NancyL

It's good news for Chiang Mai, in general, that this big hotel is back in operation. A Thai Rotary Club will have meetings there several times a month, Chiang Mai Expats Club will resume monthly meetings there in June and I hope other local organizations will support them, in addition to individuals enjoying their good pool and exercise facilities.

I'm willing to pay the 1650 baht not to have to wait long for the shot and not to have to sit around long after to see if I have a reaction. I live very close to CM Ram, so if I have a problem, I can get myself there and their protocol reduces potential Covid exposure. In my age group, the reactions seem to occur the next day and put you out of commission.

Yes, this is the norm in the U.S. Learned this when a nurse told me, "you should take the phone, pillows, blanket, etc, You're just going to be billed for them." All that was top-drawer stuff, too, that we used for years. Incidentally, I wanted a fan in the room, which they wouldn't provide, but I asked if my husband could bring one from home. The only way that was acceptable was if he brought in a brand-new one, still in the box. Of course, we took that home, too.

A few times when I've called 1333 with a similar problem, their first recommendation is to try another browser. Chrome is my preferred browser but sometimes it doesn't "get along" with Bangkok Bank internet banking. I've tried this same trick with other online financial apps and it often works. Good to keep Internet Explorer on your computer for just such times. I guess developers are still using it as their "go-to" browser.

Did you try dialing 1333 on a mobile phone and using their English language customer service? I haven't found the menus to be very difficult to navigate and can talk with a real person fairly quickly.

I think it's just plain rude to go into a small shop or market stall, especially early in the day and expect the vendor/owner to be able to provide change for 1000 baht for a small purchase. When we lived in the U.S., I sold plants at Farmers' Markets and hated it when a customer showed up at 6:30 am, while I was still setting up our display and wanted to buy one plant, expecting change for $100. Sure, toward the end of the day, I would have welcomed the $100 as a way to consolidate all the $20 bills I'd accumulated during the day, but not at 6:30 am. Now that we're retired in Thailand, Hubby goes to Bangkok Bank each week and gets 100 baht and 20 baht notes that we use in our daily purchases. We always try to pay as close to the amount of the purchase as possible when we buy things. For one thing, it eliminates confusion about whether the correct change was given.

Cat Castle https://www.catcastlecm.com/en/cat-hotel/ Boarded our little dears there recently for a week. They have CCTV in each of the rooms, so you can watch your cats any time you want. Be sure to bring a bed for them. We paid extra for them to use the "cat playground" each day, but one cat wouldn't let them pick her up so she stayed in the room and the other just wandered around the perimeter of the playroom, acting very scared. Total waste of money. They seemed very comfortable in their room, however.

That's what we received when we rode the train to the end of the line a few years ago. Maybe they stopped doing this during Covid.

If you're admitted to a private hospital for something urgent, they will want a deposit even if you have insurance. If you aren't able to make a deposit, then you are referred to a government hospital. This was my experience when admitted to a private hospital for sepsis, with a high fever. No time to wait around for "Guarantee of Payment". Friends have had similar experiences. I gladly paid it, knowing I had a deductible with the insurance and the amount requested was lower than the deductible. Let the insurance office at the hospital obtain the "Guarantee of Payment" while I'm getting treatment paid by my deposit.

The lack of an antidote should be a consideration. A husband of a suffered several bad cuts when a glass door at a shop broke while he was entering the shop. He was taken to Chiang Mai Ram Hospital for but treatment was delayed for nearly two hours while they phoned around and finally located the antidote for the Xarelto, prescribed by a doctor at that hospital. Mind you, this is in Chiang Mai where there are numerous hospitals and it still took this long to find the antidote. It seems to be that if a doctor at a hospital is prescribing a non-vitamin K blood thinner, they should have the antidote stocked in their pharmacy.

As one person mentioned, Hubby and I personally know the owner of the machine we use and she takes very good care of it. Many people in our condo use it. We change replace our plastic bottles every couple months and store them in a dark room or dark kitchen drawer after filling to try to reduce plastic leaching into the water. Before the owner of the mini-mart in our condo bought her water machine, we were somewhat concerned about the machine across the soi that we used. Didn't know if it was properly maintained.

It's a special tourist attraction train. Just took a "regular" train last month to Hua Hin. Pricing the same for foreigners and Thai people. Get over it. As I recall on this special tourist train, they give you a special certificate and snack, too. It's a nice ride for the price.

I certainly don't use wheelchair service when I'm just going on a trip within Thailand, but on long trips, I book business class and do ask for a wheelchair, esp. if traveling by myself, because by the end of the long trip, my ankles will be swollen and my brain jet-lagged. I'm not taking a wheelchair/attendant away from someone else. There are more than enough and I always tip the attendants, except in countries like Japan where that's not done (research in advance). It's a win-win for everyone. I don't think the fact that I booked business class entitles me to a wheelchair more than someone in economy, it's just at this point in my life, I decided that I have enough money to spend it on some comforts.

I don't think this is necessarily true. Both Hubby and I each have 800,000 baht in a Thai bank and in the big picture of our finances, we'd rather just leave it there earning 0.5% interest and not be bothered playing games with a "dodgy" agent. (We've learned that the word "dodgy" is Brit-speak for lying, cheating, etc") or worrying about transferring money over each month, but rather when we need it. Our agent in Chiang Mai charges 5500 baht above the gov't fees and for that they complete the forms, take our photos, know what color is suppose to be used this month for the photo background and document signatures, what pages of the passport have to be copied, get the bank documents, take us to Immigration (we're on different schedules for our extensions) and we go to a special VIP window where we peer thru the window at the IO and don't have to say a word. In-and-out, little exposure to Covid. Yes, I've heard that in CM, the agents have to pay 3000 baht for each customer to use the VIP queue, so the 2500 baht above the "fee" they pay immigration is well worth it not to be jerked around by immigration because we signed our names using the wrong color ink or forgot to take off our glasses for the photos we submitted.

Definitely suggest wheelchair service even if your friend is fit, as the wheelchair attendants eliminate the need to figure out how to navigate through the airports and bring you to the head of the queues. Also, business class is a must for anyone who can afford it and the middle eastern airlines have a good reputation for their business class service. As mentioned, coming into Singapore and then flying directly from Singapore to CM eliminates the potential chaos at Swampy, but if it can't be avoided, then the airport Novotel is nice and handled the wheelchair aspect quite nicely when I made a solo international trip last year. It helps if he is mobile enough to handle transfers in/out vehicles, etc himself and just needs the wheelchair to make the long hall walks tolerable.

We have friends, an American couple, who are very devout Christians and are uncomfortable with having a spirit house at their rented house in Chiang Mai. They asked the owner if they could remove it and she refused. So, at my suggestion they turned it into a year-round nativity scene, with figurines they brought from America. The owner lives overseas and hasn't seen it.

It's a matter of how well the condo committee enforces the rules. In our building, if someone leaves something outside their door, like shoes, the cleaning staff has been instructed to push the items to the end of the hall with their dust mop when they do their twice daily sweep of the halls. As for people who don't dry off before entering the lift after exiting the pool, they're spotted by the security guard with the CCTV and receive a stern letter. We have some stern people on our condo committee and I like it that way.

Get a 30 day extension to give yourself time to sort this. You may have to move. The rental agent didn't do their job. With every condo we've rented, all these documents were part of the rental contract. This is why you use a real estate agent rather than trying to rent directly from the owner. In a couple cases, we did rent directly from owners, but they were local and provided all these documents. If they didn't, we wouldn't have signed the lease. There's a reason an visa agent is quoting high fees like 35,000 baht. It's because you don't have everything in order and they're going to have to "make a deal" with immigration on your behalf.

It seems like every time Hubby or I get another one-year extension for retirement in Chiang Mai that the online 90 day report system rejects us for the next report and we have to go to Immigration's easy-peasy drive-thru window. Our extensions are not at the same time of year and are not connected to each other's visas. It's like the 90 day online system doesn't know, somehow, that we just got a new extension a few weeks ago. After this once-a-year trip to file a 90-day report in person, we can use the online 90 day report system just fine for the rest of the year. This may just be a Chiang Mai problem.

Tom, have you ever had a TEE? It is a very different procedure from a standard echocardiogram requiring a team of professionals with very different risks for the patient. I'm not surprised you're receiving quotes of 100,000 baht, although an overnight hospital stay seems a little excessive. The Wikipedia article explains the difference nicely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transesophageal_echocardiogram

I've gone to the ENT doc at Bangkok Hospital a couple of times, not for cleaning, but when I felt I was having problems. He has a scope where you can look inside your ear canal on his computer screen. One time I felt that maybe I did have an ear wax or infection problem and he checked out the ear and retrieved a tiny piece of dandruff off the ear drum. That was it. Immediate relief. He couldn't believe I was even feeling it. Princess and the pea, I guess.

A year or so ago my cardiologist said he and some of his cardiologist friends at the big government hospital in CM thought that the generic Thai-produced amlodipine had some quality problems and wasn't as effective at blood pressure control as the Pfizer brand Norvasc. I need to see him soon, so I'll ask if that's still the case because there is a big difference in price, but not as high as what OzMan reports. A friend who is a retired U.S. doctor said he was also noticing problems in BP control with the Thai-produced generic amlodipine, but rather than switch to Norvasc, he simply switched to another generic drug in the same category. But, he's a doctor and has an idea of what med he could substitute and still save money.

We've been very happy with the Xiaomi purifiers. We had other brands, but when it came time to buy replacement filters, they were difficult to find.

We use USABox.com in Miami, FL One good thing about them is that you can specify your mode of shipment, not only DHL/FedEx/UPS but also the U.S. Postal System, which means that usually purchases of goods, delivered through the Thai postal system aren't inspected by Thai customs.

Dr. Thanawat is the best in Chiang Mai for stents. As Sheryl suggested ask him where else he practices. I see Dr. Apichard, another cardiologist at Bangkok Hospital CM who is very good for those of us with blood pressure problems. Dr. Apichard suggests that he prescribe 5 days worth of my meds each time through the hospitals, so that there is record of my meds on file with the hospital in case I ever have to be admitted as an inpatient, to make it quicker to access what meds I must take. Then, I can purchase the rest of the supply needed at a cheaper retail pharmacy. This came in handy when I was admitted for a problem totally unrelated to my heart, but still needed to continue my heart meds, of course. The hospital pharmacy had immediate access to what meds had been prescribed for me.