RamenRaven

I've heard from a farang friend here that the Thai government is actually subsidizing pickup trucks for Thai buyers. I wonder if this is true.

How else would car dealers be able to sell these huge pickups to all the khao man gai vendors out there? If you were a khao man gai vendor in the UK or US, chances are you'd be denied a car loan for a huge pickup.

The biggest reverse culture shock for me:

Every time I see a fat, balding, old white man, he is ALMOST ALWAYS with a white woman of nearly the same age, weight, and type of appearance. He might be with 2-3 children and a grandma too. A rare sight in Thailand.

Every time I see a middle-aged white guy, there is no short, dark Thai wife following him! What?!

Old Farangs are usually couples who haven't traveled outside the US except perhaps to a few Latin American countries on brief vacations. Grandpa and grandma look like George HW Bush and Barbara Bush, not Donald Trump and the Thai version of Melania Trump.

Farangs everywhere are 50% male, 50% female of all ages! How is that possible?

Why aren't all Farangs old balding men?

Why are so many Farang men skinny and working out?

Why are the younger ones not all wearing huge backpacks?

Where are the Brit and Aussie and German accents?

Why do they all suddenly appear to be normal sized and not like gigantic, brutish Neanderthal giants towering over 4-foot-tall Thai women?

Why are so many decent-looking men paired with mediocre-looking women, instead of vice versa?

What's going on?

- Mean cops. Once in Thailand, I was with a friend who just drove right pass a police checkpoint with stopping, even though the police waved us down to check for something. Nothing happened. The police didn't follow us and it was as if nothing had happened! Now if this were in the US ... 4-5 Ford Victoria's would be following us, sirens blaring, guns and tasers pointed at us. We'd be slammed to the ground, handcuffed, taken to the county jail, booked, and careers ruined with a permanent record.

- Me at the USPS post office: "How many kilograms is that?" Post office lady: "Sir, we use pounds here."

- Me at the bank: "Can I get some US dollar bills?" Bank teller: "Sure no problem, I guess you mean $100 bills."

- Restaurant waiters using smartphones and tablets to take orders. Never seen that before!

- People getting extremely addicted to their smartphones. Their faces are pasted onto their phones everywhere they walk.

- Being about to walk and run around everywhere without being chased by dogs. Most of the time.

- Abnormally sterile streets. No street vendors! Hardly any pedestrians!

It seems like for many of us, we have nowhere to go. Recently, there are wildfires all over Canada, the US, Australia, and even in Greece. The world is burning up. Looks like only Antarctica is left?

On 9/29/2018 at 5:33 PM, 55Jay said:

Yeah, I've known a few guys like you - lithe, fit runner's body. 

 

Have you tried any those shakes/drinks (or whatever) weight lifters use to bulk up? 

 

Protein shakes are used by bodybuilders, but I haven't really heard of endurance athletes using them.

The main issue is how to counter the barriers against weight gain due to the intense Thai heat and humidity, as well as the low-calorie food. (Yes, athletes think that calories, sugars, and sodium are absolutely critical for survival!)

Swimmers, runners, cyclists, rowers, bodybuilders, and other athletes who engage in extremely vigorous exercise will talk about how to stuff more calories in their diet, not less. Go onto their forums, and you will see lots of threads on "carb-loading" and increasing caloric intake. 3,000-4,000 calories per day is quite typical for such athletes. Some marathon runners burn more than 5,000 calories everyday. Michael Phelps is famous for his 12,000 calorie diet. And some football players consume somewhere between 5,000-9,000 calories everyday. Monstrous amounts of calories are burned everyday. Eating tons of calories is easy to do so in places like the US, but not Thailand if you are living on the local diet and in the local culture.

I eat a lot and am fine, but am slowly losing weight on my already thin frame, like maybe a kilo every few months. My body might soon start to burn off muscles instead of fat if this continues, so that's why I'm trying to buff up some more.

Maybe high-calorie late night snacks (mac and cheese? milk?) can help a bit. I'll be experimenting with different methods to try to gain some weight.

I'm shaped like these guys in this video. I'm sure they'll find it hard to subsist on local Thai food and tiny Thai portions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXa-f6AYpCg

I counted calories and figured that I eat nearly 3,000 calories, and sometimes a bit more, everyday. That would fatten up shorter sedentary people, but isn't enough for me. In order to gain weight, I would need 3,500-4,000 calories. That's very easy to do with Farang fast food back home, since a 1,000-calorie meal is a piece of cake (pun intended) to chow down in Farangland with the large portions, cool weather, and calorie-dense treats. Not so easy to cram in 4,000 calories in Thailand.

I also live in a small mooban just south of Chiang Mai where there are no Western restaurants or fast food outlets nearby.

I run and bike up steep mountain trails and work out a lot, so I require a lot of energy. Currently I'm quite lean and healthy, but I'm just trying to figure out a way to not lose any more weight. Weight loss creeps up slowly on me like how weight gain creeps up slowly for some of you guys.

18 minutes ago, ezzra said:

Hey buddy, your problem is by far the problem of a very few, while the most of us trying very hard to shed unwanted kilos here you come with how to add kilos, maybe you should try to ask this question on websites in N. Korea Haiti, Zambia, Chad and similar places.. ????

Or check out upcountry Northern Thailand and Isan. Impoverished Thais can be far skinnier and sicklier than me! They often have liver disease and parasites. I don't and currently have no major health issues.

How do you gain weight in super hot, humid tropical Thailand? I now have visible ribs and collarbones, with very bony forearms, and my BMI of 19 is borderline underweight, despite eating twice as much as the average Thai - and hence getting stares and weird comments from Thais. Even a Thai girl called me a walking skeleton.

I do a lot of biking and running. It's part of my endurance athlete lifestyle in Thailand. I'm also a young, ectomorphic tall guy (185 cm) with a fast metabolism.

I used some caloric needs online calculators, and they say that I need 3,000-3,500 calories just to maintain my weight. For some, that's actually kind of hard to do in Thailand even if you have a lion's appetite.
 

Some of you may be a bit jealous at first, but keep in mind that this means you have to eat like a pig and still be a walking skeleton. Thais, who are generally short with slow metabolisms, usually eat teeny-tiny portions and will kind of stare at how I eat 2-3 times as much food as they do in one sitting.
 

Here is why it's hard to bulk up in Thailand, which is totally geared towards making you skinny:

• Hot weather means you have to drink LOTS of water all the day. You feel bloated and full all day from all that water, which prevents you from eating quality high-calorie foods. And I can't drink too many sweet drinks, since overly sweet stuff makes you even thirstier. Soda is hardly a thirst quencher in hot, humid Thailand.
• The intense heat decreases appetite.
• Very tiny portions everywhere. Back home, these portions would be filling only for anorexic girls. No strong, well-built farang guy can possibly survive on such portions, unless they order 2-3 and get funny looks from bewildered Thais. Thai street food portions are only half or a third as big as Farang portions. Fatter farangs tell me that small portions are good for you, but that's a curse if you're a high-calorie needs guy.
• Everything is low calorie. That's good if you're trying to lose weight, but is really frustrating if you're trying to bulk up. Veggies everywhere, som tam, watery soups, noodles don't give you that much energy. Getting 2,000 calories per day with Thai food is not that hard, but 3,000-3,500 calories with Thai food is difficult. Eating large quantities of white rice seems to be the only efficient way of getting in all those calories.
• All that chili pepper definitely limits your food intake.

What's even mysterious is how portly and big many of the Farang expats are. In this anti-fat environment with low-energy food and infrastructure built for midgets, how is it possible for so many Westerners to be very fat instead of very skinny?

In Chiang Mai, schools have been passing out big boxes of free milk. But many Thai kids may just feed their dogs and cats with that milk, since they prefer junk sugary drinks over real milk.

By Western standards, Thais are still incredibly short. From my personal observations of people in Chiang Mai markets, most Thai women are in the 140-160 cm range, while most Thai men are in the 160-170 cm range. People in shopping malls and in middle-class Bangkok areas will be taller than that. Many middle-aged and older Thai women are about as tall as 10-12 year old Western schoolgirls.

But I don't think their short stature is all due to poor nurture. Thais and all of their Southeast Asian neighbors seem to have short genes. Thai guys top out at about 180 cm when nourished properly, but Dutch guys will top out at 190-195 cm.

Short height is also an adaptation to the hot tropical climate and history of rationed food portions in agricultural societies with limited resources. Smaller bodies mean lower metabolic rates and more heat tolerance. Bigger bodies mean more calories needed just to keep yourself alive while sleeping, and much less tolerance to hot weather. I know because I'm a tall guy who has to eat twice as much as the average Thai person simply to prevent myself from starving, and sweat more than Thais even after years of living here.

On 9/25/2018 at 9:03 AM, Samuel Smith said:

They cut the trees back after harvesting.  Plenty to burn.  As different fruit ripen throughout the year, there is always plenty to burn, pretty much all year.  Obviously, we don't get the cr@ppy smog all year, but if you climb to a high point overlooking Chiang Mai, there is always a smoke haze visible, unless there's been a lot of rain.  Car fumes 24/7 365 days a year too.

Chiang Mai has mostly rice fields and longan orchards. Smoke corresponds to harvest seasons and in the weeks following the harvests themselves. Many locals will start burning the tree branches as firewood for cooking fuel, since they can save on natural gas.

Longan orchard areas: smoke is worst in August and September

Rice field areas: smoke is worst in the winter

This is LOCAL smoke that won't drastically affect official PM readings in the city center. If you use an air quality measuring device, you can see local smoke from your neighbors' burning would cause the AQI (air quality index) to shoot up to way over 1,000, which is way worse and far more suffocating than the general widespread haze in March and April, which generally sees air quality readings in the 100-200 range. As a resident in the longan orchard areas, this is why I can easily survive March and April, but will completely suffocate when tree branches are being burned by the local pyromaniac farmers.

On 9/26/2018 at 10:34 AM, LolaS said:

do you have any foto to prove this? or are you telling me I am making things up?

Drive around the outskirts of Saraphi around 4-5 pm, with your windows rolled down, away from all the new condos on the main roads. Most of the smoke is south of the Chiang Mai Outer Ring Road. There is smoke everyday, everywhere.

On 9/17/2018 at 8:46 AM, LolaS said:

where did you find smoke in this time of year?

All over the southern outskirts of Chiang Mai, like Saraphi and southern Hang Dong. This is local burning that makes local air quality readings shoot up above 1,000, rather than more widespread smoke that covers the entire valley and results in air quality readings of only about 100-150.

The burning should stop in a few weeks after the longan harvests are over.

What kinds of air purifiers and air conditioners do you guys recommend for getting rid of the noxious Chiang Mai smoke?

My house does not have air conditioning at the moment Looking to install something to rid the smoke in my second-story office so that I can function during the afternoons.

5 hours ago, eyecatcher said:

If thats your September moan, the March moan will be an epic.

I easily lived through March, because the smog was actually quite spread out and comes from other districts.

The difference now is that the fires are all within a 5 km radius, so the smoke is very thick and heavy. Farangs living in air-conditioned downtown Chiang Mai condos are not likely to notice this. Try living in a typical local house (no A/C) in rural southern Chiang Mai province or Lamphun province.

It's September now, but burning is happening everywhere. In southern Chiang Mai, by the Lamphun border area, there are many longan orchards where tree branches and other organic matter are burned daily, usually around the afternoon. I am dismayed that not only March and Songkran have this kind of burning, and that apparently August and September see a lot of burning in Chiang Mai too. I don't know when this will stop. When I drive my motorcycle around the area, I see a different fire being lit about every 1 km or so. Not wearing glasses would result in itchy, irritated eyes. Of course, the smoke would also cause hacking and coughing. Absolutely atrocious.

Chiang Mai farmers do open-air burning for various reasons, including...

1. Clearing the fields of post-harvest organic matter (straw, branches, and so forth) and to rid the fields of weeds

2. Burning trash because they're too poor (or cheap) to pay for the weekly trash service that comes every Monday

3. Burning random stuff to get rid of mosquitoes in their houses, since they don't want to get proper mosquito repellant

4. Burning piles of sticks when someone dies

5. Open-fire cooking, including making muu yaang (barbecue pork)

Am I missing anything else?

The locals are addicted to burning. It is the Lanna panacea for all of their problems, but causes huge problems for us. Work, exercise, sleep, and all sorts of daily activities become very difficult under such conditions.

I am sick and tired of this constant burning.

Everyday from 2 pm - 6 pm, smoke fills my house, which has no air conditioning, and I cannot work on my computer anymore. This is negatively affecting my work and income, since I work from home doing computer work. I have to close all the windows, which makes the house unbreathable with hot, suffocating air. I would usually leave the house during that time, or take a nap. To deal with this, I've tried working at night and during early mornings, which has messed up my circadian rhythm.

What is the best solution to deal with this? What kinds of air conditioners and/or air purifiers would you recommend to get rid of all the noxious smoke?

Weight is often linked more to lifestyle rather than just diet and exercise.

Timing matters a lot. Don't eat at least 2-3 hours before bedtime. Large breakfasts and lunches and small dinners are the way to go.

Sleep is important, since it raises the amount of calories you burn during the daytime by making you more well-rested, active, and alert when you're not sleeping. Get at least 7-8 hours of sleep per day.

10 hours ago, BritManToo said:

Japanese and Thai men seem to wear the same.

Have you never been to either country?

What are you talking about? Have you ever seen Thais dressed like the above? I don't see middle-aged Thai men wandering around everywhere with knee-length white socks and funny hats.

Thai  and Japanese guys generally try to make themselves look less touristy. Polo shirt, khaki shorts, sport shoes or flip-flops. Asian guys have styles highly distinct from old-man Farang styles.

Thais often have trouble telling Farangs apart, thinking they all look the same.

This thread can serve as a nice introductory tutorial to helping them see how Farangs might differ from each other:

"How to tell Farangs apart 101"

Introducing: the one and only Farang uniform

Knee-length white socks

Oversized sandals

Khaki shorts highlighting hairy legs with freckled red skin

Hawaiian shirts, partially unbuttoned, accentuating pot belly

Funny brimmed hats

Cheap trinkets around the neck

Fuzzy hairy bodies and faces

Fanny pack

Oversized old-man glasses

Cheap analog watch

Hansum man!

Do NOT EVER take any weight loss pills and injections in Thailand. Many of them work by using dangerous substances to dehydrate your body, which is extremely unhealthy and dangerous. They do not burn fat, but rather water. I know one Thai woman who took weight loss pills for a few days, and ended up with an extremely dry throat and dizzy head. She promptly quit afterwards and refused to take anymore.

Thailand now has a big running boom going on, so join the fun if you want to get in shape. Exercise is a far more efficient and healthier way to lose weight in a good way. Som tam diets are also a good way to lose weight.

Actually, he is completely right. Reproduction and mating rituals are essential parts of nature. Every single little critter does these things in the forests and beaches of Chonburi. 100% Thamachat!

Wish I had your problem.

A Thai girl keeps calling me a walking skeleton. Looks like everyday is Halloween for her!

But it's because I'm an endurance athlete with big strong legs and a thin upper body. Lean but healthy. My BMI is just under 20, whereas underweight is below 18.5.

People in poor rural areas of Thailand are used to seeing walking skeletons, so I look completely normal to them. In big cities with many overfed balloons, a few Thais would say I'm on the skinny side.

Would you rather be called a skeleton or pig? ?