newnative

Just the opposite. I hardly drink at all now.

As others have said, it's gotten super-busy and parking is really inadequate. Spouse and I no longer stop there as it is such a mess. They really need at least one more of these along the motorway to spread out the business. They have built several restroom stops along the motorway but it's too bad they didn't include a few fast food joints with them.

I would turn your sentence around a bit and change it to: Traffic is becoming unbearable, so it does matter where you are in Pattaya. Which was the point I was making in my post.

What utter rubbish. You visit for a few weeks and complain you had no routine during your visit. Of course you didn't--you were on vacation. The whole point of a vacation is to get out of your routine. Then, you add insult to injury by claiming that since you had no routine in Pattaya, nobody else does, either. If you actually lived here year-round, rather than always just visiting, you would soon get into what is a normal routine for you, which would be different from how you spend your time on vacation. For most expats living here year-round, their normal routine does not include hanging out at a bar at 9am.

Totally agree. I try to avoid the 787 if I possibly can. Its shortcomings were highlighted several years ago when my spouse and I took 2 flights back-to-back. The first flight was a 787 from BKK to Japan. Awful. The seat was, indeed, very narrow and it was difficult eating with so little arm room. Changed planes in Japan and the second flight was on a 777. What a difference. Spouse and I were on 2 middle row seats and there was a fairly large gap between our 2 seats and the other two. Much more room--which was easy to note having just been on the 787.

I'm an American and I pronounce the 'T'.

Earlier I posted on the importance of living within one's means. Equally important is how one is living. One might question why they are spending 'everyday' of their life in 'sports lounges' drinking '100 baht beers'. (Or is it '125 baht beers'? The price changed midway through your post. I guess the Trump tariffs kicked in. )

Thanks.

There have been numerous threads on this--likely some by you. Can you live on ________ amount in Thailand? Fill in various amounts, including the latest, yours, of 40k. If you have read any of those numerous past threads, you'll recall a lot of different answers. But, basically, it pretty much boils down to two. You have the posters who say, no way could they live on _______ amount. And, you have the posters who say they could easily live on _________ amount, with some posting that they could live on even less. A responsible person will make whatever amount they are working with meet their needs. And, especially if that amount is small, they will do that by adjusting their needs according to the amount they have. When my spouse and I first moved to Thailand in 2010, our income dropped quite a bit and we were living on just a pension of around 65,000 baht a month, about what Immigration requires. I would turn 59 that year and Social Security would not kick in until I turned 62. 65,000 baht is not a lot, especially for two, but it's more than some receive and we made it work by making adjustments. That meant buying a small condo to save on rent. That meant buying a small condo we could afford and not a large house we couldn't afford--living within our means--which many have never learned to do. Could we live in a small, one-room studio with only one bathroom and not kill each other? Yes, we could--and we did. A studio was all that was within our means at that time, so we made it work. That's really all there is to it, whatever your income--living within your means. Being realistic and making it work. There used to be a popular expression, years ago when I was growing up, "Keeping up with the Joneses". If you're not a Jones, don't try to keep up with them. Keep up with yourself, instead. Just as an aside, by buying, not renting, we put to work for us the largest chunk of money we had each month to do anything with to better ourselves--our housing money to keep a roof over our heads. Instead of paying a landlord rent, we paid ourselves. We used what we would have spent on rent to fix up the condo we bought and then we sold it--at a profit. Then, rinsed and repeated.

Buh bye bye

Lock her up.

Thanks!

I think the BKK governor is great--but he has to deal with examples like this. Thai spouse told me he wanted to put some sort of new technology earthquake warning systems on public buildings--starting with hospitals--but that was also turned down when he asked for it to be funded by some council that, apparently, oversees the BKK budget.

It's been much the same with my Bangkok highrise project. The building has been inspected twice and passed both times. Owners have been posting photos of their condos and most are like mine--minor cracks, wallpaper damage, etc. There are some double-floor units with 2-story living rooms and these units perhaps had more damage than some others, from the photos posted. Like you, my project will submit a claim and the condos will, hopefully, be repaired--owners have until April 12 to submit photos and owner information to the condo management. We talked to the handyman who will likely be repairing our condo and he was in a number of units looking at the work to be done. Purely un-scientific, but in our building he thought that there was slightly more damage to units in the middle of the 42-story building rather than the lower or upper floors. We are on floor 37 and I think what surprised me most was that we have huge floor to ceiling mirror panels in the dining room area and the master bedroom. I thought they would likely all be severely cracked but only one of them has a horizontal crack about 6 or 7 inches long right at the top of the panel--we might be able to hide that with molding or spouse says the crack maybe can be fixed.

Year after year, same old lame excuses. Incompetence and indifference from the top down.

True, but he would be alive today if Thailand did not allow unlicensed tourists inexperienced with both motorcycles and Thailand's roads to rent motorcycles. Add another needless tourist motorcycle death to the list of dead and severely injured.

Might be worth noting that Chadchart became governor in 2022. The building that collapsed began construction in 2020, on another governor's watch. I'm not sure how much say the Bangkok governor would have had in a federal office building--likely not much, if any at all. He's been educated at the University of Illinois and MIT, one of the most prestigious universities in America. In my opinion, he's one of the good guys--and Bangkok's lucky to have him at the helm at a time like this.

Agree. Pattaya needs a dedicated crew of city workers focused solely on parking enforcement. We used to call them 'meter maids'--in the days when flight attendants were still called 'stewardesses'. Whatever the name, the fines collected should easily pay their salaries while improving things both for walkers and those in vehicles.

You would think, wouldn't you--but almost every time I mention Asean Now, and, before AN, Thai Visa, none of the expats I know or meet has ever heard of it, or just vaguely know about it. I'm still waiting to meet someone who actually reads it.

I like to keep busy. Spouse and I are working on the plans for a house we will be building, likely starting sometime this summer on land near Lake Mabprachan. For relaxation, I like to read mystery and suspense novels, watch movies and tv, swim and exercise, and travel. We will be going on a cruise in November, leaving from Barcelona, with six of my USA family members. Should be fun. Life is good.

Often when you have a catastrophe, such as two planes colliding, or, in this case, a building collapse, it will be later found that a number of factors came together in a 'perfect storm' to cause the catastrophe. I would guess that will be the case here. Likely the 'perfect storm' here was some combination of inferior building materials, architectural design and engineering flaws, improper or poor inspection and supervision, and construction errors.

Glad at least the police want to know what happened to him. Suspicious the family could care less.

Scary. It's all scary these days. How could anyone object to having a biography of Jackie Robinson in a library? Or the autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.?

"Maybe over half voted for him..." Trump wishes. In 3 presidential elections, Trump failed all three times in reaching even 50% of the vote. A large number of those who voted for him are now being royally screwed by him. I don't know why any of them are surprised--the one truth he told in the election--somewhat hidden in his thousands of lies--was that he didn't care about them at all--he just wanted their vote. I'm almost--almost--feeling sorry for those poor Republican congressmen/women who have to go back to their districts and face the wrath of the voters. I think they've been told to cancel any public meetings as they have been so embarrassing to the Republican party and the president. The mid-term elections next year should be interesting--if Americans are still allowed to vote, that is. America's decline began with the Kennedy assassination, in my opinion. The 20th century may have been the American Century; the 21st will be the Asian Century. America has become so fractured, it's hard to see it being a United States again. But, perhaps Trump will be so bad that he will inadvertently be the catalyst to unite Americans--against him and his mostly illegal actions and policies. When the earthquake hit I posted a short note on Facebook that my spouse and I were ok. One of my American sisters responded that she had not even been aware of the earthquake--the news is so bad in America she has stopped watching any news altogether. Sad that's the state of things--and we're only just starting month 4 of the second term of the worst president in US history.

Throw the book at him. Fine should be 10 times that and then deportation, after he cleans up his mess.