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The downtown branches always have massive lines. Even my humble suburban mall branch has a heck of a wait on the weekends. A neat little place not many have heard of is K79 at On Nut station. They have decent exchange rates and are far less busy than SuperRich.
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Dec 5, 2022 06:19
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Just arrived in Bangkok yesterday. Seems more quiet than before Corona. Most people still wearing masks as well. This isn't a requirement anymore though?
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Dec 6, 2022 05:27
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Mulozon Empuri posted:Just arrived in Bangkok yesterday. Seems more quiet than before Corona. It doesn't need to be a requirement for people to wear masks, for a lot it's a matter of common courtesy
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Dec 6, 2022 05:49
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Mulozon Empuri posted:Just arrived in Bangkok yesterday. Seems more quiet than before Corona. Wear a mask. Don't be that tourist.
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Dec 6, 2022 06:53
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It's too late. I have become what I hate
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Dec 6, 2022 07:19
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It's quiet, but it's rebounding. They're also actively discouraging the old kind of tourist (backpackers and other low budget travelers looking for a cheap place to drink beer) and are courting high end tourists with loads of cash to burn, and there are significantly fewer of those. Wear a mask.
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Dec 6, 2022 11:24
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I was in Phuket a few months ago and funnily enough the overwhelming majority of people not wearing masks were tourists. One of them even told me "you don't need to wear that poo poo here". I arrived in Hanoi a few days ago and I'm trying to find high-protein meals I can eat on gym days. I don't know much about Vietnamese food, so does anybody have any suggestions?
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Dec 6, 2022 11:26
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I get it. I'm just surprised. The day after it wasn't mandatory in Denmark nobody was wearing masks. I have sourced some masks. The only think I know about vietnamese cuisine is fresh beer and Bahn Mi alas.
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Dec 6, 2022 12:10
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Bushmaori posted:I was in Phuket a few months ago and funnily enough the overwhelming majority of people not wearing masks were tourists. One of them even told me "you don't need to wear that poo poo here". Vietnamese egg rolls loving rule.
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Dec 6, 2022 12:37
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Bushmaori posted:I was in Phuket a few months ago and funnily enough the overwhelming majority of people not wearing masks were tourists. One of them even told me "you don't need to wear that poo poo here". I spent a couple months in Mexico back in January, and I reckon probably 95%+ of the people not wearing masks were tourists. We always wore them anyway (Covid was much more concerning in January than it is now), but it was seriously noticeable. It was the same story across most of the country, from the northern deserts to the central mountains, both coasts, and of course down in Yucatan and Quintana Roo. My wife and I eventually decided that it was a mixture of arrogance and the semi-conscious idea that "if I have a problem, I can afford the expensive level of care here or even fly home and get treated". Whereas the average Mexican is probably under no illusions about the kind of medical care they'll receive if they get Covid, so they end up taking it much more seriously.
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Dec 6, 2022 13:08
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This is how I see it as well. It's very easy for a tourist, or an expat, or retiree to mock "the locals" for wearing a mask and to demand that the country change its policies if they have any. This is all in spite of the country in question being far less wealth or having far less infrastructure than where the foreigner is from (and millions died in the West for listening to that poo poo advice there).
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Dec 6, 2022 14:27
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Atlas Hugged posted:This is how I see it as well. It's very easy for a tourist, or an expat, or retiree to mock "the locals" for wearing a mask and to demand that the country change its policies if they have any. This is all in spite of the country in question being far less wealth or having far less infrastructure than where the foreigner is from (and millions died in the West for listening to that poo poo advice there). Nah there must be more to it. Here in Singapore it's the same pattern and the mask wearing locals usually earn more and have far better and cheaper access to health care than the average American tourist.
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Dec 6, 2022 14:35
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In SE Asia there is a huge cultural thing around not getting sick from the cold / wet weather through prevention - just try carrying your own baby outside in the lightest of drizzle will have handy helpers running over to you to tell you it is raining and the little one needs to be taken inside. And I agree it is from a time (in some places current time) when getting sick through exposure was time off work, a crop not harvested or harvested late, etc was just being reckless. Australian Union rules during the first world war had stoppages mandated for wet weather for the same reason. A few days unpaid work was not worth the unnecessary exposure.
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Dec 6, 2022 19:11
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Bushmaori posted:I was in Phuket a few months ago and funnily enough the overwhelming majority of people not wearing masks were tourists. One of them even told me "you don't need to wear that poo poo here". one thing you can do is install the Grab app and check out food on there. Hundreds of restaurants with menus you can see, usually with pictures. You can then either get it delivered or you can look at the address of the place and go there yourself. I'm in Saigon and there's a wide variety of stuff including non Vietnamese food, sure it's the same in Hanoi. Korean and Japanese food are common and popular if you're more familiar with those Food is a bit different in the south so not sure how much my recs apply. But generally Vietnamese food often has a meat/fish component and a rice/noodle component. The meat portion is not always that large, but can be sometimes. Some stuff I eat all the time: com tam - rice with a pork chop, pickles and fish sauce. can add a fried egg (op la) com ga - rice with grilled chicken bun thit nuong - cold noodle salad with herbs, veggies and grilled pork pho - beef noodle soup pho tron - basically pho with less/no broth bun bo hue - better, different beef noodle soup bun cha - grilled pork and meatballs in a noodle sauce/soup bo kho - french inspired beef stew bot chien - fried rice cakes and fried eggs with shredded papaya and soy/vinegar/chili sauce banh cuon - steamed rice rolls filled with pork and vegetables nem nuong - grilled pork sausages (kinda) rolled in rice paper with vegetables and herbs ga nuong - grilled chicken bo luc lac - beef with peppers, onions and rice banh mi - sure you know this, but there are lots of options. thit - basically various processed pork meats, trung/op la - egg, heo quay - crispy pork, xiu mai - meatballs, xa xiu - char siu pork, ga xe - shredded chicken again some of these are southern, you can still find them I'm sure but they may be less common in Hanoi. And idk how much protein they have but they're very typical Vietnamese dishes i.e meat and rice of some kind basically. Also Vietnam has good barbecue places where you can just order a big plate of meat and cook it yourself on a hot stone. Idk what the term is exactly but shouldnt be hard to find if you just Google Hanoi barbecue
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Dec 6, 2022 20:41
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BabyFur Denny posted:Nah there must be more to it. Here in Singapore it's the same pattern and the mask wearing locals usually earn more and have far better and cheaper access to health care than the average American tourist. Might just be a case of "got used to it". It's not mandatory here in Malaysia anymore but I still get the same feeling as I do in a dream where I forget to wear trousers out in public as when I forget to wear a mask.
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Dec 7, 2022 01:27
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Thanks for the suggestions dudes.
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Dec 10, 2022 03:12
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Legal weed has really changed my approach to a night out in Bangkok. I used to be out until 3 or 4 drinking beer. Now my nights out are at home rewatching Mad Max Fury Road.
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Dec 10, 2022 03:22
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What is going with the whole weed situation? Is that going to be a thing?
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Dec 12, 2022 00:43
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:What is going with the whole weed situation? Is that going to be a thing? Seems like they're leaning into it. Already a bunch of stores and street vendors in Khaosan. Outside of that places to buy are still pretty regular, though in my experience they tend towards small stalls once you get out of tourist centers.
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Dec 12, 2022 03:17
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Alright thread, did some skimming earlier but could use recommendations for Singapore on NYE. Yes I looked at Atlas bar, and no, they're booked solid that night  In lieu of, what would be some near-similar experiences? We're staying near the Anderson bridge so hanging out in the parks to watch the fireworks could work, but how feasible is it getting into someplace like the Marina Bay? Oh, and this is catapulting into a two week excursion throughout Thailand, so I'll be soliciting advice shortly on that after I figure out dates and cities we're staying in tomorrow.
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Dec 12, 2022 06:16
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I’m not a weed guy really but it seems like the amount of places selling it is really excessive. Like every corner has a place. More so I’m pattaya than in Bangkok or Chiang Mai from what I’ve seen. As for masks. I was only wearing them indoors or in crowded areas but got lazy and got a Covid scare out of it. Back to wearing masks again. Truthfully though it can be uncomfortable I’m the heat.
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Dec 12, 2022 07:27
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Oh this just popped up https://twitter.com/khaosodenglish/status/1602163431985278977?s=21&t=Oz-M8ZQ95HJmmucNYgleOA
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Dec 12, 2022 07:37
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The deal with weed in Thailand is that while it is legal, there are still some rules and there's growing backlash against it. The way it was legalized was kind of weird. Basically, the Ministry of Health said that it was no longer a regulated plant and this was endorsed by the Royal Gazette, where all laws and changes to laws are published. Once that happened, weed was defacto legalized. The intent was for medicinal marijuana to be legalized, for marijuana to be available for research purposes, and for a local hemp industry to develop. Supposedly, recreational legalization was never actually intended, but was a consequence of delisting the plant as a controlled substance. Some half-assed rules have been put in place since then: you can't sell online, you can't sell through vending machines, you can't sell to pregnant women, you can't sell to people under 20 years old. Online sales are pretty common through social media though. Still, you can just walk into a weed shop, pick what you want, pay however you feel, and walk out and that's basically all there is to it. It's amazing, really. The market is obviously saturated with shops because every 20 year old thinks they can become a millionaire selling weed. There's no way half of these shops survive. You either need to be the only or best shop in an area or you need to have the best prices and most of these places are identical and don't really know what they're doing. Some of these shops are literally next door to one another, even if you're not in touristy areas. As far as the backlash goes, yeah you have places putting up signs saying not to smoke it, but it goes deeper than that. There's a strong moral, conservative streak in Thai culture, or at least a performative one. Alcohol is a good example of this. You're technically not supposed to sell alcohol between 11am and 2pm, or 12am and 11am (at least from shops, bars can stay open until 2am). Alcohol is regularly blurred in television and advertisements. It's one of the reasons why soda water is so big here: Chang, Leo, Singha, etc can advertise soda water without running afoul of morality laws, so the product has to physically exist. There were even laws trying to ban the sale of alcohol from shops within a certain distance of schools, but given the density of schools in Bangkok, it basically meant that no alcohol could be sold in the city and the law was quietly forgotten about. In any case, opponents to legalization want to officially ban recreational use and are playing every, "Oh, think of the children!" card they can think of. Two 10 year olds were caught smoking last week and the papers made it sound like the actual end of the world. Twitter comments basically just rolled their eyes at the absurdity of the reporting. Chances are, some kind of regulations will be put into place over the next year making it clearer what is and is not permissible, but it's a question of how much money from how high up is being pumped into the industry at the moment. The more money from powerful people that's going into weed, the less likely we'll see any major changes to the status quo despite certain segments of the population being deeply upset that I can make the best goddamn brownies in the world whenever I feel like it.
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Dec 12, 2022 08:20
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For comparison, is smoking cigarettes allowed inside restaurants?
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Dec 12, 2022 11:30
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peanut posted:For comparison, is smoking cigarettes allowed inside restaurants? Obviously, no. But a lot of Thai restaurants are semi or mostly outdoors and while I think there are probably laws on the books about minimum distance from doors, if there are only three walls, or less than exactly four walls and a roof, people will be smoking. The kinds of bars that are getting reported on are the kinds of places where the "inside" is little more than a toilet stall, the literal bar, a fridge with beer, and a monitor with YouTube on it. There might also be a couple of barstools at the bar. The other tables and chairs are on the sidewalk.
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Dec 12, 2022 13:10
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There are a bunch of places I want to visit in SEA and around (Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, but also SK, Japan, Australia and NZ which aren't SEA obviously) and it's very time consuming and expensive to fly from Europe to each separately. Since I can work remotely, are there any places that a) would let me stay for more than a few month on an EU passport, b) are cheap to do so c) have good low-cost airline connections to other countries around? I'm guessing Singapore would be a good hub except for b). Malaysia maybe?
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Dec 14, 2022 15:01
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mobby_6kl posted:There are a bunch of places I want to visit in SEA and around (Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, but also SK, Japan, Australia and NZ which aren't SEA obviously) and it's very time consuming and expensive to fly from Europe to each separately. Since I can work remotely, are there any places that a) would let me stay for more than a few month on an EU passport, b) are cheap to do so c) have good low-cost airline connections to other countries around? Singapore is not an easy place to just chill out immigrate to and not cheap accommodation wise. Thailand is/was the crowd favourite. Malaysia is popular as is the Philippines. Air travel around SEA is not quite as easy as around Europe but it is probably the next best after Europe for international flights so don't be afraid to be a little out of the way. Philippines is probably the easiest to do due to English being an official language and still being quite cheap for a given quality of life. I would just book an AirBNB for a short while sussing out the place and probably make sense to book an AirBNB for the full time you are there. How will the timezone difference effect you? If you are a nightowl, then the eight hour time difference between Philippines and UK might be right up your alley or maybe your work is time of day agnostic.
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Dec 14, 2022 16:12
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Electric Wrigglies posted:Singapore is not an easy place to just chill out immigrate to and not cheap accommodation wise. There's nobody I work with in my CET timezone actually, my immediate team are either on the East and West coasts of the US. We have one Singapore based guy though who occasionally gets to enjoy late-night meetings lol.
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Dec 14, 2022 19:41
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Malaysia will let you stay on a tourist visa for 90 days and you can go cross a border to renew it indefinitely. If you gently caress up and forget and get caught you will be deported and barred from reentry though.
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Dec 15, 2022 01:55
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Ibblebibble posted:Malaysia will let you stay on a tourist visa for 90 days and you can go cross a border to renew it indefinitely. If you gently caress up and forget and get caught you will be deported and barred from reentry though. Yeah I’d recommend Malaysia as well. AirAsia is based in KL and flies almost everywhere in the region, the food is great, internet is pretty reliable, things are generally cheap, it’s fairly safe, and enough people speak English that you can get by. There’s not a colossal amount of stuff to “do” in KL, unlike say Bangkok or even Singapore, but it’s interesting enough plus you’ve got a whole fascinating country to explore.
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Dec 15, 2022 02:46
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KL is a great place to hang out and eat many kinds of good food if you know people or want to meet people doing that, but yeah standard sightseeing/activities around town you could knock out in two very relaxed days. Not being able to walk more or less anywhere is miserable. Some pretty good indoor climbing gyms if you're into that. I am told the rest of the country has some cool stuff we're not going to visit because of monsoon season/bad roads but I suspect the real reason is that I'm the only one who cares about tea.
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Dec 15, 2022 05:20
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Koh Tao is pretty nice. My recommendation for anybody going here is be younger and singeler than me. But that is my general advice to anybody.
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Dec 16, 2022 13:59
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Ibblebibble posted:Malaysia will let you stay on a tourist visa for 90 days and you can go cross a border to renew it indefinitely. If you gently caress up and forget and get caught you will be deported and barred from reentry though. Thailand works similarly, you can do a day trip every few months to slap the snooze button on your visa. Both places will get annoyed if they officially notice you working while there on a tourist visa but you are unlikely to be detected if you aren't interacting with the local economy as part of your duties and you aren't taking up two tables at a cafe as your "office" every day for a month.
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Dec 16, 2022 19:56
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Midjack posted:Thailand works similarly, you can do a day trip every few months to slap the snooze button on your visa. Both places will get annoyed if they officially notice you working while there on a tourist visa but you are unlikely to be detected if you aren't interacting with the local economy as part of your duties and you aren't taking up two tables at a cafe as your "office" every day for a month. They started doing a big cleanout of the old visa run crew. At first just focusing on the bus to poipet and back visa run crew that they let exit the country then not let them back in, then on air ticket visa runs. Has that stopped now? Have they got rid of enough lost in Asia in the 70's -90's that were hitting retirement with no saving types that were begging off other expats so they can go back to letting the visas be refreshed again without issue? My workmate was married to a Thai and he was getting grilled at one stage there.
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Dec 16, 2022 21:31
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Electric Wrigglies posted:They started doing a big cleanout of the old visa run crew. At first just focusing on the bus to poipet and back visa run crew that they let exit the country then not let them back in, then on air ticket visa runs. Has that stopped now? Have they got rid of enough lost in Asia in the 70's -90's that were hitting retirement with no saving types that were begging off other expats so they can go back to letting the visas be refreshed again without issue? As recently as 2012-2020 that worked for the people I'm personally aware of.
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Dec 16, 2022 21:40
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Hello thread, I got something a bit unusual. I'm planning a wedding in Vietnam and specifically on a boat in Ha Long Bay. Neither family is from Vietnam, the location chosen as the most viable location for both families to travel to and still be interesting. Current thought is, Budget ~$100k but not strict - a lot of it will be consumed by flights/accommodation though. Late Dec 2023, early Jan 20224. A two days one night wedding boat package - partner went and looked at one package provider in person and the boat seems nice enough and the staff gave a professional impression. The quote was $18k USD for 60 people, not including the bus to and from Hanoi, photographer or band mainly. A number of guests would not be able to afford to come so some of the budget would be on their flights/accommodation. For those, I'm thinking to get accommodation in Hanoi old town for the time outside being on the boat for the wedding itself (say a week as this will be the only international trip in their life for some of them). The other guests would sort themselves out aside from being picked up and dropped off in Hanoi. Faily low maintenance wedding expectations. My concern is while a google search suggests that the weddings in Ha Long bay are a thing, not all tour operators are reputable and unsure best way to verify that all will be fine. My overall lack of contacts in Vietnam is a cause of concern. It is tempting to just ask the package provider to do as much as possible - photographer, hotels, visa support, renting suits, etc. Anyway, any thoughts you might have, jot them down and post as it would be appreciated.
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Dec 20, 2022 09:37
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That sounds hella cool and nice. We hired a van w driver through HVG Travel https://hvgtravel.com/ and got urgent visas through vietnam-visa.com and everything went very smoothly considering our ever-changing schedule. I can also recommend a superb interpreter based in Hanoi who may be able to help with coordination after everyone arrives https://transtrust.net/
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Dec 20, 2022 12:04
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Skip the suits though
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Dec 20, 2022 12:06
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Any suggestions to river cruise dinners in Thailand, specifically Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and/or Phuket? Trying to add a bit of romanticism to this two week trip my wife and I are taking around Thailand, which is bookended by a couple days in Singapore.
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Dec 20, 2022 21:54
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throwing an itinerary by you guys for critique/suggestions. Tickets to Bangkok are already purchased, arriving feb 5th and flying out feb 18th. get in to Bangkok 12:05a on Feb 5. Thinking of flying down to Koh Samui at 6 am the same day then heading to Koh Phangan for a full moon party that night. This wasn't the reason for going but hell, I'm there, why not. turn around might suck but we'll be able to shower and get cleaned up in the airport. Few days on the beach/recovering, then off to Koh Samui to Siem Reap. Angkor Wat is a bucket list of mine so we're gonna spend a few days taking it all in. From there, Siem Reap to Hanoi. Take in the city, eat as much food as I can, do touristy poo poo like Ha Long Bay, etc End with a few days in Bangkok. just being in a big, fun city with great food and warm weather. I'l need visas for Vietnam and Cambodia Any suggestions/thoughts about this?
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Dec 20, 2022 22:32
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