Aussiepeter

Safety guarantee pigs' bottom ! I'm with you Caine - I have no intention of returning to LO Sh*t ever, & Mrs P feels exactly the same. I like beer or wine with my meal, (or any time really) and the stupid and senseless liquor hours that idiot Taksin brought in never cut it with me. Our daughter doesn't speak a word of Thai and has no interest in learning it. She's already learning two other languages (that she chose to learn) as several of her friends at school are also doing. Aged ten, after seven years in Oz she already knows exactly what she wants to study at Uni (Science) and she has read enough about her birth country to know that it is (a) extremely dangerous and not just on the roads, (b) has both filthy air and no food safety or chemical standards whatsoever and (c) is a place where corruption at all walks of life is considered normal. Wifey loves Oz, as the police in our little town still patrol several times a day, the air is 100% clean and it is incredibly safe - there has not (so far that is) even been a case of C-19 within 50 miles of here. I don't drink-drive either, as I love my family and I am a responsible person, something too many Thais are not. Yes we have lockdown, but I can go out shopping any time I want. Add to that what someone else posted - if you have money, LOS would be the last place you would choose to visit. I served my country proudly for over thirty years, invested wisely but still banked over half my military pension whilst living in LOS. We are now quite well off. We will most certainly travel again when it is supposedly safe to do so, but never again to Thailand. That being said, I'd go back to Laos in an instant. No stupid beer hours there, heh Mr Caine ! But that's just me ...

To the TAT - "good luck with that one". I don't envisage anyone wanting to travel anyplace for at least a year or even longer and the worlds' major airlines are surely of the same opinion. Major airlines have begun mothballing or 'storing' their fleets with many of them putting their aircraft to sleep in the desert at Alice Springs airport in Oz, or other similar places well away from the heat and in particular the moisture of SE Asia that can rot an aeroplane in months. No one had ever seen an A380 or a 747 jumbo arrive at 'the Alice' before but a load of them from Singapore landed in the desert to go into long-term storage earlier this week and it even made the ABC news. The cost is said to be a minimum of $25K USD to keep one mothballed per month, as they have to be started up every two weeks and moved around too so the tires don't go square. I can only see airfares going one way when this is over and only the big names surviving. Didn't see any TG planes arriving to be stored here tho' - guess they'll just park anywhere 'Thai style'. Maybe the end of TG ? 

The lockdown in Oz has finally started to get to me. I can't believe that I just wasted half an hour reading 16 pages of this drivel. Get out MrMilk, while you still can. As many on here have alluded to - there are a lot of younger and much cheaper models available out there - you are in a position to choose whatever you want when you are under 40 ! Unless you are legally working in Thailand - my advice would be to try next-door in Laos. If I had my time again, I'd have chosen a Lao wife. They don't spit the dummy when they don't get their own way and, the love will be for real and for ever. Make sure that you speak some good Thai or Lao though. Just a suggestion, as I get the feeling that LOS 'ain't cutting the metal for yuh' any more.

We live in Oz now but the missus called the MIL today - she lives in Mai Hia, C Mai, near the airport. The old girl is over  70 y.o. and went to the 'mini' or-por-tor (govt office) today for the third time in the last three months, to get her massive 500 baht a month old-age pension ! Just as happened the last two months, they told her that they could not give it to her this month, because "they are saving it for those with Covid-19" BUT "that they will pay it back to her when the C-19 thing is over". What a crock of sh*t ! She is HIV+ and very unwell and for sure would be dead, if I didn't send her a few $ every year. She lives a very frugal life and rides an old bicycle. No air-con, zilch. If her daughter had not married a farang 20 years ago, she'd be totally stu**ed right now. It is more than likely that her meagre 500 baht a month has been nicked, permanently. Thai govt help their people ? What govt ? Pathetic ! 

With you cats4ever,  - can't believe I forgot "Zulu". Must have seen it a hundred times. Reason ? I was a corps training officer at the School of Infantry in Oz for several years during my time in the army. Believe it or not, all new soldiers who join the Infantry Corps in Oz are still shown this movie as part of their training, on about day 2. It is used to instil the importance of obeying orders, remaining confident and not panicking, amongst other things. Michael Caine is a newbie in the original "Zulu" so I guess that makes me rather old now too.

With you toolpush - Kelly's Heroes. On a posting to Greece 1987/88 we had a VDO player but only had 2 movies, "KH" and "The Blues Brothers". Next best (and surprised nobody mentioned it) is "The Magnificent Seven". Lastly, "The African Queen". Luckily, got all four on DVD in Tachilek market for 30 baht each when doing the ubiquitous Non-O visa runs about ten years ago. I also like the original B/W movie "Dunkirk" which is far more believable and much better watching than the new Dunkirk (I hate computer graphics).  

P.S. They also make it as a hatch - forgot to tell yuh !

They are absolutely 100% true in Chiangmai at least, as my Thai missus' uncle has been in debt to them for over twenty years - as long as I have been married to her ! He has never had any violence as far as I know. Uncle is a tradesman (locksmith) in Chiangmai and always has work, but lives from day to day. Some good days, some not. Every evening at about 1700 hours (5p.m.) for the fourteen years that I was living in Saraphi and certainly still until this day, the two people he owes money to appear. One who I call "mu-uck dang" ('cos he wears a red hat), is a likeable rogue who always has a ball of cash in one hand and almost every Thai person in Pratu Chiangmai (Chiangmai Gate) market is in his debt in some way or other. Last year when I went back to get dental work done, I bought a Thai lottery ticket on the day before I was leaving and won the two digit part - two thousand baht. Flying out next day and no way to cash it - he cashed it, less the 40 baht commission. Guess he wanted to show it off. I had seen him in the market when I bought the ticket and he already knew what number I always bought, so he did me a favour. He is not violent. Uncle is also in debt for thousands of baht to a vicious, nasty Chinese lesbian who owns lots of local real estate - she too turns up at 1700 or so. Uncle, only 52, has now been diagnosed with lung cancer from breathing the air pollution in Changers for so long (he's a non-smoker) - he has told no one and I hope his debts will die with him. Should this very nasty lady ever 'succumb', the better it would be for a great many very poor folks. She has 'minders' and they can do a lot worse than just knees. Trust me all you naysayers, - LOS is most assuredly chockers with illegal loan sharks. You just never see them, probably because many of you can't or don't speak enough Thai to be aware, but the sharks are out there - for 100 % certain.

Gotta love T/Visa, as it keeps me amused during the lock-in. One heck of a truly amazing government in LOS ! Probably the only country to have a convicted heroin trafficker as a government Minister. I have just looked through several of the financial disclosures that these lads had to make to be politicians. (All on the net). After the heroin guy got six years in prison in Oz, served four and was deported, he seems to have bounced back quite well. He and Mr Anutin are both a bit wealthy, as they say. The ex-con chap gave his net worth as $42 million USD ! It seems these bods also share a common love of fancy watches and nice cars too. The ex-con owns a Bentley, a Rolls Royce, a Benz and a Tesla, just to name a few. Good to know LOS in in the safe hands of like-minded, humble business folk. Obviously, since these luxury items that they own were all manufactured by foreigners, Mr Anutin and his pals don't really hate us at all ! He must have simply been mis-quoted. 

Sorry folks - just like others have said, I have never had private health cover in Oz in over thirty years. Three years ago, in a four day flood here in the northern-rivers, I had to get up at 0100 to try to repair a 100y.o. retaining wall made of 120kg railway sleepers. I lifted one and bang, an abdominal hernia. This, after radiation therapy to destroy the laryngeal cancer I got from the air in C Mai. All fixed for free by Medicare. Gotta love it. I did pay the surgeon who did my hernia $100 extra but hell, he is a Colonel (army reserve) and I was only a Captain, now retired and blxxdy wealthy ! Brilliant repair job for 2000 baht ? Strewth, I've paid more in a bar fine at Spotlight etc for top shelf stuff. My Thai missus needed an urgent operation on her knee, but no insurance so I said I'll pay. She said NO ! Wait ! Six weeks later a slot appeared and she got the op in a public hospital and walked out fixed the next day. Of course, I pay about $2500 a year in Medicare levy. Flaming bargain if you ask me. In my humble opinion, the only Aussies who choose deliberately to live permanently in LOS, even if they are married to a Thai and have kids, as I do, fall into just three categories (a) too poor, pensioners and saved nothing in their lives (b) seek cheaper rent and/or booze and/or smokes and/or NICE (not fat and ugly) pussy or (c) have lots of money but NO assets or property in Oz or anywhere. I have made more $ in the seven years since I returned to Oz, even given half of that time I was incredibly sick with cancer, than the twenty odd years I wasted in LOS. In 1990, I came to Thailand, seeking love or whatever. I returned to Oz with Thai missus and kid/s in 2013 and the missus says "she ain't going back to that cesspit, ever." Guess I have a farang wife after all ? But she's still Thai !

Oh hell, it is 2315 hours in Oz and I turn on tv and get "Thai horror story number 297,867 ... or was that 868" ?

I contributed to two of those numbers so I should know - then twenty-five years ago I stopped dating and trying to 're-humanise' Thai bar girls/hookers and instead learned to speak near fluent Thai, as I wanted to meet a good girl. Married twenty years now and have a kid. Never bought her a thing if I didn't want to. Missus has said many times in the seven years that we have been in Oz that "she will never return to LOS ever again" and, she means it. Good luck to the OP, but I'd running like all shxt right now ....

We are in lockdown here in Oz and after years as a teacher in C Mai, I am home-schooling our daughter. By comparison with LOS, we have it great with pure, clean, air. I am not a great fan of our PM, but he has shown himself to be well up to the task in leading Oz during a wartime situation. No alcohol ban here - that would only cause WW4. I am stocked up anyway - just came back from the supermarket in our little country town (I was one of very few wearing a mask) with 2 cartons of my favourite beer (Tooheys) - 30 cans to a box, cost about 1000 baht in total. It's actually on special ! The big surprise (still no toilet paper after six weeks) was they got a load of tins of mushy peas (from the UK) and are knocking them out at 30 baht ($1.50 Oz) a tin. Locals here don't know what they are ! Wifey was happy - only 5 Thais in this town so the asian food section was chockers and I got all the things she needed. They are talking here that this lockdown could go on longer than six months. Hope not ...

I saw first-hand the havoc this stuff causes, in C Mai in the nineties. I was a frequent customer of the old 'Spotlight Bar' and I would estimate that 50% of the ninety or so girls available back then to bar-fine 'out', were taking what a young lass euphemistically told me she called 'pink tablets'. One girl told me in Nthn Thai - (& yes folks I AM near fluent, in all three dialects of Thai and can read and write it too, so please excuse) "it makes girls go to sleep, and men do crazy things". No shxt ! The hell it does. Nong Yinn has a close handle on it, to her credit. I reckon about 30% of young folk have tried 'ya-ba' in LOS. Mostly those with no education or basic workers. When I left CM for ever in 2013, it was out of control then. We lived in Saraphi, C Mai. It was rife in our community. Dangerously rife. After Covid 19 - who knows ? What I do know is that poxy criminal Taksins' stupid war on drugs killed a shedload of very innocent folks, for sure.

Many thanks to you 'cardinal blue' for only confirming my story and the truth of this matter. Chiang Mai as a city is finished, forever, due to the greed and selfishness of a few, very wealthy, Thai people. A totally polluted xxxxhole on the planet, for almost three quarters of a year now, every year for the last fifteen years. Just an OK  place to pass through, when and if, and I mean "if", it is raining ... Thanks also to "dunroaming" who had the balls to save his childs' life and get the hell out of 'turd-mai'. Too many friends back there, to even contemplate their demise due to pulmonary disease.

Hey daoyai - not ONE bum gun but, I literally brought about TWENTY bum guns back here from my final trip to CM in March 2019 (I travel Bus Class) ! Every house I've had in Oz since about 1998 has had one. My 98 y.o. dad even has one in his place, after a visit to my place in C Mai in 1994. Greatest invention (somehow I doubt that a Thai ever invented it) on the blxxdy planet ! We have one in our 100 y.o. Aussie timber home, hence that is why I only need a bit of newsprint to soak up the water/leftovers ! I bought a couple of the really expensive (stainless) ones too last trip, as I am planning on a new-build, when I find a decent block near the ocean that is not over-priced. (Yeh, I have a few quid). "Bum guns - made for just such a dunny-paper crisis - cos you use bxxxer all paper". Could be a sales pitch ? Would have loved one when I was growing up mate - we had a 'thunder box' ! Maybe I should market them now in Oz, due to the paper crisis ?

Don't take any notice of the 'knockers' moonjar - you do have my sympathy. I was in the opposite situation seven years ago. I got cancer after breathing the filthy air in C Mai for umpteen years and we had to sell our palace in Saraphi in a 'fire sale' in order to return to Oz for treatment. On the market for several months at 2.5 mill and worth every cent. Word got around - sharks approached - sold it for almost a mill less than the boss wanted, but got cash. At least you still have a property in Sydney - ride out the storm and in another year it will be worth even more, not less. My dad owned two properties in Sydney and the value only ever went one way - and that is up. Does depend on the area of course. Virus or no virus, Sydney rules the roost in real estate prices in Oz. Cheers to all of you on TV who are stuck, wherever you are. Our only problem at the moment is having to use old newspaper as toilet roll !

My family have gone into total lockdown on our little farm in NSW Oz. An ex-army officer, I have always been prepared for the worst and in fact one farang ex GF dumped me over thirty years ago saying "I fxxxing hate it - you are always so blxxxy well organised" - well - I ain't no doomsday prep guy, but on our little farm we will be OK. Got about six months supply of whatever. Plenty of fresh veg in our own paddocks. Plenty of Corona beer in 3 fridges. My 98 y.o.dad called today from his farm, to see if we were OK - (he was). He's an ex WW2 fighter pilot - to him this virus is a bit of excitement. But, to answer the OP,  if you really, really, must travel to an island right now, - the one Tom Hanks landed on in "Castaway" would probably be my choice at the moment ! Cheers !