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On 10/28/2017 at 4:50 PM, Meljames said:

 

If this means going to Big C every night...forget it.

I live right next to it, and Tesco is 5 minutes away.  I just head straight to the reduced shelf,  chuck anything edible in a basket and I'm in and out in 5 minutes.

On 10/28/2017 at 2:09 PM, KiChakayan said:

Don't see how anyone could live like that more than 12 hours. Unless he's boombooming a hot nun full time. For free.

Not everybody is paying for sex in Thailand.  Not judging those who do, I think once you get to a certain age (and your preference is 18 year olds rather than 48 year olds) you don't have much choice.  But I'm not there yet, I can still pull 7, 8 out of 10 girls for free.  I'm not lor enough to pull the 9s and 10s but on balance I'm happy with my lot.

I see these threads every now and again but they are all poor attempts to live frugally.  The below is for one person.

Electric 400 baht a month (1-bed apartment).  Don't use air, a big fan works fine except for a few weeks in summer.  Cold water shower, you don't need hot in the tropics.  Switch stuff off when you're not using it, unplug it when it's charged, easy enough.

Water from tap 50 baht a month.

Washing use the 20 baht or 30 baht washing machines, 3 times a month.   100 baht inc powder.

1 baht water machine - all the fluids you need for 8 baht a week, 30 baht a month.

Food.  Go to the supermarkets at 9pm.  Max Valu, Big C, Tesco, you can buy a bag full of food for under 50 baht and there's nothing wrong with it as long as you eat it within 24 hours or so.  Buy the milk with 75% off and freeze it.  Don't buy fruit from carts, you're just paying more for them to cut it for you.  Buy Thai food in Thailand.  Go to local markets and eat rice dishes for 30 baht.  Don't smoke or drink or have any other vices.  It's exercising poor self control when you cannot stop yourself consuming something that is bad for your body and for your wallet.  But if you want to die quicker that's your business.  If you have to eat out, use apps like eatigo for 50% discounts at restaurants.  100 baht a day, 3000 a month.

Transport (I know varies and BKK is easier than other places).  Walk.  Songtaews.  No taxis.  Buses 0-10 baht get you anywhere in the city.  Travel outside of peak times if possible.  Combine trips.  400 baht a month.

3970 baht I think.  Which leaves 30 baht for extravagances.

Thank you.  I'll now answer any questions and critiques that you may have.  But not for about 2 hours because I'm going to watch Man U Tottenham (mine's a 20 baht Coke).

4 hours ago, smutcakes said:

We've turned around several times at waterfalls or so where they charged me much more than the rest of our group...Or i just step out of the car, sit down at the road infront of the entrance and wait untill my group comes back.

The problem is the guys at the checkpoints have zero say in how much they charge you.  If they charge every farang the Thai price they'll lose their job.  So you have nobody to complain to.  It makes no difference to them whether you go in or wait outside.

To be clear, I can hear and understand the conversation (of which there is very little).  Usually the ranger simply states the total amount to pay.

I like nature a lot so I can't boycott the national parks.  The temples that charge foreigners to enter them, the museums that charge double price, and most of the theme parks and water parks and zoos, I can boycott all these.  But the national parks are a must for me.  So I try and get around the charge as often as possible, and pay it on the occasion when I'm not familiar with the area or there is no other option.

Often if I want to go to a waterfall I'll go there at 6am before there is anybody manning the gate.  It beats the crowds as well.  If I want to go to a marine park I'll kayak rather than get a boat trip, as long as the weather is okay and the distance involved isn't huge.  I've done that with Koh Rang (near Koh Chang) and Koh Adang (near Koh Lipe).  I'll use GPS tracks online to find alternative routes up mountains in national park areas to avoid national park checkpoints.  I figure hiding in the boot of a car would be easy, alas I do not own a car.  Cheap or principled?  I think both.

I'm 180cm and my skin is tanned, still lighter than most Thais I guess, but I'm not convinced it's that noticable when you just have hands to go from.  Often I pull up 5 metres past the checkpoint so they can only see my back; same outcome.

A lot of the national parks I'm going to are out of the way and I doubt they get many foreign visitors.  Doi Pha Hom Pok national park, for example.

I disagree with the pricing structure at national parks where anybody who doesn't look asian and/or cannot speak Thai has to pay 5-10 times the price.

In an effort to avoid this malpractice, I have on a few occasions attempted to get away with paying the Thai price.  This involves wearing long sleeve tops and trousers, which I do anyway to protect from the sun, and a full-face helmet through which you cannot see my face.  Of my whole body only my neck and hands are visible.  I instruct my passenger (who is invariably Thai) to get off and go to the window/desk a few metres away and pay for 2 people.  At no point is it mentioned that one of us is a foreigner, yet the park ranger always knows, without asking.  My passenger is occasionally dressed like a whore, (which I concede might raise suspicions), but usually not.

So how?

24 minutes ago, Pilotman said:

Thais are decent upright people,

not sure about that, most of them like a nap or 3 and not when standing up

It's not lesser educated tourists, they're just ignorant of this particular cultural norm.  Not the same.

In any case, when you look at this from outside the box, it really should not matter what anybody is wearing, it's pompous and pretentious to judge people based on what type of fabric they have on and it's silly to assume that because somebody happens to be wearing a suit or a bowtie that they are somehow more important or more intellectual than other people.  That sort of attitude belongs back in the 1950s.

On 10/3/2017 at 3:10 AM, pgrahmm said:

Because they are devoid of decency & respect for the culture and the people of that culture....

Or they just don't know it's not normal here.  Not everybody has been here for years, I imagine a lot of the ones you see doing this are on holiday.

I have collected an array of them and do not currently have any Thai gf to palm them off onto, so I am looking for some info from convenience store stamp connoisseurs.

I understand the 7 11 stamps can be used as a cash equivalent, right?

I have no idea what the Tesco Lotus stamps do/are worth - can anybody give me some insight?  I have 31 of them.

I was trying to do the same, just about 1-2km though, so only a 20-minute job.  I just couldn't carry it.  I carried a fridge by myself and a bunch of other stuff but the mattress is not carry-able.

In the end I went to the local songtaew parking lot and someone there charged me 500 baht to put it on the roof.  Far too expensive but I was out of options and needed it moved that day.  I moaned a bit but he wasn't budging from 500.

For anybody else reading this, there is no Onnut post office, well there is but it's nowhere near the BTS.  If you want to go to Onnut Post Office you have to stand on the opposite side of the road to BIG C and get songtaew number 1 about 30 minutes up the road.  You'll then turn left, go under an underpass and come back on yourself and then turn left again, back onto the road that you were on.  Once you go past the underpass part you're very close, look out for it on your right hand-side.

Phra Khanong post office is very busy.  Thong Lor post office is smaller and less busy, but still busy.  Both are right next to their respective BTS stations.

Nana post office is open long after the others have already closed.  So it's good if you wake up late on a weekend or something.  That's 5-10 minutes walk from the BTS, roughly half way in between Nana and Ploen Chit BTS stations.

Udom Suk post office is 5 minutes walk away from that BTS station, heading back towards Punnawitti BTS.  That place doesn't get many foreigners.

Nana always asks for a passport and they're generally really strict about everything, the others sometimes do and sometimes don't and one or two of them never ask.  Expect Nana to want to repackage your parcel (for a fee of course) even if it is the best-packed parcel in history.

As a general rule none of the post offices like parcels that aren't in box format.  In my country it's fine to send mailing bags, but not so in Thailand.  They want stiff parcels, so cardboard protection or any kind of box.  I generally pick up some cardboard lying around in Tesco or Big C and make a envelope-type parcel, because none of my parcels are big/bulky enough to require a box.  But you need to make it look pretty.  If it looks bad, they will want it repackaged.

I'm lazy to quote all these replies so sorry if this post isn't very fluent..

I'm not really a bar kind of person.  I don't really drink.

I had quite a few girls recently not want to talk to me and they dropped hints along the lines that they thought I was a 'playboy'.  This is before they've spoken to me so they're only going from my pictures, none of which show me partying or with other girls and all of which show me fully clothed.  I'm not really sure what you're supposed to do about those kinds of girls, just write them off I suppose.

I think between TF and Tinder I've met somewhere between 50-100 girls.  Plus one who I thought was a girl but turned out to be a ladyboy.  I don't really meet them for any specific purpose I just have a lot of spare time and like to meet new people. A lot of memories, some relationships and a lot of longterm friendships that I wouldn't have made otherwise.  But most of the good memories are from nearer the beginning.

Not really sure how saying 'I'm not ugly' makes me an airhead.  It's hardly arrogant is it.  And even if it was I think it's better to lay the cards on the table to get the most relevant answers.  If I euphemised my posts to suit fragile egos on Thaivisa I might as well not make the post in the first place.

I'm not looking for a life partner, maybe when I'm older I might.  I'm not necessarily looking for cheap sex either.  Not everybody fits these typical moulds, there's some middle ground in there as well.

"Time for the OP to polish up is social skills."  You're probably right.

As I said, "unless you're really pedantic". It's free.

The mall though.  I hate malls.

What should I go with.

Hi.  You have a boyfriend?  Want to talk to me on *insert app here*?

Anything better than that?

Yes you might be on to something there.  Every girl I speak to complains about the guys asking for sex or generally being sex pests.

But it didn't used to be like that.  Agree the 'want to learn English' girls were always there and they're still there now.

'find rich prince/play head games' - they're not replying in the first place; they have no idea if I am rich or whether they can play head games with me.

My issue is with the reply rate and the general disinterest, particularly in BKK.  And it's low season anyway, most of the part-timers aren't here.

A glass of water in the UK will cost you about 0.1p.  Or about 0.2 satang.  Unless you're really pedantic, that's free.

#2 Ahh, I think it's a fair post. Maybe not the best forum to post it, but where else is there.

#3 maybe we're not quite on the same page.

Isaan, obviously.

I've been in and around Thailand for around 5 years now.  I've used Thaifriendly for about the last 3 of those years.

Thaifriendly, when I first started using it, was a revelation.  From using dating sites in the UK where the selection wasn't much better than the reduced meat bin in Tesco Lotus an hour before closing, and the reply rate was still pathetic and mostly limited to single mums, on Thaifriendly I was getting 80-90% replies from BKK university girls, and I was messaging exclusively  7/10, 8/10, 9/10 girls.  I'm not saying that all those conversations developed into something, but that's normal, right?  You don't click with everyone.  I think I was meeting about 20% of the girls I was adding onto Line and I got casual relationships and some girlfriends out of about half of those.

In the last year or so on Thaifriendly, it's really gone tits up.  Can I say tits?  The reply rate has dropped down to about 50%.  I'm finding that all the girls in BKK are more choosy now, the reply rate with the prettier 9/10 girls in BKK has plummeted, they're just not interested.  I've messed around with pictures and stuff, even using some of the same pictures I was using 1-2 years ago, just to see if it was that that was making the difference.  I'm young, physically fit, not ugly and with a decent personality, and in the past that was all you needed to get lots of attention on Thaifriendly.  But, times seem to have changed, I'm left wondering why.  More younger guys using the site i.e. I was a sought after commodity before but now that pool has been diluted?  Less interest in farang generally?  Less interest in Thaifriendly generally (website hasn't had a facelift in all the time I've been using it)?   If you search outside of BKK, the reply rate is better, and they're more interested in you.  Which makes me think that it's more guys, maybe specifically more younger guys using thaifriendly, most of them living in BKK?

I've started using Tinder but that's a minefield, the amount of hookers and ladyboys on there almost outnumbers the genuine girls and there's no separate category for ladyboys, as there is on Thaifriendly, so they all put themselves under 'female'.

Anybody else noticed similar?  Any other decent pick-up apps?

It's more than 40 baht though isn't it.  You can get 12 600ml bottles for about 50 baht.  I could drink 3-4 of those packs in a week.  I can buy 1.5 litres of water from a machine for 1 baht.  So it's more like 150 baht a week difference, per person.  If there are 2 or more of you in the same household multiply it up.

I come from the UK where water is free, I understand the US and other places can't/don't drink water from the tap, so maybe it's less of a jump for them if they were buying bottled water before anyway.  But for me it was a shock to come to Thailand and have to buy water, at any cost.

Surprised to hear that these are protected, they're everywhere.  I've seen people throwing a dead one in the back of a truck, presumably to eat.

Maybe you ate some that wasn't quite ripe.  When it's ripe or overripe it has a strong taste not like any other, but when it's not ripe it can taste a bit bland.