Category Archives: Thoughts from the expats corner
Jack Corbett has now been living full time in Thailand as an expat. This category encompasses a wide range of thoughts and subjects from the perspective of being in a strange land thousands of miles from the United States where the culture oftentimes seems to be 180 degrees apart from the values and beliefs of the West.
Baron’s Swedish Mauser hung on the wall of his narrow trailer above the wood burning stove at his rustic home in Washington State’s Olympic Mountains. The Baron also had a 22 semi automatic rifle and a 12 gauge shotgun hanging his 1996 6.65 mm Swedish bolt action. This is the first time I met the Baron after he became a regular in the Lost Angels Chat. But it is Baron’s Swedish Mauser that became by far the most unforgettable focus of my week long visit to the great writer’s home in the mountains.
Every mountaineer’s home must have at least two firearms within easy reach. Baron’s Swedish Mauser appears below the single shot 12 gauge and the 50 caliber black powder Hawken. To make room for the Swedish Mauser I just had to purchase, Baron took down his 22 semi automatic rifle.
When I was 12 years old looking for a Springfield 03 to buy I was intrigued by the surplus Swedish military rifles that were selling for a pittance. They looked cool. But now it’s 1997 and I am visiting Baron in his small single wide trailer. I’m here for one week, and Baron and I have a lot of very interesting times together. Which you can read all about in my latest book, Life of an Exotic Entertainment Photographer.
It makes sense for a self proclaimed mountain man like Baron to have three or four firearms in his trailer.
He’s got a semi automatic 22 rife which is cheap, fun to shoot and good for small game. His 12 gauge shotgun is indispensable. Because when the chips are down and he has no food, he can always hit birds on the wing or small animals on the run. Good for self defense also, and if he were attacked by a grizzly bear it has stopping power he can count on. But the 50 caliber black powder Hawken? It might have been the cats meow for early 19th century mountain men. But this isn’t the 19th century. But oh well. Each to his own. I will soon have 36 firearms. And not all of them are practical must haves. Of all of his guns, the one that intrigued me the most was Baron’s Swedish Mauser. And it was the one he was the proudest of.
“Believe it or not, it will shoot as flat as a 300 H & H Magnum,” Baron told me.
“Nah. No way,” I replied. That 6.65 mm Swedish round was devised in 1896. And it wasn’t the most powerful round out there. Our 30-06 is a far better cartridge and it was introduced in 1906.”
The Baron had few amenities in his small trailer. He had an old 1500 watt space heater that was so run down that it would produce just half that many watts. He had a supply of firewood on hand for his wood burning stove. But it was soft wood. And each log would last only for a couple of hours. I found myself waking up every couple of hours putting more wood on the fire. But he had a passable internet connection.
And used it to check the ballistics of Baron’s Swedish Mauser.
Although the velocity of a 139 grain bullet was well below a 150 grain 30-06 load, the 6.5 Swede actually shot flatter. And by the time Baron explained to me that the Swedish Mauser was built better than an 1898 German Mauser I had to have one.
“How much do you think I will have to pay for one?” I asked the Baron.
“About a hundred dollars or so,” Baron replied. “And I think there’s a nearby gun shop that will have one in stock.”
I got a rifle that was nearly identical to Baron’s Swedish Mauser the next day. And had to try it out a.s.a.p.
Baron had this old Nissan pickup truck that he used for hauling wood that he cut back to his trailer. And for general transportation. I was surprised that it was two wheel drive and not four wheel drive. Because I had learned in my first several years as a farmer that two wheel drive pickups were as useless as tits on a bore when the going go tough. And those Olympic mountains of Baron’s were no laughing matter. I can’t remember how long it took us to get to that pristine mountain lake. Two hours, three hours? But whatever time it took, I was completely surprised that we didn’t encounter one single motorized vehicle over the last forty-five minutes of our journey. In my many years traveling out West I never encountered an area so devoid of human civilization since spending a month at the National Outdoor Leadership School in Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains.
Later I’d buy two Russian capture German Mauser 98’s the Germans used in World War II. I took them apart to improve the wood finish on all three rifles, the Swedish Mauser and the two German 98’s. Baron’s Swedish Mauser was more painstakingly manufactured than either of my German Mausers.
Baron and I shot out Swedish Mausers out to two hundred yards once we got to the lake. We didn’t take any targets with us. So we shot at tree stumps and willows out on the lake, or whatever else was close at hand. The rifle was very easy on my shoulder. Kicking far less than my 30-06 Springfield. And even less than the .243 I had shot in my early teens. But as Baron explained to me, that 6.5 mm Swedish cartridge was a favorite with Swedish moose hunters. And it was equally good on American Moose Baron assured me. So I felt really good about my new rifle. And even if, and that was a very big if. An almost impossible if. A grizzly bear should attack us I had a rifle with the power and penetration that would save our lives.
Recoil of the 6.5 Swedish rifle is soft for a rifle that is capable of taking out Moose and other large animals.
But it would be my fascination with Baron’s Swedish Mauser and my buying one just like his that might soon cost us our lives.
When we decided to head back to a restaurant near Baron’s trailer, we found that Baron’s two wheel drive pickup was stuck in the snow.
Stuck in the snow at the lake.
I used to drive both rear engine and front wheel drive Volkswagens, and always had a shovel along. Baron didn’t. Although he kept a chain saw in his pickup bed which he used for cutting firewood whenever he encountered a fallen tree along the road. The largest potential snow digging implements we could find were a screwdriver and claw hammer. But there was no one around to rescue us. And it was already close to 4 p.m. We could freeze to death our on that lake before anyone would find us. So we had no choice other than making that claw hammer and screwdriver fly. Both were better than using our fingernails.
After we finally hacked and chiseled enough snow away from the pickup’s rear tires, Baron finally gave it a go. But the tires never got a good grip in the snow. I finally noticed the brushwood that filled the bed of Baron’s pickup. On the way to the lake we encountered a small tree that had fallen across the road. An elated Baron, gleefully cried out, “Road Kill.” And used his chainsaw to cut the tree into small pieces that would fit in his stove.
The pickup truck’s back wheels had dug a rut beneath its tires. Which kept getting deeper each time Baron tried to drive his way out of the ruts. I pushed while Baron drove. All to no avail. We were finally able to get the pickup out of the ruts by cramming brushwood underneath its tires.
We were home free a last getting the truck unstuck until Baron almost got us stuck again.
The road “Home” proved to be a road leading higher and higher up into the Olympic mountains. And North, not South. There is heavy snow already to contend with. It soon started to snow heavily. One can just imagine how difficult it would have been turning Baron’s two wheel drive pickup once the now got deeper.
The road was a narrow two lane all covered with snow. But it started snowing before we got a mile away from the lake. Baron seemed totally unconcerned as he relaxed behind the wheel. But I had been there before. Two many times. I’d be driving home to my farm house from a party. And it would start to snow. Snowing harder and harder until my front wheel drive car would get stuck in a drift before I had gone thirty miles.
I watched the snow falling harder and harder down on that road when I asked Baron.
“I’m hungry. How far is Port Townsend?
“Not very far,” Baron replied. We should be there within half an hour.”
“Is Port Townsend North or South of us?” I asked.
“It’s South of us.”
“So we are traveling South, right Baron?”
“Yes.”
“Baron, even though it’s snowing I can still see a bit of the sun to our left.”
“That’s good.”
“Baron, it is 4 p.m. So if we are traveling South should the sun be on our left or on our right.”
“On our right, Jack.”
“Baron, the sun is on our left. Which puts the sun West of us So we are going North, not South and we are heading uphill where the snow will be falling a lot harder. We are going to get stuck again unless you turn around.”
That night Baron and I got in the Lost Angels Chat while we had a nice dinner and drank a lot of beer together.
PlOne and several of the Dollies strippers were in the chat room with us, when Baron described our day getting stuck in the snow.
“We might have died in those mountains if we had gotten my truck stuck again. There was no one on that road but us. So if we had gotten stuck chances are no one might have come by to help us. That jack. He saved the day. Jack is the Greatest Mountain man that ever lived. Greater than Daniel Boone and even Abraham Lincoln.”
The San Francisco Harlot was Scarlet the Harlot. But my new friend would name himself as a computer code, PlONe
Before Facebook, we had our own chat group, the Lost Angel., The Lost Angels included a lot of strippers and a San Francisco Harlot. Each year the Lost Angels would have an annual awards party. We gave trophies, for the qualities and deficiencies of our members and people we knew from the topless clubs. Back in early 2007, we had the best chat room in the United States. And when you look at the picture above, there was no doubt we had the most entertaining members.
Both of them had been coming to our Lost Angels chats, PlOne a lot more than Scarlet. Who had made a big name for herself more for being an intellectual and protester than as a whore. Several of the men had ventured into our Lost Angels chat room by chance or because they were looking for strippers. Whereas we had to lure Scarlet in who already had a large web site and substantial following. Grey Ghost got her measure straight off when he described her as one kick ass bitch.
When Grey Ghost calls a woman a kickass bitch, he’s giving her the highest compliment. Which Scarlet deserved not because she was the most famous San Francisco Harlot. But because she had a heart of gold and a real flair for taking the spotlight. For Scarlet was a unionizer. With a mission of organizing all of San Francisco’s whores and strippers into a union demanding real pay that could be taxed with benefits such as social security and health insurance.
Back in 1997, most strip clubs treated their dancers as outside contractors.
For example, the better Saint Louis Metro East Clubs required all their dancers to pay a thirty dollar nightly tip out for the privilege of stripping for the club’s customers. While a top end San Francisco club might charge as much as a fifty dollar nightly tip out. The stripper would earn most of her income off her share of customers’ drinks and lap dances that would last several minutes at $15.00 to $20.00 per dance. Because the clubs treated their dancers as outside contractors instead of employees, no salaries were paid and no benefits provided. With hardly any paperwork required from the Federal or State government.
Scarlet the San Francisco Harlot wanted a square deal for San Francisco’s strippers and whores.
While I wanted to meet her in the worse way. By the time Grey Ghost and I got Scarlet to host several of our Lost Angels chats, Baron and PlONe had become Lost Angels chat room regulars.
Baron was a gifted writer who lived in Washington State’s Olympic Mountains. Who wrote a lot like Ernest Hemingway and like Hemingway had lived life on the edge. Whereas PlONe lived out in a wealthy San Francisco suburb and seemed every inch a city boy. I had to meet all three of them, Scarlet the Harlot, PlONe and the Baron. And bought three plane tickets, one to San Francisco, a second one from San Francisco to Seattle. And a third ticket from Seattle back to Saint Louis.
The Lost Angels Chat functioned a lot like Facebook does today. But I think in almost every way it was far superior. While we had a far more intellectual membership including on San Francisco Harlot.
There was none of this, I like this, I like what you posted. I like your restaurant (even though I have never been there). I like the picture of that turd you showed all of us”. Facebook is trite. It’s full of hypocrisy. And it’s very boring. Our Lost Angels chats were hardly ever boring. There was nothing like it on the internet back in 1997. Most of our members were strippers or people who were interested in strip clubs. So the Lost Angels had all of the mystery, excitement and warped senses of humor of the people who work for strip clubs. And who are addicted to them as customers.
The Lost Angels used to have annual parties, at a strip club, at a restaurant, and later at my apartment once I moved to Collinsville.
At these parties, each member could vote for who was the best or worse person according to certain criteria.
For example, best dancer. Or woman of the year. Worse bullshitter (Male). Worse bullshitter (female), Most derelict (Male). Most derelict (Female). Most obnoxious female, Most obnoxious male, Most Gallant, Most unreliable Male, most unreliable female, best prankster, Leach of the Year Then we put the results on line. Our 1999 Lost Angels Chat Room Awards being a prime example.
Many of our stripper members prided themselves on being reliable. Or telling the truth. If you can imagine that. We even had a category for best club owner. And humanitarian of the Year. Which went to Tommy Davis, the owner of Chameleon who prided himself by how awful he was to his dancer employees.
Our Lost Angels chat members were outrageous. We poked fun at each other. And ridiculed people we didn’t like. And we got some very interesting members such as an English escort owner, a San Francisco Harlot unionizing the city’s sex workers, several topless club owners and managers, Baron a writer living in Washington State’s Olympic Mountains, and PlONe, a high powered computer programmer, lots of strippers. We were the only game in town in those days.
Perhaps the brainiest of us all was PlOne who introduced vast improvements to the Lost Angels Chat System
The San Francisco Chez Paree Strip Club. This night club really wasn’t much but it did have its own following that had its own irc based chat room.
A few months after I visited PlONe and Scarlot the Harlot in San Francisco, I gave PlOne the user name and password for my alphapro.com web site. The Lost Angels chat platform was already a good setup due to its being html based. Which allowed our chat members to post digital pictures right into their messages. But PlOne introduced some very outstanding new features, such as the ability for our members to privately message each other. Or message just several members while others in the chat couldn’t view their private messages. PlOne devised several other useful features such as a timing mechanism which could indicate how much time had elapsed since a member had left the chat.
During my visit to San Francisco, PlONe explained to me how he had gotten his name. PlOne was extraordinarily gifted having a PHD in Computer Science. But he was a nerd and proud of it. Back in 1997, a group of guys frequented the Chez Paree strip club in downtown San Francisco. Compared to MItchell Brothers, Crazy Horse, and several other SF clubs, Chez Paree wasn’t all that much. But it had a desktop computer in the club that anyone could use to get online. Visitors to the Chez Paree were also encouraged to bringing their own laptops into the bar. A group of Chez Paree’s customers and strippers formed their own Chez Paree chat group. And started messaging each other in an IRC based chat room.
The Chez Paree IRC chat room was a total piece of crap. It was text based and user unfriendly but it was all they had in those days.
You couldn’t insert pictures into your chat messages in irc based chat rooms. Our Lost Angels chat room simply blew all irc based chats away. While most of the Chez Paree group members were very self centered. While having a very high opinion of themselves. Many of its members ridiculed PlONe and several other guys for being nerds. Calling them Pathetic Losers. While the “Pathetic Losers” turned the tables on the Chez Paree in crowd by calling each other Pathetic Loser one, Pathetic Loser two, and so on. The Pathetic Losers would have the last laugh. Due to their having high paying computer IT jobs.
I found most of the Chez Paree guys to be a very snotty unthinking group of nitwits unlike a San Francisco Harlot I had just taken to dinner.
After PlONe and I visited Chez Paree the second time, some of Chez Paree’s staunchest chat members were calling me a hick farmer who didn’t know his place. I tried to get the Chez Paree group to embrace the digital photography I had introduced to the Dollies and Stimmelators. And to our colorful Lost Angels chat room. With no success whatsoever.
But a few months later, CMG, one of my most critical Chez Paree adversaries, paid us a surprise visit at Dollies. Crazy Czech was there that weekend. And so was Jade. And we took CMG out on the town to show him what life was really like on the Saint Louis East Side. Within a week after his return to San Francisco, CMG wrote this report in the Chez Paree chat about how much fun he had with us hicks from the MIdwest.
I didn’t forget to write about the Homeless San Francisco Prostitute. Although I included Scarlet the Harlot as the San Francisco harlot I wanted to write about here, you can read about the Homeless whore in Life of an Exotic Entertainment Photographer.
You might also want to read “San Francisco strippers win right to form a union, 1996-1997″ This is the same time period Scarlet the Harlot was trying to unionize San Francisco’s sex workers.
Giving Haiti vaccines is a criminal act against American tax payers living overseas because it sacrifices the lives of American tax payers.
This is my hospital, Bangkok Pattaya Hospital. It takes me just eight minutes to get here on either my Yamaha Nmax or Triumph Bonneville motorcycles. Unlike most American hospitals where I’d normally share my room with one other person, the rooms I’ve gotten here are single person occupancy. I can order my food from three menus in my room, which is double the size of the rooms in “comparable” American hospitals. Except there’s no comparable hospital that I’ve ever seen in the U.S. BPH is like a five star hotel. I pay a lot to have the best medical care possible so it really galls me to learn that our government’s giving Haiti vaccines out of my taxes deprives me and my fellow American expats from getting the anti virus vaccines we need.
I am one of a few thousand American expats living full time in Thailand. And I pay over $6000 a year for top notch health insurance.
While my hospital of choice, Pattaya Bangkok Hospital, is first rate. But I am willing to pay dearly for the best medical care that money can buy. And like many American expats residing in Thailand, I pay a lot of taxes. But I cannot get an effective anti virus vaccine at any price. So you can just imagine mortified I am to hear that the U.S. has just sent 500000 doses of Moderna and Pfizer vaccine to Haiti. With a lot more to come.
Meanwhile the United States Embassy has been notifying us that no vaccines will be available to us until October. But it wasn’t the United States giving Haiti vaccines that has made my anger go ballistic.
Giving Haiti vaccines only intensified the total disgust I was already feeling for our incompetent American Embassy. Which has endangered the lives of American taxpayers living in Thailand by its failure to act.
If anyone tells you that the United States government is doing its utmost to U.S. overseas citizens from Corona I’m calling it BS.
And I am putting $200 on the table to do my utmost to get my message heard worldwide.
All expats living in Thailand can get the best anti virus vaccines so long as they are French.
Germans, Austrians, Englishman, Americans, etc do not qualify for getting the best anti virus vaccines here in Thailand. Because the French government is the only government that cares about its overseas citizens. For it’s only the French who buy the vaccines. And then deliver them to private hospitals. While the French Embassy provides a list of French expats to the private hospitals. Which then contact all French nationals living in Thailand to come get your vaccine. While these same private hospitals proclaim, “we don’t have those effective vaccines you think we have.”
Before you read on, please read and memorize the following.
In early July, the Bangkok Pattaya Hospital gave the Moderna Vaccine to a French citizen who owns a condo here at Wongamat Residence. I know this because I am chairman of the committee governing Wongamat Residence.
As chairman of our committee I saw the email Bangkok Pattaya Hospital sent to the Frenchman on June 22, 2021. BPH was informing the French expat that he needed to come to the hospital on July 1 to get his first Moderna injection. I have the Frenchman’s passport number, his phone number, his exact address and his entire payment History with Wongamat Residence.
Around the 4th of July, Lek who’s our condo bookkeeper informed me that the Frenchman arrived at Bangkok Hospital where he encountered a line. And that he went back to his condo because he didn’t want to deal with the line. A couple days later. Call it July 6, when I encountered the Frenchman getting on the condo elevator. When I asked him if he had received his vaccine yet, he extended one arm out to me to show me the little mark the needles had left. Then he smiled at me, and told me he had gotten Moderna. “It was free”, he told me. and that it was free.
Meanwhile I was becoming good friends with another Frenchman.
The man’s 39 years old. He’s an engineer who works for Caterpillar which headquarters out of Peoria Illinois. From the very moment I met the man, I liked him. Having lived ten years in Australia his English was close to being perfect. While both of us had been to Peoria, Illinois many times. While the Frenchman was a high level exec for Caterpillar, I had shot at least three Pure Talent Feature Showcases at the Big Al’s Strip Club.
When I told my new friend how well his government had treated the old French condo owner at Wongamat, the man got busy to get on top of what his government was doing for its overseas citizens. But right off he told me the French government supplies free virus vaccines to all Frenchmen whether they are paying taxes. Or not.
The next time I saw him, he told me that his company will supply him with the anti virus vaccine. This meant Caterpillar. Instead of the French government. Then he told me, “but I might not quality because I’m not sixty yet.”
But a few days later I read that the French government had just announced it was making the vaccine available to all French overseas citizens. From the age of 18 and up.
This was about the same time I learned about the United States giving Haiti vaccines. I got angry and decided that I to act. Not just complain. And to cause as big a stink as possible.
My best friend in Pattaya nearly died of a heart attack several years ago. While another good friend spent over a week in Pattaya Bangkok Hospital nearly dying from a blood clot. Neither of them is likely to get vaccinated against the virus until at least October. But when my first friend told me he was complaining to his Congressman, I replied that I wouldn’t waste my time. Due to all of our Congressman being as useless as tits on a bore. But by evening I had determined that my Congressman was likely to be a Republican which made him even more useless.
Note the three Fedex receipts totaling nearly 5000 baht ($161.00) I sent to Congressman Rodney Davis, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post requesting their help in getting American overseas tax payers foreign aid vaccine from France
I would attack my Congressman before he could even give me that line of B.S. “We are doing what we can, but—-
I decided to do my utmost to humiliate him. And the American Embassy, his opposite numbers in the Democrat Party and all the other government self serving, lying scumbags.
I would not only send my Congressman a letter. I’d send it Fedex all the way from Thailand to make sure that he’d read it. I also decided to Fedex letters to the Washington Post and the New York Times. Which I felt were the best two newspapers in the U.S.
But I’d would take this one level deeper. I’d send my Fedexes not just to the Washington Post and New York Times but to the best editorialists I could think of. Eugene Robinson and Thomas Friedman.
Robinson of the Washington Post was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism while Thomas Friedman topped everyone with three Pulitzer Prizes. I figured that both men sincerely cared a lot about their country. And that if I contacted them directly they would do everything in their power to help American overseas taxpayers. Who had been abandoned by their embassies, and elected representatives.
This is the letter I fedexed to my U.S. Congressman that expresses my anger about the U.S. Giving Haiti vaccines. While ignoring the plight of American overseas taxpayers who are effectively not able to gain access to anti virus vaccines.
This is an S.O.S. via Fed Ex from my home here in Thailand. I am writing in behalf of my condo community at Wongamat Residence in Banglamung Thailand where I have been serving as chairman for the past 8 years. While also serving as a self appointed spokesman for all American citizens living overseas.
While the U.S. has recently sent over 500000 vaccines to Haiti with alot more to come, the U.S. Embassy has informed us my that an effective vaccine for covid 19 will not be available to us until October.
Wheras the French government has been taking good care of its overseas citizens whether they are paying taxes or not.
Yesterday, the French government announced it will be buying first class vaccines for all of its citizens residing in Thailand from the age of 18 and up.
Since the French value its overseas citizens, I am asking you as a voter and landowner from Montgomery County to ask your fellow Congressmen to apply for foreign aid from the French government for the neglected U.S. taxpayers living abroad.
Because our lives are in danger due to the incompetence of our American embassies.
Feel free to contact me if you wish to know more. As I can also fill you in on the plight of your average Thai citizen whose government is either unable or unwilling to deliver on its promises.
I am also Fedexing letters out to Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times to make sure my message gets the action it deserves.
The labyrinthian path U.S. taxpayers must go through to get any kind of anti virus vaccine.
I was finally able to get an appointment to get an anti virus vaccine for August 7, 2021
There’s a web site expats living in Thailand can access to get on lists on which they can wait to get an anti virus vaccine. But the first problem with this is, the web site is down for most of the week. This amounts to a very small window of opportunity for any of us to even apply for a vaccine. Fortunately one of my friends messaged me to get onto that web site RIGHT NOW before it shuts down.
The bottom line is I need to go all the way to Bangkok to get any kind of anti virus vaccine. And the best I can hope for is Astraventica which is less effective than Giving Haiti vaccines offers to the non-Americans living far away from American shores. This will take me two hours to get to the hospital and two hours back. And since I no longer have a car, I must pay for a taxi or rent a car from Hertz. But as one of my friends told me, if I take a taxi I stand a good chance of getting the virus due to so many people using that taxi.
So I am going to rent a car from Hertz and hire my own driver who works for me at the condo I’m managing.
But while the average Haitian gets Moderna or Pfizer, the best I can do it to hope for Astraventica and the hospital might even give me that horrible Chinese poor excuse for a vacccine called Sinovec.
And as chairman of my condo committee for the past eight years, I won’t have our manager buy a Chinese made water pump for our swimming pool. At even half the cost of an American Hayworth Pump or Australian equivalent. So there’s no way I’m going to have that Chinese Sinovac injected into my body.
But back to the French. The latest is the French Government will now offer all French citizens who are 18 or older living abroad with free Moderna or similar vaccines.
What this would mean to me, if I were French, is I could drive one of my two motorbikes to the Bangkok Pattaya Hospital. This would take me 8 minutes. I would not have to wait very long due to BPH’s excellent service (albeit at high cost). But I’m American. And the American Embassy is lying to us that an effective vaccine will not be available to us until at least October. However, I know better. There’s plenty of vaccine available at BPH provided I’m French. And not one of the many neglected American taxpayers living here whose government cares more about the Haitians than its own citizens.
If anyone can get an antivirus vaccine at Bangkok Pattaya Hospital, I can. I’ve written six books and I’m big boss of my condo community. Been living in Thailand for 16 years. I’ve got the connections. If I can’t get it done, no one can.
I have three good friends who either cannot or who are unable to get to Bangkok to get a vaccine. But they aren’t going to do squat about their terrible predicament. But I will.
I exercise for one of the last times at my five star Centara Grand Mirage Hotel Fitness Centers only a few days before the Thailand government shuts it down after the official reports come in that have over 15000 new virus cases per day. From the elliptical machine I spot one of my Bangkok Pattaya Hospital doctors swimming laps in the lap pool. Upon finishing my 45 minute workout I go out to the lap pool. Where I politely ask my doctor.
“I don’t want to interrupt your swimming. But if I get an appointment soon, do you think you can help me get the Moderna vaccine?”
The doctor tells me he thinks he can help me. So the next day I go to BPH to get an appointment. His office is in the mental Health Center. The doc’s a shrink.
And I’ve visited him a number of times to get sleeping piles. Or to bring in one of my girlfriends who has her own issues. I encounter the doctor outside his office so I am able to seen him within five minutes.
The physiatrist tells me that he has signed up on a list to get the Moderna vaccine. And he tells me that I can sign up for Moderna through his nurse. But when I ask the nurse for the paperwork I need to sign, she points to a cardboard advertisement. The nurse then tells me that I need to use my smartphone to copy the QR code on the advertisement and to use that to access the signup process for Moderna.
Problem is I’m terrible when it comes to smart phones. And the few times I need to use a QR code I have the other person do it for me. When I get home to my condo I eventually download two QR code readers to that I can access the Bangkok Pattaya Moderna Virus vaccine signup system. But it won’t work for me. So I ask my good friend to see if he can access the signup system using its QR code. My friend is a PHD in Computer Science. And he can’t do it either.
I go back to Bangkok Pattaya Hospital determined to get an appointment to get the Moderna Virus vaccine while thinking about the U.S. A. giving Haiti vaccines
So I go the the hospital’s large registration desk and ask two of the women to send me to BPH virus registration. But the two women inform me there is no such place. I must do it online. I show the two women the picture I had taken of the advertisement the doctor’s nurse told me to access with my smart phone. The two women told me. “No. You cannot get on a list using that. This is only for a survey you can take to tell us what vaccine you prefer.
But when I told the two women that my doctor had told me i could sign up for the moderna vaccine , they told me I had been misinformed.
So then I told the two women that I could not even access the survey web site through its QR code. I told them I was pretty good with computers but really stupid with smart phones, “So can you help me do this?”
Both women tried but neither of them could access the survey web site through its QR code. They told me, “It’s finished.”
I replied. “No it’s not. It says right here, it’s open until July 22nd and it’s not July 22nd yet.”
This has been a long post. I just wanted to show anyone reading it how it’s nearly impossible expats to even sign up to get a vaccine. Let alone actually receive the injection. Unless the expat is French of course.
So whatever you hear about the virus vaccines being in such short supply in Thailand or that the Thai government is blocking its distribution, we Americans can get it, but only if our elected leaders act as intelligently and responsibly as the French and stop being a patsy giving Haiti vaccines
But they won’t. Unless I can get the New York Times, the Washington Post and all the other newspapers to totally embarrass our so called representatives and senators. Until they are forced to start treating American citizens at least as well as they are treating American non citizens residing in Haiti.
I don’t know and I don’t care why the U.S. is giving Haiti vaccines. This smacks of the usual do gooder, stick your head in the sand liberal bull crap baby food. That hard working American tax papers have to swallow. Or it could be out of shame for the U.S. being possibly implicated in the assassination of the the Haitian premier. Or some possible malicious reason to put money into the hands of the undeserving. But our elected representatives don’t have their country’s best interests at heart. Because if they did, they’d get their heads out of their backsides. And study up on what’s happening here in Thailand now that the virus is out of control here. If it were not for the incompetence of our government officials, we can win big here now. At the expense of China. But that’s another subject for another day.
Living it up in Pattaya Thailand World's Most Exciting City
