spencer

Thai people can tell a mile off when a foreigner is with an ex-hooker. That is why us normal couples get such a bad time in Thailand, due to these idiots that get conned by farmers daughters.

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If Thai people "can tell a mile off when a foreigner is with an ex-hooker", why do you "normal" couples get a hard time?

Sounds like you look down on uneducated people. Uneducated does not mean unintelligent. You are obviously educated but rather unintelligent. There's my proof.

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Here is a perfect example. I met a thai girl from a wealthy family in that was in the USA for her masters degree. She already had a bachelers in English she obtained from a university in thailand but could not speak very well. She never worked in a Bar but she sure liked going to the bars in the USA. When we went to Bangkok the taxi drivers and tuk tuk drivers would speak to her in Isaan or Northern Thai. She would get really pissed off because she assumed that they thought she was a bar girl. Any way this girl turned out to be quite the slut so I left her for a poor hilltribe girl who is now my wife.

I met her working in an eatery in Thailand and she spoke pretty good english. She was raised in a catholic school and learned her english there. She graduated from technical school but flunked the math portion of the University entrance exam. ( I assume that if she was from a wealthy family she would have been admitted no matter how poorly she had done on the test.) She was a virgin and pretty innocent as far as far asmost things were concerned. She did not start getting messed up in the head until we moved into a moo baan that had a few other falangs living there with ex bar girl wives. They filled her head with so much bullshit it drove me nuts.

Any way I have been married for 6 years and still consider my uneducated poor hilltribe wife 1,000 times better than the rich educated bangkok girl that I used to be with.

I agree with Lukamar. Instead of creating more paperwork for the rest of the country by requiring every one to register their sim cards, disable the entire cell phone network in the south. Then they will have to go to back to using whatever detonating device they used before cell phones became popular which may be easier to trace to its source. I also agree that you should not give in to the terrorist. As an added measure travel to and from these provinces should be controled. Every vehicle in and out should be searched.

I know you say you are a carpenter but how are your cabinetry skills ???

You should use brewers yeast. It comes in both top fermenting and bottom fermenting. You probably have to order it from the internet. You could probably use the yeast that the locals make their Lao Khao from. I made some of my own rice wine with the yeast i got from my wife's village in the mountains and it worked pretty good. I added some fruit to it to give it some more flavor. Making consistent beer requires that you can control the temperature though. Do you have a way of doing this?

I think discounts at Tesco Lotus would benefit most of us who live here.

Thanks for all your replys, and Spencer I liked your family experience about spending.  I think you are similar to how I would be in LOS.

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Thanks westybrook. I know a few westerners here in Chiang Mai that try to tell me that it is just as expensive to live here than it is in there home country. For them it is because they have to buy many of the same foods that they ate at home. They fail to realise that the foods they are used to are imported foods. Try living on mostly imported foods in the USA and see how expensive it is. Also these guys spend a good deal of time in western style restaurants and at the bars. A life style like that in the USA would cost a great deal more than it does here. Also they refuse to admit that they can live quite well on locally grown food.

Listen I am from Montana. I bought 80 acres for US$200 per acre so I feel that land here is really expensive but the cost of building a house compared to where I am from is really cheap. Beef in Montana was pretty cheap (i have not been home for 5 years so I do not know what it cost today). Beef here is pretty expensive and does not taste as good. Pretty much every other locally grown food is less expensive than at home. Beer is about double of what I used to pay at home. Yes even Chang Beer. Whiskey is much less expensive here than at home. I live 20 kilos from Chiang Mai and I almost never go into town unless it is for business.

Rumpole:

My post about visa runs from Chiang Rai was a response to your response to Tyree that said they are living in Chiang Rai. It was just to illustrate that if you wanted to live on the cheap it was easy and Tyree is proof of that. Personaly I ahte bangkok and could never live there. If that is the place you want to live then you have to pay more than the rest of us that live upcountry. I am pretty sure that there is a visa run bus that goes from Bangkok to cambodia and that could be taken on the weekends so no work would be missed.

“How many hours per week are you working for your 25k, and are you supporting a wife and child? I also presume you don't have a work permit since you state you are teaching at "multiple places". This means frequent and fairly costly visa runs (costly in proportion to 25K a month), and does nothing for one's sense of stability and security.”

Why are the visa runs expensive from Chiang Rai???? He can take a bus from Chiang Rai to Mae Sai for next to nothing and then pay 250 baht at the border come back and all is finished. I know people that have been here on a tourist visa for over 2 years and they go to border this way every month with no problem. As a matter of fact I took one such person with me on my visa run. He went through Thai immigration with no problem whatsoever and I got the third degree. I have a legal multiple entry business visa and he has a 30 day transit visa that he has been doing for 2 years. It doesn’t make much sense to me.

As for living on 25,000 baht per month it is easy in Chiang Mai and I assume Chiang Rai also. I rented a 100 square meter 2 story house in a Moo Baan that was less the 1 kilo from the market for 3,000 baht per month.

Electricity with fans, refrigerator, 2 TV’s with accessories, hot water heater, microwave etc cost me about 500 baht per month. Telephone about the same because of my wife using it to call her sister’s mobile phone and my internet calls.

I figured out that I spend approx 10,000 baht per month on food for my wife, 2 children, and myself. That includes the western food that I feel I can not do without for very long such as mustard, mayonnaise, ranch dressing, spaghetti etc. Face it, rice is really cheap. Vegetables are around 10 baht per kilo. Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast is only 62 baht per kilo. Pork Loin is only 90 baht per kilo. Sure if you want to eat every thing that is imported it is going to cost you a fortune but food bought locally and cooked in your own kitchen is cheap.

I figure my expenses with gasoline for visiting the mother in law in the mountains runs about 20,000 per month.

What a bunch of &lt;deleted&gt; monkeys these Thais are sometimes.

For the (Thai policeman) apologists, you should go shoot yourself in the head if you think what he did was acceptable.   There is no excuse whatsoever for a policeman to shoot unarmed people who weren't physically threatening him.

Especially because he 'lost face'.   Time to &lt;deleted&gt; grow up!

And for those apologists, (again with the apologists ), we know that isolated cases can happen in the west. There's still no comparison between there (the West) and here. It's a hollow 'argument'; it's just really...grasping. 

IA

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Remember that we are living in a country where they actually have a law in the criminal code that you can go to jail for making someone lose face in public. This tells me that making someone lose face in public is taken very seriously here. It also states that the police man was on his way back to his motorcycle (which means he already told these idiots that they could leave) and they YELLED at him from a distance so that EVERYONE in the imediate area could hear the insults. These dark brown uniforms have to be hot. Try putting on a thick dark brown uniform then stand in the sun for 3 hours while trying to direct traffic where most people do not know how to drive. With all of this heat and stress throw in some idiot that runs a red light with school children crossing the street with the piss poor excuse of "I am late for the market". To top it off have that same idiot insult you in front of a crowd of people that you see every single day after you had already let him go instead of arresting him. Good combination for a mental breakdown. No one can say for 100% what they would do in a similar circumstance unless they have been in it.

I have to admit that i get pissed off when I see someone do something stupid that could injure children.

I very seldom lose my temper but being in the heat all day makes me lose my temper much easier than I otherwise would. Maybe they should give the traffic police a light colored uniform since they are the ones that have to stand in the sun for 2-3 hours at a time each day.

I have seen lots of underage kids on motorbikes, but none of them riding unsafely. The dangerous ones round here are the "boy racers" who are no longer underage for a licence, but are still too adolescent to ride sensibly.

One would think that young people with enough brains to get a place at University would have enough brains to protect their brains with a crash helmet, but an awful lot havent!!

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Ask any thai girl with a motorbike what the mirrors on the bike are for ? So i can check my makeup or Hair

The biggest problem with the motorcycle riders are that they do not look before they turn and they never check behind them. Get on, look straight ahead, and go. My wife tells me that it is because they have a law that if a car hits a motorcycle the driver of the car is automatically at fault. Not too sure about that but it may be what the average thai thinks.

More of a note on why the oil consumption is a concern. The people mentioning the trade imbalance are correct. The oil has to be paid for with US$. This means that they have no choice but to sell baht to buy dollars. If the people that have the dollars say they want 42 baht to the dollar then the price in baht is higher. Then thailand must use another currancy to buy their Baht back. If they have more baht going out to buy dollars than they have foreign currancy coming in from exports or tourism then the baht weakens even further. This makes the price for oil even higher in baht terms. Notice that the price per liter increases and decreases with the exchange rate for US$.

Believe it or not Spencer the pay is pretty much the same as your were offered 6 years ago-minus the housing. 

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So you are saying that the pay is getting lower because they are not including rooms any more and the cost of living is higher. Pretty sad.

I don't understand why none of the posters have answered any of the questions about current pay in various areas . I ask because I was offered 30,000 baht a month plus an "apartment" at a government school off of Sukhumvit. This was about 6 years ago. At around the same time I was told that the Native speakers at Chaing Mai University were getting about the same. Another guy I know that used to teach in Bangkok was only offered 300 baht a day to teach at a small govt school in Chiang Mai. I know any where close to 20,000 baht a month in my wife's village would be a great income. Any one out there care to through out some numbers of what is actually being paid in differant parts of Thailand and differant types of schools? So far the only rate i know for certain is the one i was offered 6 years ago.

Last night I talked with a Thai teacher from Mae Fah Luang University.  She has done extensive research with MFL students regarding studying with foreign teachers.  One of the most overlooked benefits she found from having foreign teachers in the classroom was that students gained confidence in their ability to talk to foreigners.  With the interaction between students and teachers, foreigners stop being objects of curiosity and are not just seen as "farang."  It might not be much but it is certainly a step in making Thailand a more international place. 

Imagine what will happen if their English gets good enough to understand the international press and what a sham Thaksinomics really is . . . 

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You have a great point about the interaction with people that speak English like a native. I know a few Thais that can understand English quite well but are "afraid" of making a mistake so they do not speak English. The way the schools are going now is crazy. I met a Thai girl in the USA that had a bachelors degree in English from a Thai University and came to the USA to study for her Masters Degree. I could barely understand her when she first arrived. Also i have been interviewing Thais for a job that requires them to be able to speak english. I received a list of 30+ University graduates from the labor department that all marked on their application that they could speak,read, and write english. I had my Thai manager telephone them and let them know that they will be working for a Falang boss and English is a must for this job. They all said "no problem." Not one single person could answer even basic questions. I seem to remember advertisements that were hiring Americans to come to China to Stand on Street corners by the Universities so that students could come and practice their english.

Out of curiousity, how much are they paying falang english teachers in Thailand now that they raised the income requirements??