newnative

Nothing swift about any of this. It's all glacially slow.

And, as Espanol pointed out in his excellent post, these entertainment areas make up a very small percentage of Greater Pattaya.

Thanks!

What if I don't want to be short and 73? What if I want to be thirty years younger, 6 feet tall, and look like Brad Pitt? Time to be realistic--this is Thailand.

Yes, finders keepers.

Get a car.

As others have said, get an implant. 76 isn't that old--and I would get it at any age.

I have not moved a family from Bangkok to Pattaya. For my spouse and myself, it's a bit the reverse--we have lived in Pattaya for 14 years and have a get-away condo in Bangkok. But, I can try to offer a few pointers. We Pattaya residents complain about the traffic but, as you say, it's far better than Bangkok. You soon learn routes and shortcuts that work and the times to avoid certain roads and areas, including rush hours and holiday weekends. I disagree with one of your statements saying, 'It's going to be hard to remove my children from this crap.' Meaning, Pattaya's, in your words, 'sex industry'. Actually, once you know Pattaya, it will not be hard at all. Living our everyday, normal, non-tourist lives, my spouse and I easily avoid it. In 14 years, we've walked on Walking Street exactly once, and we easily avoid the other adult entertainment areas. Greater Pattaya is actually quite large, and growing larger. There are a number of distinct neighborhoods, with most far away from your 'sex industry'. It's very easy to live your everyday life in Pattaya and never go near the nightlife areas. Most of the family entertainments, such as the water parks, are away from it, as well. Another correction. Pattaya doesn't just have a 'pretty good' selection of 'housing stock'; it has a truly excellent selection--probably one of the best anywhere in Thailand, especially when you include one-story single-family housing on nice-sized lots. You need to get out and do some more exploring--away from the tourist areas--and you'll quickly see what I am talking about. I think you will be staggered when you see some of the many projects being bulit, and that have been recently built here in the past few years. With more on the way, again at all price points, which is super important. You can buy a single-family home for 2MB or 200MB--and everything in-between. Enormous selection, and ditto for condos. In your shoes, with or without a family, I would suggest you concentrate your search on the Darkside--a huge area, now not so dark, with a wide selection of single-family housing, both with stand-alone houses and others in hundreds of housing projects, at all price points. We are in a new, large, 4-bedroom/5 bathroom one-story pool villa on a land plot of 120 square wah in a nice housing project of similar homes. To give you an example of pricing, we built our villa and it cost less, including all furnishings, than the 1 bedroom 1 bath condo we sold in town at Northshore condo. You can take advantage of the topsy turvy pricing in Thailand--where small condos can cost much more than large single-family houses, usually not the case in most towns in the US. We are in the Lake Mabprachan area--which is very popular and growing even more popular as more housing is being built. Nice walking/bike riding paved trail around the lake, which is very popular. We are in a safe and quiet area but we can be on the Motorway in 3 minutes and be on Sukumvit in less than 10 minutes. Central Festival, Terminal 21, Home Pro, Index, Boonthavorn, Little Walk, Bangkok Pattaya Hosptal, Big C, Lotus's, etc. are all about 15 minutes or less away--and it's an easy drive, especially compared to driving around Bangkok. This easy proximity to businesses and services we use frequently led us to select this area of Pattaya. If there was a neighborhood I would likely avoid moving to, it would be Jomtien, although we lived there for a number of years in different condo projects, including 3 different View Talays, Axis, and Lumpini Park Beach. We would avoid it now because there are a number of mega condo projects now under construction or in the planning stages and the traffic, already some of the worst in Pattaya, will be impacted even more when these projects open. If we were to move back across Sukumvit, we would likely choose Wongamat. We lived there before and preferred it to Jomtien as we liked the vibe and it was easier and faster to get to the places we go to a lot, including T21 and Central Festival. Contrary to the myth, Pattaya actually is family-friendly and there are lots of families living in Pattaya. My housing project, and the two I lived in before this one, is filled with families. Fun fact, which I didn't know until recently--Pattaya has 18 international schools, with another one, Highgate, opening next year. Many are on the Darkside, including Regents and Rugby. We drove around Rugby a few weeks ago and were very impressed. There should be an international school that will meet your family's needs. It goes without saying that Pattaya has tons of restaurants and shopping to fit about every need, plus movie theaters in English, 3 or 4 hospitals, and all the services one uses on a regular basis. About every car dealer is represented, including at least 4 of the new Chinese ones. It's all here, in a relatively compact footprint, compared to Bangkok. Good luck with your move.

True, it's just an assumption but certainly not a 'bizarre' one. It's a mega project with an abundance of very small hotel-size condo units. Some of the units are only 20 sqm, with no balcony. We've seen in the past that a number of new mega projects in Pattaya, also with an abundance of small hotel-size condo units, did, indeed, become plagued by illegal daily renters. I, personally, lived in several of these new projects and owned a rental unit in a third mega project, which had the same problem. In my opinion, it's more 'reasonable' than 'bizarre' to assume that this could become a problem with this new project, as well.

AXIS, not APEX.

No, you aren't. Spouse and I have owned and moved about a dozen times in our 15 years here.

Good advice. Hopefully, some reading this thread, who have also put off doing a Will, will get on the stick and get it done.

Yes, one of my favorites. You may already know it but, if not, you might like the Christopher Reich series featuring Simon Riske.

Trump is acting more and more like thin-skinned, paranoid, vindictive, law-breaking Nixon. I suppose Musk will be number one with a bullet on his Enemies List. I didn't end well with Nixon; likely a similar fate awaits Trump.

Can't stand Musk but he's totally right on this one. Seems there's buyers remorse setting in with some of the idiot House Republicans who voted for the 'disgusting abomination' without even reading what was in it.