Loptr

I live in a very nice area, total cost for rent and utilities is $2400

The exact same cost of the 2 bedroom furnished condo I was renting in Huai Kwang,

The girl I'm with currently, is 5'7 125, and is blonde w green eyes, a native blonde Floridian

If everyone would just accept that we all choose to live according to our personal tastes, this thread could fade away and we can debate the next personal choice topic

As gentlemen

Is there any aspect of your life story you haven't told us yet?

Perhaps his annual trips to Pattaya... From the tone of his posts, this is the only reason I can fathom why he is posting on TVF in the first place...

Interesting things people say about Americans, but when they need our help their hands come right out.

Americans are amongst the most benevolent yo those less fortunate, and there isn't widespread sending of their daughters away to work I'm brothels so the mother's and brothers to drink and gamble

Let me know how many Carnegie and Ford foundations are in Thailand and let's not argue that Carnegie was a Scot.

He could have gone to Thailand to create his fortunes, but he didnt, did he

Oh <deleted>, take your nationalistic BS and shove it... The US has interfered, manipulated, assassinated leaders, curried favor through arms deals, facilitated the global heroin trade, committed genocide and on and on and on for the last 60 years... The world would be a better place if the US would take of their own mess at home and leave the rest of the world alone... No one and I mean NO ONE asked the US to be the world cop... BTW, I am a US citizen too, but I don't wear blinders...

I can't see any westerners relocating to Thailand.

The press has just gotten too bad to feel you are going to a place where your quality of life will improve.

For sure as is said here every day, Thailand has changed dramatically .... and for the worse.

Hoards of Chinese and Russians and plane loads of louts from Europe have destroyed the place. Phuket, a one star island, with overpriced and too often filthy hotels and restaurants, is a Russian satellite and has gone down the dumps. Along with it's openly flaunted Mafia and street thugs is no longer a family destination.

In contrast Mauritius, where I now go, is a fantastic five star island. Genuine friendliness, english speaking relaxed smiling people, six star service like Thailand used to have, stunning beaches, police that will help you and won't shake you down.

Add in corruption from the very top, a residency/visa system (that changes on a whiim) designed to actually keep you out, open faced hostility from locals, no consumer protection, no medical services as we know from home, no police or courts service that will actually, and willingly help you, increasing violence, no property rights, the ever present threat of losing your property, , ...etc...etc...etc.

You would want to be a fool to relocate to Thailand when the rest of the world is at your feet.

I truly feel a sense of loss of what was a world class stunning place to visit/live and sadly having to watch this degeneration over 30 years.

The corrupt class has made a world class mess out of Thailand.

Then please, by all means, stay away from Thailand... It would be much better to stay away if you feel this way... Leave the country for those that have relocated here and do enjoy the lifestyle, the culture, the people, the differences to the west, warts and all...

In case you haven't read the news lately, the western world isn't very pretty anymore either... So pick you poison and roll the dice, life is not a spectator sport...

yes I too would like that information and possible become a member. Never heard of this club

http://www.chiangmaiexpatsclub.com/

Is this an expats club or a retired immigrant club?

Wow, what a lucid and well thought out question... I think I will let you find out for yourself, but if someone shows up at the next meeting with dreadlocks, piercings on their face and wearing beggar pants along with a tie-died wife beater, we will know who it is...

See how stereotypes work?

http://www.assistthaivisa.com/

yes I too would like that information and possible become a member. Never heard of this club

http://www.chiangmaiexpatsclub.com/

I've been here nine years this October and have already purchased my ticket for Mexico. I could be perfectly happy for the rest of my life in Thailand if it weren't for the present government. My little inner voice is saying "get the heck outta Dodge," this man is not playing with a full deck of cards and that will eventually trickle down to all facets of life. It's already bad enough - as a musician it is illegal for me to play UNPAID in public, but the harassment from the BIB in Bangkok described by an earlier post can get worse as they grow bolder when the PM gets cemented into his position. And there are other circumstances we can't even mention on this forum that are going to cause a great upheaval. I don't want to be around for ANY of that. I arrived when Thaksin was ousted, and not a THING was noticed by me or my friends. THIS PM is making serious waves felt by all!

Funny, I was chatting with a foreigner last week that moved to Chiang Mai last year from Mexico after living there for many years... His reason, safety.. The cartels of narco trafficantes have all but taken over the country, even down on the Yucatan peninsula... I know folks that retired to Monterey 10 years ago and have since moved on, either back to the US or to Costa Rica and Panama... Living in Texas we used to cross the border into Mexico on weekends for holidays... Not anymore considering that hundreds of Americans have disappeared after crossing in Mexico over the last 10 years... Good luck and take care to keep your head attached living in Mexico these days...

Hmm, seems the Thais got the memo to not to refer to "negative inflation" by the correct term, which is DEFLATION... This term has been banned from the lexicon of western media for some time now... Looks like the memo finally found it's way to Asia...

Shouldn't you be taking this up with the person you are aggrieved with and not airing your somewhat disjointed story on a public forum?

If you are on Windows, it saves everything you browse on the internet in temporary cache in case you want to access it again at a later date... That way it is cached and you don't have to download it a second time... You can delete your browser history / cache manually and / or set it to delete every time you exit the browser... You may want to read up on clearing temp files, browser cache and history settings for whatever browser you are using...

Just Loptr so far.

Are you denying it happened or is this a lame attempt at humor?

You're obviously a newbie if you haven't heard of Thaksin's extra-judicial murder of over 5000 suspected drug dealers when he was PM...

Actually the count was more like around 2,500 of which they figure at least 1,350 were innocent.

I've read the numbers and there seems to be a difference as to whether there were 2800 killed, plus another 1800 who were innocent or whether the 1800 were part of the 2800... Either way it makes the execution of the Indonesia nine seem tame by comparison...

Newbie above nailed it for me '' we are in exile ''

Think about it ?

Perhaps fugitive would be a better term...

If they are called EXPAT it is because they have been relocated by their multinational company thus you know the answer. All the others are immigrants.

Hardly, as my visa says non-immigrant and yes, I am an expat as I am a resident of foreign country not of my birth... You've been reading political correctness blogs again, haven't you? Why do people try to change the tone of a conversation by changing the definition of terms?

Technically, any time you enable VPN your throughput is going to suffer, for 2 simple reasons...

1) You are adding a proxy to your connection to route internet traffic on your behalf... This adds at least 1 hop count and usually more... Each hop takes time and will increase latency...

2) The VPN has to encrypt the data stream before routing it to your IP... Once you receive each packet, it has to be decoded before use...

Both of the above will increase response time and latency... How much it effects you depends on the speed of your network and the connected resources... In the case of accessing content in the US via VPN, you have to route that traffic over already over-subscribed circuits from Thailand to the US, then add in the overhead of the VPN tunneling... The result is a slow connection at peak hours of usage... I use 3bb and have a 30/3 fiber connection... Streaming content from the US yesterday afternoon was no problem until about 17:00... After that, I could not get anything to stream without excessive buffering...

Meh, New Orleans is 18 feet below sea level and has been for over a century... It is settling too, just like Bangkok... Once NOLA finally goes, give Bangkok another 100 years or so, then start worrying...

The EU has a bad habit of shooting itself in the foot by taking the moral high-ground... Case in point, the backlash from EU economic sanctions on Russia and the repercussions for their exports... If the EU holds to their sanctions and ban against Thailand's fishing industry if they do not comply with the EU rules, there will be other buyers for the fish exports... India, China or Russia would surely like to strengthen their economic ties to Thailand and we know those countries have no scruples when it comes to protecting the environment... The EU represents roughly 350+/- million people, while the three countries I named represent close to 3 billion souls... You do the math...

the URL might have been in the name of someone who isn't around anymore, or the email sent to an address no one checks, plenty of reasons why sometimes URL's lapse.

What? If you have an ecommerce website with a viable business, that business is going to make sure the domain name gets renewed.

I have no idea what you mean by an email might have been sent to an address no one checks. That makes no sense either. And no there are not plenty of reasons why a domain name would lapse, especially if it is tied to a business unless the business is shutting down or already gone.

Guess I will stop by and see if anyone on the premises has anything to say about this. That's if they are still open when I get there.

I used to be involved with a company whose focus was providing internet circuits, domain name services, web site hosting / development, etc... It was almost a daily occurrence that someone or some company would allow their domain name registration to expire... It's one of those things that doesn't usually wind up on someone's task list to monitor and they only expire on an annual or bi-annual basis... In other words, it's fairly common, even for the biggest companies...

I spent the morning cycling out to Doi Saket and back and the weather was glorious...

you can just hear it ' we dont mean anything by it,' 'we've always used it ' it comes from' . Well, for all your ignorant and dim witted arguements, people find it offensive, that should be enough for EVERYONE to respect and recognise.its time to start to stop using it., but no, self rightous ignorance rules. Well meaning ,derogitary , whatever term u put on it doesnt matter, its a term/word used to group a people by the color of their skin and its, therefore, racist.

Sent from my GT-I9000 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Why should Thais adjust their behavior because you are offended by it? You have some special visa that the rest of us don't know about?

There seems to be a reading comprehension situation gone awry here,

And who cares what some 75 year old has to say about it,

I wrote the OP after a 70 year old American friend from

New York used it to self describe, and he sounded retarded.

I too, asked my soapy princess if it was derogatory and she said no, unless the falang was acting a fool or was otherwise drawing attention to himself,

But it was the face she made when she said it to describe the fools

That was clearly derogatory.....

This question is only directed to the people who disagree or ambivalent about it,

"If you had a female child, of mixed Thai and w/e you are, and the kid had light skin blonde or reddish hair and blue eyes, would you want her teachers in school to single her out as the falang, so she felt like an outcast, and was abused forth with by her classmates, because the <deleted> of a teacher called her a falang, or would you want her called by her name, the one that you gave her?

And if she was so devalued by that name, making her different from all the rest, what further abuses might that possibly lead too?

I grew up with busing, in the new york 60's and I know that kids will not repeat their parents prejudice,

So why would you encourage it, because some old teacher gave you her definition, when we all know it is used as a form of separation and devaluation?

All you have done with this post is expose your own racial programming and bias derived thereof, to feel fear and guilt whenever someone uses a term which you have been programmed to interpret as racist... Just because you had a f##ked up upbringing in the US does not mean that every culture and every race on the planet is subjected to the same programming... You are not in US anymore...

Yet you continue to trot out your bias when the facts say otherwise... I give up, have a nice day...

Some collateral damage is unavoidable in war and IMO, that is the case here. Rather than drop drones, we need to keep using them, but also grab some live terrorists for Intelligence from time to time.

But therein lies the rub UG, the US has not declared war on anyone since the end of WWII... What some view as collateral damage due to military operations in the best interest of the US are viewed as terrorist attacks by those on the receiving end of a hellfire missile... Much like his predecessor, Obama is being called a war criminal for his unilateral, covert assassinations in foreign countries...

OK, I am not telling anyone what to use.

I do think it is really moronic to use that term for ourselves though and I'm entitled to that opinion as well.

I think it's pretty stupid to assign racist motives to a neutral descriptor. I guess we can leave it to others to decide which opinion they think is more valid.

I asked my Thai language teacher about the origins of the word farang and whether it was a derogatory term... This teacher is Thai, she holds Masters degrees in three languages and is about 75 years old, so I give credence to her opinion... She said that the word was derived from the word Francais, which was how the Thais identified the French in the country decades ago, but it was too difficult for Thais to pronounce, so it morphed into the word farang... She also stated that it was in no way derogatory...