LaosLover

Agreed. a 3 bedroom in my old style brutalist concrete building just went for 80K a month. And the tenant paid 2 years in advance. As a comparison tho, to live in a similar place like Soho or Greenwich Village, NYC would cost you 4 times as much. We barely ever leave Nimman; there's enough to keep us happy steps away from our home. We'll not be enticed towards Santiem, even if it only costs 55 baht to get there. Low traffic streets are also worth paying a premium for. Quiet, big tree streets AND a wide range of great restaurants is a very unique setting.

I thought about retiring to The Dark Side due to the sociability factor. If Pattaya were in the States -with girls, or not- it would be a top 10 destination. Many White people want to live in an entertainment district instead of watching corn grow in Issan. Positing that White people in tourist/entertainment areas are somehow inferior to corn growers is nuts.

Among the 10 best films ever made. This is what I'm talking about. Bunuel-level films of art-aspiration.

Have you, as a self-admitted bogan, ever bought a set of Bintang beer coozies?

Yeah, I bought my way out of a lease to be on the "right" side of Nimman Road. Less rentals over here over all. I paid under the table to see my place first. There was a guy still sleeping in the bed. The housing stock is older and less deluxe on this side, but apartments go in an hour, whereas the other side always has vacancies. I sort of have the Manhattan dilemma that I never want to move now that I got into a big 1 BR on a high, odd numbered soi. Most condo's here are 80-90% Air BNB, so it's not a lot of white people to meet. We love our condo floor and we're all planning a bbq together. If a tourist wandered into it, that would be fine.

Do you like low budget art film and foreign films? Have you seen any by a man name Bunuel? But as long as you're here, what's your favorite Oasis song?

I keep hearing that, but in a year here, it seems they pack in during the tourist season, but are otherwise very light. My building is about 80% Japanese Air BNB. Most of the businesses near me are for Japanese people; I have 2 macha tea parlors within 5 minutes walk. We seldom see a non-Jap in our fave sushi, Umai Sushi, or at the American Diner-themed Rock Me Burger next door. J-people love a fake American Diner. That said, most of the good Chinese Restaurants in Chiang Mai are in Nimman, but I don't see many Chinese people eating in them. On the weekends, Nimman packs out with Thai people. White Person Nimman is pretty small, because it's relatively expensive. And they're more in the swimming pool condo's on the Maya Mall side of the road than on our Nimman1 side of the road, which is the low -traffic maze of restaurants and street food and old growth big trees that make it feel bit Pai-ish. White Person Nimman is about having your pick of gyms, smoking local-price pot, and eating out a lot. Can't fault it. Or my brethren on that plan. Any tourist I meet is blind with envy and wants to know rental prices. 98% of the white people I see are here for less than 3 days. They're usually 2nd timers to CM who want something diff from The Old City.

You must like to have a lot of conversations about how much you love som tam. In Nimman, the westerners tend to be older backpackers pretending to be digital nomads. If I were their age, I'd be doing the exact same thing. Japanese instagrammers are ten a penny here. I don't interact, but get a buzz off of their bliss. You seldom see an unhappy face in Nimman.

Did you ever see a foreign film in a small cinema in Australia?

-Inspired by JerryMahoney's Bunuel reference in the RIP Robbie Robertson thread. Any faves? I like Discrete Charm and Belle Du Jour, of course. The Mex stuff is a little dark for me. His kid's film of Robinson Crusoe was great. There was a store in Vientiane that used to sell his box set for $50. And many copies of Diary of a Chambermaid, for some reason. Also: Where would you have seen art film back in the day? What was the cinema like?

I get a lot of mental health benefit from living here, surrounded by guys my age who are NOT currently having a hard life at all. On the contrary, for reasons both wise and misguided, they are usually the happiest they've ever been. It's rare that anyone wants to talk much about the before-time at all. Thailand is like the old French Foreign Legion, where ne'er do wells would sod off to, to "forget".

It staggers on as PoliticalStew (you have to sign up to view it). Many orig. Thorn Tree posters there. It's not bad.

Blade Runner-lite.

Uh, no. I'm not their perfect change-monkey.

I'd pay, but with a 1,000 baht bill. I know how physically painful it is for lower-tier Thai people to have to make change and give up their precious smaller bills. Seinfeld had a bit where a news stand made him buy more stuff to break a $20 bill. But if he had already started eating the candy bar....... Making them break a grand for a 10 baht payoff would likely just get me waved off.

Tried again a few years ago. Back then films could have no plots and get by. Seemed just a bit too spare to bear the last time around.

The lengths he will go to to save 10 baht on the noodles, 100 baht on the room, and see a free for a reason-band on a Saturday night.

I bought a pink latex thing in Japan that looked like a salami with hair on one end -at a moving out sale. It was still in the package, so why not? Best neck pillow ever. Quite the conversation piece. You couldn't go into a store selling hairy salami's -no whities allowed.

BN, look at Curious Sober. Very philosophical, non-punitive approach. And I know you like your self-help on the Australian side.

Can't fault Meridian Brandy from 7/11. Some Soda Water minnow, feels very proper Joseph Conrad-ish to be sipping that while looking at a stupa at sunset from my balcony. Or in some fresh squeezed orange juice. Proper fresh squeezed orange juice from Starbucks, not that sweet tangerine gunk they try to pass off here.

Did you ever go to the Cockney Heaven Pub in Pattaya? That was like The Iceman Cometh, re-filmed by Benny Hill.

Santana names checks and riffs on that song when he plays Oy Como Va live (-which is my most played iTune at 78 plays). Boogaloo -the needed crossover that racism quashed. We now return to our regularly scheduled Gamma programming.

I bought a $100 bottle of Barbancourt Haitian rum in Laos, I had never had the 5* variety. Like a quiet cloud of the cane slow-shifting my mouth. Havana Club Blue Label is still the best alcohol on earth, tho. And a month later, that bottle is still half full (for two drinkers). Why be a pig? I def like about 2-6 alcohol shots a week. If a place has a for-real Lychee Martini, I'm in. Is there a bunch of lychee's soaking in a big jar of vodka behind the bar? Why isn't the Galangal Sour more of a thing? Booze is the most popular food on earth for 10,000 years for a reason.

-Careful, you'll be humming it for a week. Joe Cuba used to sit inside the Salsa Museum in Harlem and shoot the breeze with anyone who wanted to talk. Try that with the less good Beatles.

He keeps yelling, "If you come after me, I'm coming after you". It sounds like an argument in a gay bath house.