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Aussiepeter

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Posts posted by Aussiepeter

  1. Those rubber trees on the Old Lamphun Road have indirectly contributed to dozens of road-deaths. Many locals want them gone and I know for a fact that several trees have been poisoned, resulting in their removal. My wife opened a locksmith shop on that road and her niece still runs it. I can remember at least half a dozen Thais smashing their motorbikes into those trees in the thirteen years my wife ran that business. She says the trees are "sacred" because of all the lives that have ended on them, usually when inebriated young Thais rode motorcycles into them after a night in one of the many karaokes that used to be along that road. The lighting on the Old Lamphun Road used to be very poor when I lived there & I doubt it has improved much. Just before I left LOS, a friend who had previously been married to a really nasty old B/G came over for a visit. Apparently the Thai son of his now ex-wife had been killed in a collision with one of those rubber trees and she had asked him to buy her an air ticket urgently, so that she could attend the funeral. Living on the dole in Oz with no funds, she had offered to 'take care of his needs' for a couple of weeks, if he paid for her air ticket. To me it seemed like 'taking coal to Newcastle' but he agreed. He can't speak Thai, so I went to the "Ngaan Sop" (funeral) with him & his ex. Almost as soon as we got there, staff from a local motorcycle dealer presented my farang friend with a bill (in Thai) & demanded that he pay for the brand new motorcycle the deceased had wrapped around a rubber tree. They explained nicely that he had to pay, as 'he was in some way responsible as the step-father and the boy was drunk, so insurance would not pay'. They were less than amused when I explained that my friend was no longer married to the boys' mother, did not live in Thailand and that she too lived in Australia and both had no idea who it was 'went guarantor' for the boy to buy a motorcycle. The air ticket deal proved costly too, as the 'lady' ditched my friend straight after the funeral and reneged on the 'arrangement.' 

  2. On 9/23/2021 at 10:56 PM, bamboozled said:

    I think that abandoned building 500m down Changklan and right onto a soi has been....wait for it.....refurbished! I could be wrong and I might have your soi wrong but I do remember a big graffiti covered shell that it seemed they used for rappelling or something. Anyway, driving by there a few weeks ago I was looking for that building and what I saw was a fixed up one. I could have been out of my tree, though. I will have to check again.

     

    I did eyeball that round rest. many a time and wonder. I didn't realize it had been demolished. 

     

    The cobra story seems hard to believe. I mean, wouldn't he have cried out? But what do I know??

     

    Thank you for the info!

    The chap who died from snakebite had consumed quite a lot of alcohol before going to see the movie and may even have fallen asleep. He was wearing shorts and flip-flops (thongs for us Aussies) and the cobra had bitten him on his foot. According to my wife, when the lights came on at the end of the film, the locals just thought he was asleep. She told me she wouldn't ever go in there - Thais tend to avoid areas that may be "ghost-prone". 

     

    • Like 1
  3. 14 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

    Good post.

    I suppose you have been in the "haunted" building inside the moat on the north west corner. Apparently it's quite well known.

    Yes, I had a look through it but it was un-exciting, to say the least ! 

    • Like 1
  4. On 9/23/2021 at 8:01 PM, khunjeff said:

    Are you thinking of the Royal Plaza collapse in Korat? It was illegally modified, but from three stories to six, so not a high rise per se.

     

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Royal_Plaza_Hotel

     

    That was the one. I remember the cause was they put up a lot of water tanks on the roof and piped water up to them. The building couldn't handle the weight of the additional floors plus all the extra weight of the full water tanks and the whole place suddenly collapsed. So sad for a Medal-of- Honour winner to go that way. Over the many years I lived in Chiang Mai, I met a number of military veterans who had also survived major battles, only to die from 'misadventure' in Thailand.

  5. Although I'm half British & have dual citizenship, I think the Australian Govt. looks after its' citizens better than the UK does but that being said, the UK govt has been broke for years - there is little else they can cut/do to save money, so I pity them. I often see on here that the UK Embassy doesn't look after their citizens in LOS, but my only dealings with them at the old (now demolished) UK Embassy back in 2000 were good. They gave my Thai wife a one year visitor visa when I only wanted 2 weeks, to visit my now late mother. Here in Oz, my Thai wife will inherit 67% of my army pension when I cark it, for the duration of her life. Our daughter would also be eligible to receive extra payments until she turns 18 - (she is 11 now) but chances are I'll be around a while yet, so it is unlikely our daughter will get anything extra. In the unlikely event that my wife wished to return to LOS to live, her 67% of my army pension is entirely transportable for life. That's not going to happen though - she loves it here and has already told all and sundry back home that she will never return to Thailand, other than for a holiday. As a legal migrant, she's become what used to be called "a New Australian" - only in her case, she's become "a New Farang" !

  6. Regarding comments here on the AZ vaccine and side effects- I had my first AZ jab two weeks ago. Apart from a sore arm just as I always get from any jab, all I felt was a bit tired for a couple of days. I treated that symptom in the appropriate Australian fashion, with numerous cold beers, taken therapeutically, of course. My 99 y.o. ex WW2 fighter-pilot father has had both AZ jabs and, tells me that he experienced no side effects whatsoever. He also told me that he quit drinking alcohol this year, at the suggestion of his new (Asian) GP, who told him that at his age alcohol consumption may shorten his life, but that is another subject entirely. Personally, I'd have told the doctor to ....  

  7. 1 hour ago, CygnusX1 said:

    With the massive amount of criticism the Thai Govt’s been receiving on this forum, you might compare this to wealthy first world Australia, where I’m having to wait over 2 months for my first shot, even though I’m over 60 and am happy to get AZ rather than the gold standard Pfizer.

    I think in Australia it depends not only on how early you got in, but also where you are. We are in a small country town in Nth Eastern NSW, which has its' own hospital. Up until about three weeks ago, they couldn't give AZ away in this State as many were scared of the well-reported side effects. As I'm over sixty & could only get AZ, I initially decided to hang out for the Pfizer jab, especially as we have been pretty much isolated from covid in this area since the start. Once Covid-delta got out of control & started spreading like an Aussie bushfire & folks started dying, even slackers like me got on the wagon. We are only 600M from the local hospital, so I called and got my first AZ jab the following week, which was exactly 2 weeks ago. My Thai wife is 49, so she qualifies for the Pfizer vax. I called the government covid clinic in the nearest city & she indeed was given a date in late September for her first shot. After booking it, I then called the local hospital (which I should have done first) and she was able to get her first Pfizer jab the next day - yet we are only 40klms from the city with the longer waiting time ! Covid-delta is out of control here now and we have been in lockdown for two weeks, with more to come for sure. Over a thousand new cases here in NSW yesterday and three deaths, including a lass aged only thirty. I get my second AZ jab in October & my wife gets her second Pfizer in the second week of September. Our daughter turns twelve in February & the govt here is now saying they will offer the Pfizer jab to every kid over 12, as children are catching this latest strain at an alarmingly high rate. Stay safe everyone !

    • Like 2
  8. 50 minutes ago, Pharoticus said:

    Good post. And very true.

     

    This is why I quit Thailand at the very beginning of 2020. I just grew to hate the place. 

     

    I moved away after having lived there for over 20 years, and these days miss absolutely nothing about it. 

     

    I pity expats who are still here. Thailand is a lousy option for retirees.  

    Like Pharoticus, I got my family out in 2013 after I'd lived in LOS for more than 20 years, when I saw the writing on the wall. On the topic at hand - what's the big deal ? That 104 million baht is only a bit over $4 mil AUD - hardly a fortune, even by Thai standards. I've accumulated almost that much in my lifetime, all of it legally. As others have said, he probably never declared it all anyway - who would in LOS ? He's small fry. House/land prices are so bad here in Oz, that my modest 3 bedroom 100 y.o. shack on 10 acres cost me over twenty million baht. By comparison, the two storey place I sold in C Mai was three times as big, but only cost 1.5 mil baht. It is all relative, but, you can breath the air here.

  9. 6 hours ago, IvorBiggun2 said:

    Definitely a .177 or .22 pellet.

    Absolutely. I'm almost sure this is a .22 airgun pellet - the mushroom head type. Looks too big for a .177. When I lived in the 'boonies' up near Chiang Dao in the late 90's, I did a visa run to Laos with the the now ex-wife and we saw some AK47 lookalike (folding stock) Chinese single-shot airguns for sale for 2000 baht. She came home with one. Very powerful - left the old British Diana .177 from my youth for dust. This chap is lucky it never severed his carotid artery, or he'd be toast. Ours was sold on to the "Pu Yai Baan" only a few days later - (far too nasty a thing to be in a house with a Thai woman).

    • Like 1
  10. Donaldo - you got it. Thailand is finished, broken, and it will never be as it once was - the current regime will have LOS back in the dark ages first. After nearly 30 years in LOS, I saw the writing on the wall in 2013 & got my family out of there, permanently. A $25 thousand fine for a picture of alcoholic drinks online ? Seriously ? How useless is the regime ruining what was once a nice country ? Vaccine fiasco ? The funny thing is, many Thais used to look down on their supposedly 'poor' Laos cousins. The worm has turned. Laos is booming. 

  11. They do this with monotonous regularity in LOS, - I'm convinced it is to upset all the farang's who shop there. Don't worry - they do it here in Australia too. I went to a Woolworths this week & the entire place had been re-shuffled. After 5 minutes, I just gave up and complained to a supervisor - she said "we have a new boss from South Africa,  take it up with him - we hate it too". That bloke won't last long, as Aussies HATE change. I stick to Coles here - they are too lazy to change anything.

  12. Backhand ad forehand. According to the Thai missus' friends in LOS, who once ran a good business in Kaosarn Road (we are in Oz, but she chats with them daily) - LOS is "stuffed" without tourists and will remain so, perhaps for years. They are barely surviving, selling basic foodstuffs in front of their house in BKK & are also 'sh*t scared of getting any dodgy vax for covid, as they "don't trust the current administration". Hmm. Neither does the wife either it seems - she says "Oz is MY home now - forget that other place, 'cos we aren't taking MY daughter there ever, whilst covid is still around". It seems that now that she is an Aussie citizen, it is "MY" daughter, rather than "OUR" daughter but really, who cares ? Not me  - I just got the all clear - no prostate cancer five years after 'salvage radiation', to correct a Thai Dr's failed op - I can still hoist the flag too ! Life is good in the great-south-land, even with 'she-that-must-be-obeyed' running the show. Most of the time. Cheers all !

    • Like 1
  13. In Australia, a bloke called Rodney Rude sang a song about beer. In it, he'd become a "wowser" - a non-drinker. The song is about 'how he'd sworn off alcohol for ever' etc then he says, "honestly, it was the worst three days of my life" ! Then, he'd begun drinking again & a chorus of "praise be to beer". About beer Chang - I did a posting to LOS in about 1992, when a certain wealthy Thai convinced Carlsberg to invest $550 million USD in LOS to produce & sell their beer, but they had to make a parallel production line owned entirely by him, to produce 'Elephant Beer' (Chang). They agreed, rather foolishly. The chap then 'encouraged' the mum & pop shops to push his new Chang beer, or lose their supplier of Mekong & Lao-cow whiskey, - their biggest sellers, but they had to take 'X amount' of Carlsberg as well, whether they wanted it or not. Thais didn't want Carlsberg (I did) and wouldn't pay 120 baht for 3 bottles of 5% beer, when they could get 4 bottles of Chang for 100 baht & get "shattered". They discounted Carlsberg heavily & I loved it ! Meantime, I drank 3 large bottles of early Chang beer at a funeral in 1993 & nearly became a corpse. The US military kindly had a case of it tested, only to find each bottle's alcohol level varied wildly, from about 6.8% to 'the sky's the limit', due to poor quality control. Meantime, sales of Carlsberg waned, as Chang took over the market and eventually, Carlsberg gave up & left LOS, leaving the plant behind, along with their $550 mil USD. A court case later was also a fizzer. The Thai chap is untouchable. Somebody once said to me "how do you make a small fortune in Thailand" - his answer was "come here with a large one" ! Chang seems to have dropped its' alcohol level to 'drinkable by some' level. I wouldn't touch the stuff again, even if it was free. Last time I was in LOS (2019) I drank Tiger & also found a beer called Tiger Lite, which was great. Both will probably be gone by the time I ever get back to visiting LOS again, thanks to Covid. Stay safe all of you over there - and 'praise be to beer'. 

    • Like 1
  14. Thanks to those who liked my response & how I was a victim of an 'innocent Thai lady' on a loan. To the chap who posted this topic - you need to remember that you are NOT at 'home' and so 'local rules apply'. It took me 30 years to learn that & I speak Thai fluently - all three dialects. I can also read Thai. Just before I left LOS I met an Aussie jailed for dealing drugs - he was supposedly still 'in jail'  but, I met him in a very well known girly-bar on a Sunday evening ! Seems his Thai missus was selling 'ya-ba' but, he knew nothing about it. He did however have big $ and, had a good Thai lawyer (ha ha). Obviously, the Judge was 'fair' as he got only one year. His wife with no lawyer, got fifteen years ! When I asked him when he 'got out', he said, "in another eight months". Welcome to LOS. He had  'arranged' ($) to be let out of prison every Sunday night at 2000 hours for "a <deleted>, a few beers and a western meal" ! He had to return to the back door of C Mai jail at midnight, or turn into a pumpkin. Fact. Money talks in Thailand - so to the Op, - if you don't know that - you WILL get shafted & you WILL lose your money, but it is your 2 mil baht. Lastly, shortly after I "repaired some Thai blokes' car" for 12K baht, I got clever & married a not unattractive but very virginal 28 yo locksmith - I was 49. That was 20 years ago. We now live in Australia & will never live in LOS ever again - our 11 y.o. daughter only speaks English. After 8 years back here, my Thai wife is an Aussie citizen & says she will never go back but, I am allowed to return to LOS every two years, as I support her mum. Pretty good deal, really.

    • Like 1
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