JensenZ

I'm quite familiar with the Pasay area too and have walked around there myself. I specifically mentioned Tondo as a place not to walk. I didn't mean to say you'd get mugged everywhere you walked, any time you walked, but if you did, you might not be writing about it here. It could happen on your next walk. Most people are like you when they go there - happy go lucky - everyone is friendly blah blah, not realizing the dangers lurking around them. I've lived in Valenzuela (Metro Manila) - that's a very rough area. Also I lived in Cavite for nearly a year. A foreign businessman with plenty of money was kidnapped there, nearly didn't make it out alive. I know the story well as my gf at the time used to work for him. My gf from there was kidnapped when I was in Australia. They demanded cash. It was probably a staged kidnapping by my gf and her familiy. She even had injuries to show me. I prefer to be around Thai people. I don't like people in public being too friendly and familiar - it's normally just a ploy to get something from you. You want to hear something strange. My wife is Filipino and she doesn't like Filipinos very much (lived in Thailand now for 18 years) - had too much trouble with them. My lawyer in Pattaya is married to a Filipino for over 30 years. She speaks and reads fluent Thai. When she's out and about and comes across Filipinos (quite a few here in Pattaya) she pretends she is Thai. I asked her, who gossips more? Thais or Filipinos? The answer - Filipinos. When you've been married to Filipinos, and you've lived in the provinces, experiencing the real deal, you learn a lot you'd never know about as a casual visitor. Trust me on this - they are not as nice as you think they are.

You were living a very sheltered life. Their advice not to go anywhere alone confirms the ever present dangers. One of these dangers is the possibility of you hooking up with another lady. There are many areas in the Philippines where you probably wouldn't survive a walk on your own. At the very least, you'd be mugged. Try walking around Tondo in Manila. Of course there are safer and more dangerous areas, but overall, it's MUCH more dangerous than Thailand. It's not even close. One time I was talking on my cell phone and a guy ran up to me and grabbed it from my ear. I chased him around the corner and a gang pulled a gun on me. Another time I was extorted by the police, which ended up costing me 250,000 pesos. (an ex-gf told the police some lies about me and they jailed me with no charge. Had I not paid, I could have been there for months, even years). That was the month I moved to Thailand. I could write a book about my adventures in the Philippines over the many years I lived there and I've lived all over the islands. Life in Thailand is boring by comparison, and that's the way I like it.

There's no problem changing from one agent to another, in fact I did that this year. I got a better price. The "full price" you speak of is the cost of getting a new O-visa after entering on a visa exempt stamp if you left Thailand without a re-entry permit. Who would do that?

They didn't dump some infant. It was their own baby, one she carried for up to 9 months. My sister-in-law had a baby die at birth about 15 years ago. She has a name and she still visits her grave to mourn every year on her birthday. To think this couple dumped their baby in a pile of garbage is hard to fathom. If this story doesn't make you tear up, you're not human.

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Please don't presume to speak for everyone. I'm sorry to hear you've had such a bad run - could you be the problem? I'm doing fine in a 20-year relationship. No complaints at all.

Do you bring them around to your home? That's a no-no in my book - a big mistake. Don't get personally involved with bargirls and keep it entirely professional. Pay for your service, get your service and leave. The less conversation the better for both of you. Generally they become very annoying if they become familiar and start talking about their personal lives. They aren't the slightest bit interested in you or your personal life, which is fine. Don't try to make it something it can never be.

Rich people are usually rich because they take care of their money, and don't throw it around as you're suggesting. The only exception would be if the owner inherited his money and didn't give a damn. Complaining about the cost to repair a Rolls is pathetic. No one would be surprised at the repair bill, especially when all the parts are imported at huge import duties and taxes.

Of course they might if there are no balconies.

Let's put this into perspective. There are plenty of very fine women in Australia and the USA, but they will not be interested in elderly men. It's what you can get, not what you can see, that counts.

They were lucky not so sustain injuries. Grabbing the skate board and marching him out of there would not be considered violence. I was not suggesting they beat him up.

You go first. We need to know what your wife said. Why did she marry you?

I lost respect for the 3 cops. It was pathetic display of incompetence. They allowed him to keep swinging his scateboard at them when it would have been a piece of cake to take it off him, put him in an armlock and march him out of there. Those cops need to go back to training.

The majority of the Thai public will buy it. They are not trying to convince tourists and weed smoking expats on AN that cannabis has this effect on people. There's some sort of policital campaign by the media and some politicians to blame everying on cannibis to have it banned. Once it is banned, they can go back to blaming everything on the true culprit - yabba.

That's nonsense. They would have done what any sensible police would have done - taken the skateboard off him (which would have been easy) and handcuffed him, afterwhich they could have had their "conversation" in a private room.

You really have a point with tourists, depending where they come from. Most countries drive on the right, and one of the big problems when converting to the left is looking the wrong way when crossing traffic and intersections. It takes a long time to adapt completely to the other side to the point of it becoming instinctual. You often see tourists sauntering across a road while looking the wrong way. Of course the Scottish guy who was killed doesn't have this excuse, but it is a problem for many tourists.

The reason you gave up riding motorcycles is the reason most people use them - the convenience of getting through traffic quickly rather than spending hours in an airconditioned car on roads that resemble parking lots... and burning up fuel that costs the equivalent of milk. My last 3 liters cost 150 baht, more than I pay for milk.

The danger statistics for Thailand's roads is completely distorted. It does not factor in the percentage of motorcycle usage on its roads. Thailand has the highest motorcycle usage in the world, with 87% of its population using motorcycles. It's followed by a few other SEA countries, with Vietnam at 86%, Indonesia at 85% and Malaysia 83%. All other countries, and especially Western nations are WAY behind. Top 7 countries with highest motorbike usage

The OP should definitely look in the mirror and ask the questions: "would anyone find me attractive?" and "if there was no money transaction, who would want to **** me?" I do look in the mirror and see an aging 64-year-old that wouldnt have a lot of options if I was broke... and I'm in good shape for my age, but it's not enough to get any sexy young things excited. Maybe the OP's wife is expecting a divorce at some point, so she puts out so he can't use that as grounds for divorce. She most definitly has grounds for divorce and would be in the driver's seat in any judicial divorce proceedings.

Losing purchasing power due to exchange rate fluctuations is part of the cost of living abroad. There's no point waiting around for an exchange rate to improve as that might never happen, and in many cases never does. In the 17 years I've lived in thailand, the exchange rate has fluctuated between 39 and 29 baht for the USD.

I agree! Not being able to compete is too ****** bad. In my case, I had the accident at age 23 when I was trying to compete in Olympic Lifting. Plans change - it's life. In my friend's case which I detailed earlier in this thread, the surgeon actually admitted to a mistake, and his 2nd operation was free. To the surgeon's defence, they are human and make mistakes, or perhaps, not succeed to the level they expected. In the OP's case, it's quite possible they did the best they could do and he wasn't happy with the outcome. After serious smashes one can't expect to be like brand new again.

It's just over an inch (2.54 cm), so not really a big deal. I'm probably that much shorter on one side and a lot of people are lopsided. It's not so easy to measure due to hip misalignment.

I'm of similar mind, after reading this story. I had a serious motorcycle smash 40 years ago. I broke the femur into 3 pieces, my tibia (same leg) and my left ulna and radius. Anyway, all my life I've had to live with a small percentage of disability (limited rotation in the arm, a bit of a limp in the leg) and they make it impossible to compete in sports, but overall I get around OK and never felt sorry for myself. I still hit the weights pretty hard and do plenty of cardio. Looking at the bright side, maybe they did this guy a favour - taking him out of a very dangerous sport.

You've missed the point here. He had surgery, just wasn't happy with the result. Same with my friend, who had plenty of insurance, but they still f**** up his leg. Obviously the insurance company won't pay for further surgery, which is basically elective surgery.

I'm sure my friend would have gone back to the UK had he known the best surgeons in Thailand were going to mess up his leg. By the time he had it checked out in the UK, it was beyond repair, and that was an assessment by UK surgeons.