u/No_Kangaroo6917

I just arrived in Nepal (first time visitor) and purchased an NTC sim card in a local shop.

I had read an article online stating it is possible to recharge the card through NTC app or website using an international credit card. I am wondering if this information is inaccurate?

I wanted to purchase the Sajilo unlimited basic pack but can't find a way to do this using credit card either on the app or the website. When I try to purchase it I receive the message: "no sufficient balance."

If anyone knows what I need to do in order to purchase the package for my card, I would appreciate your guidance!

I will soon be arriving in Pokhara for the frist time and staying at an airbnb in the lake area and I am trying to figure out the best option for transport from the airport for a budget traveler.

Information I have found says you cannot use ridesharing apps to get transport from the airport to lake area, but these articles are from previous years. Is it still the case today that drivers will not come to the airport if you try to book them through ridesharing apps?

If not, what is currently the best transport option for a foreign visitor arriving for the first time? Is there a prepaid taxi booth as there is at the Kathmandu airport? I have read that it is difficult to bargain with the taxi drivers at the airport themselves and that they will charge a very inflated rate, but I do not know if this information is up to date, or if things have changed.

what cities do you feel make life easiest for a digital nomad, the places where you have felt most comfortable and where every day life was more practical for a foreign visitor doing a multi month stay?

On a related note, are there any places where you just couldn’t adapt, either because things were too chaotic, disorganized or for another reason, and which you would avoid during your future travels?

The kathmandu airport is the first one I've been to where passengers and their luggage need to go through scanning before they are allowed to exit the airport. When I was looking for the baggage claim and found myself in a line with people by an x-ray machine, at first I thought I must have gone the wrong way and ended up in the flight departures section of the airport!

Since passengers and their luggage already passed all security checks at their departure airport, additional scanning on arrival seems unnecessary. Is there a reason the airport decided to implement this extra security measure? Was there some sort of incident in the past that provoked concern?

I am overseas and will not be returning to California till the end of year; however I need to renew my registration, which I had planned to do online. But when I try to do this the website tells me that smog check is required and that if I renew now I will receive a notice of "incomplete renewal" in 3 to 4 days. I am not sure exactly what this means or how I should proceed. Obviously I cannot complete the smog check at this time, but I also want to renew my registration in order to avoid late pees. Can I pay the registration fee now in order to avoid late fees, and then take care of the smog check when I return later this year, or what is my best option in this situation?

For those of you who are living abroad most of the time, how often do you return to your home country? do any of you have certain tasks/obligations that require you to return home more often than you would like?

I live most of my time in Asia and actually try to avoid returning to America very often simply because it’s such a long, grueling, expensive trip and I’m just going to need to come back to Asia anyway. So in the past I rarely returned except for every year or two. However now there are some things I need to take care of back home periodically and, really, it would be ideal if I returned every three or four months for a little while, which I have to say I say I would rather not do. another things I find is once I return home inertia sets in and I often end up not leaving again for longer than I planned.

curious what others do and how you handle similar situations.

Is there a certain amount of time one should use a card before requesting product change to another, in order to ensure a better outcome, and if so what is recommended? I have a Travel Rewards card which I would ultimately like to PC to Customized Cash. Wondering how long I should wait to request this, since the card is fairly new.

Also, does BoA allow customers to have more than one Customized Cash card, making it possible to use each card for different categories, or will they only issue one per customer?

I have an advantage relationship checking account with BoA, which I opened mainly in order to become part of the preferred rewards program. I don't generally use the account much, except to transfer funds from my ME brokerage account to an outside account every now and then. My understanding, though, was that there was no minimum balance required to keep this account, and that fees would be waived because I am a preferred rewards member; however, today I received notice that I haven't been using the checking account enough and that it would be closed if I didn't use it soon. I am wondering: if they close it, does that mean I will also lose my preferred rewards membership? Is there some minimum use I need to make of this account in order to keep it active, and if so what is the minimum activity required?

Should I book accommodation with AC when staying in Kathmandu in July and August or is it unnecessary?

Is it necessary to register travel notifications withe Fidelity when using one's debit card at ATMs during international travel? I don't want to risk getting locked out of my card when arriving in a new country. I've noticed nowadays this no longer seems to happen with other cards I use when traveling - it was a lot more common in the past - but thought I should verify beforehand just to make sure.

I’m planning to spend three months in Nepal; will be my first time there. arriving in Kathmandu in July. Any suggestions for best places to stay, things to be aware of, etc? is Airbnb going to be the best option for monthly rentals there? It seems like for the sake of convenience it would be ideal to be located in Thamel but only if one could find a place in a quiet corner, some from what I’ve read it’s generally very noisy In that area. Has anyone managed to find quiet accommodation right in the center? And if not what would be the next best area to set up base? Any tips and suggestions from those who’ve done longer term stays in Nepal would be appreciated.

Apparently the Kathmandu airport accepts credit card payments for the VoA but I've seen some people saying they were charged a cash advance fee (5% plus interest) when they used cc to pay, and others say they were not.

Is there some way to determine which cards code the transaction as a cash advance fee and which don't? I have a Bank of America Travel Rewards card which is meant to be used for international travel and which I know for sure doesn't charge a foreign transaction fee but this cash advance fee seems to be another thing altogether. It also entails a much higher fee, so it seems like it's not worth the risk of paying with cc for the Nepal visa unless you can somehow verify beforehand you won't be charged that fee.

How can I remove what I believe most here burn marks from the flame of the gas stove from the outside of a ceramic pan? the pan is white but the whole outside looks brown now. I tried scrubbing with baking soda but didn’t notice a difference.

I'm using Word for Mac and I have a document I am working with which is saved to my proton drive folder on my mac, but I just noticed what appears to be a second (larger) version of the same document in my documents folder, with the same name. I have no recollection of creating a second version of this document and have no idea how it got there. Both documents have the same last access date, but the second version in my documents folder is larger, which is worrying, because it makes me think recent revisions I made may have gone only into that document, without my being aware of it, and now it's a bit of a mess as I will need to try to compare the documents looking for discrepancies.

Anyone know why this might have happened and how I can prevent it in the future?

Update: I just noticed after working with the document for awhile that a dialogue popped up asking me to save it, and the location it is giving for the save is in fact my documents folder, not the proton drive folder where the file is actually located. I assume this is what happened before and how I ended up with two versions of the documents. Why is this happening and how can I stop it from happening? I don't want to risk having two different versions of a document with different contents when I need everything available in one.

I have a basic logitech k120 keyboard I take with me when traveling, but I had an incident on a recent trip where some instant coffee granules I had in my suitcase exploded (the suitcase must have gotten strongly compressed during transit) and the granules actually went everywhere, including between all the keys on this keyboard, creating a huge sticky mess. I individually cleaned stuck keys to get it working again but there is simply no way to get all the gunk out from under the keys manually. I know there are some keyboards where you can simply run them through the dish washer, let them dry out for 48 hours and they are as good as new - but not sure if this is one of those keyboards? Any suggestions would be appreciated except throwing the keyboard away, since that's what I'm planning to do anyway if there's no way to safely give it a deep clean!

I’m trying to decide whether to fly Thai airways or China southern from Taipei to Kathmandu. Will be footing economy. China southern flight is a little cheaper and slightly faster but not enough to be significant so it really comes down to comfort and quality. Is thai airways going to be significantly better than china southern in those respects?

I recently read a post by someone who said that when he travels to an international destination and plans to stay in the same place for awhile, he doesn't stay at airbnb or longer stay accomodation beacause too many things can get wrong and he'll be stuck, so he books a hotel one night at a time through an online booking site, rather than booking for the entire time he plans to stay. he said the advantage of this is that often the staff treats you better since they're not sure if they'll get your business again the next day and that he can get up and change accommodation at any time if something happens like construction starts up nearby, etc.

Anyone else do this and if so what has your experience been? I can see the advantages of it, the biggest disadvantage just seems to be the inconvenience of needing to go to a website and make a new booking every night, and the possibility the one night no rooms/of the type of room you want may not be available, and also you might lose a cheaper rate you could lock in if you booked your stay all at once.

While I'm not sure I'd want to do this every single night if planning to stay somewhere for awhile, it does occur to me it might be a good idea to do this for the first night in a new hotel you don't know, so you can actually get a sense for what it is like, and you may have more leverage in requesting a room change the next day if needed.

My biggest question about this though is how you handle the practical aspect of it at the front desk. This guy said if you're already staying there and you book again they will just let you stay in your current room because it's more hassle for them to assign you a new room. But since normally hotels assume after a one night stay the guest will be gone and have check out times, etc, I'm wondering exactly how you handle this with the staff. Would you need to go down every morning before check out to let them know you booked another night? Or would you just do nothing, assuming they'll see your new reservation in the system and leave you be?

I recently read a post by someone who said that when he travels to an international destination and plans to stay in the same place for awhile, he books one night at a time through an online booking site, rather than booking for the entire time he plans to stay. he said the advantage of this is that often the staff treats you better since they're not sure if they'll get your business again the next day and that he can get up and change accommodation at any time if something happens like construction starts up nearby, etc.

Anyone else do this and if so what has your experience been? I can see the advantages of it, the biggest disadvantage just seems to be the inconvenience of needing to go to a website and make a new booking every night, and the possibility the one night no rooms/of the type of room you want may not be available, and also you might lose a cheaper rate you could lock in if you booked your stay all at once.

While I'm not sure I'd want to do this every single night if planning to stay somewhere for awhile, it does occur to me it might be a good idea to do this for the first night in a new hotel you don't know, so you can actually get a sense for what it is like, and you may have more leverage in requesting a room change the next day if needed.

My biggest question about this though is how you handle the practical aspect of it at the front desk. This guy said if you're already staying there and you book again they will just let you stay in your current room because it's more hassle for them to assign you a new room. But since normally hotels assume after a one night stay the guest will be gone and have check out times, etc, I'm wondering exactly how you handle this with the staff. Would you need to go down every morning before check out to let them know you booked another night? Or would you just do nothing, assuming they'll see your new reservation in the system and leave you be?

I'm trying to troubleshoot an apparent sync problem with remotely save. I posted about this once before because I actually lost some data, and you guys gave me some help. I thought I understood the problem then, but based on what I'm seeing now I'm starting to think there's a deeper issue and wondering if I should really be relying on remotely save at all.

So here's the the situation: I have remotely save on my my iphone and also my macbook air. I've added many new notes to a file in my vault over the last few days. During that time I've always had an internet connection. My Mac also has an internet connection. However, none of the new material is getting synced to my mac from my iphone.

Just now I used the "manual sync" option on both my phone and my computer, thinking perhaps that's what I needed to go to get the sync to happen. But my computer is still displaying the old version of the file and has not updated to include the new notes I've added on my phone.

This is very concerning to me as I'm using the app for notes for important work. What could be happening here? What should Ido next to troubleshoot the issue?

Update: in troubleshooting I just tried something else: I quit the Obsidian App and restarted it. after I restarted it, it did finally update the file properly and synced the new notes from my phone. But should I actually need to quit and restart the Obsidian app on my computer every time like that for sync to take place? If that is the case, I know I'm going to end up losing data over time sometimes I'll just end up forgetting all the steps I need to take to ensure sync. I thought the syncing would work seamlessly across devices?

What are your suggestions for the best lightweight powerful portable battery charger? A specific one was recommended to me: Xiaomi ultrathin powerback 5000 which I can pick up for about $19, but I don't have enough general knowledge about chargers like this to know if there isn't one that's better/cheaper. I'll be using it mostly for charging phones and perhaps also sometimes my macbook air which can be charged via USB-C.