penwithcris

Pattaya, despite it's downsides, would still be in my top ten retirement destinations. Fifteen thousand baht a month for a twenty third floor apartment on the south side of Markland condo with magnificent views of the bay.UBC so I can watch all the sport I want, and a host of young pretty ladies on Beach Road willing to provide me with my '5 a day' and stimulate my septuagerian heart for a pittance.

Plenty of 'losers' like myself around to share a joke with and to trawl the area for fleeting company. Breakfasts for 50 baht and superb seafood, pork, steak barbies in Naklua for 150 baht at night.

And when I grow old Father William I will hire a long term carer from the many ladies who are past their best and they can become my nursemaids for minimum wage.

Just avoid the bars and strip clubs, enjoy the occasional Chang or Singha with friends at home or on the beach. Watch your back, dress down, carry outdated credit cards and the minimum of cash, never take katois or walk alone especially if intoxicated.

Not perfect of course, nowhere is, but my retirement pension and superannuation allow me to live like Prince rather than a Pauper in UK

It must be sad to have someone you love incarcerated in prison but I feel the best thing the boyfriend can do is to ensure that her immediate family are helped if they need it and that you prepare carefully for the time that she is released.

Sounds as though there were problems in her life that led to a prison sentence. Involvement with drugs, particularly, is the most likely reason. Unfortunately drugs are easily available in Thai prisons so addiction is unlikely to have been overcome.

If you cannot give her 100 percent support on her release she is very likely to lapse into the same circumstances that caused her initial incarceration.

Good luck with your future but I fear you will have problem after problem to overcome

My wife is Thai and she has little inclination to return to Thailand except out of necessity and she is not alone in feeling that way

UK has it's problems but generally speaking it is a very SAFE country in which to live and work. Thailand has become like the Philippines where one is always looking over one's shoulder in case there is someone wishing to do one harm

It is not only physical hurt to be wary of. Business dealings from the smallest to the largest are fraught with danger and Thais will take any opportunity to 'rip off' the naive or unsuspecting.

Like the Phil what could have been a nation paradise has degenrated beyond all recognition over the past thirty years. The sickness is terminal

Several posts refer to blonde hair and blue eyes. If that was the case Hitler and his inner circle would certainly have been excluded from the 'master race' he sought to create.

My grandfather died in Belsen (he fell out of a watchtower) but, seriously, I don't think there was any intended offence in the mural. If one deliberately sets out to hurt someone with ones actions that is a different thing. Better to keep things in perspective

Some people would find a mural depicting George Bush and Tony Bliar repugnant