TallGuyJohninBKK

Planet Express has a no sales tax address in Oregon, as do various other reshippers. But at least in the case of PE, their shipping rates out of Oregon, at least for their economy airmail, are higher than they would be if the customer ordered to and they reshipped out of their main location in Southern California. (Because for international shipments, they end up having to send the item back from Oregon to Los Angeles to be sent abroad.) So whether the Oregon no sales tax issue is a benefit or not, in their case, depends on the valuation of the package. For lower value items, it won't make economic sense because the sales tax amount would be small and outweighed by the higher shipping rates. But it might be a benefit for higher value / lower weight packages.

Let me know if there's ever any actual proof that President Biden gained any direct financial benefit from his son's business activities. Thus far NONE. Or, let me know if there's ever any actual proof that President Biden, or his prior iterations as a public official, ever altered any government policy or decision (other than what it already would have been) to benefit his son's business activities. Thus fare NONE. Otherwise, Fox can take their ongoing political misinformation and propaganda campaign and shove it! From the same outfit that just agreed to pay $787 million to settle their knowingly false claims over the 2020 presidential election.

I was surprised to see, apparently there's no Villa Markets anywhere in the north including Chiang Mai...as best as I can find. If he doesnt find a better option, the OP also could contact the Villa Market main branch at Sukhumvit Soi 33 in BKK, and I believe they'll accept online orders that they'll ship anywhere in Thailand for non-perishable items. Might be another 125b or so for delivery based on my mockup of a single package. https://shop.villamarket.com/search?keyword=Cream of Wheat

No... not necessarily so... For many years, I used Shipito and more recently Planet Express to send Amazon and other packages here, lately running about $12 per pound (about $25 per kilo) using their economy airmail (least expensive) shipping method. But starting last fall, my Planet Express packages regularly started never arriving here to my address in BKK, even though I'd gone years without ever missing a package from them. So something changed, dunno what, because the tracking on that method basically ends once the package has arrived into Thailand. So no way to nail down or address just where things were going wrong. But my point is, in the wake of that, I ended up finding and now for some months using a Thai service called WeShippingUSA, which offers both air and sea shipments to Thailand, with the weight based prices you pay including all/any taxes and customs duty, meaning you always know the final, real price upfront simply by calculating the actual weight. I've been regularly using their sea shipping service for some months now, which runs 300 baht ($9 USD) per kilo of package weight, and typically takes about 2 months from U.S. departure to home delivery here, usually by EMS mail as a small added cost. Every package I've ordered has arrived intact and without anything going missing or arriving damaged, etc etc. https://www.facebook.com/WeShippingUSA/ Because I no longer have to worry about staying under the $50 valuation limit for Thai Customs' small package duty exemption policy, I've been ordering larger and more expensive items than I used to in the past, where those kinds of packages would often attract unpredictable add-on costs of extra VAT and/or customs duty. WeShippingUSA has been working out a great economical option for US to Thailand shipments, especially if you can think to order ahead and plan for the extra time involved in sea shipping.

Just as a beef-related aside, there's an Argentinian steakhouse near EmQuartier in Bangkok called El Toro that offers some pretty expensive Churrascaria (a kind of all you want meats buffet sliced to order). However, they also have a pretty broad menu of both U.S. and Australian steaks available as standard dinners. And right now and for some time now, meals ordered from them via FoodPanda by PandaPro members get an extra 20% off their regular FP delivery prices, which seem to be less than their regular dine-in prices. In short, the wife and I recently ordered 250g steaks from them, mine a New Zealand ribeye and the wife's an Australian sirloin, that both were excellent. Hers came with rice and fried onions as sides. Mine came with a full-sized baked potato with butter and sour cream. We ordered a third steak as an extra, and our total bill for the three steak meals came to under 2,000 baht total, which was great. https://eltoroasia.com/ That averages out to about $20 U.S. per steak dinner at 250 grams / about 9 ounces. By comparison, on my recent U.S. trip, I had a 12 ounce prime rib dinner from Stuart Anderson's Black Angus that ran about $34 U.S. (PS, in the photo below, I asked for them to cook it "blackened" on the exterior with Cajun spices.) Between the two, although I very much like prime rib, I'd say the New Zealand ribeye from El Toro was a better steak.

How did the SS's there compare to the one in BKK in terms of taste and the food offerings themselves...? I had thought about trying a SS in the U.S. for the first time during a recent trip back, just to have a basis for comparison to BKK.... but didn't get around to it, with other dining priorities winning out... including a chili burger from an OK imitation of the original Tommy's burgers in L.A.

As an American, I too have often found that general Thai ground beef often seems to have some kind of funky odd taste to it that I don't care for. That said, there also are various places here that use either Thai French beef or their own custom grounds of other Thai beef that to my taste have been very good and without the funky odd taste found elsewhere. Curiously, I was looking earlier today just to make sure that Carl's Jr. had totally exited Thailand, which they indeed have. And one of the reasons the Thai franchisee gave for their exit was the requirement by the master franchise holder that the Thai operation had to use imported beef, which was more expensive than locally available options. That said, I believe the Thai branches of Burger King claim to use ground beef imported from Australia. I've never found the taste of their beef patties to be antything special, but at least, it doesn't seem to have any odd taste like some Thai offerings do.

The burger I had a Shake Shack at CW in BKK ranks nowhere close to any of the best burgers I've had in Bangkok or in the U.S. IMHO, it was an OK but otherwise unexceptional offering. Will Shake Shack end up fizzling out the way fellow U.S. import ventures IHOP, Outback Steakhouse, Tony Roma's, and Carl's Jr. did? Or will it end up struggling on like Taco Bell and Krispy Kreme have? Shake Shack announced pretty ambitious expansion plans for Thailand in the years ahead. But frankly, for numerous reasons, I just don't see that as very likely.

On the map, it looks well more than 100 meters, especially to get to the center of the complex, as opposed to one edge... But I haven't been there myself as yet since the Yellow Line station opened.

That's an unfortunate situation to the extent it exists... When I read about the new Yellow Line and the fact that one of its stations was in the vicinity of Seacon Square and Paradise Park, I was hopeful that those places would finally have a good public transit connection. Just how far off is the station there? On Google Maps, it looks like the King Rama IX Park Station is kind of halfway between Seacon Square to the north and Paradise Park to the south, but some walking distance either way to get to either of them. I wonder if they basically decided to split the difference between the two in terms of locating the station...instead of building two nearby stations or choosing one over the other. My wife used to have the same issue with the Airport Rail Link Line and its Hua Mak station. She used to work in the area, but they built the ARL station there pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and not proximate to any major road in the area. So once you exited the train there, you pretty much only had access to whatever taxis had decided to come and park/stay at that station... and no easy access to any nearby bus routes or even regular taxis traveling on major roads in the area. In contrast, one thing I really like about the original BTS Green Line in central Bangkok is a lot of its stations have direct, easy connections to many of the big places people tend to go... like Siam Paragon, Central Chidlom, Terminal 21, EmQuartier, Victory Monument, etc etc... You don't have to hike a mile to get to those endpoint destinations.

Can you elaborate on just what you mean by "blocked"? Does the yellow line station have a constructed exit connecting to The Mall Bangkapi, but it's just not open yet... (and presumably could be opened with some added work). Or, are you saying a connecting exit hasn't actually been constructed?

I'm not sure if that's a so-called Low Level Format that really permanently erases the data in a way that makes it unrecoverable. But either way, he's also doing that while running the OS on his PC, meaning the disk he's wiping isn't the one currently being used to run the PC.... In his example, he's already removed the disk he's wiping from his operating PC. So it's not the case example of the kind I was asking about in the thread, where you want to prepare an old PC/laptop for discard or donation in a way that wipes its operating hard disk so that all content is unrecoverable.

OK.. think I've finally successfully worked things out now (without resorting to power tools!) ... by using the free Darik's Boot and Nuke software, which gives me the ability to boot my old laptops from a USB drive or a CD/DVD drive outside of Windows, and thus SECURELY nuke, without any ability to recover, the entire hard disk including the existing Windows installs there. https://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/ Download the .iso file on a regular working PC, and then select the file in Windows file explorer, right click with the mouse, and choose "burn disk image" from the context menu to create a bootable source on either a blank CD/DVD or a blank USB drive that you'll then use to boot the device you want to wipe the disk on. Had a bit of a complication as first, as it turned out the internal, built-in CD-ROM drives on both OLD laptops were no longer working properly... So I had to use an external USB CD/DVD drive that I had handy, and set that as the primary boot device in the laptops' BIOS, and then re-boot the laptops using the DBAN program running off the external drive. DBAN launched and ran just fine. The menu is pretty simple and clear. I chose the default 3 passes DoD short wiping method. And on my first OLD laptop with an old slow processor, it's going to take about 2-1/2 hours to totally and securely wipe the laptop's built in 160 GB hard disk. The more detailed instructions on setting up and using DBAN are toward the end of the following article linked below: https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/secure-erase-ssd-or-hard-drive

"I was getting ready to donate my old Windows 10 PC so I used the built-in Windows reset feature and I clicked "Remove everything," which deletes all of your files and leaves you with a factory default install of the OS. After the reset process completed, my personal files were erased as was all the software I had installed. However, after I installed and ran , a utility that finds and undeletes files, I located all my old files. To prove my point, I recovered a file called mypasswords2.txt that had lived in the Documents folder and I was able to read everything inside of it." https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/secure-erase-ssd-or-hard-drive

One thing I discovered about this "free" Easeus software is that if you want to nuke a Windows install off a PC OR the PC you're dealing with doesn't have a properly working version of Windows, the free version does NOT support creating a bootable version of their software via USB or CD/DVD. Only their paid version will create a bootable disk.

The only issue with GV for folks who have already set it up the first time using a linked U.S. mobile number is that some US financial institutions don't support sending their OTP / SMS codes to GV numbers...only to traditional mobile numbers. But other than that, it's a charm!

PPS - on a related matter, this thread prompted me to check something and discover that the Obihai 200 series box I've been using for many years to enable a home/landline phone interface to my Google Voice number/account is due to be End of Lifed at the end of 2023. This doesn't directly impact or cancel my GV account in any way. But it does seem to threaten the device/service that I've long been using to make the GV number available via a traditional landline-type home phone device. https://www.obitalk.com/info/products/obi200 "The End of Engineering support date and the End of Service date for all OBi200, OBi202 and OBi212 products will be December 18, 2023. OBiTALK calling service will continue to be supported for the OBi200, OBi202 and OBi212 until December 18, 2023. OBi200, OBi202 and OBi212 devices may continue to work after the end of service date, but they will not be able to get added to the Google Voice service after December 18, 2023. OBi200, OBi202 and OBi212 devices registered prior to the End of Engineering Support date won’t be able to be provisioned via OBiTALK after the December 18, 2023 and can only be managed and provisioned locally (manually)."

PS - just recently renewed by annual MagicJack subscription... now going on more than 10 years of ongoing service... Annual MJ price with taxes and fees is now up to about $45 per year... But still an excellent value and resource that's been my mainstay U.S. home phone for all my years in Thailand.

T-Mobile and its various MVNOs are great for providing working wifi calling and SMSing capability when abroad, such as in Thailand, provided that the user's phone actually supports wifi calling on that particular network. Samsung phones, whether from the US or from Thailand, seem to be very good about that... Though the advantage of Thai market Samsung phones is that they're pretty much all dual SIM, whereas a dual SIM Sammie phone from the US market seems almost a non-entity. These days, I have two dual SIM Sammie phones at home... the more recent 5G one loaded with my two Thai SIMs, and the older but still very functional LTE Sammie loaded with my two US T-Mobile network SIMs.... Whether for Thai or the U.S., always believe in having an available backup option just in case something goes wrong at some point with my primary provider/account.

Funny, I was also there a couple months back for an in person 90 day report and a COR I needed for a DL application. I didn't know it beforehand, but the queue line at the far right end of the front lobby queue tickets counter is where they require people to have their COR paperwork checked before they'll issue you a queue ticket for the COR section. I initially lined up at the first couple lines as you come in from outside, where I'd normally get my retirement extension queue ticket, and when I got to the front, was told NO, you have to go down to the right end of the front counter and have your COR paperwork checked there, and then that officer will issue you a queue ticket for the COR section. On my visit that day, I had no idea it might be possible to get the COR handled by the officers in the 90-day reports room. So I never showed them my COR paperwork. Just completed the 90-day report process, and then went outside to do the COR separately.

I don't know or understand exactly what it is with stocking issues here, but it often seems to be a big problem with the various supermarket chains, both in the online and in-store modes... We used to shop at Tops Central Food Hall pretty regularly, and buy the same items each week to resupply our stocks at home. They'd invariably be out of stock on the store shelves of certain things, but when I'd check, it turned out they'd have plenty of stock in their in-store warehouse area...that for some reason they hadn't bothered to put out on the actual store shelves. Then with imported items there's a whole nother layer of complications. Once they start carrying some item, they can't seem to reliably keep it in stock. And imported items often pop up for a period of time, and then disappear never to be seen or stocked again. And, in the chains, they'll sell out of some item at a busy store, and yet have plenty of unsold stock of the same item in a less busy, more out of the way store. But they'll never seem to think, on their own, to have the busy, in demand store take/transfer some of the unsold stock from the other store in order to accommodate their customers. It's like the whole operations are being run by a bunch of amateurs.

The Thai wife and I both had/have Makro online accounts that we both used often thru the years for home delivery... As soon as Makro made the switch to Pro (whatever that means), we were both locked out of both their website and their app and unable to log-into our accounts. Finally this past week called Makro's customer service number to complain. First call resulted in a promise to get back to us... They never did. Second call resulted in a promise to resolve things... A few days later, they did in fact fix the problems inhouse. One of the problems was....when I went to try to reset my password, their system would say they're sending an OTP code to my mobile phone... But, even though the number was correct, never got any OTP codes from them.... Until the 2nd call finally triggered them to successfully send one to me and I in fact used to successfully update my password. In dealing with the problems, I was looking at the ratings for the Makro app in the Google Play store. All the recent ratings from users are horrible.... like one star, the lowest rating. So they seem to have made quite a cock-up of their Makro Pro conversion. I haven't ordered yet under the new system... but one other thing I noticed... In the past here in BKK, as best as I recall, I used to get free delivery on orders above 1,000 baht. But now, somehow, if I'm reading things right, they seem to now have a 3000 baht minimum order to qualify for free delivery.

I'm one of those... eligible for both.... But, I started out on retirement before I was married, so it's just seemed easier to continue on with the same rather than trying to switch over to marriage and then have to deal with the it's "under consideration" waiting period. Also, there's something reasonably permanent about my retirement status... Whereas with marriage, there's always the possibility/risk of a spouse's death and/or divorce complicating things in the future.

Jack, I'm a bit confused about your comment above. At BKK CW, the 90 day report section and the certificate of residence section are two different sections, although physically adjoining each other. Are you saying the officers in the 90-day reports room in the front corner area also will issue certificates of residence... even though the CofR section/counter is outside the 90 day reports room up against the wall?

Each year at BKK CW, and for many past years, I've always provided them with a Google Maps printout of my home area, computer annotated to show directions to my home from the main road. It's always been accepted without issue or comment.