NancyL

It's possible to treat seed corns yourself and definitely you can prevent their return.  YouTube has a number of videos on how to remove seed corns.  

 You can prevent them very easily in Thailand by having a pedicure every 3 or 4 weeks.  Very cheap way to have callus removed from your feet.  Treat yourself to a manicure at the same time.  Very relaxing.  

If you every remodel, pay attention to the design of the windows.  When we remodeled our 15th story condo, I insisted that the windows be of the type where the outside can be safely cleaned from the inside.  The maid would hang precariously out the windows of another high-rise condo where we lived to clean the windows and didn't want to have that in the new place.  Incidentally, we never asked her to do that, but she did.

The general contractor insisted it wasn't possible, that one glass panel had to be fixed, so I showed him sliding French windows on the website of a Bangkok company that sold PVC windows made in Germany, asking him to get a quote from them.  Rather than do that, he showed the website to his usual aluminum-frame window people here in Chiang Mai and they simply copied the design.  Thai ingenuity.  Now, the maid loves to clean the windows every week.  It's the first thing she does when she arrives.  

My father developed this condition in his late 60s and wasn't really keeping it under control after numerous doctor visits.  He was diabetic and doing a pretty good job of keeping his blood sugar under control.  Finally, the doctor suggested circumcision, not a trivial procedure for a mature adult, but it made it much easier to solve the problem.

Hubby and I took the train from Bang Sue Junction to Hua Hin two weeks ago.  The new Bang Sue Grand station isn't serving trains yet.  We took Train 31, a new, excellent train with wonderful modern 1st class cabin.  As said, reserve the entire cabin for yourself.  

Right now, there is no food service on board, although some hawkers come on at stops.  But, they focus more on the 2nd class cars, where there are more people.  We got friendly, i.e. gave a tip, to the porter serving our car and he scored some food for us at the stops, fortunately, because we were on the very last car of the train and weren't getting much love from the hawkers.

This situation was tolerable for the 4.5 hr trip from Bang Sue Junction to Hua Hin, but it would have been bad for a long trip all the way to Hat Yai.  Bring food and drink.  They just provided a couple of little bottles of unchilled water.

On 3/28/2022 at 1:42 PM, Liverpool Lou said:

The agent would be the party bribing the official.   

 

The arrangement has been going on for decades and, unless you have evidence to the contrary, so far, there have been no reports of anything going wrong, so why would you be so worried about it?

 

"Thought it was against forum rules to discus these things btw".

Why are you discussing them, then?

I've known situations where this "goes wrong" when an expat retiree ends up the a government hospital and claims poverty; unable to pay his medical bill.  Then the question is asked about how he financially justifies his retirement visa.  Here in Chiang Mai, if someone is able to pay their medical bill, the government hospitals don't care about visa status, and in the past they'd even let someone sign a payment contract for as little as 10,000 baht/month.  But the past several years, they've really cracked down and bring in the police when someone pleads poverty with a retirement/marriage visa.  And the police wonder why his visa extension was done in a province other than Chiang Mai and make inquiries.

The end result is either the patient scrambles around and comes up with the money for the hospital bill or ends up returning back to their home country.  And the visa agent has to find another corrupt I/O because he knows that the one he had been using isn't going to be available for future dodgy extensions.

39 minutes ago, Klonko said:

Though I purchased two armchairs from Ikea, Index Living has more apealing furniture for me at the same price point. I think Ikea is also living from its image. And I hate to be forced to walk through the whole store.

I'm not a fan of the upholstered IKEA furniture.  But, you can get a map of the store and see that there are short-cuts where you don't have to walk through the whole store.

5 minutes ago, Hummin said:

Kjøtkaker is better at Taste of Norway at jomtien. 
 

I like swedish meatballs as a kid, but noe, not so much. Tried them at Ikea Bagna, and will not eat them again. 
 

 

I like their salmon a little better than the meatballs.

Rats, I was hoping for Chiang Mai, but realistically we're past the point of buying a condo-full of furniture again.  When we totally remodeled our condo in 2019, I we made a couple trips to IKEA in Bangkok.  First one to check it out and second one after I did hours of online research.  

While it's great for young people outfitting their first place, it's also good for retirees fitting out their last place.  We left behind very high quality furniture (sold for pittance at garage sales) and a kitchen in the U.S. -- all built to last decades.  And we used them for decades.  We don't need that now at this point in our lives.  The high-end IKEA stuff is great for us.

At the time, the Thai versions of their online design tools were clunky, but I found the UK versions worked well and the items had the same part numbers in both the UK and Thailand.  I had to get a customer number for a UK store and selected Nottingham, not knowing it was actually a real place and I still get special offers from that store!  

When I returned for the second trip to IKEA BangNa with the designs I'd created for the kitchen and closets, plus a list of other items I wanted, on a slow Monday, somehow the store general manager tracked me down (maybe it was the roll of blueprints I was carrying), and after chatting gave great advice about how to shop for an entire condo, i.e. head to the kitchen and closet depts to make appointments with the designers, then go buy the other stuff (free-standing furniture) until time for the appointments with the designers, then allow plenty of time at the end to arrange delivery and home assembly at the end.  And he gave me some vouchers that paid for lunch and dinner.  The designers were great, offering wise improvements over the designs I had created. 

I must admit that the only department that seemed less than totally thrilled to help me was the professional office furniture section, where I bought a professional-quality desk, file cabinet and bookcase for Hubby's home office.  They seemed to lose interest when they realized I wasn't outfitting an entire office complex.  However, it's great quality stuff and anyone outfitting an office should consider it.  Much better than the "home office" Hemnes desk I bought for myself because it matches the Hemnes furniture in our bedroom.  Oh well, the cats spend more time at the Hemnes desk than I do.

At check-out , I discovered that they had a contractor who would travel to Chiang Mai and assemble everything for something like 7% of the purchase price.  I called the general contractor for our condo remodeling and asked him if this was better than having his crew assemble and he said "go for it"; his people had never assembled IKEA.  And they were amazing.  Driving all night from Bangkok, acting as a highly synchronized team to bring the boxes up to the 15th floor condo, tossing away the instructions immediately upon opening the boxes, and going to work assembling items in record time.  The kitchen took 1/2 day, the closets 2 hours.  Then jumping into the truck to drive back to Bangkok.  Who says that Thai people don't know how to work?   

2 hours ago, JimmyJ said:

Timely post, as I am - as I do annually - pondering "Renew or Not Renew (my non-USA health insurance?)".

 

Was considering making a separate thread on the following, but will float it here first:

 

I can return to the USA (if able) and medical coverage there will handle the medical bills adequately.

 

But if I am unable to do that - 

 

Can posters offer some idea of what unexpected medical bills can be?

I am as usual trying to justify the coverage, and it gets more difficult to justify with the annual price increases.

 

Would be helpful to know what bills I could be faced with in making my annual decision.

Sheryl has more experience with this than me, but I've seen hospital bills close to 10 million baht for people who have bad vehicular accidents or strokes with ICU stays.   And this is in government hospitals.  Here in Chiang Mai, the government hospitals have "special rates" for foreigners now to discourage them from using government hospitals which are already overburdened with Thai patients.  They're still cheap for out-patient, but the in-patient rates for rooms, food, nursing for very basic ward rooms are equal to to the rates of the mid-level private hospitals in the area.

Has the OP talked with his insurance broker to see if there are ways to reduce the cost of his insurance without switching his provider?  We did and discovered we had enrolled in a gold-plated plan that included things like maternity care (what, I was over age 55 when we first took the policy!) and mental health cover.  We switched to a more basic plan, increased our deductible and substantially reduced our annual cost.

On 3/28/2022 at 6:35 PM, scubascuba3 said:

I started watching a Mickey Rourke movie yesterday, The Commando, my god he looks terrible after numerous plastic surgeries. Looks like a mask now

Mickey Rourke really messed up his face due to his boxing career, in fact leaving acting for a time to be a professional boxer.  Acting and boxing aren't really compatible careers and he has used plastic surgery to try to correct the abuses from boxing.  He is hardly a typical example of the results of cosmetic surgery.

22 hours ago, Dante99 said:

Thank you very much Nancy. It looks very good.  Appreciate your assistance.

I know the Little Giant ladders are pricey by Thai standards, but what is the cost of your safety?  In the U.S. one way they were sold, at least when we were last there 15 years ago, was at home shows, with a husband/wife team that made a living touring around to these type of events.  The husband would demonstrate the ladders with a nice little patter on a personal microphone that would draw crowds while the wife sat at a table, running a credit card machine as fast as she could as the ladders flew out the door. 

One time Hubby and I had our booth across the aisle from the Little Giant folks, unfortunately, and they blocked the aisle with the crowd they drew and few people were interested in our nursery stock.  Oh well.  At least we knew exactly how to operate the ladder when we left the show with one like everyone else, because we'd heard the guy's pitch a zillion times during the three days of the show. 

And they gave us a 10% discount as an apology for blocking the aisle during most of the show and we were so nice about it.  Actually, we had a nice little chat about what they did for a living, thinking maybe we were in the wrong line of work!

7 hours ago, Dante99 said:

Those I found on lazada were all much too short to do second story windows of this topic.  Maybe they had others I could not locate.

If you type "Little Giant Ladder" in the Lazada search engine the very first one shown is the one, actually one of several that we used in our greenhouse/nursery operation.  You may want to purchase the attachment where you can attach a tray to the ladder.  Very useful for painting or holding tools.

https://www.lazada.co.th/products/little-giant-ladder-lgl15422-little-giant-22-foot-i255313356-s393707621.html?spm=a2o4m.searchlist.list.2.24f46e80IkvbnP&search=1

You may want to go onto YouTube and look at videos of the versatility of this ladder system.  It's a step ladder, extension ladder, can be part of a scaffolding system and was very helpful when we painted the walls of the stairwell in our house.

1 hour ago, Dante99 said:

Where in Chiang Mai can one purchase a ladder which meets those standards and what is the brand of the ladder?

Barco and Little Giant ladders.  Available on Lazada.

We had a greenhouse/nursery business in the U.S. and the gutters on some of our greenhouses were 15 ft tall and we had an 1890s barn with a roof that sometimes needed repair.  I handled purchasing and/or renting equipment.  I'd never send Hubby or employees up on something like a bamboo ladder.  Be sure to have a spotter holding the base of an extension ladder.  

1 hour ago, Maybole said:

I do not know which district you live in, so cannot point you at a specific shop. Not far from me is a shop making bamboo furniture and othet artifacts. I got them to make me a 5m ladder so that I could reach some coconuts . The cost was about 1200 Baht.

And that ladder met all applicable ANSI safety standards, right?

On 3/23/2022 at 10:42 AM, SamSanuk said:

Rebar arrives. PanSook Condominiums next door. Time to sell?
 

Gonna be a noisy few months of construction….then followed by Pneumatic drivers and lug nuts as you so rightly mentioned. Ugh!

 

We lived on the 5th floor of Nakorn Ping, across the street from PanSook when it was being built.  It took months, almost a year and it was a comedy of errors to watch the construction. 

First the hole dug for the garage flooded and collapsed.  Then they dug again and brought in pumps and poured concrete as the pumps struggled to keep up with the flooding.  (Note to contractor:  don't dig big holes during rainy season)  I wonder how sound that concrete is.  

Then each floor went up, slowly, very slowly, with staff that appeared to mill about for most of the day.  They brought in an outside contractor crew who laid the plumbing in each floor just before the concrete was poured.  That contractor was obviously paid by the job, not the hour, because that crew really hustled, unlike the regular workers.

The crane would swing around within inches of the window where we ate our meals.  A little scary during breakfast to see a large crane heading straight at you.

The "balconies"  aren't proper balconies.  They can be accessed via a window, not a door and the railings are merely decorative.  After completion, a couple within view of our condo used theirs as a storeroom for all their junk.

The front steps of PanSook are a total joke.  They were built and torn out three times before whomever was in charge decided they were acceptable. 

Then when it was done, half of our view of Doi Suthep was gone.  If we were still in the same condo, I'd rejoice at the prospect of a low tire center going into the empty lot, with the construction progressing as quickly and professionally as it appears.  The sound of pneumatic tools during the day is a small price to pay for retaining the view and knowing that commerce is continuing in Chiang Mai, rather than having yet another shoddy condo building blocking views and sitting nearly empty. 

And yes, I agree, the banana lady and other food sellers will probably benefit with the increased customer traffic at the corner, in the long run.

You may want to ask for this thread to be moved over to the Health section of this forum where the moderator Sheryl, a very experienced nurse in Thailand can give you advice.  

Yesterday, March 23 Hubby and I flew from Chiang Mai to Don Muang on Nok Air (way more delightful than Air Asia) and no one either at the airport or with the airline asked about our vaccination status.  Then we wanted to experience the old Bang Sue Junction train station before the opened the new Bang Sue Grand, so we took a taxi there to board a wonderful, new Chinese-built train for a 1st class experience to Hua Hin.  Again no one asked about vaccination status, Covid testing, etc.  I think all anyone cared about is that we wore masks.

In retrospect, spending two hours at the Bang Sue Junction train station was more than enough "local color".  I've really been out of circulation for two years and had forgotten what the experience was like of walking up and down a row of Thai food stalls, looking for one that cooked food to order and was fairly clean.  And then eating that food while perched on a little plastic stool in the stifling heat.  

After our lunch, a friendly, English-speaking SRT employee came to us as we sat in the waiting area, looked at our tickets and told us where to sit to be near our train car on arrival.  Since we had booked 1st class tickets, I asked if there was an airconditioned 1st class lounge at the station and he had a nice laugh.

Definitely keep pet cats indoors or within a confined garden area from which they can't escape.  If they're old and fat, a high fence will do.  If young and nibble, construct a catio enclosure.  There are just too many natural hazards here for cats.  

Sometimes Hubby puts a cardboard cutout of a jingjoke on the wall of the condo for the cats to stare at if they've been annoying him while he's trying to get something done.  Somehow we get enough "wildlife" within our 15th story condo to keep the cats amused from time-to-time that we don't have to use the cardboard cutout, but we try to encourage the young jingjokes to moves elsewhere because they don't last long in our place.

One upside of a tire center would be that it won't be multi-story and block the views of the residents of the surrounding condos and hotel.  Also, it won't stay open late or host loud events.

Topamax (topiramate) did the trick for me.  

Since we live in a condo and thus don't have a garden, cremation is our only option.  Certainly, when we lived in a house, our pets were buried in the garden.

Doesn't your condo have a parking garage or covered parking?  Nope, guess not.  The OP said it was a cheap place.  You get what you pay for.