Aussiepeter

Finally a first for me on TV - no one else on this topic has noticed that the guy in the top right hand of the rear rank has his eyes shut !  It is almost as though he is on another planet (due to good weed), or perhaps, he has just had a couple of beers too many - (I sometimes get a silly grin like that when I've got a few in, but usually after a big win on the horses) - you are allowed to grin after 33 years in the Infantry and (wait for it)  three Thai wives. Just wondering WHY he has his eyes shut though and has a silly grin ? Any ideas ? I have a friend in the airline industry senior management - he says all the worlds' A380's are finished (grounded for ever) and will be "beer cans" in the near future and, that almost no serious regular flights to LOS for the next two to three years is their prediction. Hope he's wrong, but he never has been yet ... 

To use Aussie slang - "their dreamin" - Qantas has retired its' last B747's early and all their A380's are either on the way, or already parked in the desert in Arizona for the next three years (public knowledge). Meantime, Mrs P's "hiso" best friend (who loaned us her gold chains for "show" 20 years ago at our wedding) - (and got it all back the same night) and her Chinese-Thai hubby have been posting on facebook for weeks now, from all sorts of resorts in LOS, along with their "hiso" mates. They own at least 12 properties in LOS. He sells farm chemicals, (or used to, as much of it is now supposedly illegal ). Social distancing ? What is that ? Meantime, in the real world my wifes' uncle, who was her boss when I met her working in his locksmith shop in C Mai 21 years ago is now bankrupt and, the hounds are at his door. He failed to turn up to court this week in C Mai over his defunct credit cards - he already has lung cancer, (a non-smoker and non-drinker) from breathing the filth they call "air" in C Mai for all of his 55 years on the planet. Wifey says they will jail him - where, as he is already very ill, he will die. There must be many thousands more just like him, who can not pay their bills, out there in LOS now. No govt help whatsoever. The MIL has not got her lousy 500 baht pension for the last six months ! The local "Pu Yai" says "they are keeping it for Covid patients" ! Utter BS ! Sorry Thailand, but you are "stuffed" ! The internet has so many sorry tales about LOS now, that it makes me weep with laughter ! I lived there for nearly 25 years. We left in 2013 after I too got throat cancer from the filthy air, - it was the smartest move I have ever made. I beat the cancer. Thailand ? Doubt we will ever return. Missus P says "no way". She's generally 'on the money'.

Administration has never their strong point in that office. I left the original of an article there to be published some years back and when I called in later to find out why it had not been published, they told me they had lost it !

When I married my Thai missus exactly 20 years ago, I was near flat broke, but had just been granted my army Officers' pension, so I knew I was OK. I bought a 100cc Honda Dream with the last of my ready cash and rented a townhouse for us. The subject of sinsod came up (my wife was a rather plain, single 27 y.o. "factory sealed unit")  and had never had any boyfriend. I was lucky - she could not speak much English back then, but I was pretty sound in all three dialects of Thai, thanks in part to having worked for four years in the early 90's with the Thai army, as an exchange Officer. She was 28, me 48. She said that she could come up with the 50K baht that she had saved in working for 14 years (that her family knew zilch about), plus 'borrow' a gold chain and cash to make up 100K from her "hiso" friend, which is exactly what we did. All 'face'. Mrs "hiso" got her gold and cash back the same day as the party. Mrs P put hers back in the bank. Been to numerous 'weddings' since, where often well-meaning foreigners have tipped up thousands of $. Twenty years on, her "hiso" friend still has no idea of just how wealthy we have become, plus the missus just got her Oz citizenship but has not even told her family or friends. She likes it that way. I've seen some huge sinsods paid for very, nasty 'damaged' goods, by the way. It's minefield for the unwary out there in LOS, but not for all, as I've noted from several other posts on this subject.

In 1988 whilst posted to the Oz embassy in Saudi Arabia, I heard about a deal where you could fly to any local country for $100 Business Class, if on a Diplomatic Passport, with the Saudi flag carrier. My then girlfriend decided we would go to Egypt to see the pyramids. In Riyadh, then just before take off, the temple music starts and then a good five minutes of prayers in arabic. Bloke next to me said "do they know something about the pilot that we don't know" ? Flight was OK, then on landing in Cairo, even before the seat belt light went to 'off', everyone started cheering and clapping for a good five minutes again. Same bloke next to me said the same thing, again ! Wonder if PIA is the same ?

Thanks for the quick feedback moontang - I've been with the missus for over 20 years now and she is interested in owning another bit of LOS, especially as I made her sell the last one. We have friends who live in HH so the boss says 'lets look there' (when of course they let us back in). She said 'she was never going back to LOS' but after seven years, she's homesick. A Belgian chef we know moved to HH from CM after his farang business partner died several years ago.

I am sure that he will have opened another "Benelux" restaurant there by now. For those not in the know - Benelux is a mix of Belgian, Netherlands (and I guess) Luxembourg food. He had a place called "Mozart" in C Mai for almost thirty years. Great food - I ate there at least twice a week for fifteen years. Even the Thai missus liked his cooking (spicy).

Homes near the sea are always very expensive, but did that house in HH really sell for 8 mill plus baht ? I ask, because it is not half as big, or as 'flash', as the one we built in 2008 and sold in Saraphi, Chiang Mai (yes, that is "get yourself smoked to death for nine months a year" C Mai these days) in 2013 for 1.55 million. It resold last year to the No 2 man in the Amphur for 2.4 million. Our land was a lot bigger too, but no spa pool. (I did like the Tiger bottle in the photo though - it's my favourite brew when in LOS or Singapore). I used to tell people that I had built 'an absolute waterfront mansion in C Mai' until an ex-army buddy who had lived in Asia said to me 'oh, you got a place on a klong, have yuh' ? That sorted it ! I'm not complaining, as we still made a profit of about 300 thou baht and got the hell out of there, but I guess the land in Hua Hin is very expensive, as in "paang maak gern pai" ? Just wondering - never been there. We bought a little apartment (as in bedsitter/studio to us farang) in Singapore three years ago, as we visit the place regularly. I won't say what we paid for it, as no one would believe it on this forum. Thai missus and our daughter liked the place - 'nuff said. 

This brings back sad memories for me and anyone else who knew a likeable Aussie expat by the nickname of "Blue" who lost his life in C Mai in the early nineties. He was a good mechanic and worked for a Thai wrecking yard and got around town on an old Honda 750cc four. He was well known and well liked, especially by other expat bikers. These paramotors are not an aircraft as such, but more like a small engine with a huge propellor and you sort of strap into it, with the parachute becoming the wing. I am of the opinion that they appear to be quite dangerous and I recall at least two Thai guys ending their lives in C Mai when crashing. One chap had never even heard of taking off and landing "into the prevailing wind" believe it or not - a basic usually learned very early on in ground school. Sadly, "Blue" was asked by a Thai friend to test a paramotor that the chap was thinking of buying. I have no idea if "Blue" had much flying experience, but others told me at the time that 'he knew what he was doing.' No one mentioned to "Blue" that this same unit had its' propellor badly broken in a previous accident and that rather than replace it, the Thai owner had just 'glued it back together.' "Blue" was testing the thing one Sunday when at about 600 feet in the air near Hang Dong the propellor suffered catastrophic failure and severely damaged the parachute wing as it came apart. Poor "Blue" was killed instantly in the fall. He was 47. Like others have said, I also wondered 'in what kind of an aircraft crash do you only injure your willy' ? Guess it will all come out in the end.

Pineapple is right in one respect - youth crime is out of control in the far north of Oz, but there is a common denominator involved there that is too politically emotive at the moment to mention. Last week in Brisbane five teenagers stole a new car (from some old man like me) and the 14 y.o. driving it at high speed rolled it, killing his four young passengers instantly. They all came from similar socio-economic backgrounds, - two were 'imports' from NZ. All were "known to the authorities". Where were their parents ? By the way - I am wealthy and I only taught English in LOS to avoid becoming an alcoholic through boredom, although some may say that I already was one. Ironically, I used the money from teaching to buy two motorcycles, one of which is being registered here in Oz this week. Youth trying to break the law in this tiny backwoods town will fall foul of our local cops, who are terrific at their job. No crime here. Whilst pushing our Honda Dream down the road to the bike shop, they stopped to advise me not to even sit on it, as although it was not running, I would technically be 'riding it unregistered'. I had a chuckle to myself. Half the bikes on the road in LOS have no plates or rego or insurance and anyway, most riders don't have any licence either. I eventually had a gut-full of teaching kids who did not want to learn and being treated poorly by so-called 'hiso' schools in LOS, so I quit in 2005. Now 70, I was just like many on this forum being informative, not preaching. Riding a motorcycle at any time requires caution and experience - riding one in LOS is just plain dangerous, although I managed it for over twenty-five years relatively unscathed. I look forward to going shopping on our 2009 Honda Dream later in the week. Unlike the Honda postal bikes here that were made in China and constantly break down, at least ours was built in LOS and will go for ever !  

A great many Thais will never in their lifetime have enough money to buy a car, but can buy a motorcycle with a small down-payment. Hence the popularity of motorcycles here. All of us who have lived here any length of time have seen up to five people (or even more) on a single motorbike. You can see at least three kids on a motorbike outside any school on any day here in LOS, most of them not wearing helmets. Girls are often the worst at this, as helmets "mess up their hair," When I was teaching in C Mai fifteen years ago, a Thai policeman that we knew bought his teenage son a new Honda Wave and a good full-face helmet, for his birthday. As I was leaving school that afternoon I found it difficult to enter the main road near the school, due to a traffic jam. When I finally got out, there was the same boy dead on the road, his head smashed in a pool of blood. His helmet was still in the basket on the front of the Honda. He literally had almost no other injury at all, but a completely fractured skull. He had tried to push in front of a song-tow at low speed, with disastrous (for hIm) consequences. He had just turned fourteen. As for us foreigners, yes farang do die here too in motorcycle accidents and, a lot more than is reported, especially if the farang happens to come to grief out in the boonies, rather than in a heavily touristed area. There is a good book called "De Mortis" about the graves in the C Mai Foreign Cemetery and some of those buried in that cemetery resulted from motorcycle prangs. Speed and alcohol were often a factor, but not always. I lost a good friend in C Mai after he was run over by a truck when riding an old and very slow motorcycle. In the twenty-five years or so I lived in LOS, I can recall at least forty farang who have reached "roads end" as a result of motorcycle accidents, but most farang who die here in such accidents are usually cremated, so there are no graves for them. Statistically though, with Thais of all ages killing themselves at more than sixty a day in motor vehicle (usually motorcycle) accidents, we farang don't even rate a mention. Poor parenting and a pathetic, useless police force just means that the carnage and needless death of children riding motorcycles here in LOS will continue unabated.  

I've never been to either Phuket or Samui, but it was only a few years ago that two German backpacker girls got badly stung by 'chironex' (scientific name) box jellyfish when swimming on Samui. Both girls were aged about twenty. One died within hours and the other was critical for days and was scarred for life. As a now retired army Officer, I used to warn all my soldiers that "anything you do in LOS can get you killed, including doing nothing." I've lost count of my jellyfish stings, as I was a surfer in my younger days, but the government in LOS has never to my knowledge ever put up signs warning about box jellyfish, (or any other thing for that matter). Box jellyfish are seasonal and are translucent or clear, so are very hard to see - in Oz they are rampant in the north between November to March. They love dirty sea water and there is plenty of that in LOS in rainy season. Wearing any sort of skin cover will prevent a sting and pantyhose or a wetsuit are the preferred things for surfers, plus surf shirt and hood. I wouldn't be game to wear pantyhose in LOS though - might attract a nice ladyboy ! 'Blue bottles' - also known as Portuguese man-o-war, can be nasty too, as there is a stinger (nematode) every 5mm and their tentacles are metres long, but are really only a threat to those who suffer allergies, as they can affect your ability to breathe if you are stung enough or, are stung in the airway. These and ordinary common jellyfish just hurt like hell - I usually just rub a beer or two on them, internally. Use vinegar or a product called "Stingose" (aluminium hydroxide) on the sting. I'm 70, so I'm more worried about sharks, especially the common female land-shark that is prevalent in LOS. You'd be better off asking Mr NCC about them though.

After living in LOS for over 25 years it is ironic to see this post, as just today I commenced registering our Honda Dream 125cc 2009 model (the last with a carburettor) that I bought in Chiang Mai, just before we left LOS for ever in 2013. The CT-90 and then CT-110 was sold in Australia for over 30 years or so, targeted at farmers. Thousands of them were sold for just that purpose. Total reliability. My Thai missus and I now live in a rural area and we see old ones. The Post Office started using them and for at least 20 years they delivered the mail as well. The Thai-built Hondas are far superior in every detail, than anything made by Honda in China and I suspect that this is just more Chinese-built rubbish. Like its' predecessors, this is just another Honda Dream/Wave variant with centrifuge clutch. No clutch lever. They retail in Oz today at over $6K - or 125K baht ! Our Thai-built 2009 model Dream passed rego in Oz ok, but the workshop told me the local post office bought the Chinese ones and they are constantly repaired and, are absolute trash ! I bought a Thai made 100cc Dream for 36,400 baht from Niyom Panich in CM in 2000 - we sold it for 18,000 baht when we left in 2013.

I rented a Chinese-made Wave in Laos in 2005 - it was garbage and nothing worked. Honda made in LOS = OK. Chinese made baby Hondas ? Forget it.

Like it or hate it, KFC helped save my life in Egypt of all places in 1988 after I and seven others caught amoebic dysentary, after eating filthy food on a train from Cairo to Aswan. Two Irish nurses nearly died and all except me were hospitalised and also got hepatitis - holidays ruined. Within hours of being infected we all got violent stomach cramps, followed by extreme diaharrea and vomiting blood. My life was saved because I was a serving army Officer at the time and had noticed a wounded man with blonde hair and blue eyes being carried in to a hospital by others of similar appearance - definitely non-arabs. They were Russian soldiers and were helping Egypt was in some fight with Sudan. I got the Ruski doctor to treat me - his medicine worked, but I recall the stomach cramp pain was what I assume a woman must feel when giving birth. I lost 12kg in 7 days and looked like a survivor from a holocaust camp. My ticket out was not for another week and I lived on KFC and nothing else. It was the only thing I risked eating in that s-hole of a country. Have to agree with the bloke from Hervey Bay Oz though - the local KFC here in NSW is oily rubbish. I think it is pot-luck. The Egyptian stuff was OK and I like the Thai version too. Oh, by the way - cross Egypt off your bucket list....

Heh folks, I've got an idea for the new Patts' planners. Last time I was in Singapore before the C-19 crisis, I won big $ at the races on an ex-Aussie horse I had previously sold to a local Chinese gent. Later on in the evening, a taxi driver took me to a shopping mall that closes at 1700, only to open again at 2000 (8pm) as a place known locally as 'four floors of whores.' A sort of dual purpose development. Have to think outside the square though - I doubt a Thai planner could do that ?

Hey Bangkok Barry and Dr Jack - Your comments on Hungarian/Oz Immigration are interesting, to me at least. My brother (now retired) was a senior public servant in Centrelink (the dole office in Oz) and was sent to Hungary at Oz govt. expense (yes we taxpayers paid for it) to set up their dole/welfare system, some years ago just before his retirement. He was there for a year. He told me that it was a fantastic place (who knew) and, that their immigration system in particular seemed to be geared to helping people and attracting foreign retirees, but was really painless to go through. Their social welfare system is based on the Oz model, so they have the dole for those really in need (and a few bludgers too I guess). Sounds like the total opposite of LOS ha ha ! I also note that the report says that 'both the Oz and NZ govt. have made overtures to the Thais to open up for visitors from both places ASAP". Useless for me/us if there are no airlines flying in or out of Oz. 

Looking in from the outside, it is 2200 hours in Oz, freezing cold and I have turned on a heater. I have also just opened another of my $2 a can (40 baht) real Oz (large) beers and reflected on all the news on T Visa. Missus speaks to her extended family in C Mai almost daily - they are all hurting financially but I can't help, as the boss says "there are far too many of them and anyway they are all lazy" - (but the MIL sure aint included, 'cos I sent her 50K baht last week, but that's a secret). Once every ten months - no sooner. Even Thais can keep secrets from their own families. Our farm is just outside a tiny town with two pubs. Both are still shut although they could open if they wanted, but the govt. Covid-19 limit of a maximum ten patrons at a time is useless. Nobody drinks seriously in pubs here anymore - the police breathalyser presence killed that years ago, - it is about meeting friends and having a cheap healthy meal. Covid -19 ? Not a single confirmed case in over a hundred miles (160 kilometres) since we locked down in February. Almost all cases in NSW can be linked to returning overseas travellers, mostly from cruise ships. I pity all my friends in the bar business in LOS - as others have said, it is almost as if a blanket ban on alcohol consumption in LOS has been quietly implemented, by stealth. Although the boss says she will never return to Thailand, I would like to at least visit sometime if flights ever return, as I spent half my life there and still have many friends living there, most being too old, too settled in or just too poor to leave. However, I think the LOS that many of us grew up with and adored for all the wrong reasons, is finished - or at best, changed completely for ever.

Just read that bit by another poster who said that childbirth in LOS costs about 100,000 baht. Utter rubbish. My lovely half-Thai daughter was born in a government hospital in Chiang Mai and even with me paying the salaried doctor to see us as a private patient, the cost was well under twenty thousand baht, including five nights in there in a shared room. I just asked the missus - she said 'doubt it would be over 4OK baht even with a private room'. Hmm. Of course, I do speak Thai and was a local then, but still ...

Mate - get a grip on yourself. You have absolutely no proof at all that this girl is even pregnant at all ! Sorry, but you sound very young and totally inexperienced in the scheming, nasty, liar ways of a greater majority of Thai bar girls.

I knew one bar girl in Chiang Mai in the early 1990's who was engaged to eight different guys at the same time and was being sent money by all of them, plus about half a dozen more, every month ! We locals called her "Miss International" at the time. I was in C Mai last year and ran into her - now nearly fifty, but still running a bar and still 'playing the game' of business as usual. That's just the way they are my friend. In her case, Miss "I" made sure to never date any two blokes from the same country. Of course, she eventually got found out - her geography failed her as it were. (Two nearby Scandinavians who were mates). Firstly, they ALL play emotional blackmail and you fell for it. I know I certainly did thirty years ago - that is how you learn. She is a hooker - it is her job to lie. Do NOT look for love in a bar in Asia, 'cos it sure ain't there, 99% of the time. You owe her nothing. If and when you can get back to Thailand and if she will even see you (chances are high that she is probably not pregnant at all) then you can get a DNA test on the child, if, that is, she has one (a 'new' one that is) at all. You and thousands of others have lost their jobs due to Covid-19. You were 'an easy mark' and a meal ticket - now the money has stopped she is showing her real tigers' teeth. By my calculations you will be about the one millionth bod to have even believed this scam, by the way. Of course, she may just be in the other 1% - but as someone heavily involved in horse racing - "the odds are weighted against you". Move on. You had a bonk or two, nothing else. (Hope I did not waste 30 minutes on a troll) ...

When I first married my missus twenty years ago I was flat broke and used the last of my $ after the wedding party to buy a new Honda Dream 100cc in Chiang Mai -I still recall the exact cost - 36,400 baht on the road from Niyom Panich. As I have been riding big bikes all my life and no offence to her, I always (and still do) put her on the back behind me unless, as another poster said, "I am a little under the weather". One day I asked her (after noticing the odd Thai or two giving us strange looks) "what do they think about you being on a motorbike with a farang ?" She answered "half of them think I am a prostitute, the other half are jealous" ! Pretty fair comment really, given that she was a locksmith at the time and had never set foot outside the family business). Like many on here have said, 'up to you but don't read too much into Thais looking at you', anytime. Just enjoy the fun of being on a motorbike, with a lady.

Heh Stadtler, I think you mean a '78 Holden Statesman Caprice, as in 1968 it would have been an HK and thus only a Kingswood or Premier (sorry, I'm a Holden guy), - the V8 Statesman was ten years later. (I also saw that TV guy warm a pie on a Statesman block). The whole lot in the foil, into the ashes, takes less time and tastes a lot better. Just sayin'. Of course, my Koori mates barbecue just about anything here in Oz, especially during lockdown. I suspect the monitor lizard though is cold-blooded like many reptiles and, was simply warming himself on the donk, just as many snakes do in Australia and lots of folks find out, usually the hard way after parking overnight in the bush !