newnative

For the Supersight, I can't remember what my spouse's cost--I think around 200,000 baht. Mine was more expensive as I had a different type of lens--I think it was around 275,000 baht. That included an overnight stay at the hospital after the surgery to monitor our progress and follow-up visits.

Spouse and I both had lasik around 2012 and last year we did SuperSight. Both procedures with Dr. Somchai at Bangkok Pattaya Hospital. Both procedures completely eliminated the need for glasses for both of us. After 10 or 12 years our lasik vision had deteriorated a bit so we did the Supersight. In both procedures, we had some strobing and glare at night--maybe most noticeable with oncoming car headlights. That has gone away, as it did with the lasik. Both procedures were quick, easy, and painless. The Superight required putting several different kinds of eyedrops in the eyes several times a day for a number of days. That was more of a bother than anything else. Dr. Somchai is a total wiz at lasik--just terrific. I was told in the US I would still need glasses--either for close up or distance--after lasik. So, I didn't do it there. Dr. Somchai said he thought he could tweak my eyes with lasik so I wouldn't need glasses for ether close up or distance--and he did just that. Excellent doctor. I'm 73 and have great vision--I would check out having lasik done with a good doctor. Easier and cheaper than Supersight. It's great not wearing glasses ever--except sunglasses.

I'm gonna have to nominate this for the surprise of the day.

Thai partner decided to move back to Thailand from the US. I had retired and was working part-time, decided to move to Thailand with him and see if I liked it. Starting my 15th year here and it's been mostly great.

Ear-splittingly noisy motorcycles.

It does make both me, and my Thai spouse, appreciate how lucky we are, in comparison to some of the Thai folk we see, like the ones pushing a hand cart along the road, filled with hopefully enough cans or plastic to earn them money to eat that day.

Yes, we boomers are lucky. Perhaps our best luck was being the sons and daughters of the Greatest Generation. That generation survived the Great Depression and World War II, worked hard, scrimped and saved to send their children to college, some as the first generation to go to college. I was certainly lucky with my parents and the upbringing they provided us 6 kids.

Boo hoo. As I was reading the article I was wondering when Gofundme would come up and there it was at the end.

Complete and utter nonsense. Also, laughable! I used the very website you, yourself, said to use in your post--Thinkofliving! Check the very first sentence of your post that I referenced! You, yourself, said to check Thinkofliving's prices for projects when they were new and then compare them to today's prices, where, supposedly, we would see a 25% drop after 10 years, except for a very few projects. Readers are welcome to check my figures for what Thinkofliving was quoting when it reviewed the projects I mentioned when they were new or just getting started with their sales. I then used one of the most popular websites, Hipflat, to see current prices. You're in a snit because none of the Thinkofliving projects I checked lost your 25% in value. Indeed, most either stayed flat or increased in value--which was what I suspected, from our personal experience, even before I started my checking. Having bought and sold something like 20 condos since 2010, my spouse and I would not have been able to buy one condo after another if they lost value. We would have quickly gone broke. Rather than 'cherry picking', I included some of the most popular, numerous projects, such as the View Talays. I don't know where you live in Thailand but I don't think anybody living in Pattaya would consider choosing the View Talay projects as 'cherry picking'. Some posters have called them Soviet-era housing. The projects I cited ranged from the very small Garden Cliff project to the massive Lumpini Park Beach, with over 1800 units. Lumpini, one of the largest builders in Thailand, which builds many, many projects, was represented both in Bangkok and Pattaya with my research. Let's do one more check. Some readers will know that my spouse and I have steered clear of what I've called 'theme park' condo projects. These are the numerous low-rise projects in Pattaya, many named after places. Atlantis, Grand Caribbean, Espana, etc. One of them has a pirate ship in the swimming pool, if I recall. Let's check Laguna Beach Resort 3, The Maldives and see how it is doing. Below you will see the Thinkofliving report from 2015. Big project with over 1,700 units. TOL, the website you said to use, has the starting prices at 39,000 baht a sqm, with the smallest units priced at 890.000 baht. See the TOL report below as evidence I am not making up figures: Laguna Beach Resort 3 The Maldives Pattaya Laguna Beach Resort 3 - The Maldives Pattaya Project information Location / District: Pattaya , Eastern Region Location / Area: Chonburi Location / Road: Jomtien Road Price range: 1 - SUPER ECONOMY Project status: In progress Completion Date: 2015 Basic information group: Condo Building information: Low Rise 7 buildings Number of floors: 8 Number of units: 1,750 website: Official Website Price information Starting price: 0.89 million baht Per square meter: 39,000 baht/sq m. Common fee: 40 fund: 500 baht Types of residential units Studio 23 - 27.5 square meters 1 bedroom 34 - 68 square meters Other project details Unit details Utilities Security system Standard equipment Fully Fitted Now, let's see how the project is doing today on Hipflat. Hipflat has the average sale price at 56,097 baht per sqm. Cheapest unit for sale is at 1.3MB, up from the TOL starting price of 890,000 baht. So, again, not seeing your 25% drop. It's interesting that TOL classified the project as 'super economy', so, also again, I'm not cherry picking only upscale projects, or projects that I personally like. I will repeat what I said in my previous post. Some condos lose value. Never said otherwise. What I am not seeing is your 25% loss in value over 10 years time for most condo projects, except for a very few.

Saw your post and thought I'd do some checking with condo projects I have owned at, have thought about owning at, and, in one case, still own at. These projects were all reviewed on Thinkofliving--an excellent website, in my opinion. (Will be referred to as TOL.) First up, the condo I still own in Bangkok. Built in 2012, TOL, in its review at that time, had the average price per sqm at 105,000 to 125,000 baht. Hipflat today has the average at 146,696. So, no 25% drop in prices. Phew! Checked a condo nearby, Q Asoke, to see how it is doing. Built in 2014. TOL had 180,000 baht as the average price per sqm in its review. Hipflat gives 206,049 baht per sqm today so also no 25% drop. The first condo we bought in Bangkok was at a new project, Lumpini Makkasan. TOL, in 2017, gave the average price per sqm as 140,000 baht. We bought the smallest unit, 24 sqm, on a low floor and paid exactly 2.4MB, or 100,000 baht a sqm. Hipflat has Lumpini Makkasan with average prices today of 141,176. Again, no 25% drop, although the project is not yet 10 years old. Moving to Pattaya, let's check Baan Plai Haad, built in 2015. Nice project, almost bought there. TOL had 128,750 as the average price per sqm. Hipflat gives 121,126 for prices today. Slight drop but not 25%. Unixx is a big project but not oceanfront. Also 2015. Apparently it had a very low pre-sale of 40,000 to 85,000 baht per sqm, according to TOL. I imagine low floor, non-seaview units were at that lower end. Hipflat has Unixx at 86,538. Also no 25% drop there. Something a little more 'average Joe'? Also large, Lumpini Park Beach in Jomtien. 3 highrise buildings of 30 stories and around 1800 units. Starting price way back in 2013 was 46,000 baht a sqm, according to TOL. Could not find an average on Hipflat for today's prices but the cheapest unit was priced at 51,000 baht a sqm and the highest at 120,000 baht a sqm. No drastic 25% price drops in those figures. Centric Sea? 2016 construction. TOL's review said the average price was 86,000 baht a sqm at that time. Hipflat today has the average right at 100,000 baht. Not finding any of those 25% drops you wrote about. Let's try one more TOL project and call it a day. Riviera Wong Amat. TOL in its 2013 review gave the average price per sqm as 86,000 baht. Hipflat today has it at 86,538. I would call that flat. Again, no 25% drop. What about older projects, built before Thinkofliving even existed? One of the oldest in Pattaya is Garden Cliff, built in the early 1980s, which we owned at. I have no idea what the price per sqm was back in the early '80s but the current price is 122,500 baht per sqm--I doubt it was that much in the 1980s. 3 bedrooms run from 10 to 17MB--I also doubt that is a 25% drop. The fact that Garden Cliff is still standing also disproves the two posters who claimed that Thailand condos go crashing to the ground on either their 20th or 30th birthdays--take your pick. One last example, the View Talays of Pattaya. Probably thousands of those 48 sqm studios. Spouse and I did a half dozen of them in the View Talay 5 projects years ago. Bought them for around 2.2MB as shells, renovated them, and then sold them for 3.25 to 3.5MB. Never bought below floor 16. Hipflat has a 48 sqm unit on floor 15 for 3.5MB. One on floor 19 for 2.99MB. But, also units in the 2.6MB range. Seems to be a mixed bag with price depending a lot on how the unit looks--which was actually the case years ago, as well. We did nice renovations and sold at the higher price range at the time. Let's say some VT condos have likely lost value but I don't think I am seeing a 25% drop. To sum up, do some condos drop in price? Likely. Do most condos lose 25% of their value in 10 years, as you claim, with 'very few buildings that are the exception'? Unlikely, and certainly not at any of the projects I have owned at, or thought about owning at, both in Bangkok and Pattaya. As a buyer, I'm waiting to see a 25% drop in some of the projects I like. So far, I am waiting in vain. As an owner, I'm happy to see the one condo I still own has not lost 25% of its value.

Would someone please tell the AI writing these stories that Trump is not "Former President Trump"--unfortunately. Hello, AI! He is the current President--try to keep up. As for the story--scary.

Very good advice here, starting with #1. Take your time and do your homework--2 thru 4 above. Be thorough. Also, be aware of the illegal daily rental problem that plagues some condo projects here--especially some of the newer mega projects in areas popular with tourists. I would check that issue with any project you are interested in. Even after numerous real estate transactions here and in the US, I always also follow #5 above.

Not true--at least not for my Thai spouse and myself. We have bought numerous condos in Thailand. We have never transferred money to a private seller's bank account in advance of receiving the chanote at the Land Office. And, we never would. If a seller demanded that, we would walk away. True, also for Virginia in the USA, by the way--the process of which is much more complex--but again, no money ever went into a seller's bank account in advance of the 8 or 9 properties I bought in Virginia. Typically, we show up at the Land Office with a cashier's check in the seller's name, for the amount we still owe, and cash to pay our share of the closing costs, if any. When we see the chanote with our name on it, we hand over the cashier's check, which we have shown the seller at the start of the Land Office transfer. All of this should be spelled out in the sales contract which both parties have agreed to and signed. It's the same when we are the sellers. We've both signed the contract to buy and sell, buyer has put down a non-refundable down payment, and we both show up at the Land Office on the date arranged to do the transfer. We receive the final payment by cashier's check, (one or two may have been in cash), chanote is changed, transfer fees are paid, agent, if any, is paid, keys are handed over, etc. I mentioned 'private seller' above. In a number of cases, we bought new condos off-plan from established developers--Lumpini, Sansiri, Raimon Land, and SC Asset. Probably 9 or 10 condos in total. With those large, well-established developers, we gave them our final payments and they did all the paperwork for us. If I am remembering correctly, we didn't even have to go to the Land Office for several of the buys--perhaps because these developers are so huge and do so many transactions.

We're on our third SUV and would never go back to a sedan. The SUV is just so much more versatile--especially as we are often finding treasures to bring home on our antiquing and other shopping excursions. We open the back and--whether it was our old CR-V or our new Sealion 6--we are usually able to get in what we buy. Plus, we like the easy entrance and exit and sitting higher than we did in the Civic we owned before. Absolutely loving the new Sealion 6 plug-in hybrid, by the way. Super comfortable, great acceleration when we need it, and we hardly ever fill up at a gas station--the electric function has plenty enough range for our daily driving around town needs. Features galore--some of which we are still discovering. My personal favorite might be the seat cooling feature--one of the recent features we discovered. But, the camera system is also awesome . . .

Nailed it. Lots of hard work. High failure rate. Very little time off. Not for the faint of heart.

Airlines should require the purchase of 2 economy seats when someone's width exceeds the width of the seat. Or, my solution, special extra-wide seats out on the wing. No cabin service, unfortunately, but all the fresh air you could ever want--and the views!

These days the trains are so packed at all hours riders can;t do much of anything except stand in place and occupy their tiny piece of space. Bring on two more cars per train, starting with the most crowded ones first. Long overdue. The recent free ride total fiasco showed what's in store for the future, otherwise.

Thais need to do more public shaming like this--taking to social media to bring it to light. Sometimes, if the embarrassing spotlight gets bright and hot enough, it might lead to some action. That's about the only tool they readily have in their toolbox.

As always, just talk. Stop talking and crash into action. Had a big laugh with the statement regarding switching to teaching languages other than English---they're not even doing English well--always at the very bottom of ASEAN rankings. Knowing English is and always will be the most important skill for the Thai workforce, especially in an economy with a large tourist component.

Not to mention the World. First visit to New York City, one of my sisters was pickpocketed just steps after we left our hotel room. And so it goes.

Well, back to square one after umpteenth threads and posts. Sticking with my original plan to keep my head down and do nothing until absolutely required to do something, such as to extend my retirement visa.

Luckily, I have better things to do with my time, and more enjoyable for me, than hanging out in beer bars--in Pattaya or anywhere else.

I didn't say they all have to be in the same building. The Avenue site, I believe, is on the small side for about any of the very large attractions that are planned for these complexes. And, that area of Pattaya isn't that great--most of the new, nice development is being built in the northern part of the beach area. As I pointed out, there are some large tracts of land near Hard Rock hotel, one with a big, now closed hotel and other closed retail, and some other land that is vacant or with temporary stuff on it. These could possibly all be combined and the casino component incorporated into what is being planned for Aquatique. As you pointed out, there are already two nice, big malls in place nearby--Central and T21. The attraction to this area would be that it is already highly popular with tourists, with some very nice, new development already in place, including Centre Point Space, T21, the new Mytt, Grand Centre Point, Ozo, Akari, and others. They join the other hotels already there, which are some of the nicest now in Pattaya, including Dusit, Holiday Inn, and Amari. Plus the massive Centre Point 3 resort now under construction, and Once Pattaya also going in, along with another highrise condo project. This popularity, however, has led to gridlock traffic so I question the wisdom of putting the complex there without major road improvements, none of which is taking place.

Have not used JFK or Boston but Frankfurt was old and bad. Also bad, in my opinion, Dubai. What a lousy airport that is--for a passenger. Maybe it works better as a mall or whatever. The last two or three times we used it there wasn't even a walkway bridge to enter and exit the plane from the terminal on landing and departing. Instead, a long, cramped, standing up bus ride out to the middle of nowhere to board the plane just like they did in the dawn of flight in the last century. And, along with the very long walks, there were waits for elevator rides to different levels, and a train ride also thrown in. You'd think the train ride would at least finally get you to your plane. Think again. The bus ride was next. At least there wasn't a camel ride after the bus--small favors. I guess we could all pretend we were the President of the US as we trudged up the steep outdoor steps to get on the plane. Wave to the Press, folks! And, we were flying Emirates on all the flights, which should have had the best landing slots at the terminal. The last Emirates trip back from Europe was delayed 4 hours at the Dubai layover--this in addition to the regular 3-hour layover--no apology or explanation from the pilot. In my opinion that airline has gone downhill recently. Suvarnabhumi isn't perfect but what a refreshing relief after Dubai. Deplaned right into the terminal. Very fast Immigration now--a real breeze--and we were at Baggage Claim very quickly and then on our way. I will try to avoid Dubai on my next trip.

Ha. Too funny. Just look at the news--check out the very angry town meetings the Republican congressmen are dealing with now.