I’ve been busy for the last several days trying to get my visa to stay in Thailand in order. It’s been one strange adventure after the next on that, but it has led to an interesting discovery. Always follow the money flows.
The record flooding in North Carolina and Tenessee seems to be following the clear pattern of horrific man made disasters with now blocking of relief efforts by the federal government. By pure happenstance we experienced record flooding in Phuket recently, with 11 inches of rain falling in 24 hours. I am sure I had never seen that amount in that short of a time before in my lifetime. During the heaviest downpours the raindrops coalesce together and form these sheets of water which torrent and undulate in the wind. It was enough to overwhelm even Phuket’s monsoon climate, even with the ground and infrastructure well prepared for such onslaughts. We were moated into the restaurant as I documented.
That said I do not think that Phuket’s flooding had anything to do with weather modification per say. I think it was just the bad luck of what happens when a monsoon comes together with a typhoon, or in this case fragments of then Tropical Storm Yagi. But it gave me a clear comparator regarding what happened in North Carolina.
I looked at the rainfall totals during Hurricane Helene in some of these mountainous areas which are in no way shape or form prepared for these types of extremely heavy rains. Some areas received over twice as much as monsoony Phuket did during the worst of it. These are apocalyptic amounts, beyond unprecedented and do not in any way appear natural:
As is usual during these freak weather events, the checklist is coming in handy. Is there a strategic and financial interest in grabbing the land after the disaster? Check. I keep on hearing about the lithium depositis in the area. Are relief efforts and rescue missions being actively blocked by government officials? Check. Is there a lame stream media blackout? Check. Was evacuation not done which increased the death toll? Check. Are people being told they can’t go back to the land? Check. Are they being offered a laughably paltry sum by the despicable thieves in power, while vast sums are wasted on things nobody wants, like war in other countries and giving money to migrants from other countries? Check.
There’s been a record surge in government employment, because obviously more FEMA personell blocking rescue, recovery and relief efforts is just what the doctor ordered.
My marriage visa to stay in Thailand saga has been ongoing for several days. I needed a document called a kor rohr 2, which basically signifies that me and Ka remain married to each other. This is usually very easy to get, requiring me and my husband to go to a local amphur, show his Thai ID card, my passport and our original marriage certificate. They check the records, make sure we haven’t divorced or anything and it costs 40 baht (like $1.33). I usually go to the Amphur in Phuket Town for this, simply because it is close to Phuket Immigration where I need go next. On Wednesday we arrived at around 2:00 PM and the office was swamped. They told us there were no more tickets left and to come back the next day.
On Thursday our rental motorobike would not start. It turned out camp rats also chew electrical wires, as was discovered by the mechanic at the motorbike rental place. They didn’t charge me for the repair, good people that they are, but I wasn’t able to go to the Amphur until Friday. We arrived at 10:20 AM, they told us no more tickets were available until after lunch at 1:00 PM. We went back at 1:00 PM, waited in line behind a bunch of people, then they told us they had no more tickets again and to go to another Amphur for it. Argh. Usually this document takes 5 minutes to issue and costs a little over $1.
We went to Amphur Thalang to get this usually very easy to get document. They were swamped with Thai people too and told the guy in front of us in line to go to Amphur Kathu! But why are there so many Thai people at all of these Amphurs right now? They do marriage registrations, birth registrations and Thai national ID cards. Thankfully this one let us in, perhaps having sympathy for how many times we’d already tried and my ability to produce documents in Thai language at the drop of the hat. I probably have as many legal documents with my name in Thai language as I do with my name in English.
The lady at the counter asked where Ka’s real Thai ID card was. I couldn’t find it anywhere in my bag and my husband did not have it either. See the Thailand .gov provided relief funds during the pandemic to their people too. In late 2020 during the Covid catastrophe I returned to Thailand and my husband did not have his ID card anywhere. Brother Tee’s explanation for him losing it was “He drunk and he blur.”
We went and Ka got a new ID card. That one disappeared quickly again. I realized then that brother Tee was likely taking Covid relief funds slated for Ka from his ID card. Then we went again and made yet another new Thai ID card for Ka, which presumably voided the one we had made just one month prior. Then Ka’s old ID card, no longer of cash value, reappeared. We were very careful after that point to guard both Thai IDs, but only the most recently issued one could in theory be used for government assistance.
Then Thailand switched this over to a phone app for Covid relief benefits in 2021, which Ka’s sister cashed out after taking his picture and biometric information. My husband’s family’s taking of funds presumably slated for me and my family was a source of arguments. They seemed to have rationalized that I was farang and therefore rich so they could use the Covid stimmy cash more. We had times I had cash flow problems and we literally couldn’t afford food.
Of course all of the Covid stimmies in the US and Thailand went away long ago. But in looking for Ka’s real active ID card in my bag frantically, I remembered the last time we had had it was when we had gone to Thalang Hospital.
Had my husband’s always very dodgy tuberculosis diagnosis been used to release some benefits to him (and the hospital) which were then stolen via his ID card? It makes sense. The TB diagnosis involves all of the worst aspects of the Covid quarantine response plus six months: during the first two months Ka was supposed to quarantine away from everybody, not work, always wear a facemask in public settings et cetera. If you take away somebody’s ability to work wouldn’t you need to provide assistance to them somehow?
I was able to get the kor rohr but now I’m dragged into Monday on making my husband a new ID card and going to Phuket Immigration. Always follow the money.
Israel is supposedly selling houses in Lebanon already. The move looks desperate to me. I believe in due time Netanyahu will be understood as an arch enemy of the Jewish people, as is true of Zelensky in Ukraine.
Who wins in a broader war? Probably whoever is invested in this stuff.
We all lose
Such a lot of good ways to be evil. If I were, I’d be laundering money and introducing geoengineers, DEWs, hostile illegal immigrants, and inflation into the neighborhoods of useless eaters, such as middle-class folks. We should stop taking a stand and start pushing back.
The DON’T poster disturbs me, so I saved it.
Almost all of my interpersonal difficulties in Thailand have been related to money. I don't want to downplay financial struggles, because they are very real here, but money obsessions seem to always be just below the surface.