MrWorldwide

Meet me at Swampy in April 2014 - I'll give you my NSW driver's licence, medicare card and some Kevin Bloody Wilson CDs : all you could possibly need for your new life in Sydney. Free health care, the wind in your hair and immediate grasp of the language / customs of a developed country. The only payment I require is your tears. Joyful tears, of course ...

Had this conversation with 3 Fili working girls over dinner in KL back in 2011, and they were scathing. Apparently Filipino guys are very good at 'love' right up until there is a baby to care for, then they make themselves very scarce. Of course, that could be the Fili version of 'Thai man no good', but it had a ring of truth to it. Not much use telling someone you love them unless you are prepared to back it up.

The next time you and your best mate get drunk and he tells you he 'loves' you, ask him if you can borrow 10K baht. Love. like all talk, seems to be very cheap

The worse Airline Ever.... Neve fly them and never have a problem....

I guess you've never flown with Tiger Airways. That's OK - many of Tiger's paying customers haven't either .....

^^ Good to see no problems with Australians.

We're a nice bunch of guys ...

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Everything in Oz is overpriced, so why would anyone want to do business with Australians?

It did our exporters no favours whatsoever when the Fed started printing more money, but its not that long ago when the AUD was nowhere near parity with the USD. Still hasnt worked entirely in our favour for anything other than internet purchases, and who is going to buy a pair of Levi 501s without being able to try them on ?? They *should* be a standard size, but I'm just not prepared to shop for clothes over the Net.

I've always interpreted anyone hovering around my table as a blatant ploy for tips. Australia doesnt have a tipping culture, but then we have a minimum wage which other countries would envy. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.

I ran into a crazy English teacher back in 2008 who told me he had returned from S Korea 4 years earlier on the 30-day visa exemption and didn't have a single stamp in his passport beyond that. When I asked him whether he was scared of being arrested at the airport, he responded that he would simply have to pay 'one hell of an overstay fine !'.

How many such folk are illegally living and working in Thailand ? Your guess is as good as mine. Ultimately, unless they are eating my food, wearing my shirt or shagging my woman, does it matter how many expats are in Thailand ?

Come on - you old cynics ate it up with a spoon and came back gagging for more. You know you love it, bitches.

The Air Asia booking website, is set up for booking mistakes ! One would think that it would include a warning that there is not enough time to connect. But NO, this is something that is completely ignored. Why ? i am sure that it creates extra revenue .

There is a reason that low cost carriers *are* low-cost carriers. Think of it as a flying bus service (God knows the KLCCT departure lounge looks like one) and you might be happier with Air Asia - personally, other than the odd delay, I've had an excellent run with budget airlines. Compare that to Garuda (ok, ok - they are STILL a 'full service' airline ..) where I sat around at Sydney Airport for 5 hours waiting for a flight that was supposed to depart at 11am. Normally wouldn't have been a huge deal, but I had to meet my Thai GF at Denpasar Airport : she stood in the same spot outside Customs for 3 solid hours waiting for me. Moral of the story - never rely on ANY airline to get you to your destination at the appointed time. It's a crapshoot, and we are all just one volcano away from sleeping at some Godforsaken airport en route to the place we really want to be. Think happy thoughts.

Anyone who wants an alternative flight from KL can always fly Thai or Malaysia, but who wants to spend that sort of money on an hour-long flight ? It can have its moments though - on a Business Class Garuda flight between Denpasar and Jakarta, I was one of just 3 passengers in the front of the plane, and the only one not wearing a suit. The FAs kept offering me food and alcohol to the point where it all got a little silly, but it was still a welcome change from the joys of Cattle Class.

My current Thai wife cleans the wax out of my ears, wants to pop any zits, cut my toenails and shower me.

That would be considered perfectly normal grooming behaviour if she was a Bonobo ....

I happen to like Bonobos - huiman behaviour is much closer to chimps, sadly - but I prefer to admire them from afar. Each to their own, I guess

Old stereotypes die hard, I guess.

Just saw a news story about a Vietnamese woman who was jailed here in Oz for leaving her child to die in a car - windows wound up in the hot sun, a terrible way to die. Do I think this makes a 'myth' of the notion that Asian people are dedicated to family ? No, because that has always been a convenient generalisation. I know a Thai woman who has made no attempt to care for either of her kids - one is being cared for by the father, another by a friend who lives one Soi further down Suk. The antithesis of the 'caring mother' stereotype, and I doubt that she ever sent a satang to her parents. Seriously off the rails, but this is 2013 not 1983.

Another girl quit her job in a Soi 4 bar to work for considerably less money in a salon when she realised she was pregnant to her Thai BF : her girlfriend later showed her how to sell clothes from Chatuchak on E-Bay and I have never seen her as happy as she was to have control of her own life. No Farang, no barfine quota - just her friends and enough money to take care of herself and her baby. Why would she want to add a geriatric Farang to the list of people she needed to take care of, regardless of whatever pot of cash he might bring to the party ? A lifetime of raising smaller siblings, being responsible for her parents, and now some old geezer wants the same treatment ? Please ....

Let's agree to take care of ourselves. Failing that, don't leave the nanny state.

I still chuckle over the old gem that 'the most beautiful women in Thailand are men' : personally, I've seen very few Katoeys that I consider attractive, but I'm sure the wags here would claim that I just dont know how to spot the really convincing ladyboys. I only know this:

- if it's too tall

- if it's too 'pale'

- if it's boobs are too big

- if it has a Farang nose and abnormally high cheekbones

then it's almost certainly a Katoey, IMO, but each of those characteristics set a 'girl' apart from the majority of her Thai sisters and clearly it's what the girls genuinely believe Farang men want. Of course, there *are* Thai women who are tall, pale (relatively) and have impressive chests, but IME Katoeys always give themselves away by trying too hard to be feminine. I've found the vast majority of Thai women, be they 'good' or 'bad' girls, to be very earthy :they dont spend inordinate amounts of time adjusting their lip gloss every 30 minutes - YMMV.

If I had to rate an Asian woman that I consider more beautiful than any Russian model (if that is the epitome of a Farang beauty), it would be the Chinese-Filipina combination. Some of the KPOP starlets are cute, but it's usually a very manufactured look and I'm over dyed hair, false eyelashes and 8-inch heels - whatever happened to long, jet-black hair and button noses ? I guess that's 'too boring' for many Thai women - much easier to somehow change yourself to look like a blonde Russian ....

Farang women better than their Asian sisters ? Nyet.

rct99q, I'm amazed that you admit to having given that much money to scammers - kudos for your honesty. One of the few pluses of the classic 'cynical Farang' mentality is that you dont believe anyone 100% - it works for me with most beggars but occasionally I'm confronted by something that still shakes me up. Conventional wisdom has it that most of Bangkok's beggars are retrieved by their criminal minders each night and taken back to whatever accommodations they have to house them till the next 'shift'. Staggering down Suk on my way back to Soi 22 at around 3am, I was surprised to find a woman sleeping next to one of the pedestrian overpasses, her baby asleep beside her. I normally buy food / Milo etc and hand it to the kids if I feel inclined to give anything during the day, but at that hour I had nothing beyond a stash of ten baht coins that had accumulated in my pocket - in a completely futile gesture I left the pittance next to the child and continued on my less-than-merry-way. I occasionally like to tell myself that I had a less-than-ideal childhood, but something like that puts it all in perspective.

I vote that all male Farang tourists in Thailand wear loud Hawaiian shirts and stage a sit-in at Soi Cowboy. No-one gets in and no-one gets out until the price of a Chang is standardised at 60 baht in every bar in Thailand.

Solidarity, brothers.

I stopped playing mind games with Thai women the night I saw one grab her 'sister' by the hair, pin her to the ground and start slamming her skull against the concrete. I don't remember any reference to that in the tourist brochures

Thailand is full of short term scams, they don't give a dam_n about return custom.

I am totally fed up with the place sometimes, I actually look FWD to go to work.

Why don't you just leave ? Move to Utopia, the *real* land of smiles. No scammers there.

oh another one who say "why dont you just leave "

When I got totally fed up with Sydney, I left. I knew the city wasn't going to change to suit me - at least not in the areas that led to me being 'fed up'. It just wasn't the city I adored ten years earlier, and I wasn't the only one who felt that way. When the party's over, it's over - whining about it wont change anything.

Thailand is full of short term scams, they don't give a dam_n about return custom.

I am totally fed up with the place sometimes, I actually look FWD to go to work.

Why don't you just leave ? Move to Utopia, the *real* land of smiles. No scammers there.

I thought the term you are describing sounded a lot more like 'chim-chim' than the way a native English speaker would pronounce 'Jim', but I guess boredom and 8 years of formal education may have a lot to do with the girls considering the latter to be a comical name. Given that the common Thai nickname 'Porn' is usually accepted as nothing more than a name by most Farang after their first trip to Thailand, it seems odd that the girls would find 'Jim' particularly funny when they realise how common that name is outside Thailand. I'm told that its katoeys who specialise in vulgar terms for female genitalia, and the girls don't appreciate it, I have a few choice terms for katoeys, but that's a topic for another thread.

One of the gals on Cowboy openly referred to me as 'ATM', despite the fact that she was one of very few in that bar who knew my name. When I returned to Oz after 3 months, I gave the phone to my then GF, and she handed it on to her elderly father. Predictably, he got a call from my Cowboy associate, a woman so single-minded in her quest that she simply launched into 'ATM ! Where are you ??' in English as soon as dear old dad answered the phone.

I know - 'cool story, bro' - but I laughed long and hard every time Ms Psycho-Ex trotted that tale out as an example of my evil ways and the persistence of this particular lady. Not sure that I would have mentioned it personally, but she was 'special'

Quite amazing how "Mr Worldwide" turns out to be anything but, and rambles on about something that most can't relate to.

It's true though, not the land of smiles....too many moaning farangs for that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitbull_(entertainer)

It's just a board name - 'amazingly', I don't look anything like my avatar either. Weird how that works.

I only know this - Georgetown has the worst one-star hotel I've ever stayed in, and said hotel has a guy who passes your passport on to his mate at the Consulate and you get a tourist visa without having to show proof of an outbound flight (or anything beyond your two passport-sized photos). It was great not having to line up at the Consulate (Vientiane is a lot of fun in that regard), but the obvious concern is whether its a scam : all I can say is that I got my passport back the following afternoon, jumped on a plane and had no problems getting back into Thailand.

From memory, it cost me about a thousand baht - roughly ten times what they should have charged me for the hotel room. Lesson learnt - there are times when even a single night in a hotel just isn't worth saving a few baht.

Do the Thais vet 'family groups' to ascertain whether minors belong to their parents/guardians ? This would be particularly ironic given that they dont do background checks on incoming passengers prior to granting them 30 days in the Kingdom. I'm not aware of any such checks on outbound passengers in Australia : it would be an extra workload that our Immigration folk can probably do without. Given that you are travelling with Thai relative of the 15-year old girl, I really cant see a problem anyway - might be different if you rocked up at the check-in counter holding hands and calling one another Tilac. :sarcasm:

There is no Thai alive able to speak English like you do.

You know this for a fact ? Back in 2008, I met Thai brothers (twins, FWIW) who had grown up in Denmark, and their English was superb, even with their ersatz 'American' accent. Sesame Street has a lot to answer for

I woke up this morning, went to the gym. Went to the cafe with my wife and daughter. Headed down with them both to the Ampur to shift her yellow book place of residence - cost nothing. Went shopping with my daughter while my wife went off to Chatuchuk for a bit of retail therapy.

Then met up this arvo with my burmese maid to hand over paperwork to extend her work permit (which the local labour office guided me through on Friday morning - again for nothing).

Came home. Played with my daughter with her new remote control helicopter which the shop at MBK had repaired for nothing when we bought it and had found it faulty.

Happy day all around.

I often wonder if I live in a different Thailand to the rest of you blokes.

Nah - you're just one of those 'glass half-full guys' - but I do know how easy it is to get tagged a 'Thai apologist'. If people elsewhere were 'perfect', particularly the poor and uneducated, I could see what the fuss was about, but they arent. We have a massive problem here in Oz with white trash dragging the rest of us down with their racism and petty BS crime - mainly assault - but I dont judge my countrymen by our bottom 10%. (ok - 20-30%, but that's it - honest !) Ask any Balinese what he/she thinks of Australians ....

Just like Australia isnt always 'the lucky country' and there is no real 'american dream' and the war in Iraq wasnt really all about democracy...come on people...I love Thailand warts and all, and there are a lot of warts.

You do realise that the 'lucky country' tag was intended as a wake-up call, not an endorsement ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lucky_country

Funny thing is, our tourist bosses don't promote drive-by shootings in Sydney as an 'attraction'. I realised I'd reached my use-by date in Sydney in 1985 - the year my flat was burgled 3 times - and left town. Perhaps some TVers have reached their use-by date in Thailand ?