JingerBen

Like Barretta said; "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."

I got stopped the other day. The cop checked my license (Thai,) my tax sticker (valid,) my insurance papers (under my seat,) my passport copy (with me,) smiled, pointed at my helmet and said 'Thank you, Mister' and sent me on my way. I smiled back and rode off. A full minute or two out of my day, nothing more. Cops doing their job.

Good for you!

I'll bet you were the teacher's pet in school.

Shakespeare walks into a bar. The barman shouts" Get out you're Bard"

I have loads of these and will post them unless you send me money

How much?

Australians aren't so much low-class as they are middleclass.

Middleclass mediocrity pervades the society and characterizes the people.

Nothing wrong with being in the middle.

I guess not, if that's where you want to be.

Australians aren't so much low-class as they are middleclass.

Middleclass mediocrity pervades the society and characterizes the people.

If that is your pict then I want go on the record to say your smoking hot!!!

I'm not aware of kettlebells for sale in CM but a few places in BKK and Phuket sell and ship them.

Not exactly cheap though.

Check this thread for websites

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/444920-where-to-buy-kettlebells-weights-in-chiang-mai/

"...I want to go on the record to say your smoking hot!!!"

Gawd Almighty...what a way to greet this lovely girl! Crude, rude, and semi-literate.

No wonder there are so few Thais on the forum.

Then after that loutish come-on you provide her with some useful information.

TITV.

A bit like postponing Christmas in the UK if the Archbishop of Canterbury died in December

Your analogy is off.

Celebrating Carnival or Mardi Gras after the death of a pope in the old days would be closer to the present situation.

In any event, it's their business, not ours.

Let the Thais sort it out themselves.

I like the story. Has some familiar elements from my freshman year here. I am no expert on AIDS/HIV but I don't believe the stuff about the low possibility of catching same from non-anal intercourse with a woman. I never heard that before. I ran to get checked out a couple of times (clean, whew!) after some ill-advised liassons, followed by massive attack of regret/paranoia.

Bet you won't be going back to that place, hmmmm?

Don't bet the ranch on it, Frank.

A sleazy experience more typical of Pattaya, Phuket, or Bangkok.

The scenario of sex, drink/drugs, and pratfalls in an exotic location has become a Hollywood staple that is beginning to bore.

Any farang who lived here in the 1970's and early '80s would have stories to tell about the girls and a lot of other things as well.

The boom-times that started after that changed everything, even the people.

The generation that has come of age since then are as different from the older Thais as were the 1960s generation in the west from their parents and grandparents who had lived through the Depression and WWII.

Worlds apart.

I doubt the US government is interested in who your current gf is. Time and grief are an inseparable part of the visa process. Everything costs money at the US consulate.

That's quite true; regardless of what the Pollyannas say to the contrary.

Incidentally, there seem to be a lot of them on the forum these days. I wonder why?

In the topic about living in the West with a Thai wife nearly ever single post talks about how all the Thai women living in the West (besides their wife) are a bunch of gambling, lying, cheating, gossiping villains?

I assume you are not American because the average American can't even find Thailand on a map! Taiwan? Is that in China? Is it close to Shanghai? Tom Cruise went there in Mission Impossible III.

That's a stereotype...but like so many racial and ethnic stereotypes there is a lot of truth in it.

Most Americans are pig-ignorant about geography.

Unlike Australians who are suprisingly well-informed about it, although they are blissfully ignorant about everything else under the sun.

Americans think that their country has it all. If it's not in the USA, it's not worth having, or seeing, or doing.

Australians know that they live on a desolate island with a history that could be contained in a comicbook, and populated by people who never had what it takes to fight for their own freedom.

So much for stereotypes.

Your post is full of interesting information about Chiang Mai.

You didn't dumb-it-down but at the same time you kept it concise.

That said, I must point out one glaring omission, and that is the abandonment of Chiang Mai in the late 18th century - 1770s to 1790s, or whenever it was.

Surely that deserves mention in even an outline of the city's history during that period.

Can you comment?

The encouragement of retirees to settle in Chiang Mai with special visas, housing estates etc. is a textbook example of the way so many Thais look for the short-term profit while ignoring the long-term costs.

Who will care for 70 or 80 year old people when they become sick and disabled?

Most of the farang who settled here a long time ago have families to take care of them.

Thais are justly famous for taking care of their own; and that would include a farang who could speak the language, raised children among them and showed some basic respect for their culture and religion.

What do the newcomers have? A mia-chow? Some recent Thai in-laws - parasites by any other name - who will bag-out as soon as their cash-cow stops producing.

Will the government here provide long-term care for farangs who are unable to care for themselves? I doubt it.

The Golden Years of retirement that never materialized in their own countries are even less likely to become a reality here.

Many of these people are old enough to remember the early years of the Castro regime in Cuba when posters went up in front of the old state-run airline reading: Yankee Go Home - via Cubana Airlines.

Couldn't happen here, could it?

No way Jose, we'd carpet-bomb them suckers back to the Stone Age.

I think too much has been made of Gringo's anti-farang feelings. They were there, to be sure, but he just seemed to prefer the country and people of Thailand.

I can understand that because I feel exactly the same way.

There are many irritations and aggravations here, but compared to the US, where we both came from, they seem insignificant.

Britons and Americans, at least the more intelligent and perceptive among them, more or less dislike their own kind when met abroad. And who can blame them?

Muddled middle-class mediocrities, knuckle-headed lower-class louts and the pompous ignorance of their few remaining "aristocrats" are hardly what you would want to identify with.

And their negative qualities are magnified ten-fold when these people find themselves living culturally isolated in a country like Thailand with traditions of refinement and civility that go back a long time.

Certainly we have similar traditions, but many of us seem to have come full-circle and have descended - to one degree or another - into a state of neo-barbarism. Extreme examples being the heavily tattooed and pierced Goths. The music and popular culture express it very well.

So if Gringo and the oldtimers were "anti-farang" to some extent, they had good reasons to be.

I knew him and his family rather well in the late 80's, early 90's when our children were at Sacred Heart together. He was a talented but complex person.

The paintings of hilltribe people, Buddhist subjects, landscapes, and mandalas that he did during his first twenty or so years here were really fine.

The transformation of Chiang Mai as we knew it, followed by the events of post - 9/11 in the US and beyond, changed him and his work profoundly.

Political and social satire and a dark undercurrent took over.

Maintaining a friendship with him was as difficult as I would imagine it would have been with the likes of Orwell or Kafka.

His relations with Thais, as far as I could tell, seemed good.

The Thai dislike for the pahk-wahn / doot pree-oh type probably worked to his advantage, combined with his innate respect for the people and their culture.

He once told me that the most important part of getting along here was to never forget you were a guest; because if you lived with them a hundred years you wouldn't be accepted on any other terms.

I guess that just about sums it up.

R.I.P. Gringo

"Farang men". I've heard that countless times in the past 30+ years I've been coming here.

Sure, there are many dirty Farangs, but I shower twice a day, three times a day in the hot season, and I know many other Farangs who do likewise. We're not all pigs. Yet Thais say we smell bad. What possible racial difference could account for this?

Is it because we sweat more?

Any ideas?

This whole thing is just hype to promote tourism in Chiang Mai and shouldn't be taken seriously by anybody.

A crass commercial attempt to make these gullible fools think they are somehow playing a positive role here by helping out in various ways.

The mass tourists and the hordes of resident expats with any degree of intelligence or sensibility know very well that they themselves are out of place in Chiang Mai.

The dramatic increase in their numbers makes their presence here more problematic as time goes on.

The best thing they could do is call it quits and go home.

Nobody who remembers Chiang Mai as it was before they came would miss them.

Is Chiang Mai a dystopia that needs an ethnic cleansing?

Have things really gotten that bad?

If so, let's snap to it and create an ultra-violent video game based on that premise.

An updated Clockwork Orange scenario in a real horrorshow Thai context!

The avatars would be the droogs Alex, Georgie, Pete, and Dim with their antagonist Billyboy. Throw in Anders Breivik for a modern touch.

They would prowl Chiang Mai by night looking for degenerate farangs to eliminate in creative ways.

Better living through chemistry at the Korova Milkbar, located... where else?... on Loi Kroh. Dirty, seedy, and squalid as it is.

A game like this would be the perfect outlet for those who are concerned about the present situation.

They could play to their heart's content and at the at the end of the day Chiang Mai would still be...

"Queer as a Clockwork Orange".

Bog help us all!

Wasn't a Clockwork Orange banned in Britain... maybe still?

If so, a lot of Brits won't know what you're on about.

I think Kubrick's film was banned.

But I don't think Burgess' book ever was.

I may be wrong.

But whatever the case, as a lifelong anglophile I'm confident my beloved limeys are hip to everything.

Is Chiang Mai a dystopia that needs an ethnic cleansing?

Have things really gotten that bad?

If so, let's snap to it and create an ultra-violent video game based on that premise.

An updated Clockwork Orange scenario in a real horrorshow Thai context!

The avatars would be the droogs Alex, Georgie, Pete, and Dim with their antagonist Billyboy. Throw in Anders Breivik for a modern touch.

They would prowl Chiang Mai by night looking for degenerate farangs to eliminate in creative ways.

Better living through chemistry at the Korova Milkbar, located... where else?... on Loi Kroh. Dirty, seedy, and squalid as it is.

A game like this would be the perfect outlet for those who are concerned about the present situation.

They could play to their heart's content and at the at the end of the day Chiang Mai would still be...

"Queer as a Clockwork Orange".

Bog help us all!