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Wikipedia - Interesting immunology-tidbit on immunosenescence
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Travel Insurance
Travel insurance will cover you for the duration of your trip, not before that. -
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Where to start in a medical emergency as an expat in Thailand
Beware of some volunteer rescue workers in your area. This is an excerpt from a currently unpublished article. "The pandemic drained the energy from the rescue service, shattering the momentum we’d fought so hard to build. Volunteer numbers dwindled, unity frayed, and private hospitals began offering illegal payouts to rescue workers. More unscrupulous volunteers, eager for quick, lucrative incomes, flooded the service. For old-school rescuers like me—those who joined to help people, not for profit—this created constant friction. In the old days, volunteering was about passion for humanity, not benefits. Sure, small illegal payments had crept in over the years—200 or 300 baht to cover fuel or supplies—but it didn’t compromise the ethics of the job. Most volunteers paid for their own vehicles, equipment, and petrol. But now, hospitals were offering thousands of baht for delivering insured patients, and even more if they were admitted or required surgery. Volunteers could earn a month’s salary in a single day, provided they were aggressive enough. And aggression became the problem. To ensure they reached incidents first, volunteers abandoned rescue radios and switched to private messaging apps like Line, similar to WhatsApp. They developed networks of informants—motorcycle taxi drivers, shopkeepers, rogue policemen, and even a radio operator from Erawan, the government ambulance service. For tipping them off, these informants received kickbacks of around 300 baht. Some volunteers stopped reporting incidents until they were already on scene, preventing others from arriving first. This reckless behavior delayed critical medical care and, in some cases, cost lives. Though proving this is nearly impossible, the possibility alone is deeply troubling. One case still haunts me. A young volunteer arrived at a multi-casualty accident but didn’t call it in. Instead, he ferried two injured patients to the hospital, leaving others on the roadside for 20 minutes until he returned to transport them. He earned 8,000 baht that day—more than half the average monthly wage in Thailand in 2024. All the while, other volunteers stood ready and willing to help. This greed-driven negligence put lives at risk, and it was appalling. Adding to the chaos, some volunteers stopped performing basic assessments altogether in their rush to secure their illegitimate income. I’ve even seen untrained friends or girlfriends tagging along, foundations and government regulators turning a blind eye to these serious violations. The influx of money tore apart volunteer teams, shattered friendships, and nearly obliterated the brotherhood culture that was one of greatest things about the service. Watching the system unravel was heartbreaking." Yesterday, I was in parliament where they were having a hearing on some rescue volunteers who had taken a heart attack patient to a hospital far away to get extra money. He allegedly had more heart damage than he would have if he had received earlier treatment. Not all rescue workers are like this but just be aware there are quite a few nowadays. They are often first on scene and may be useful in an emergency but if you can wait for a non-volunteer ambulance then it "may" pay to do so. -
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Furniture/Personal Possessions/Container From UK
Importing most stuff is easy, but the duty on a lot of stuff is prohibitively high. A lot of stuff good stuff is cheaper to buy new in the US and import than to by new here. -
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Were Those Stupid "Never Surrender" Sneakers Ever Delivered?
Making and supplying buses is certainly the business to "be in" in the US for the next couple of years - they are going to need an awful lot of them! -
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Furniture/Personal Possessions/Container From UK
The law on vehicles changed a few years ago. You are not allowed to import secondhand cars or bikes now.- 1
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Thai tax tangle: Expats warned of new rules on overseas income
I'm more of a middle ground person at the moment. There is a lot we don't know yet about enforcement and also a number of important technical details on the actual rules of the system. But I will say this about enforcement. Up till now, retired expats living only on remittances didn't think about Thai tax, getting a TIN at all. That was when the LOOPHOLE rule was money remitted from previous years to the current year was not accessable. But think about this for a moment. What percentage of retired expats do you think DID remit money earned in the current year? My guess is 75 percent or more. Weren't they in violation of Thai tax law? I think, yes, absolutely, they were, but it was completely off the radar because of NO ENFORCEMENT. It would have been totally insane to even try to go in to pay tax on such remittances before now. So you see, this is much more of grey area than you're presenting it as.
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