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Riobard

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Everything posted by Riobard

  1. Sildenafil/Nitrates combo special. Every Urgent Care team’s chemsex triage favourite since 1998. More maturity at a children’s playground.
  2. HIV PrEP access was established as a human health right under the public health insurance system for Colombian nationals as of Dec 2021 and does not require epidemiological high risk group affiliation. Similar policy position as Brazil that established access for ‘high risk’ in 2018 and finally removed in 2022 the requirement of self-identifying with potentially stigmatized risk group membership.
  3. Sorry I missed it. I see you can hop on the Gold Line going north from Krung Thon Buri BTS station. Yaowarat Road in Chinatown is fun but might be too intense. I was tipped off to it watching Netflix 1st season of Somebody Feed Phil though of course it’s mentioned in all guides. It’s only a few Metro stops northwest of Si Lom station, then short walk south, so it would be easy to backtrack to Patpong if not to the guests’ liking.
  4. [delete: duplicate]
  5. Sorry to break it to you but Michelin Tire Man is deflating your tired comment several pressure points as I had a delicious lunch at a decent French restaurant conveniently located where my sightseeing took me that day, not multi tasting course mid-evening meal at a South Asia themed restaurant. Nothing personal.
  6. I’m in the habit of setting Netflix at 1.5X speed, except for savouring Jacqueline Novak’s stand-up.
  7. Yes I did by the way, immediately when it debuted. That was a good series. I pretty much keep up with most well reviewed offerings on Apple, Netflix, Prime, and Disney, even CBC Gem for Harlots and Great British Baking. Have yet to return to finish later Peaky Blinders seasons, though. He is starring with Ruth Wilson in the series The Woman in the Wall but I am not about to subscribe to Paramount, yet anyway. Maybe when there is a bigger payload to make it worth it.
  8. I finally texted my contact working there a long time with a binary question: re-opened or not. Very cryptic response sent Sunday afternoon. Just that there is a problem now.
  9. It was down permanently months before I visited when I researched all the venues, the link broken or expired. Not uncommon, as many places simply keep a Facebook or other social media account that does not require a webmaster or URL hosting platform. I used to pay $hundreds a year for a business site that had no content updates but the host wouid make alterations if desired.
  10. First time this week that real time busyness data is pinging beyond rock bottom, in fact ‘’more busy than usual’ 21:00-21:45. These aggregate anonymized signals are not always completely reliable but it’s something. Maybe even a large protest or prayer meeting, candlelight vigil etc close enough to register. 😉 Oops, then dropped to “less busy”. Management could be communicating better on media for its fan base but has never been particularly regular. Sometimes it’s due to staff turnover without password succession.
  11. I have seen no mention of the entrance-inclusive masked dance performance privilege, initiated 2018, most afternoons at Sala Chalermkrung Royal Theatre. It has a separate perforation on the ticket and the small print reveals it is valid for a single entry within 7 days. Look up the afternoon days of the week the show runs; on the display board at the palace or I think they are printed on the ticket as well. Or see attachment that indicates Mon-Fri 13:00, 14:30, 16:00, each a half-hour performance. My sense is that most visitors take it in via crowded afternoon shuttle from the north palace compound entrance (across road on north side from where morning entrance queue exists), which could be energy-sapping following the mobbed morning palace and temple sights (no shorts allowed as mentioned; apparently capri length OK if you wish to display calf development but long pants or Thai PJ bottoms aka bohemian harem trousers recommended), though theatre nicely AC’d. Instead, I simply kept the ticket and attended on a separate afternoon getting there by Metro instead of shuttle aggravation. There was plenty of seating.
  12. Foreign tourists are VAT-exempt for hotels, in fact for many goods and services, but sometimes the booking system adds it assuming you are a national or dual citizen. I only detected it on a one-night stay in 2023 and flagged it on check-in, as it was itemized in the 3rd party system. Hence, I always checked final receipts because a mistake could have amounted to 3-digit figures for long durations. Nobody could be “accidentally ” charged for it from mid-2020 to end of 2022 because hotel VAT was waived even for nationals over that period. The problem is if you pay the hotel bill upfront through a 3rd party booking system; good luck reversing it because the hotel would likely need to pay it back to you through its coffers and seek reimbursement from the booking company. If you pay directly via a card hold upon check-in the hotel will waive it on the final tally. There is an onerous procedure for applying for VAT reimbursement at the airport upon leaving. As I understand it, goods merchants, say for example you purchase a watch, cannot waive the VAT. This way the country can calculate the ratio of obligatory sales tax to exempt tax by tracking departure reimbursement claims, though I expect most people go through the bother only for larger expenditures or longstay accumulation.
  13. I saw this today and it seems very comprehensive and current. I’m not going to search whether it’s been previously posted. If you go to the main menu you can link to Pattaya, Chiang Mai, or Phuket. https://gayandasia.com/en/bangkok
  14. Actually, new case incidence very low first 3 weeks February, so appears under better control, fortunately. Unclear whether a factor in Tawan but it is closest to brothel model of entertainment and majority of cases are MSM.
  15. 36 in January, 721 total since initial case. The concern would be not so much the volume of new cases but that the ongoing rate of incidence has yet to level off. For example, Canada’s population is a little over half that of Thailand but no new cases in January, 1 in December likely acquired abroad. In contrast, Thailand reports 65 cases over the same period.
  16. Is it possible they flaunted Buddhist Day Feb 24th? Is it obligatory to shut down and maybe they opened, being a Saturday?
  17. Bear in mind that MPOX daily incidence peaked about a year later compared to the western world, national cumulative incidence has nevertheless doubled as it is not trending to negligible as would be hoped, and it’s a (the?) Patpong venue reportedly (and personally experientially) known for explicit MSM stage interaction and private offerings on site upstairs. Might be a factor, albeit a superficial measure and arguably a wake-up call for other clubs and massage spas. Just saying. I realize no such measure was invoked last summer. However, one among hundreds of diagnosed cases may have mentioned the place when triaged or interviewed for contact tracing; such events can have a cascade effect including isolated venue closure with minimal inpact on general society while public health claims a win. I neglected to ask my one major contact at the club about MVA-BN vaccination uptake among the hosts.
  18. Experiment at home. I just noticed a ‘limited data’ prompt but a coffee search offline when out shopping just now produced a yield, and the blue dot situates me correctly, though of course I have the option of cellular data in my local package. I forgot to check to see if the location dot moves block to block according to my trajectory, but I do distinctly recall it did when offline abroad this winter … most of the time when desired.
  19. Thank you for the reprise of Penile Code section 69, subsections 11, 117, 202, 555.
  20. +1 I obtained a local SIM, in 2016 in Porto Alegre. Just the once since travelling with a mobile phone became the norm. I don’t recall using my phone very much beyond where local wifi such as lodgings was accessible, or tapping into restaurant or sauna or bar wifi where available. It’s usually a question of dark mode a few hours at a time. Obviously, Google translate functions in ‘roaming off’ mode. $18.40 for the Canada plan 00.00-23.59ET. Alexander Graham did not anticipate sales tax. Post-pandemic I have undertaken the ‘Airplane mode’ challenge fairly successfully as I had at times previously accepted the full Bell communications tasting menu with post travel blues then augmented by seeing the racking up of telecommunications racket charges for the sake of usually very minimal use out and about. This winter so far I have managed to slay it over a cumulative period total of 6 weeks abroad. Just one $18.40 charge in all that time because I needed a final WhatsApp exchange out on the street for an appointment with a guy who I realize had given me an incomplete buzzer code, not matching the buzzer building panel, when I looked at the array of specific apartment codes and I did not want to press the wrong one of three selections that it could have been. This delivery man of donations always rings once. In this case the Bell fee turned out to be well worth it. A wise decision as he later demonstrated his understandable sensitivity about drawing neighbours’ attention to guest traffic. Surprisingly, I found that Google Maps showed my exact location most of the time without local SIM or activated roaming in cases where I wanted to check I was walking to a destination in the correct direction. Usually having a few map screenshots in my Photos file was sufficient for guidance. Yet my strategies did little to reduce the sneering of a wealthy but frugal friend in my age group who does not possess a cell phone and travels abroad successfully. He may have to break down one day and sacrifice the final word.
  21. It’s an example of analysis paralysis, an oversimplified and indolent way of getting off a seemingly endless and irreconcilable hamster wheel of disagreement about who owns history, the narrative of the past, how and where to display it and its tangible physical representations. In a way, not unlike the construction and attempted implementation of law related to the oldest profession. Never to be settled. Perhaps the intent is to lay down the foundation of a reset, yet it doesn’t have the feel of a new day a new dawn, that very much in terms of productive next steps will unfold other than a pattern of certain objects trickling back to origins in some fashion. How do you re-curate all the vast collections spanning millenia?
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