LaosLover

If only cargo shorts hadn't been so vilified, the man bag would never have become necessary.

One time I left a Miles Davis playlist on and went out for the day. I came back and thought: This is how it will be. The music will go on, and I'll just be somewhere else. Sadly, prob not wearing a white robe, sitting on a cloud, and hanging out with Jesus and Sinatra. I'll be part of the earth and that'll be it. My broken down elements will eventually create something new, but it's not like that something-new is going to be sending me a thank you-note.

I notice that the oldies here with 15-20 years younger partners all started these relationships when they were a lot less old. Could they get those partners today? Prob not. There's a great NY Times article about the new trend of women very specifically staying single so as NOT to be the caretaker for some old wreck up the road. Fair enough. Women tend to be the ones sandbagged with family caretaking. By age 50, they've had enough, partic if they also had kids to care for and raise. If you're super late to the love-game, expect to pay a higher price for admission to it.

Night life means bars, women, dinner, or some kind of folklore or drag show all over Thailand. I don't consider night markets to be nightlife. If someone eating a mango and sticky rice on the street constitutes nightlife, then going out to McDonalds is a mega-nightlife opportunity too. The idea of some latent, hidden category of previously unknown night life options or undiscovered gems seems unrealistic. But to play along, lots of raves by waterfalls, check pot bars for posters. I live 5 minutes from the Nimman1 one mall which offers lots of little fairs and salsa dancing etc. Look 'em up. Nearby is a roof top sushi bar with a good view. Across from Nimman1 is a little maze of Japanese restaurants worth a look. If you want to meet me for sushi (at night, even), shoot me a pm. I live mere steps from Sushi Umi, which I call the best sushi deal for the money in CM.

Tell me more. These two have been on my list forever (also, Samui). Ko Kut, Ko Chang remain my favorites and Trat is a lovely old teak-woody town to kill a night in, before and after. 'Have Tahiti penciled in for Dec '25, will do a 2-week cruise around all the islands. There's also a one-way cruise between Tahiti and Honolulu where it's straight sea days for a week. For a few thousand more, you can also take in The Easter Islands, which for me would be the ultimate "Why Am I Here?" destination. 'Would love to visit Vanuatu and The Solomon Islands. So many Aussie people rave about Vanuatu and retire there. Toss in an Indonesian Spice Islands Cruise and that would do me (and probably do me for cruising too).

Agreed. The Soprano's, my former #1 show has aged a little creakily. A lot of duff story lines like when Meadow Soprano goes to college. Succession is no-filler. Breaking Bad demanded a lot of patience to stick with. The Wire didn't need that third season.

Cheaper/better to do home detention with an electronic bracelet. Let them go to work at McDonald's etc. Putting baddies together in close proximity never works out. But most people in jail are druggies. Not much you do to help them out with that. I have a friend with a relative who got married twice while in prison to true crime nutters who wrote him. He got an every other month trip to the trailer for conjugal visits. He said that was one bad smelling trailer.

I read that 80% of the people living on cruise ships full time are older, wealthy women. So maybe not.

Fair enough. Couldn't do a 2 months of constant travel any more. More like 4 places in 3 weeks, then call it done for a while. I'd like to travel 20-25% of my time. We like mountains, and more specifically, left-wing type mountains like The Alps, Asheville NC, or Colorado on average. The Himalaya's are hippie, but not left-wing, so a bit on the fence on them. So def some Rose by the glass instead of redneck mountains in the summer and NYC in the Spring. The Upper East Side, of course. Me and my western wife are in a year-long haggle over BKK versus CM. The lease is up in Feb. I'll bet we go one more and then we move to Sathorn/Silom. Due to mental well being and close affinity, BKK/CM will always be our base. Overall, I think being fabulously rich would be classier and more fun in Europe than in the states.

I had a little Tinder-look while I was traveling around in the states. I'm going to guess a 2% swipe-back rate, so about average. I'm 70, no one under 58 responded. You -and they- have to swipe left wildly to get any play at all. So it's a lot of chaff with a few bits of wheat. If I were single, I'd milk the Tinder-cow as best I could (3 boys for every girl on it). It would occasionally yield up a warm body to consider as opposed to the worse success rate of mall-approaches. But if only 2% are even very broadly responsive, it's going to go nowhere 99.2% of the time. Therefore, Tinder fails in its implicit promise of being the girl friend store.

The people who do well in rural life here are (duh) people who really enjoy farming and solar panel-studying. Like everything else, you can have that on the cheap here compared to back home. Moving to the country for a partner usually doesn't work out. Didn't they make this movie one million times? I just left a dozen years of living in The Blue Ridge Mountains; a more spectacular scenery and user- friendly country life experience. Ultimately, I was bored. I meditated in the forest, improved the land, and took care of my wife. All in, not enough for me. I moved to Nimman. I felt like I had been released from a grave, like in Kill Bill. If 70 means the beginning my last so-called good decade, let me spend somewhere with a few sushi bars. At this point, a little nature goes a long way.

Yeah, but it's not. Affordable housing is the responsibility of the government, not individual landlords. Fobbing the problem off on individual landlords is as UNFAIR as corporations dumping pollutants and sticking government with the clean up bill. I recall a neighbor who exposed a brick wall in his apartment and then took the Landlord to court because his apartment was cold. Because exposing a brick wall leaks a lot of heat. In a local newspaper, a neighborhood was praised as being a Mecca for dining due to so many rent controlled building around it with disposable income to dine out. Should individual landlords be forced to subsidize interior design choices, eating out more, and 4 trips a year to Thailand? Should rent subsidies (which is what rent control is) be reserved for families, disabled people etc, or just tipped out of a plane flying over Manhattan for whoever is lucky enough to grab one? I am the most big-government, anti-libertarian person you will ever meet, And yet things sometimes indeed are either fair or un-. Even if you really dislike it when someone points that out. These days, I find myself on the other end of things. I am a liberal, but am suddenly happy to be free of liberal restrictions in renting out my house as an Air BnB. I recall a similar sentiment from the guy in England who I bought my house from -who bought that house with the proceeds from selling a Thatcher-era council flat. Oh, how he hated and gnashed his teeth about Thatcher. I'm glad I'm in redneck no-zoning, no rules land, even tho as a liberal, I love zoning and rules. I studied urban planning in college, so unsurprisingly, I like a lot of planning, which means more rules. But now, a few thousand dollars a month are at stake. Like conservatives and liberals alike, I believe in rules for thee, not for me. Can rent control-milkers not similarly laugh at themselves while in the airport departure lounge to Paradise on someone else's dime?

I'm all for that, but I don't think developers suffer too much in NYC. They regularly renege on providing the public spaces they promise. I'm currently benefiting from a 100% lack of rent control in renting out my house as an AirBnb. It cuts both ways. Not interested in debating rent control. Def interested in how it affects people's ability to be in Thailand, both ways.

Your quarterly (!!!) trips to see your girlfriend are unwillingly underwritten by your landlord via rent control laws. It's not fair. I'm glad it's going your way, but it's not fair. Caveat: My long ago landlord likewise reluctantly underwrote my attempt to have an acting career. Do you worry about rent stabilization going away? As long as we're talking about money issues back home, who here has benefited from rent control and who has felt it's sting as a property owner?

Yeah, I was one of them too. Now laying low in Thailand. May be (after more situps) I'l pretend I was in The Special Forces.

I had an apps date with a woman who showed up looking like Jabba the Hut. She started eating directly off of my plate. Sensing my fading interest, she suggested an, uh, act. All I could think of was the punchline to the classic joke: "Hey, help me find my car and we'll drive out".

True, true, true. With one caveat: they have a guy in their sights who they've already started to move on. Typical tale: My obese sister fell in pretend-love with her son's karate instructor. She started dressing up for karate class drop-off and even attempted half a dozen situps. Open marriage proposed, her hang dog cuck husband accepted. Upshot: Karate-man negs her, Hang dog Cuck shags his secretary -who also tied him up and spanked him with a fly swatter (my sister got the deets). Much wailing and accusing him of betrayal. Open marriage ended. Funny detail: My sister demanded to know what Cuck and Spanker ate before the deed. He said she had a korma. She screeched, "A korma? A korma? that's my dish". To this day, if I'm with my brother in an Indian restaurant and we see a korma on a the menu, we know one of us is going to start screaming.

I'm closing up shop in the states. Just gave away 5 Hermes ties. Moving here is beyond getting the haircut for cheaper. Whole categories of money-burning and the ego problems that go with them just evaporate.

Unless you're Leo Di Caprio, an open relationship never favors the man. Woman can always get attention easier than men. It's women who mostly initiate one. I agree that this post is laying the humility on to thick to be for real.

Within its category, The Mandarin is a steal. Would cost 4 times more, at least, in the west.

In the comment section, A guy who just moved to Ottawa says it costs the same to live in a "frozen turd". Fatuous 'who's to say?'-posturing aside, there are a lot truly crazy prices that are only in New York. I used to tip my doormen a grand at Christmas. It's now $50-$100 to have your door walked. They get a week's dog walking fee at Christmas too. You tip a lot of people in New York. Take a look at a very average sandwich for $29. I've eaten there, but only a $5 cookie. https://www.grubstreet.com/2023/04/29-dollar-ham-and-cheese-sandwich-nyc.html

So if you drive out to Phnom-whatever, how long do you spend at some dusty collection of free standing old columns and what do you do while you're there? Me: 8-10 minutes, and read a few placards.

My OP intent was to highlight all of the stupid stuff back home that we don't have to do: going out for expensive drinking nights, getting emeshed in family $$$ obligations, worrying about your fashion sense, etc. Thailand is not only cheaper, it's simpler. And simpler feeds into the cheapness. A lot of Nyers in that article are dropping a $1000-2,000 on therapy every month. Not many therapy-goers on the site.

The bottle temple is free, it's in Issan, and it's easy to understand. Everything you like. No way should you suffer thru Anger Wat. It's not free, it's not in Issan, and you have to read a book first to know what you're looking at. Don't do it.

Bignok did you ever go to the bottle temple in Sisaket? Maybe more your thing.