BigStar

You have to prove your identity and that you are enrolled in SS. The card is the necessary proof enabling them to verify your identity and check on your enrollment. My office stopped giving out separate insurance cards years ago.

Inspection tells you whether the walls are paper thin. Walls tend to be thicker in older buildings. I'm a fan of older, well-maintained buildings. In the better condos, neighbors tend not be noisy, at least regularly. Many are mostly absent, esp in resort areas where the condo is a vacation home. If your neighbors are too noisy, you can work things out by talking to them and even complaining to the condo management. Very different situation than living in cheap apts or fleabag hotels with mostly Thais and farang drunks around.

Nobody told you, OMG. And your lifestyle interrupted for 10 months. SO sad.???? And your business, destroyed? How much time in ICU, where a friend of mine died of COVID? He had taped a "Do Not Resuscitate" notice to the side of his bed. That interruption will last a bit longer than 10 months. Me, I've never invested in Thailand. I only buy to consume and enjoy. I lack the expertise, as do most expats, no matter their pretensions. If you know what you're doing, as @newnative and his partner do, and are willing to work hard, then you can make some good money. I know a Belgian engineer who owned a small factory employing Thai workers. Now that was a real challenge. Speaks fluent Thai, conducted his own sales presentations, made a pile and sold to a large Japanese company. Super guy, smart, calm, patient, resilient. Deserved his high return. Otherwise, you may end up like these idiots: Pattaya residents and expats accuse bank manager of fraud, hold protest Around 50 to 100 Thais and foreigners in Pattaya held a protest last Friday accusing the assistant manager of a local Kasikorn Bank branch of scamming them out of more than 300 million baht. A report was filed back in February accusing the assistant bank manager of defrauding people out of millions of baht, for some it was their life savings, by promising high returns for investments. --https://thethaiger.com/news/other-news/pattaya-residents-and-expats-accuse-bank-manager-of-fraud-hold-protest For the average naif, I suggest only buying a property that will become your home--if want your own place. And that only after due diligence. I haven't yet seen a need for the requisite Plan B yet as I still enjoy my life in Pattaya. It's been smooth sailing for decades. Posters, usually renters, promoting Plan Bs are mostly paranoid and disgruntled, even already plagued by hellish brain-eating Whither Thailand? and Whither Pattaya? space monkeys. Now one can try this remedy: I recommended this solution to one of our stricken members and, incredibly, he's made some progress. But most find the only remedy is to leave. Find happiness elsewhere and so improve the signal/noise ratio on the forum. Expats who return to Blighty are all just happy as clams and no longer inundate the forum with whinges. Bug out bag, hmmm. Now, no thread daring suggest the mere possibility of buying property in Thailand is complete without mentioning the classic, shrewd, street-smart AN (TVF) Poster Three Primal Laws Of Survival In Thailand. They've been formulated from countless disasters over the many years wherein expats have lost their ENTIRE LIFE SAVINGS--never less. 1. Never invest in anything you aren't ready to lose; 2. Never own more than you can carry with you; 3. Keep your suitcase packed at all times. You got to be ready to head for exits at just any moment before you lose everything, Quoting one or more of the Laws gives you ten (+10) instant points of posting cred from renting brigade. Looks like you hit #1 and were close on #3, bingo.

Worked for a few years with a Thai company and enrolled in the system then. HIGHLY recommended for anyone under 60: work with a Thai employer who offers the benefit.

I am Foreigner in Thailand with Pink ID Card that serves as my SS card. I pay Thai SS about B450 a month. I paid nothing for an eye exam, back X-ray, CT Virtual Colonoscopy, and a few meds (for nothing chronic) just a couple of months ago. Close enuff.

I don't submit any TM30 receipt, just a copy of my pink card.

No.

Merely hot air, since you don't really know. There have been reports of not having to pay the foreigner surcharge at some hsps if one used a pink ID to register at the hsp. I get free healthcare from Thai SS (well, I pay B450 or so per month), but I also re-registered at the local gov't hsps nearby for times I don't want to bother traveling to my registered hospital. Worth doing if it works; if not, they're still cheap and for anything major I'll use SS.

Earlier this year to renew my 5-year I used my yellow book in lieu of residency certificate at the Chonburi DLT. The lucky part was not even having to take an eye test or reaction test. I was out in about 20 minutes.????

I've had two strong recommendations for Dr. Nitivadee Teeyapan-Songdej. After a biopsy she excised an ugly skin cancer for one of my old friends, and he's had no further problems, extremely satisfied. a Board Certified Specialist in Dermatology and Aesthetic Laser Surgery. She has practiced in the U.S.A for 15 years and has received training in over five countries. http://www.lanitivadee.com/ Like Dr. Anna, not cheap but worth it.

Actual certificates. Then taped together and used to shelter on a sidewalk from the sun and rain. Near Walking Street, perhaps. Lot of simplistic binary thinking here. I much prefer to think in terms of both/and, not either/or. Why deprive oneself needlessly?

Who knows (not you) or cares? In my experience, in a large building, none. Little self-serving anecdotes prove nothing. One owner supposedly "bolted," but we'd need a legal deposition to know the exact reason, which may have been some trivial snowflake reason. Maybe needed to go get extra photocopies for Immigration. Some of our members find that request just absolutely devastating. Or, maybe he didn't "bolt" at all but simply left for the free healthcare in Blighty or somesuch practical reason. Living in Thailand permanently does take due diligence. Some helpless farang fail to do that, having no agent who might have held their hands and done it for them--as one might expect in this population. Owners in my building often rent out their units when they're away for extended periods, as they often are, using their condo for vacations. Great thing about resorts. OP, buy a unit with a sea view in a resort.???? Only busy during high season. Yeah, more "bolting" would make for a quieter building. It's good that everyone has the freedom to rant and "bolt" whenever they choose. Our posters have a typical response to the departure announcement, too. If that leaves the unit(s) to be seized and sold by the JP and the proceeds used for building maintenance, then all to the good. Now the supposed "multi-millionaire" wasn't an owner, and for all the supposed wealth and free rent couldn't afford the trivial expense of a long-term visa and instead put himself to a lot of bother. So he was basically, and rightly, kicked out by Immigration, assuming you didn't make it all up. (Yeah, we do that here.) Good on 'em. Irrelevant example.

Exactly, nothing to worry about. Main worry for the old fossils here is a phishing email with an offer for curing erectile dysfunction, BPH, or growing dementia. Or, say, a fake demand from facebook, gmail, or a bank that they change their passwords and info at a fake site. Get an earlier version. But then, being ultra cautious, you'll want to be sure you ignore this warning from Kapersky that came in today, obviously a plot by the Russians: A report from Kaspersky today provides technical details about CosmicStrand, from the infected UEFI component to deploying a kernel-level implant into a Windows system at every boot. The entire process consists of setting up hooks to modify the operating system loader and take control of the entire execution flow to launch the shellcode that fetches the payload from the command and control server. --CosmicStrand UEFI malware found in Gigabyte, ASUS motherboards

Get with the program. The plan is to leave the slim wallet safely stashed in a sock, its disappearance explained by a sad and terribly unfortunate theft on the train. That's a panty dropper right there. Then just carry on with the ol' wit, charm, and debonair cargo shorts to get an invitation to her room, hopefully within easy walking distance. There begins the long-anticipated expedition to find the wet spot.

And why would the east find you more interesting? Have you perchance been a hit with any of the many Asian communities in Australia?

Probably key. Want friends, pack 'em in with you. Point for the OP is that there's not going to be any hot attractive young women there or anywhere else in Thailand giving out free sex to a middle-aged, overweight, impecunious, prospectless Australian male. Very different situation from that of a young, handsome guy with a trust fund--as I can attest from the countless amorous adventures recounted by a young acquaintance of mine. Those, while also holding down a rich hi-so girl getting her MBA from Chula. Met her once, briefly.

Offshore oil laborer, hod carrier, Uber driver (your car!), contract engineering and programming, digital nomad. Blogger and social influencer. The west is bored with you. Why would the east be different?

You might read the latest studies on anti-depressants for correcting serotonin levels, inevitably "perscribed" by proper doctors. There's no money for "proper doctors" in prescribing saw palmetto. Large studies may show it doesn't work. Alas, studies are often wrong. I can give you some impressive "proper" documentation on that. Including the meta analyses one of our members believes in religiously--when they support his point, ignoring those that don't. ???? Such is our forum. However, if I had BPH and read the "small studies" and all the anecdotal evidence, and keeping the placebo effect firmly in mind, I'd have no real reason not to give it a try. Cheap and pretty harmless. What if I happened to be one of those it worked for, seemingly? Great. If not, move on. You got a problem?

Ccleaner. Get the Slim version and even then avoid the option to install another browser. But go to the Chrome web store and get stuff like Do Not Track Cookie Cleaner Cookie Autodelete Clear Cache Click&Clean

Risk of a hacked BIOS is infinitesimal on an old consumer laptop. As for the drive, if you're that paranoid you'd boot from a separate boot disk/drive with a rootkit scanner and do a scan. Half the members on here have "free" Windows and a software package installed at a Thai shop. Not much of a worry, obviously. Come to think of it, despite all our experts continually sounding their alarms here, I don't recall any member complaining, justifiably, a Thai shop had installed a virus on his machine. It's always PLBKC. Still, a solution best avoided, I completely agree.

For some time, before he stopped posting, one of our regulars regularly complained that a well-known Irish-themed bar, still open, charged 60 baht for a bottle of water. Things could be worse. 5 baht worse, anyway. ????

Difficult. Best thing to do is get one from a reputable shop from Lazada and rated well. This one would do: https://www.lazada.co.th/totalsolution/?q=All-Products&from=wangpu&langFlag=en&pageTypeId=2 Me, I'd get an old Thinkpad. Great builds, parts widely available, upgradable, still get lots of love on computer forums. Check a few threads here: https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/search?q=best+used+thinkpad&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all They typically run Linux well. Any problems have long been sorted out by Linux geeks. For example, this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/vsiq8c/how_many_of_you_guys_use_linux_or_windows_on/ If it comes w/ a DVD drive, you can lighten things up by just removing it, maybe even replacing it with an adapter for another SSD.

I have basically an old Chromebook about the same spec, and it runs Fedora XFCE well enough for surfing around, chatting, reading an e-book, and checking email when I'm traveling. Very light, and convenient to leave in the hotel room when I'm out with no cares if it's stolen. Take it! ????

Nonsense, as you probably know. But by that theory you'd want to exercise strenuously for brief periods (read: intervals) to condition the cardiovascular system enough to bring down your resting heart rate signficantly and so conserve the number of beats. A common chart: And resting heart rate correlates with mortality: --https://heart.bmj.com/content/94/5/561

Yes, still better watch the diet and the numbers. You're not off the hook, sorry. --Alan Watson