LaosLover

Just did biz in Chiang Mai with CMX Insure (Andy). For a 70 year old with 10K deductible it was about 5K a year via Cigna. Compared to American Medicare, that's a bargain. This price excludes treatment in the states. He said that Thai insurers are more likely to toss you off when you get to 75, and international insurers less so. The upwards of 75 market is always in flux, but someone will prob always want that biz -at a price. If a hospital visit is pre-authorized, Cigna will pay the hospital directly.

My wife left her phone in a Grab Cab. She went on line to research what to do, and even tho we didn't remember the specific driver, they had an app to relocate her. We called her and offered her a 2K baht reward. We had the phone back an hour after we lost it.

If you went to The Temple of Awareness and the Nong Nooch Gardens, that would be a good family day out.

So many strongly held opinions are wholly made up out of thin air. In the last election, I talked knowingly about Hillary's ground game in Florida. But honestly, I don't really know beyond the broadest of guessing just exactly what ground game is. I have, however, been to Florida.

My opinions are a pile of intractable, useless dead wood, mostly. So any opportunity to off-load one of them is always welcome.

True, if you want to eat at a decent restaurant on a Saturday night, you need to reserve around Thursday. A lot of people come up from Bangkok to party in Nimman these days.

Old Mel Brooks joke: "My wife in the divorce was like Hitler saying 'all I want is Czechoslovakia".

Skipping to the end: "Blah, blah, blah -USA is the #1 undisputed world leader that sorts out the big jams. Europe is there -as always- to "help". "We don't like being completely irrelevant hangers-on, but we are too cheap to buy our own tanks in sufficient numbers to protect ourselves. We don't like Russia, but without the USA, we'd already be standing in it." "Daddy provides, but Daddy is MEAN. Boo Daddy".

Biden - Risked getting a bomb dropped on him to stand up for democracy. Trump- Cowered in his bunker (his bunker) when a few dozen protestors showed up at outside.

I've been listening to a lot of techno music (now called psytrance) in preparation for a visit to Ko Phagnan's Full Moon Party. I've come to appreciate the DJ skill of repetition/tension-building up to the point where they have "the drop", where the rhythm changes and everyone goes berserk. But Disco did this trick better 50 years ago and with better tunes. Jazz musicians were bringing audiences to their feet by blasting harder and faster on the second chorus 80 years ago. The Grateful Dead had a whole career based on this simple musical hat trick. I'm back in my long-running taste for Soul Jazz, which was post-bop players reaching for a little commerciality by mixing in soul/r+b elements and covering songs outside of the American song book canon, like really stretching out on Ode To Billy Joe. To sample this groovy genre, Back At The Chicken Shack is a 20 minute long cut that will have you hitting replay. I'm Part Of The In Crowd by Ramsey Lewis is another Soul Jazz Ear-wormer. Blue Note Records had the best cuts and a Youtube search for Blue Note Soul Jazz can get you lost for days. Then there is Latin Soul Jazz, where say, Mongo Santamaria really beats the hell out Watermelon Man, or Willie Bobo's bongo's thru the orig (he wrote it) version of Evil Ways, or War's 20 minute version of The World is A Ghetto. That's really my preferred flavor, but they didn't make enough of it.

This is like the war on Hillary: She can't even walk, she's near death/She's trying to destroy us all. Just because.

He's senile, but he's a mastermind. No wait, he's but a mere puppet, but he does what he wants. Hmmm.

In my nabe, a lot of decent condo's and serviced apartments are not on google maps. You have to walk around and find them. Call it 20% off by cutting out the AirBnB middle man.

My wife followed The Dead on some legendary tour in the 80's where they played Dark Star. Oh, how they pined and waited for Dark Star. Old City is unique in how un-moribund it is. There are real businesses next door to old wats and many, many purveyors of mango and sticky rice and 70 baht lattes. Having another tourist area outside of that, but very near that, is good for the long term vibe. The world is def homogenizing. Nimman is not far off of Shimotagawa, Tokyo, or whatever the like-place is in Seoul. You have your better crafty night market, your many high mark up dessert restaurant options, and your pedestrianized zone. I feel like I could skip one or two living here. But would I? No. I like an entertainment district if it's not too youth-marketed.

I read that list with great interest. I see like-businesses down every side-soi. As per Britmantoo, quirkiness still abounds, but you may have to walk 5 minutes further to find it. If you want some hanging ferns with your Khao soi noodles for a dollar more, this is your neighborhood. If you want to eat 8 kinds of Northern sausage for 20 baht per skewer from a cart in front of a pot bar, this is your neighborhood. If you want to buy a nice straw hat or a hill tribe-inspred handbag, this is very def. your neighborhood. Low traffic on the side soi's give it a pedestrianized feeling similar to the side lanes of the Old City. The mix of old and young people is unique, even when compared to the Old City. Nimman provides a safety valve of night clubs, pot bars, and shabbu shabbu restaurants that people clearly want, but would be less suitable in the Old City, due to historic conservation concerns and sensitivity about so many wats being so close by. Ultimately, no diff from any restaurant row in the world looking to attract free-spending tourists, like The French Quarter or the East Village of NYC. In such changeable places the wail of 'you should have been here 5 years ago' is never far off. I'm a new arrival and I like Bangkok-level dining choices w/o BKK traffic. Side by side across from my condo are an ancient chicken and rice place that has yet to show up on Google maps and a Japanese sweet toast restaurant. People (including me) like a bit of both when on holiday. I see Japanese people taking chicken and rice pics all day long.

Serviced apartments seems to be that category. They seem a little cheaper than AirBnB since you will tend to deal directly with the property. For me as a new arrival, the first sweet spot was buying a toaster, blender, and Mr Coffee for my hotel room. I'd love to move every 90 days too. My wife likes to dig in for a year at a time, at least.

Thai massage seems very hit and miss: usually a bit blah/boring, sometimes stupidly painful, only very occasionally pretty good. Compared to pricey Japan, it's a C-. No double way is a 400 baht massage here at the quality of a licensed masseuse in the west. Best to catch them in the morning when they still have some attention span and oomph in their hands. But it's dull, dreary work for them. They should let them watch tik tok cat videos while they do it. It's cheap for the same reason the beer is: it's not that great. It's for people who like cheap but not that great-stuff, like the sex trade here. Xanthe above me has it precisely right.

The Old City is well preserved like you remember it. I live in the Nimman section, which has really come up in the world as a dining and pot Mecca since '16 to the extent that I barely go to the Old City anymore.

I'm on my second condo rental in Nimman, Chiang Mai. Both were/are majority-rented out as AirBnB although illegally. I have seen no bad behavior from the short term tenants. I'm a model tenant. As someone who started living here on a 3 month, and then a 6 month lease, where do you draw the line about it being bad? A 30 day rental indicates that a person is either a snowbird or here for a reason and prob being a party animal isn't it. Who are the "real" tenants who will harass someone new they see in the elevator? Thai people? Other westerners? What satisfaction comes from this? People with concerns about housing availability should address that politically, where some change can occur (like in Hawaii). Putting it on the heads of short term renters and yelling at them is crazy.

I see a fair bit of tax when I book a room on Agoda too. Tourist taxes are popular because the taxed complain and moan, and then they votelessly depart. They use the infrastructure, the police, and sometimes the health system, and they are very pluck-able sitting ducks. If it goes to 1,000 baht, are you not going to come here? Tourist taxes and fees are pretty elastic in popular destinations. In Las Vegas, you pay a fee above the room rate and tax, called a resort fee. Basically, it's a charge for using the lobby. The Taj Mahal wants' $70 and there's never not going to be a line to get into it. Can Thailand demand a small premium to visit? I think yes. Expect surrounding countries to start charging soon. In Laos, the famous Pak Ou Caves are in pretty bad shape despite years of admission fees. It's owned by 6 families who rotate taking the revenue on a yearly basis. So when it comes around to be one or another family's turn, they're never quite in the mood for capital improvements. A lot of what we think must be public sites are not in SEA. If it could be credibly demonstrated that my super-inflated Farang price admission to a hot spring was going into a conservation land trust, they could double it as far I'm concerned. Thailand should follow the Bhutan model of milking tourists and providing a pristine paradise. That goes triple for the islands.

There's an ethnic Chinese village up that way that has a good Sat Night walking street with old timers playing their hill tribe music. Mark Weins has a video about it. Reddit Chiang Mai says Pai is very smokey today, whereas here it's perfect.

I'm a newcomer to CM, but the smoke seems very tolerable. Yesterday it wasn't even noticeable. Some mornings you def want a jacket. Where is GT?

I loved it when the Fox lawyers sneered at Dominion as "private equity" opportunists. So now Fox hates private equity? Just like conservative Trump now hates the Chamber of Commerce and The Club For Growth? And now Republicans love Russia? Mind blown.

After Covid and a tepid tourist season, I am in favor of anyone coming over and spending money here. Those very pretty 150 baht mango shakes for instragamers on my corner are not going to drink themselves.

They were thick on the ground in Nimman, Chiang Mai, in the early fall but seem to have wholly vanished. I am neutral, leaning slightly positive, about the Russians I have met in Thailand. Even if they love Putin and are just opportunist draft dodgers, it's still better for them to be adding to the Russian brain drain and general demoralization about the war. No Chinese tourists here either, mostly just Japanese, who everyone loves. It's def still a bit of high season here and good-value hotels need booking about a week in advance -anything in the 1,200-1,500 baht range. The smoke season isn't too bad just yet, and N.Thailand is still packing them in. Was just in Pai. It's still a mecca for Israeli's (which is fine by me) and about 80% full on the weekend. No Russians spotted there either.