MaiChai

We live near the Ubonrat dam in Khon Kaen provence. Sometimes we go KK to shop but nowadays big stores are poping up everywhere; Chumpair is nearer for us and that has at least 3 big wasadus (diy home centers). In KK you have Dohome, Thai wasadu, Global House and HomeHub; between all of these you can find anything home related (DoHome is my favourite; every kind of tool or building material you could wish for).

KK is pretty modern thinking; it has the second best University in Thailand, which covers alot of the land in the city. The airport is pretty good and busy; at least 10 flights a day, mainly to Bangkok.

Western food will always be a problem in Thailand. Its rarely like home. If you plan staying a long time you will need to adapt to the local diet. Thats not a bad thing; its very healthy. Currently in the mango season so you could just gorg yourself on that!

Regarding shopping and buying difficult to find things: I just order them on Lazada or find them on websites near Bangkok and get them delivered ems/kerry/dhl. Just pay on delivery or transfer to someones bank. Today I ordered a new wheel bearing for my pickup; it will arrive in a couple of days. Out in the sticks we even get decent Internet!

I would not want to live in KK city; I think now most Asian cities are horrible. Nowadays the attraction of Thailand has got to be country living?

The pretties will be in demand in prison.

On a more serious note, lets see if they get just penance or if they manage to wiggle their way out of it.

Always avoid confrontation on the roads of Thailand. You never know who the other driver is. Also alot of bad driving; let the bad drivers pass; it only a matter of time before they will come unstuck. I have a webcam recording all the time, just incase.

My local Thai gov hospital is not burdened by lots of foreigners queuing up for healthcare. Instead its old poor Thais who can't afford private and get cheap healthcare because of their age. The health service is overloaded because of demand because it's cheap. 

Even with the gov free/cheap healthcare there is only so much you will get free before you have to pay. Replacing knees for example. In this case you would get cheap/free drugs to relieve the pain but not the expensive op.

Same case with foreigners. Got a graze on your leg from falling off your bike? No problem; its a quick easy treatment. But if you break anything then you need to pay.

So its all a storm in a tea  cup, and another way to generate revenue? But you could argue that mass tourism generates alot of revenue anyway?  

I am always insured but it has lots of exclusions; eg motorbikes if you dont have a bike license in your home country.

Good advice from bazza73.

The whole issue of what to do for retirement is a minefield. Retiring to Thailand and giving up links to your home country is a bad idea, on the basis you dont have full citizen rights in Thailand. Also what happens when you get really old and loose you facilities so to speak? Your young Thai wife going to care for when you get to this state? Personally i would keep my house in the UK and spend the uk winter in Thailand and return for the UK spring/summer/autumn. Then you get the best of both worlds and maintain your uk citizenship and the nanny state can take care of you when you loose your marbles or get too decrepit.

Its very important to try and get along with the locals rather than be the grumpy angry farang who knows best! What i mean is keep everyone happy and in your pocket. Try not to cause anyone to loose face and upset anyone. ok your builder was no good; release him in a face saving way. Try and not make enemies and make them like you.

Today i fixed my builders chainsaw; to say he is over the moon and it did not cost him anything would be an understatement. Now he owes me a favour and i have him in my pocket :)

Seems a bit mad to me, but to get 4g upgraded from 3g you need to go into a True shop and get your sim swapped over. Wife and I got new phones (same model Samsung J7 Prime) and got our sim cards swapped to nano sims; went into a True shop to get this done. Strange thing is I still only get 3g while the wife gets 4g. Suppose I will need to go back to the True shop and try again? Back in the UK, never had all this hassle, my 3g sims just worked when 4g came along. Anyone any experience or knowledge on why this is so messy in Thailand?

Ideally tourists should be charged a health insurance fee on entry that would allow government hospital care in event of an accident. This was considered before but maybe the private hospitals might see their gravy train disappear and some powerful folks would not want this?

What is it with the hospitals on the islands off Surat Thani being so expensive? Get her moved to a main land gov hospital and her costs will drop dramatically?

I looked at the crowdfunding page on my phone and did not see much detail about her injuries. Did I miss something?

Trouble is the Thais regard travelling by train is for the poor. So rolling stock is old and lines are badly maintained. Seems the Chinese are trying to change that and give the Thais something akin to a modern train system. Sometimes it takes some effort to change the mindset. Instead low cost airline's are replacing the awful trains?

I always get travel insurance when we stay in Thailand but have never felt they would payout if I got really sick. Knowing the health system in Thailand really helps. Wife has me on the government health care system; have use it several times for dental work and its really good and amazingly cheap. But we live up country in a rural area and can imagine the costs can be astronomical if you are in a tourist area and visit a private hospital. Thailand is now only really cheap if you live in a rural area.

Regarding insurance in general, it's always worth remembering why you have it. The idea being it will pay out when something terrible happens. If you are in the situation where you can cover the costs in the most extreme situation then you don't need insurance. If you got ill and could cover the costs of a government hospital and you feel modern day insurance wont pay out if you got ill, then maybe its not worth having? Then there are the age limits; above 55 years of age the insurance becomes very expensive, and if you have an existing condition even more so?

I also observe that the same doctors and specialists work at the government and private hospitals, and private rooms are available at extra cost at government hospitals so you might ask why would you use a private hospital? The only downside of the government hospitals is they can get busy at times.

So I am sitting on the fence with travel insurance as I always pay it, have never claimed, and expect it would be a nightmare trying to claim if I was really sick. I think mine has an excess of several hundred pounds anyway.

Which then comes back to the risk factor; do dangerous things and you might have an accident. 22 years on and off living in Thailand teach you to lookout for accidents. Riding a motorbike in city areas increases the chances phenomenally. diy around the house needs you to take of your safety. even walking around and looking what you stand on; old rusty nails and nasty creepy crawlies! jumping off cliffs into the sea or into waterfalls; now you are asking for it!

Every year it becomes a challenge mothballing the pickup. Last year they made a nest in the air cleaner box; I foiled their return to that this year by closing the air intake. Always close the air vent into the cabin so they can't enter through that. Always have to remove the blower motor and extract all the bedding they put in the air intakes. Always sprinkle lots of pepper everywhere; eg floor mats. Will try some mothballs above the blower motor this year. Surprisingly they have never chewed through any wires; maybe they put something in the plastic?

Generally I would not use water filter machines. For the sake of a 7 baht or 14 baht for a big bottle it's safer to buy them at 7/11. At home I have one of those 5 stage filters that you can buy on Lazada for 1300 baht for drinking water. In addition I have a 10" polypropylene inline filter for the house water; this filters out huge amounts of scale and crap and means the toilet/sink etc does not get scaled up, the water valve on the washing does not get clogged up, ballcock on the tank does not get grit in it and stick open and the tank overflows; one of the best things I have done. The inline filter cost 300 baht on Lazada. Then you can get replacement 10" pp filters in pack's of 8 or 10 for about 400 baht. Mostly the pp filters need changing; I move the drinking water one to the supply one and then put a new one on the drinking water filter. The old filters get chopped up and use as kindle in charcoal fires!

5 hours ago, DPKANKAN said:

The stupid things is you get a new landing card at the airport, on which you have confirmed your address anyway and that is then stapled in your passport!!   

This is what the police said to us the other day when we went to report. Policeman said he thought it stupid and out of date and not very tourist friendly. Said to us tourists should be treated better. Suppose it makes it easy to track tourist movements around the country. This law has been around for a long time but only recently enforced. Suppose not all of us are honest good tourists :)

19 minutes ago, transam said:

Bit off topic but I have a fridge/freezer with ice maker, put your glass up against this thingy and it dispenses ice...Mrs.Trans had folk round..Next day went to get ice to find the thingy was hanging out and the mechanism all broken....How they manged that is beyond me..

Thai: hammer and nails. Foreigner: screws and portable drill/driver.

Ah yes... Lock the important stuff up when you are away, especially the garage with pickup and lots of expensive tools in it. Tell them it all costs money which you have to work to get. Call this 30 years of Thai experience!

Throw the wifes paing around. Seems they dont like the powder on their feet. Other thing is ants climb when they think its going to rain and we are heading into rainy season. They got into the ear buds this morning, so they do like to make nests so best check laptop bags and anything else bagged away and keep stuff off the floor.  Having empty houses with minimum furnishings and clutter really helps.

Talking about bizarre things we were driving the other day and a tree frog jumped up onto my leg and then tried to jump out of the closed window. So opened the window and pushed it out.

Riding in the back of pickups will be difficult to enforce. Too ingrained in the culture. Anyhow it makes sense at times; but not high speed on main routes. Wife recons it will not happen. What about all those folks with space cabs; now they are not allowed in the back? Glad I bought a 4 door pickup; much more comfortable and we still have the convenience of the flat bed; but it's 10 years old but still drives well since it has a careful low usage owner! 

Where the Swiss Alps, the snow, mountain goats, milk maidens? Last thing Bangkok reminds me of is Geneva. 

Might as well sue Honda or whoever made the car that took her to the hotel as well. If this was a properly run country the judge would throw the case out for wasting time. But nooo money can buy anything here so the loss facing family can get their revenge by sueing all and sundry. So the news outlet does not get sued the family name, lady in question and pharmaceutical company cannot be named either.

Please ban the mini buses; they are overcrowded, uncomfortable, dangerous in an accident and are driven dangerously and at high speed. However the Thai style of driving is the issue and that has been the same since i first visited over 20 years ago. Thus nothing will change and we will continue to read about horrible accidents on Thai roads.

Which brings me to the Thai wife driving with me in the UK today. She never ceases to be impressed with UK drivers stopping at zebra crossings to let pedestrians crossed. I pointed out that in Thai law, drivers are also supposed to do the same thing but no one does. So there you go; its about obeying the law rather than ignoring it and in Thailand the land of the free everyone does what they want and there is very little chance of being caught by police.

Dont want to focus too much on what created the large hole and lets just blame a large wave! Is this a cultural thing? I mean we would not want to appoint any blame or cause any loss of face? Or maybe get sued by the ferry company by causing it to get any negative publicity! So lets just blame a large wave. Immediately investigate it away!

The thing is so much crime is now happening online that you now need as much security as possible. Not only do most websites use encryption, and you connect to them on the basis they have a certificate that proves they are genuine because it comes from a trusted authority like VeriSign. So the question must be can the government eavesdrop on your conversations online if they are mostly encrypted? The only one that isnt encrypted is email. Even all the chat programs are now encrypted. Unless companies like Facebook are going to freely allow governments to read private content?

Suppose no one knows what a private key is? Providing the private key is kept private and you choose a large cipher then ssl encrypted traffic is not crackable. Well without a hugh amount of processing power.

Openvpn is based on a certificate authority cert and then a pub/priv key pair. Mostly openvpn used these days although cisco vpn still quite popular.

But why does Thailand need this gateway?

Maybe they could blast the spaceship into orbit so its never seen again?