nkped

100K Baht a month hardly makes one wealthy. I have the good luck that my employer subsidized health insurance continued into retirement. Now I will have to muck around the Blue Cross web site to see how I prove the level of insurance coverage.

I wouldn't expect news stories about immigration law in Thailand to be any more accurate than similar stories in the US.

For the US, the only thing the embassy is doing is notarizing your sworn statement that you have the income you specify.

I had the passport/departure card copies and a copy of my lease. The officer detached those and handed them back to me without looking at them. I was into the 7 days after grace period. She did refer to a chart, presumably to see if I owed 2,000 baht. The young woman at the front counter who did the initial screening of documents had asked asked if I had photos. When I did my best bewildered farang look, she thought about it for a second and it was "Sorry, sorry." This was on a Tuesday morning. I was in and out within 15 minutes. Nothing about the previously rumored addition

Interesting, just did an ATM withdrawal on my US bank and got 35.20. Unfortunately, they cap reimbursement of ATM fees at $15 a month.

There are a couple of US based sites which I had not been able to access from Thailand. I had tried to access them using Hola and setting it, not unnaturally, to indicate I was browsing from the US. It didn't work. With one of them Ditech.com, I changed the Hola country setting to Canada and it worked. No joy on the other one.

Korean Air 777s have been 3-4-3 in economy right along. It's not the height of luxury but not the worst seating I have had on long haul flights either. I'm 115kg, but don't have any problem fitting my butt between the arm rests. The person next to me probably doesn't enjoy sitting next to the guy who brought the double wide shoulders. At 6'2" (avoid foolish consistency) my greater concern is leg room and amazingly I can stretch out my legs and even cross my legs if I do it with care. Having felt that I had been on the rack after flying business class on a Delta 767 a couple of years ago,

Good now. Quien sabe

When I try to use the quote function, I get an error message "You do not have permission for this action."

You're exhausting my technical knowledge. I think the transaction I witnessed at Starbucks was similar to Android pay. Perhaps my primary Starbucks in Anchorage had defective gear, but there, when someone hauled out their phone to pay, you could count on several failed scans often followed by an alternative payment method.

A little more information. http://www.bangkokbank.com/BangkokBank/PersonalBanking/SpecialServices/NationalEpayment/Pages/index.aspx# It suggests it will allow use of your phone to pay for purchases. Don't know if it was Prompt Pay or not but saw someone pay for a purchase at the Royal Garden Starbucks with her phone. Unlike in the US, the sales person scanned the phone and it worked first try.

No problem accepting cash in Bangkok. All the emails say it's worldwide. I can imagine it would be a bit risky to be traveling with thousands in cash in some parts of the world. For that matter, I suspect it could be a bit awkward for the trips further out of Bangkok such as Udon Thani Phuket. But, yes, it is pain in the butt.

The site for 90 day reporting was back up this morning (26 October). FWIW, I was able to check the status of my report (pending after 6 days) using Chrome.

The lineup is improved. Still wouldn't be giving the recruiting sergeant a big bonus however.

Yeah, I'm hoping it has something to do with the holiday

It worked fine on October 20 using IE. First time out forgot that you have to scroll down on the box in the middle of the window to get to the accept box which you must check in order to proceed. Got the message acknowledging receipt within about 4 hours. One thing they do get right is the drop down menus for your address. Start with province and select Chonburi (or whatever) and then work from there for district and tambon. Beats having to guess whether its "Banglamung" or "Bang Lamung." Also, for the US delegation, don't look for USA, you're "American." Nationality also has a dr

Worst trans-Pacific flight I ever had was Eva, probably in 2007, a beat up old 747 with low rise seat backs, no seat back video and the sound for my seat not working. Plus they didn't want me to turn on the reading light because it would interfere with the people watching the movie. I was more or less prepared to stand for several hours rather than sit in that torture device, but a flight attendant found a saint in an exit row who volunteered to change seats with me. For the return flight from Thailand, I had decided to drop an AMEX bomb on it; buy a completely new ticket on another carrier

Whenever you hear a woman say "Why do men chase after younger women?" I always think that even the Pope or the Dali Lama would, at some level, say "Well, duh." Have to let my inner misogynist our of the basement once in a while.

I prefer my duck fully roasted.

Heard an ad for them on the radio which said it is air conditioned, a critical point for some of us.

Evening aerobics class at View Talay 2A

Tape delay, but you would probably get your carnival atmosphere

Perhaps some obscure C of E feast day.

Some genres work better for audio books than others. Listened to plenty of sci fi audio books. Military history doesn't work too well without maps.

On the lower reaches of Tappraya in Jomtien there doesn't seem to have been any major projects. Some clogged storm drains MAY have been cleared, but that's it. On the other hand, Tappraya can be bare pavement 15 minutes after running curb full, at least north of the Hannuman statue.