EricV

Lol maybe... I think it's just the natural cycle: every few years there are complaints & a clean up is ordered, vendors are pushed back to their official concessions, big officials come to inspect, photos are taken, articles are written, how Pattaya is more family friendly and upscale... Then slowly more chairs are added, tea money is paid and the cycle repeats...

Jomtien Beach looked like that probably for the time it took to take the photo. The beach is filled with chairs all the way to the waterline... Of course, more than half of the chairs are empty, even in high season...

On Lazada / AliExpress, try Chuwi (original store!). It's a Chinese budget brand of reliable tablets and notebooks with several models in your budget. They often use older components that'll be fine for your purposes. Good built quality, I made two purchases & no issues... While fakes might be ok quality for clothes & shoes, I would not recommend buying any of the "fake" phones/tablets/laptops - they often are completely useless scams. The description might resemble a brand product, but the item shipped will decidedly not. Read too many horror stories, waste of money imo

I think most of this devaluation is adjusting the "official" Peso conversion rate to the informal "Blue Dollar" rate. The previous government tried to control currency rates, including an artificial (fantasy) conversion rate, resulting in a grey market where you could get significantly more pesos for your $... Some/most/all (?) of the difference was already passed on in the local prices... Argentina has a tough road ahead; this change might make tourism easier, hopefully contributing to improvements for Argentina in the long run...

Thanks for posting, that's good to know. I've always carried just paper or photos, but have never been checked, so was never sure it'll be sufficient...

It's a chain that grew before and during CoVid, there are seven Quarter hotels by UHG all over Bangkok... http://uhgholdings.com/hotel.php

Pretty much any residential building you'd find on airbnb in Makati/Taguig will have 24h security and guests will likely have to sign in. I wouldn't expect any issues, unless the record is a concern to you...

In the EU, it's generally illegal to discriminate based on passport for prices of services and goods.There are some exceptions for government (subsidized) services and of course some businesses don't follow the rules, but then you can complain/sue... I also have never seen it in the US, unless it's (subsidized) government services. Of course there are some tourist targeted fees, for example rental cars at airports, but those are charged to everybody...

paulsf has it right: it's not AirBnB that's illegal in Thailand, it's short-term rentals of less than 30 days. Long-term rentals on Airbnb are no issue. Even if it hasn't been enforced in the past, it only takes one upset tenant/owner in the building to cause a stink and get you into trouble... There are now a number of serviced apartment buildings in Bangkok, so if you want to be on the safe side AND have a kitchen, laundry, etc it's easier than it used to be...

One advantage of getting the SIM card at the airport is the ease of use: The staff will usually set it up for you, so you know it works. No problem with damaged SIM or configuration issues. And the instructions are in English. I bought a SIM package in town once that was Thai only, so figuring out how to reload etc was extra effort. The local packages are usually better value though, bye a few THB...

The latest policy makes it impossible to go, but at the same time you can't get a refund for air or hotel, because theoretically it's your decision not to go. Foreigners pay, Thai hotel owners get to keep the money... I bet Anutin is laughing all the way to the bank... screw the dirty farangs...

Because you want to make this special for the BF, I'd cancel even though the health risk may not be bigger in BKK than the US. BUT I'm currently traveling in Asia and flights to Asia are a mess. LH Group (incl. SWISS) is cancelling about 50% of their flights, so your carefully planned itinerary may fall apart before you get to BKK - and using UA miles makes it more difficult ... Even though you'll get there, it might not be together or your bf might get stuck on his own for a day or so in Zurich... And flight restrictions are getting more complicated, with countries banning different countries of flight origin every day... Vietnam just cancelled visa-free travel from several EU countries, Qatar banned Asian countries, nobody knows what's next... As an experienced traveler, you can work it out. A First-Timer might be frazzled... Hopefully, the situation will be better by summer and the hysteria over, so you can show your BF the true Bangkok, not the masked one with fewer smiles...

It's a longer route, requiring more fuel. Some planes can make the longer route, some have to make stops to refuel which some airlines decided to do. Thai might not have the planes, might not have ground ops for a stop-over or plain doesn't want to pay for it...

Stayed there a few years ago, great location, liked the rooms and service. Recently, they added a lot of props for selfies on the property, which I thought were a little cheesy. Also beachfront on the same stretch are the bigger Avalon and new Welcome World less personal, more amenities...

Agree that would be a reasonable way to solve this, but I don't think people will get fired or arrested in Thailand over a little tea money in our life time...too many people are part of that collection pyramid...

I partially agree with that sentiment. I would never expect a regular Thai (or any other boat nationality) to speak my mother tongue or English. But I DO expect any business that caters to tourists to speak the language of their guests well, it's just good business sense. In many places, that means English, and increasingly in Asia that may mean. Mandarin. If you don't speak the language of the people you want to earn money from, it's just plain poor customer service and if you expect your customers to learn your language do buy from you, you are not likely to succeed... (national) pride can get into the way of good business... In my observation, people in hospitality in smaller countries tend to speak better English than in bigger (prouder, more nationalistic?) countries - Portugal better than Spain, Netherlands better than France and Cambodia or Laos better than Thailand. And over the last 10-15y in my opinion, English skills in Thailand hospitality have stagnated while they have improved greatly in Cambodia or Laos...

They had dispatchers for a while. Problem was, they were in cahoots with drivers, telling visitors there was a fixed fee of THB500 or more, which was defeating the purpose of the machines, tags, etc...

Here are three ways to do this: 1. Buy a refundable ticket for return flight & cancel if your plans change. 2. Buy the cheapest one-way ticket you can find. Use SkyScanner - it'll let you search for flights to "Everywhere" from BKK/DMK within a month, so you can get a ticket for a few bucks and just toss it...