LaosLover

Your situation as a solo traveler banging around from place to place and and booking on the fly into lower-end, independently owned small places is a pretty small segment of Thai tourism. I used to do that, it was great. Being married, staying in Noi's Cozy Cottages in Ubon is a distant dream for me, and a fondly recalled one. Slightly off topic, Nimman is a hot rental market. I thought I'd be spoilt for choice, but I'll likely be picking from 2-4 places, at best. At the agency, a brit baldie was hoping to get a condo for $100 a week, on a week to week basis. With a pool. Not doable. Nothing is available for less than a six month lease, prob around $7-800 a month. I found a $150 a month place down a side soi near the night market (with a pool, no less), but it was not wife-able. Hard matresses, barking dogs. PM for details.

It may also be down to the class of the hotel. When I stayed at the funky old Business Inn on Soi 11 off Suk Road, I could get a deal (the usual 20%). Here at the De Chai Oriental Hotel in Nimman with a pool on the roof, they are much less forthcoming. In fact, rates have gone up again since I re-booked. Many people here noted here that places like The 4 Seasons in Chiang Rai never lowered their rates even at the height of Covid. Nimman had pretty full bars and restaurants on Halloween. With Loy Krotong coming up, I couldn't even get into my first 3 choices in The Old City of Chiang Mai. The place I booked for $26 a night 2 weeks ago now wants an extra tenner. Consider a holiday in Siem Reap. Hotels there are about 80% empty. Our driver there said the walk-in discount was 50%. I never saw a place so dead. I spent 3 hours at Angkor Wat and saw maybe 4 other people. To save money, you gotta go to a place where nobody wants to go -which I understand is a you-favorite thing to do.

I was staying for $36 a night in Nimman (booked well in advance), and when I wanted to stay on, it had doubled. And then I paid it. I certainly could have moved nearby to a less nice hotel, but I didn't. My wife is not well, so I just sucked up that extra $108 like a man. I felt no need to cross examine the desk clerk, or counter-offer. Frankly, $36 for this room was a steal. If I average out the two prices, I still got a deal. My experience this trip over is that in nice places, bargaining at the front desk doesn't get you much. I got a 20% discount in one place by staying 10 days, but it required a phone call to the home office. At another, they tossed in a free breakfast. It doesn't seem like the front desk people are empowered to discount much and getting in front of someone who can is usually not possible. They know what they can get from algorithms and experience and I can hardly blame them for trying to get it. The idea of a good hotel bending over backwards to come out 20 baht ahead is preposterous. On their side of things, customer loyalty is non-existent. People book based on price, not warm, fuzzy feelings. I do too.

What if it really doesn't matter much what you do and nobody cares what you think?

Respect for the courage of your convictions. Even as an old horn dog on the wane, I'd still cave and do the fattie, say 90 days out. Maybe that appetite for cheesecake is indicative of other hungers. My (white) wife has def spread out. It's easier to send her to the gym than find a replacement. She's on it, doing aerobics in the pool. Like I said, dating demographics are very local. DC/NYC are famous for being man-friendly. But if you're in a rural area? You better love Jesus and be prepared to really wait for some very blah sex.

-Partic those lucky people writing in from cheapskate paradise where they enjoy all the positive aspects of the place, none of the negative, and can also have their pick of nearby, slightly lesser cheapskate paradises if their latte isn't quite hot enough. I'm looking to move into a Nimman, Chiang Mai nice building this week. It's like Miami without a beach for a fifth the money. When I lived in Mexico City, I was a bit impaired by not speaking Spanish. In Nimman, no Thai, no problem (will start Thai lessons soon in spite of this). After years of reading ThaiVisa moaning and finally moving here, the only explanation for such a reality disconnect I can think of is that day drinking really fries the brain.

Never heard about big east coast Christmas parties. Can we hear more? I'm from New York. I have a friend in DC who's 52 and killing it on Tinder. Like real estate, dating situations vary with the zip code. I tried his account, swiped a few dozen 55+ (I'm 70) and got a 30% swipe back-rate. As he put it, "if you want a decent-looking, arty, liberal, looking woman, you can have a gf in a month." Expecting white woman to have the same genetic weight disposition of Thai women is a recipe for disappointment. Next up: why are black people on the dark side? Philosophical question: White fattie who gets wet for you or Thai beauty queen who never will?

Def would listen to Kinda Blue a few dozen times. I'm going to clock that one at 500+ spins to date. In a perfect world, All Blues is my fade out swan song.

On the other hand, trash-wise, I never had to buy a stick of furniture till I was 35+. One time, I found pretty nice oriental carpets in the trash outside a nice apartment building on Park Avenue. I took as many as I could lift and hailed a cab. Not until I moved to Kyoto were the trash-pickings ever again so sweet. There, they'd leave out a DVD player for the taking, with the remote sanitized and wrapped in plastic. They called furniture trash day Gaijin Christmas.

Born in '53. New York in the 70's was broken, stinky and chaotic, but you could go see Tito Puente in the park, The Talking Heads at CBBG's, Sun Ra in a loft, and Gloria Gaynor at Paradise Garage and still have change from a $20 bill.

If we go out 25 years instead of 20, 3 marriages: one died, one went nuts, the last one is good till the grave. The last 2 years were brutal with money problems and my wife's health problems. The next few look pretty plush in a high rise in Nimman, Chiang Mai. Prob more wine by the glass options here than along Suk Road in Bangkok.

I suggested that here. Much better than slogging thru the original Stoic texts. If you want to read a pretty uneven modern novel that has a lot stoic philosophy in it, try Man In Full by Tom Wolfe. Even in his steep, decades long decline, I love his books.

Peerless customer service, I am a 30 year customer and wouldn't change for anything. Added bonus: They reimburse you a decent exchange rate, not what it says on the ATM screen, partic for baht.

If you're even asking how to find yourself, that means you're already well down that road, a road not taken by many people. Even the simple aspiration sets you well apart. So just keep doing what you're already doing: talking to people, dipping into new idea's, loving and forgiving yourself, loving and forgiving others. You don't need an outside guru or a prison sentence of a long term meditation retreat (unless that's what you like, in which case I say try 3 days first). When I was young, I was very moved by the Springsteen lyric, "take a knife and cut this pain from my heart", but it's not workable. Your heart wants, demands gentler healing. It's not about tramping around in the Himalayas', it's about feeling right. You can only feel right by living broadly right over time. You can't big-experience yourself into that. You have to show up every day, punch the you-time clock, and do the work. As per the joke, wherever you go, there you are. For me, Insight Meditation was a big breakthrough, partic. via Joseph Goldstein's take, of which there are hundreds of free hours on Youtube, along with his many worthy peers's work too. I just listened to a bunch of Lisa Ernst's talks on Soundcloud. A lot of people love Pema Chodrin. These teachers stay true to Buddhist concepts, but reframe them for Western sensibilities. As Big B himself said when asked what people should do when they'd already done everything, "just abide".

I want to hear more about -and then heavily snark on - this touching prison reunion that took place after not seeing this dim witted, tattoo'd miscreant for years. What occasioned this sad, futile trip to jail? What did you expect? What possessed you to want to berate a near-stranger over failing to own a house?

You're here daily giving advice to people living Thailand about living in Thailand. -When you yourself, who would love to live in Thailand, and yet for reasons mostly beyond your control, cannot live in Thailand -either for many, many years to come, or forever. So def take autism poster child Steve Jobs advice to heart already.

If I didn't do the stupid stuff I did, I would have just done other stupid stuff. Probably stupider. At no point was I ever engaged in a dramatic struggle between good and evil -more like between dumb and dumber -a film that could serve as my bio. I def think that way about my bad love affairs; those thankless drones stopped me from being with even worse women. Thanks, gals!

I def wasted a fair bit of it. If only I had been working on a cure for cancer instead. Except......that cure for cancer thing prob wouldn't have really panned out. So same result with zero effort? I win!!!!

Robert Downey Senior had a good joke in one of his ancient indie films. A huge black woman says to a guy, "I dream of you every night". The guys says "Just don't send me the laundry bill".

As Frankie Boyle, the greatest scot of all time pointed out, "It's either a fortnight in Spain or a weekend in Edinburgh for the same dosh, and even the Scots themselves have voted with their feet." In my former Appalachian home, the yearly Scottish games and culture-fest was a massive yearly crush of hard drinking and reveling. They're just behind the Irish for American cultural idolization that stops well short of ever actually visiting. If something like the Black Watch bagpipe band tours, it sells out faster than Pink Floyd. They always stress that the bagpipers will be in full regalia. If you are going to bother to sit thru an interminable bag pipe show with a LOT of Amazing Grace in the mix, you will def want maximum regalia to help you keep awake thru it. Partial regalia? Refund please. England remains a distant third. Really, just a handful of fake pubs in major cities. A major culture without a street fair; only the Welsh are less represented.

I like long suffering wife #2 along for the ride (the 40 years ago ride). Worst date night ever?

No, not directed at you. I was making the point that only the wildly dissatisfied or ga-ga happy tend to leave reviews. But most of life is about merely pretty good spag Bol.

Any proper Buddhist wandering by would point out that the feeling states come and go and you shouldn't over-invest in any of them. I was a bit bored today slogging through reading about England's financial problems, but then less so, and then more so, as I read the article. It comes and goes. All of the time. I am soon out in a car all day looking at Angkor Wat. Some of that time, I will be bored, yes, even while exploring a true wonder of the world. It's just no biggie. I don't blame myself, and I certainly don't fault Angkor Wat -or "The West" for that matter. As an adult, not an adult child, I accept that I will not be maximally entertained during every waking moment.

People confuse over-familiarity with boredom. I'm in Siem Reap, enjoying a typical buffet breakfast spread. They're often very similar. I am again very unsurprised to see a toast convey belt. I am not bored by toast.

Who's rushing to the internet to type, "that spag bolonaise was perfectly adequate"?