TallGuyJohninBKK

The case numbers certainly are looking UP! Source weblink

Here's an example of the local product... Strikes me as being very SALT heavy... Also not great if a person has food allergies to either wheat or soy. https://www.meatzerobrand.com/en/meat-zero-plant-based-crispy-pork/ Here's their basic ground "non-meat" version that's less salty, but still very much based on soy. https://www.meatzerobrand.com/en/meat-zero-plant-based-ground-meat/

I wonder if Thais ever watched the movie "Soylent Green"??? ???? Also, you do have to wonder, WHY would a plant based meat replacement product need to be MORE expensive that the meat product itself?

Have no idea, and of course, such things rarely get publicly explained.... If I were guessing, I'd guess the original wood decking was getting worn due to long-term exposure to water, and/or, they wanted to avoid that for the future. Just guessing.... But why the now replacement concrete decking areas remain closed off remains a mystery. Dunno if they're planning to do something more in those areas or what.... Also, I believe, the long-time bicycle rental shop that used to be lakeside there is gone, as is the lake paddle boats operation there -- notwithstanding the old photo of them posted in the OP. Likewise, no known reason given for why the former bicycle track around the lake remains closed to bicyclists, and they are only allowed now during certain hours (until 5:30 p.m.) in certain areas of the expanded park area across the road.

Squeal??? ????

This layout map of the park comes from a new display board at the park that I snapped a photo of. I've annotated it to show and describe the different areas, to the best of my knowledge.

The first couple pictures in the OP report are showing the ORIGINAL park area with its large lake, while only the last photo in the set is showing the newly opened portion of the expanded park. We've lived nearby there for many years, and the wife and I have been there for exercise and walking several times in the past week to see the latest developments. Even though a whole new area has just opened, that being the wetlands section with its interesting set of elevated walkways, there's still a lot of additional park development slated to occur there and remaining undone for the present. Also, after a LONG time, the original Benjakitti Park area around the lake there has never yet quite made it back to its original splendor, after being subjected to a massive phased construction project apparently to improve drainage in the area that tore up large sections of the original park area. For example, the original bike path circling the lake remains closed to cyclists, even though the construction that previously had obstructed it has been completed. The bicycling area has been shifted over to a perimeter of the expanded park area. Also, the former wooden deck sitting areas around perimeter portions of the lake (where people used to go to launch their loy kratong floats, take photos, etc.) have been removed and replaced with plain concrete deck surfaces that remain roped off to the public for some reason.

Wife and I were in Hua Hin over the Christmas-pre New Year week. Went looking for the former GARC location in Hua Hin. Somewhat to my surprise, the entire site remains empty and unused after all this time (the rear right edge corner of the photo below).

I was thinking of the exact same context in writing my prior post, even though I didn't address it in my comments. But I'm glad you did and bringing your family's experiences to bear. Doctors and nurses and other medical staff are TWO YEARS into COVID now. They've been getting sick and they're dying of COVID themselves. They've long-term been seeing vast numbers of patients dying before their eyes, unable to save too many of them. And more recently, in various places, after all of the crushing reality above, they're now getting verbally and physically abused by anti-vax wingnuts, religious zealots, conspiracy proponents, etc etc... And amid all this, they're preparing for what's shaping up as a FIFTH wave of COVID... Being a front line health care professional these days means having a job that's literally going to ground you into the earth.

Omicron infections are the majority in the U.S. right now, and total numbers of new COVID hospitalizations are spiking with the explosion of new Omicron cases. The rate of COVID hospitalizations from Omicron vs Delta is widely said to be substantially less. But the infectiousness and spread of new cases from Omicron is vastly outstripping Delta that came before. Once you get such a large influx of new Omicron cases, even with a lower RATE of hospitalizations, the sheer increase in volume of cases is going to drive overall increases in hospitalizations, which is exactly what's occurring now. That's why those who advocate letting Omicron run unchecked, or even encouraging its spread, are pushing a course that heads for public health disaster.

But in other countries like the UK and US with better public reporting of public health data, hospitalizations due to Omicron have been rising. If it's so "pathetic and weak" as you put it, why are COVID hospitalizations spiking just lately again now? From Friday's CDC update: U.S. New COVID Hospital Admissions "The current 7-day daily average for December 28, 2021–January 4, 2022, was 16,458. This is a 60.2% increase from the prior 7-day average (10,271) from December 21–December 27, 2021." And a slightly later version of the same data via chart form: Source weblink Rising deaths in the past have trailed rising COVID hospitalizations. Whether that will be the case or not in this current Omicron wave, I think it's too early to tell for the time being. But it bears remembering, in Thailand and the U.S. right now, about one-third of the overall population still has not received two vaccine doses as yet, much less a third booster shot that the medical experts say is needed to best fight off Omicron. So there remains large populations of not fully vaccinated folks out there. And disproportionately larger numbers of them, at least in the U.S., are ending up being hospitalized lately with the explosion of new Omicron cases.

I don't know what that language above from As-win is supposed to mean.... But on the way home last night, all the regular non-gogo bars (quasi restaurants) in my central BKK neighborhood were open and serving alcohol as usual. No special precautions seen. Everyone sitting around drinking in close proximity maskless.

A cleaner look at the same info for Thailand solo: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores-projected-baseline?country=~THA

It's a curious trend lately that 3rd shot booster doses often are outnumbering the numbers of first and second doses given on various days, such as above.... And yet, still, about one-third of the Thai population hasn't yet been fully vaccinated with the two regular doses thus far.

It's likely the weekend effect (less testing and/or less reporting). The Jan 9 report today is tallying totals of the end of Sat Jan. 8.

The latest info is suggesting that saliva-based ATK tests are doing a better job of promptly detecting Omicron than the nasal ones, which appear to be the more common variety here. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/rapid-nose-swab-tests-covid-may-not-detect-omicron-quickly-enough-expert-says-2022-01-07/ "Jan 7 (Reuters) - Swabbing the nose with a rapid antigen test will not reliably detect the Omicron variant in the first few days of an infection, so manufacturers should seek U.S. approval to allow users to safely collect samples from the throat as well, according to an infectious diseases expert. People can already transmit Omicron to others when it has infected their throat and saliva but before the virus reaches their nose, so swabbing the nostrils too early in the course of infection will not pick it up, Dr. Michael Mina, formerly of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and now chief science officer at eMed, said during a news conference on Thursday. A study released on Wednesday on medRxiv ahead of peer review looked at 29 Omicron-infected workers in high-risk professions who had PCR and antigen tests done simultaneously on multiple days. The PCR tests of saliva detected the virus on average three days before the rapid nose-swab samples became positive."

4 pm also yesterday. But it was a Saturday, coming off the New Year's holidays.... Can't speak to what the comparable situation would be on a weekday. But from everything I've seen reported about the Bang Sue experience along the way, the late afternoon time slot seems generally to be the most free of any crowding.

Thailand has about the same fully vaccinated rate as the U.S., although the U.S. vaccinations overall are of better quality/efficacy. But here's what's going on in the U.S. with Omicron, which is the dominant strain there now: From the U.S. CDC on Friday: "On January 5, 705,264 new cases were reported, more than doubling the January 2021 peak. The entire country is now experiencing high levels of community transmission. Hospitalizations are also on the rise. While early data suggest Omicron infections might be less severe than those of other variants, the increases in cases and hospitalizations are expected to stress the healthcare system in the coming weeks." "New Hospital Admissions The current 7-day daily average for December 28, 2021–January 4, 2022, was 16,458. This is a 60.2% increase from the prior 7-day average (10,271) from December 21–December 27, 2021." https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/?ACSTrackingID=USCDC_2145-DM73048&ACSTrackingLabel=01.07.2022 - COVID-19 Data Tracker Weekly Review&deliveryName=USCDC_2145-DM73048#new-hospital-admissions Deaths The current 7-day moving average of new deaths (1,246) has increased 14.4% compared with the previous 7-day moving average (1,089). As of January 6, 2022, a total of 829,740 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the United States. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/?ACSTrackingID=USCDC_2145-DM73048&ACSTrackingLabel=01.07.2022 - COVID-19 Data Tracker Weekly Review&deliveryName=USCDC_2145-DM73048#trends_dailydeaths To my eyes, NONE of the above -- cases, hospitalizations, deaths -- look like they're good trends. That's not a road Thailand wants to go down...

Overall, on average, I wouldn't want to bet my life on your approach to things.... unless I had a death wish.

When the wife and I recently were in Hua Hin for a short trip, a lot of the hotels we checked with that normally offered buffet breakfasts to their guests had switched to offering single set plate meals, because they didn't have enough paying guests to warrant putting out buffets. And that was for the week of Christmas leading up to New Year. Perhaps, hopefully, Pattaya hotels are faring a bit better in that regard.

Another little wrinkle for us TH expats that I came across in dealing with my father's U.S. trust: "Can a trustee live out of country? It is common to name family members and friends as Successor Trustees. However, if a trust names a non-U.S. Citizen or a U.S. Citizen who resides in another country as a Successor Trustee, the trust could be considered a “foreign trust” by the IRS, resulting in adverse tax consequences." https://estateandprobatelegalgroup.com/lombard-estate-planning-lawyer/citizenship-of-beneficiaries-and-trustees/ "Does a trustee of a US trust need to be a US citizen? Additionally, the trust must be managed and administered by a person who is a resident of the United States. It does not matter if the successor trustee is an American citizen or not. As long as the trustee is a resident of this country and administers the trust here, it should not be classified as a foreign trust." https://blog.calprobate.com/2018/11/naming-non-citizens-as-beneficiaries-trustees-and-executors.html So, a U.S. citizen living in Thailand who wants to create a personal trust under U.S. law needs to be cautious in how they handle/structure it. In case, I had always kept an official U.S. address that I used for tax filing, financial accounts and everything else. I never put anything U.S. related showing residence outside the U.S. So when it came to my documentation for the trust, it was just using the same U.S. address I had always used for everything in my life.

Ya, there are all kinds of potential issues. In the U.S., I believe, a trust can have co-trustees... For a time, my father and mother were co-trustees of their trust while she was alive, and then he became the sole trustee onward until his death. But I'm not clear, in a co-trustees situation (assuming you had someone else you could trust like an attorney or non-beneficiary entity like a brokerage house), whether the co-trustee can act unilaterally (say in a situation where you had become indisposed), or whether that kind of situation requires the consent of both.

You're in complete control of your trust while you're alive. If you don't like the way someone is treating you in your latter years, you can (have your home country attorney who set up your trust) simply write them out of your trust, and they'll get nothing, if you so desire.

The type of trusts we're talking about here ONLY give control over your finances to someone else (your successor trustee) AFTER you've passed (unless you wish otherwise). While you're still alive, you would want to remain the trustee of your own trust and retain complete control over everything in it. I went thru this with my own father, who had a trust for his assets, when he passed away last year. He was the sole trustee of his own trust while he was alive, and I was the designated beneficiary of his trust. While still living, he also designated me to be his successor trustee that would take effect once he passed away. While he was alive, I had absolutely no control over or say in what happened with his trust. But upon his death, I became the trustee of his trust, and was then legally responsible for allocating his inheritance to his designated beneficiary, which he had chosen to be me. PS -- Leaving the typical Thai (including a Thai wife) as the beneficiary of any sizable estate outside Thailand seems to me to be a very bad idea, especially if that Thai person has never lived in your home country for an extended period and come to understand life and finances there. The typical domestic Thai isn't going to be familiar with or understand the legalities of such things in the U.S., UK or wherever. There could be language barriers, communication problems, etc etc. I, as an American, had to handle the disposition of all my father's different bank accounts and such in the U.S. after his passing. And the banks and various other financial entities don't make it especially easy, even when, as in our case, there were no legal will/probate complexities and everything was pre-designated as POD (Payable on Death) to designated beneficiaries. The POD process being one that can bypass legal probate in the U.S. Having gone thru it from Thailand with my father who died in the U.S., I wouldn't wish that kind of process on my Thai wife here at all. If I ended up leaving that kind of thing solely in her hands after my death, I'm afraid she'd give up on the whole thing and never get a dime of my estate held outside Thailand.

As of tonight, no, the 3rd shot booster dose from today hasn't yet surfaced in my Mor Prom app info. I'm guessing, they'll update overnight, and it probably will show up when I look again tomorrow. I'm also assuming, the reason they weren't automatically handing out paper vax certificates at Bang Sue is because they're expecting Thais to get and download that kind of info from the Mor Prom app. I hadn't set up the Mor Prom app previously on my mobile phone, but did so this afternoon after my booster, using the 13-digit "ID Card Number" entry on my original two-dose vaccine certificate, in lieu of a Thai national ID card number that I don't have. Using the ID Card number from my prior MoPH vax certificate worked just fine in setting up a new Mor Prom account.