BTS and MRT and visiting some malls.... and going up and down on various escalators throughout... And given recent events, we were paying particular attention to the escalators we used. Some of the designs had the plastic-type end cap type coverings at the end of each section... But others were entirely one piece solid metal where the structural part meets the moving part.... In the solid one-piece metal style, there's seemingly nothing to break off or come lose at the end of each section. But even on the other style with the plastic type coverings, it's hard to see how a suitcase wheel alone would cause that kind of mishap.

I believe they get a substantial discount when they buy and install the exploding kind! ????

So a drunken regular Thai policeman shoots and kills his Thai Immigration officer wife.... More of the same, what can you say.... The same pattern of disreputable, criminal behavior by those charged with enforcing the laws keeps getting repeated over and over again...in all its various iterations.

More nonsense from those in charge... and heading toward Thai victim blaming at its worst! No matter how you slice it, a broken suitcase wheel -- if that even was really the cause -- should never have been able to result in the kind of mishap that occurred.

FWIW, I do have one issue with the Pacific Cross Maxima policy... though I'm not sure it would be any different or better with any other Thai insurers.... AFAIK, their policy's maximum daily inpatient limit for hospital room and board has remained unchanged at max 8,000 baht per day for all the years I've had their policy. When I first took out the policy many years back, that probably would have covered most of my likely private hospital choices. But with the years of inflation and rising medical costs, these days, a lot of private hospitals in BKK have daily room rates that are higher, and sometimes much higher, than that.... Meaning that you can't necessarily rely on their inpatient daily hospital room and board benefit to cover ALL of what your daily inpatient room expenses might be... obviously, depending on what hospital you use and what level of room you select. I would have hoped...though I don't know if this is or isn't' done with other Thai insurers...that they would make some kind of inflationary adjustment for their benefit levels.... just as they do with their premium levels. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

I've been with Pacific Cross for many years... Never had any inpatient claims. But some years back, I did have some day surgery and outpatients claims back when I had a zero deductible policy, and they paid promptly and without any hassle.... And with a lot of providers, their insurance (at least for outpatient in Thailand) will be accepted as payment at the time services are rendered... as opposed to you having to pay up front, and then seek reimbursement later.

AFAIK, one of the potential risks of changing insurers once you get older is the new, prospective insurer is almost certainly going to require a medical exam. And, AFAIK, would be pretty likely to exclude from your prospective policy anything notable that might surface in the medical exam... So a person could go from having newer issues remain covered by their existing policy to potentially a situation where those same issues become exclusions from a newly issued, underwritten policy.

OP, are you aware that medical insurers typically make premium adjustments as their customers reach various age ranges? In the case of Pacific Cross, they have a standard age band for premiums of ages 61 to 65, meaning you and every other one of their policy holders would get an automatic premium increase once you and they reach age 61. A lot of Thai health insurers adjust premiums based on age AND do annual premium increases year to year as their standard practice. Pacific Cross hasn't done that, and with the exception of this past year, hasn't passed along any year-to-year inflationary increases in quite a few years. Below is a chart from Pacific Cross' brochure showing how their premiums are adjusted as policy holders reach certain age thresholds such as 61. It's something that's readily seen and understood in their policy materials. PS - also, since you mentioned not having any claims against your medical policy, Pacific Cross also has a pretty generous no claims discount policy. And, you also have the option to increase your policy deductible beyond the 40,000 amount if you want to lower your annual premium. Just some added options there.

Yes, when black and Hispanic students at large have equal educational opportunities (teachers, resources, school facilities, etc) as their white counterparts.... Which as things stand now in the United States.... is a long way off.

I've had a couple rounds with jury duty notices from Texas now. In both cases, about 4-5 years apart, I called the county jury duty office that mailed me the notice well prior to the summons date, and explained that I was out of the country for an indefinite period, and they agreed to cancel my notices. No documentation required, just my call. I got the impression if I had said I was merely in a different US state (out of state), the answer might have been different. Perhaps a request to reschedule instead of cancel.

Thanks for the personal feedback on that.... In reading the wiki entry I linked to above on the drug Amitriptyline, it appeared that side effects and sometimes serious ones can be a real issue with its use. But Simple talked of a 10 mg per day dose. Not sure whether that level of use is normal or to what extent side effects would present with that level.

Simple, did you have any difficulty in getting a Thai doctor to prescribe that medication for that kind of off main use purpose? @Sheryl Do you have any familiarity with the use of that medication for spinal nerve pain? "Amitriptyline, sold under the brand name Elavil among others, is a tricyclic antidepressant primarily used to treat major depressive disorder, a variety of pain syndromes such as neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, migraine and tension headaches.[10] Due to the frequency and prominence of side effects, amitriptyline is generally considered a second-line therapy for these indications." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amitriptyline

BBK Bank has its USD exchange rate today at 35.52. https://www.bangkokbank.com/en/Personal/Other-Services/View-Rates/Foreign-Exchange-Rates

I believe various of the Embassies will provide their citizens with a list of translation agencies they recommend or at least list. I'd get that list from my Embassy, and then use one of those.

That's a good question. I know from personal experience it works with a legal spouse. But I've never tried it with a non spouse.

There's no Thai law that imposes that requirement on them, because they're not covered by the DPA. It's up to the whims of the Thai government, which I would prefer not to rely on. If you have some source to substantiate your 100% claim regarding GSB, please post it here so we all can see.... The bank itself may make some claim about that. But if the bank making the claim ends up failing, then what? At least with the DPA for commercial banks, there's a legally mandated and specified process for restoring depositor funds up to the specified limit, including specific timeframes for that process to occur.

I'm not sure that's entirely true... The current 1 million deposit protection per bank per accountholder provided for under Thai law pertains to Thai commercial banks, and GSB is not considered one of those, though Krung Thai Bank is. (There also are several other Thai government banks like BAAC that also aren't covered by DPA). https://www.dpa.or.th/en/articles/view/list-of-insured-financial-institutions Because GSB is not covered by the deposit protection law, the status of the deposits it holds is up to the Thai government, and in the absence of any governing law, who knows how they would respond if GSB were to fail financially. In the Asian financial crisis (that predated the current DPA law), where several commercial banks failed in Thailand, my understanding is foreign depositors generally did get their funds back eventually... But from what I've heard (the AFC was before my time), it often was a long process.