DogNo1

Here's a link that enables you to get the exchange rate for your currency.  When I get a cash advance, I get the Visa exchange rate, not the Bangkok Bank exchange rate.  There are no cash advance fee charges by the bank and no foreign transaction charged by my credit card so I get the straight Visa exchange rate.

https://usa.visa.com/support/consumer/travel-support/exchange-rate-calculator.html

I always carry $2,000 when I enter Thailand just in case my credit cards are lost.  It can take a while until replacement credit cards reach you.  Regarding the best exchange rate, I always get it by obtaining an over-the-counter cash advance at Bangkok Bank.  No fees, just the Visa exchange rate for the day.

That the Thais don't want us here is one interpretation of the cumbersome and frustrating procedures required by immigration but not the only one. I well remember the excessive paperwork required by the US Army when I was a soldier.

Interestingly, there is starting to be a backlash against the #metoo complainers by woman news commentators.  No pun intended.

Sony XA1 is about 8990; so is the Vivo V7.  About the same specs: 4 GB and 64 GB.  Vivo feels better in the hand.

There is a high-end shop in Amarin near Chidlom BTS.

Yes, the version of Android that you get on the phone is important because you will get to a point when you can no longer update the version on the phone.  It's best to get a phone with the most recent version so you can update for a couple of years.

You are doing a ninety-day report, not a renewal.  Your renewal comes each year when you extend your extension of stay. Don't confuse the ninety-day report with your permission to stay. Getting those two mixed up could cause you to overstay inadvertently since a ninety-day report date could fall after your yearly permission to stay has expired.

KittenKong:  I have several brands of air conditioners here in Japan and they all get gunked up.  Some are more trouble (and more expensive) to clean than others.

Isopropyl alcohol evaporates and leaves no residue unlike other liquids mentioned for killing mold.  Bleach is very corrosive and can damage surfaces.  

The blower wheel is at the bottom of the unit behind the fins/slats where the air comes out.  You can use a flashlight to look inside the unit.  In my air con, mold and grime had accumulated for years.  Take a look at my previous post, open the text file and click on the URL link.  You will see a complete explanation of where the mold is and how it should be removed.

Actually, what is needed is what is called in Japan a disassembly clean.  You really can't get the blower fan clean unless it is taken out.  Spraying various solutions into the fan and bottom of the unit will get some of the mold and grime but not all of it.  I am attaching a text file with a link to a Japanese air conditioner cleaning site.  When you get to the site use the "Translate to English" option to read it.  I recently had my air conditioners cleaned here in Tokyo but they weren't disassembled so the bottoms and blower fans of the units are somewhat dirty.  To reduce the amount of mold spewed from the units, I spray the fan and bottom interior of the air conditioner with isopropyl alcohol.  I turn on the unit and leave the room for 30-45 minutes until the alcohol odor dissipates. 

I leave for Bangkok soon and when I return in May I will have the air conditioners disassembled and cleaned again by the outfit shown in the link.  They discuss the danger of mold very well on their page.  I suffer from a mold allergy but unbeknownst to me, my air conditioners were never cleaned properly hence my rooms were always filled with mold.  It took years for the allergy to get really bad and now I am suffering whenever I get close to mold or mildew.

I suggest that everyone consider getting a disassembly cleaning for their air conditioners.   I have found out that long mold exposure WILL produce a strong allergy.

house cleaning site.txt

I’m 75 and grouchy too, especially about waiting and miscommunications (I get confused and say the wrong things.)  I like the Buddhist philosophy generally but prefer to watch Eckhart Tolle talk about presence and mindfulness without using much special terminology.  It’s more understandable to me that way.  When I find myself beginning to suffer because of my thoughts, especially regrets, I watch an hour or two of eckharttolletv.  My problems seem so much more bearable when I adjust my attitude.

Many thanks, Sheryl.  I will give the Cigna application a try.

Good point Sheryl but if you have a hospitalization whose cause is the worsening of a pre-existing condition, your insurance won't pay, right?  Accidents and a new disease might be covered but I wonder if insurance is still worth it when I would have to self-insure for cancer and heart problems.  I would be able to buy cancer insurance in Japan since my cancer was cured more than five years ago.  I wonder if that's true of insurance available in Thailand.

cheeryble:  Why not get a complete checkup and get a doctor's opinion on your risk of developing prostate cancer or coronary artery disease?  Some prostate cancers are very slow growing and just need to be watched carefully.  High cholesterol does not necessarily cause heart disease.  You could get a stress-ultrasound and see what shape your heart is in.  If you have some blockages, stenting is a possibility.  It is best done early on.  Also, elsewhere on the forum the option of having your medical procedures done in India is discussed.  Perhaps if you can predict what the cost might be if worse came to worst, you can calculate whether you need insurance or can pay on your own.  I personally have both Japanese National Health Insurance and Medicare but if I have a serious medical problem I doubt that I would want to fly out of Thailand.  Fortunately, If I must have stenting, bypass surgery or some other procedure done on an emergency basis, my Japanese insurance will reimburse me for what it would have cost in Japan which means that I would stand to recover about one-third of what I would have to pay at a private Thai hospital. At my age (75,) buying insurance to cover me in Thailand is not feasible, especially since I already have cancer and cardiovascular disease as pre-exisiting conditions.

If you are willing to buy without handling and examining the phone first, Lazada is an option for Xiaomi and other brands.

Thanks, Al.  Your post is a real wake up call for me.  I have been blindly absorbing Bumrungrad's increasing costs but I will need to shop around if I have another cardiac blockage or serious illness.  I have Japanese health insurance and spend half the year in Tokyo but if something serious happens to me in Bangkok, I may not feel like jumping on a plane back to Japan.  I like my cardiologist at Bumrungrad but may not be able to afford him any more.  A friend uses Samitivej but I've heard that it is also quite expensive.  Another friend used St. Louis Hospital for a carpal tunnel operation that was botched so I'm not confident that it can be trusted.  According to the OP, the service at Chula can be pretty terrible what with having to argue with the nurses and fight for correct pricing and keep your own records.  At least Bum has all of my records on its computer going back ten years and my doctor's assistant runs interference for me if there are any problems.  I have noticed that Bum's quality of care seems to have been going downhill for the past several years so it's an opportune time to make a change.

If I can survive for five more years, I'll move back to Little Saigon (Westminster, CA) where I have Medicare and my daughter and friends can arrange all kinds of services within the Vietnamese community.  My daughter is a social worker who handles a case load of elderly Vietnamese patients since she is a Vietnamese speaker.

You may be right.  Probably only the non-emergency cases were stopped at the door.  Now that you have jogged my memory, I can't remember emergency cases being refused entry.

Global Guy: I was an ambulance driver in San Diego in 1968-69.  I clearly remember my frustration when I pulled into Mercy Hospital with a patient who needed immediate attention only to be stopped at the door of the emergency entrance by a nurse with a clipboard who had to get all of the payment information before we were allowed the enter the hospital.  It's not only Thailand that requires payment guarantees up-front.  I never took in an unconscious patient but I feel sure that they would be looking for ID and insurance cards ASAP.  As I remember, County would let us take the patients straight in but the private hospitals wouldn't.  This may be shocking to people who assume that American hospitals provide treatment first and arrange for payment later.  Mercy Hospital would actually turn patients away if they didn't have the ability to pay and then it would be off to County.  The patients' condition was very worrisome when you couldn't get them the care that they needed promptly.  So far as I know, the ambulance company was never sued over this.

Whether to have insurance or not depends somewhat on a person's age and their period of stay in Thailand.  Some older people residing here do not have an established residence in any other country than Thailand.  Travel insurance isn't a possibility for them.  For people seventy and over, self-insurance makes sense since they can't buy local insuranc  unless they were enrolled before the age of sixty.  I am covered by Japanese National Health Insurance which will pay for any procedure what it would have cost in Japan.  The cost of an angioplasty and the installation of one Stent at Bumrungrad would be around $31,000 compared to a cost of around $10,000 in Japan.  In that case, I would be on the hook for $21,000 out of my own pocket with everything to be paid by me upfront with later reimbursement of the $10,000 in Japan.  

Today, on my way back from Seattle, I stopped by the travel insurance sales office at Narita Airport and discovered that travel insurance for the six months that I usually stay in Bangkok would cost me about $1,400. I didn't have  a chance to check  on exclusions and limitations.  It might be helpful in the case of a serious accident on a motorcycle taxi , but I'll have to check the fine print.  So far, due to my advanced age, I have simply been willing to pay everything myself, collecting any reimbursement that I can get in Japan and deducting the whole expense from my income tax which is something that you can't do in  other countries.  If it comes to all of us needing to have health insurance in Thailand, I will just declare  my JNHI and declare that I have the funds to oay the difference.

For those younger Americans expecting to use Medicare and VA Health Benefits, please be aware that Medicare cannot be used outside of the US and that VA care is still quite sluggush with  three month delays 

To see a doctor  not uncommon.

Good luck to everyone.  I hope that your choice works out for you.  I still hope to spend the six winter months in Bangkok under some scheme that TAT can accept,

What about long-term stayers with one-year retirement extensions?  I think that you have to be a resident of another country to buy travel insurance.  Plus travel insrurance certainly won’t be effective for one year.

There are lots of inexpensive phones around so choose whichever one suits your fancy.  I usually wait for Power Buy in Central Chidlom to mark down one of their phones.  Last year, I bought an ASUS Zenphone 6 there but have forgotten the price.  I like it a little better than my iPhone 6 Plus.  I'm now in California and planned to bring my Experia 3 to use here but since it won't go any higher than Android 5, the present version of Skype wouldn't install, so I ended up bringing my iPhone.  One factor to consider is that phones, tablets and computers become obsolete after a while and won't run the latest OS and applications.  In the future I plan to buy the latest and best model of each that I can afford.  I recently bought an MSI Cheyenne Pro laptop with an i7-7707 Proc and an Nvidia 1060 GPU.  I hope that it will last me for 6+ years.  I will soon be giving away two Viao laptops that were great machines for their time which has now passed.

A Japanese govt minister pointed out that Japan has been threatened by North Korean missles for quite a few years.  It's nothing new to the Japanese.  So the North Koreans will have nuclear-tipped ICBMs.  So what?  They must know that it would be suicidal to use them.  I just think that they just wan't to make themselves invulnerable to foreign attack and upgrade their status on the world stage.  We should cool down already and only react if they attack some country.  Their posturing probably isn't going to hurt anybody.