Did a human leave the door open or a cat? Or a cat disguised as a human?

@Nabo ***

as a solo traveler, I’ve found that it’s pretty easy to make friends in Thailand just by exploring the local coffee scene instead of drinking coffee in my hotel. Look for a cafe where you can actually sit or stand at the counter and chat with the baristas, and they’ll remember you the next time you visit.

House of Supha in Talat Noi and Old Town Cafe in the old city are especially great for this, but as a stylist staying on Sukhumvit 11, you might really like Sometimes I Feel on Sukhumvit 31. The team is very nice, and the place manages to be stylish, vintage, a little nerdy, and like being in a friend’s living room at the same time. I’d trust them to know some great stylists, or have stylish friends with great hair who are open to helping you out.

I sometimes ask baristas to tell me where to go for food, and to write down in Thai what to order. And places where I might otherwise feel totally intimidated by the language and cultural barriers just start smiling when I hand over a slip of paper. I bet you could do that with hair, too, although I think you’ll find that many of the experienced stylists are pretty comfortable speaking English.

Congratulations! Thanks for sharing.

Actual footage of that one agent who catches you fiddling with the matrix . . .

@Sally ******

a hospital might be able to help you get a DTV visa for medical treatment, which would let her stay in Thailand for 180 days at a time, take a brief border run, and come back for another 180 days, and keep repeating that cycle for five years without needing to get a new visa.

Failing that, maybe ask her recovery program if Muay Thai training might complement her recovery program. If so, Muay Thai programs can also be used to support the DTV visa.

Now, to *get* the DTV, she’d need to briefly leave Thailand to apply for the visa, but other members of the group have posted recently about getting the visa very quickly (within days) from the Thai consulates or embassies in Vietnam and, if I’m remembering correctly, Laos.

Others have already pointed out that volunteering can be problematic, but perhaps she can find opportunities to do structured volunteer work online for programs outside of Thailand. Within Thailand, instead of looking for volunteer roles, perhaps she could instead find some other way of giving back to the local community, like making a practice of writing a positive review of a different local business each day, or trying to provide a helpful answer to someone else’s questions in one of the local facebook groups. Maybe she can brainstorm something along those lines with the people helping her with recovery, to avoid running into any accidental work permit problems.

One other possible wrinkle to think about: if she’s in Thailand for more than 179 days a year, she *might* have to think about income taxes in Thailand. It sounds like her only “income” is just an allowance from you, which I assume she’s not reporting on her tax returns in the UK. Hopefully, this is a non-issue for her in Thailand, but just to be on the safe side, you might want to poke someone familiar with Thai tax laws to make sure she doesn’t have to do any paperwork (or pay any taxes!) in Thailand.

Is it Big?

@Wesley *******

if you apply this week, you should easily get it in time.

Not sure if you’d be able to get recourse through Thai authorities very easily, but you could flag the photos to facebook to get them taken down. Mind you, that’d probably be a time-consuming pain in the butt, but I’m pretty sure “there’s an unauthorized photo of my butt on your website” is something fb has a team in place to deal with.