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I had never heard of the place but it does sound fascinating! I read that experts and archaeologists are concerned that the place has no infrastructure to handle the number of tourists who will be trying to go there now. And that it was the most looted site in Thailand during the 70s and 80s so they are worried that this new attention and lack of planning is going to make it a target all over again as there is a large part of the city that has not been excavated.

He already has plants in China that make a large percentage of his cars. I think they might even have a plant in Xinxiang https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/teslas-china-made-ev-sales-july-down-31-mthmth-2023-08-03/ https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/05/business/tesla-china-sales-surge-intl-hnk/index.html China's government offers subsidies for electric vehicle production which is helping reduce the price of the cars.

Actually he means all users. He's claiming again that most users are bots and that the weed them out he wants to charge everyone a few dollars per month.

did they fix that? Because a couple of months ago they started requiring you to be logged in to see anything

See I thought about the bankruptcy angle as well. But he has lots of powerful investors who underwrote all of those loans he took out and they might not be so excited about lighting all of their money on fire. However they had to know the odds weren't good that this money-losing business he was overpaying for was going to be a good investment in the first place.

Bangkok Pat takes us to some vanishing places, including Soi Twilight and Babylon

Maybe they mean those Visa stickers that take up a whole page of the passport?

He's a good con man, essentially. He built a cult that has made him very wealthy. He did see the importance of electric cars and managed to muscle his way in to running Tesla. And promised all kinds of things he never delivered. And he was smart enough to corner the market on satellites and taking astronauts to the space station.

I'll miss the porn, but I suppose I'll find it somewhere else

They also followed up later to indicate that things like US retirement income that's taxed in the US is exempt because of treaty obligations. It seems that the aim is to go after Thai tax avoiders

you can't do it with checked luggage. Asking them to only check your bag to LHR is just asking for them to investigate. The only issue you might face is for your next trip if they flag you. Here in the US a kid in Florida recently tried to do this and ended up getting all over the news because they canceled his ticket altogether and he had to pay for a last minute fare to where he was trying to go. If you do it more than a couple of times you could apparently get blacklisted by the airline.

be careful about skipping legs. US airlines have really been trying to crackdown on it since it technically violates their contract of carriage. But I suspect Europe has more sensible rules about airline regulation.

I've had my eye on the boy in the AC/DC shirt for a while now

of course this attitude is not only limited to Thailand. I think all of those skin whitening creams originated in India. And places like Korea value pale skin

travel between the regions should cost the same number of miles in either direction. The beauty of alliances is that you can credit your miles to any member of the alliance. So I can credit my ANA flights to Avianca or Air Canada or United or whoever. Although because things change so fast in this world crediting to the "best" program today may not be the best choice in the future. There's an old saying in the points and miles game that you should "earn and burn" i.e. use your miles and points as fast you can. But it's not practical for most people and it takes a while to accumulate enough miles for an award redemption. These days most of the programs will sell you miles and frequently offer bonuses. Avianca for example often offers 150% bonuses. So if you buy 100,000 miles you get 250,000. The catch is that you will pay about US$3000 for those 250,000 points. IF you can find a seat this could be a decent value. For example my 90,000 mile business class award essentially costs about $1000 in such a scenario. If I were paying cash for this ticket my guess is that it would cost $4000 or so, maybe more. However I will say that if you are willing to fly in economy there are a lot more available seat options. The Lifemiles program for example seems to always have plenty of economy seats on the route I search most (IAD-BKK) for 47K points one way. But if you want business class your options will be more limited. Fewer flights and more people willing to pay cash for fewer business class seats means they don't make as many available. If you are flexible enough to travel more last-minute there can be better availablity options. For example if I wanted to fly to Tokyo next week there are many business class options on ANA and United for 90K miles.

These days seats are difficult to come by. But I did just book Bangkok to Washington using Avianca Lifemiles on THAI and United via Zurich. 90K miles plus $100 taxes and fees for one way business class is probably about the best you can get these days on this route. The problem is that they are difficult to find. I had to book a ticket paying cash for the outbound to get to Thailand - but Kuwait Airways is starting a new route to IAD in December so they have some good deals. I booked one way business class for about $2800 connecting in Kuwait of course. ANA's program has a distance based award chart still. I think from DC to BKK is about 95K miles (business class) in their program but seats are tough to find. There is a site called awardnexus.com that allow you to do a search by airline alliance but it is very slow. This site called travelcodex has a chart that shows how many miles are required to book flights between a city pair on various programs. I am not sure how up to date the information is though. https://www.travelcodex.com/award-maximizer/ They also have "tips and tricks" https://www.travelcodex.com/tips-tricks-and-useful-tools-for-award-travel/ It's very US-centric though. There are also award booking services that will do it for you - for a fee of course. But it might be worthwhile. I know there used to be another similar site but I can't remember what it's called. Personally I just spend a lot of time searching on my own. I have a big stash of Avianca miles because they are relatively cheap to buy in bulk. But it is definitely more difficult to find seats than it used to be. I search their site for Star Alliance airlines. I search American Airlines for OneWorld flights. I search FlyingBlue/AirFrance for Skyteam, but they usually want a crazy amount of miles and lots of money for their tickets. I will also search Delta and Alaska since I have a decent number of miles in those accounts. Those of us in the US are lucky in that you can accumulate lots of transferrable credit card points which can be moved to many different programs. The various air miles blogs can be helpful. I have been reading onemileatatime for a long time. https://onemileatatime.com/guides/ I don't think there's any magic bullet. You just have to poke around doing searches in the various programs.

Twitter is full of gorgeous, ripped Chinese guys with big cocks. Almost makes me want to go there....almost. I'm not surprised that queer women would find a home in Bangkok. I see lots of Tom/Dee couples every time I am in the city.

I just have Chrome set to always translate sites into English. You may need to install the Google Translate extension for that to work automatically. Heroes has a lot more nudity on their site than most of these other places

so finally a train connection to Impact Arena and the convention center? I'll have to look at the all-line map to see how this integrates with the rest of the system

Ha! You will definitely get the questions about your marital status and whether you are traveling alone. I stayed at a nice little place near Anuradhapura that had very cute staff. One of them was quizzing me with those questions one day and I couldn't quite figure out if he was trying to tell me something. I thought he was adorable and would have definitely been interested in some hanky panky. But they probably have to be careful about fraternizing with the guests. I think the staff were all hospitality students getting experience. It's a beautiful country and I see they are getting back on their feet after their economic meltdown.

I went to Indonesia many years ago now...almost a decade I think. Contacted on Grindr as you say. Met up with one Grindr guy and completely didn't get that he was a MB until it was too late. Felt a bit sheepish afterwards. I liked Bali. Loved central Java for a variety of reasons.

I have seen some mention that the current airport is operating over capacity. But "the Thai Cement Manufacturers Association (TCMA) is set to spearhead the construction of the terminal’s first phase." makes it sound like a boondoggle for sure

At this point I believe you are only able to use contactless credit cards in Tokyo on some subway lines. So it's not universal yet. Glad I kept my Pasmo card

The best advice I see from well-informed people is to take your time when it comes to choosing a place to retire. Spend a few months first before you make a permanent decision on where to live. Do you speak Thai? Will you be planning to learn? I think it's easier to get by with English only in the more tourist-oriented places like Bangkok, Pattaya or Phuket. Songkhla might be a little more challenging.

only works on MRT not BTS. Hopefully they'll update their systems too. I don't know if there are some cards it won't work with other than the fact that is must be a contactless enabled card which most credit cards seem to be these days - at least from American banks. It's great on MRT as you can avoid the lines at the ticket machines and just walk right to through gates.