LaosLover

That Northern Thai restaurant is called CHUM Northern Kitchen. I went 3 times.

I like Carrot Coffee Bar, down a side soi. They just painted a carrot on the window. They're hopefully selling Carrot tee shirts for 300 baht apiece. I may get one. Shouldn't you be emulating these people instead of dissing them? All Thai clientele on my handful of visits.

200 baht coffee = Satan, am I right? There's a no-name Northern Thai restaurant in a little house to the right of the DeLanna Hotel, where I killed a happy week. The quality and range of stuff like N. Thai dips is diverse at the levels of a 5* river place, but for a third less. To the left of the De Lanna, check out the avocado toast at the 420-friendly Zhong Cafe. Isn't avocado toast the national dish where you come from? The Writer's Bar retains the old lighting fixtures and bar, a good happy hour and an -A minus Thai menu. The fern forest bar would be a sweet date meet up spot. That whole street leading up to it is full of cheap Thai plastic chair restaurants. The one with a giant Panda outside is a good one.

A quick google says Cigna offers health insurance in Thailand to people "80 and beyond". My income is too high to get cheap medicaid so with the supplemental insurance I'm saving $60 a month by being here and with a lower deductible. My wife's insurance here (age 59) is $300. In the states, it was $1,500. Yes, $1,500 a. month. When we factor in other medical expenses and skipping state income tax, those costs alone more than cover our living in Thailand, not even allowing for 20 baht pineapples. We are American health care refugees.

And this is a problem, why? I had a friend who went to Albania looking for good looking women who were, uh, open-minded and he was told that they were all in Frankfurt. Substitute Pattaya and you get my drift. Also, the Albanian stay at homers were all pretty religious and straight arrow. Poss a similar dynamic in Issan. First rule of fishing is to go where the fish are, I mean the fish you actually want. Can't fault your opinions otherwise. Nong Khai is a uniquely beautiful little town. I agree that the other towns are samey. Ubon has a sliver of a downtown like Chiang Mai and that's why I rate it as my fave Issan town. You seem to have a real appreciation/affinity for Issan. Would you consider learning Issan Thai and settling there long term? When you have the ability to stay in one place for a while, that's when the good 'uns would surface. Your pics are great. Personally tho, I could not be dragged to another Thai waterfall at gunpoint.

My own memory has a habit of airbrushing out the discomfort of the early travel: the mosquito's of the squat toilets, the meals when you'd just point at some bit of pork-gristle and hope for the best, the non-arriving bus (forget a mini-bus), the rock-hard mattresses. I'm grateful to have had those rawer years; at 70, I'm grateful to have the option to travel a different way these days. I am grateful for the middling 7-900 baht hotel option. What I miss -what the young are missing but don't know it- is the shock of discovery, the mystery of this place slowly revealing itself. I joke above about auditioning my grilled cheese sandwich on Youtube a week before having it. I'm staying down in the Rattanakosin section of Bangkok now, surely the most well walked over part of Thailand (and not that far from Khao San Road, either). Google maps and Mark Weins insure that every single meal I eat is at least pretty good. Within 5 minutes walk of the Siri Oriental Hotel, there's a one-dish restaurant selling pork brains. How do I know that? Google maps has pork brain reviews; all 5*. I have traded (or had traded for me by progress) the serendipity of the pork brain experience for easier access to the pork brain experience. It's a fair trade off. I could easily not look at the internet and stay in a bad hotel to recreate my youth. And yet, I do not. But there's still plenty of mystery to be had in Rattanakosin. A guy selling a Nang Kwak statue on the street with some old broken lighters speaks a little English. A sukiyaki restaurant is still not on the map -and begging me to Google-review him to get him on the map. There's a lot of narrow alley ways here to walk down -and this is a rare place on earth where you can walk down an alley and not fear getting hit over the head. I don't have to ferret mystery out of this place, it's always just a few yards away. Whether someone takes a chance on the alley stroll or the pork brains is down rare temperament. I'll bet the same small % of the young do as when I was young and it's the same for my own age cohort. And I'll bet that if you go back to Ko Tao, you'd find your own pork brains and alley ways, and not just disappointment and longing. I say do it today before the hordes return. It didn't get ruined or commercialized, the locals just finally got to make a little bit of money.

I shopped around and couldn't beat Cigna. I'm 69, my insurance costs $500 a month with a $3K deductible So that's what your future looks like. Comparable insurance in the states (w/o medicare) would be three times that.

Yeah, I think so. Not a lot of traffic on it at the moment.

I first went in 85. NYC had its first Thai restaurant (a diner) and Lonely Planet had released its yellow cover Southeast Asia guide. I was hooked for life. Airfare was a thousand dollars, pretty much like it now. But a thousand dollars then meant saving up and not doing stuff like seeing The Rolling Stones. People thought I was insane, and possibly Buddhist.

If it's your first trip to Thailand, that's a really great trip. When I was their age, I was lucky to go to the beach, let alone The Beach.

This is your most you-post ever. I'm gagging laughing that you think the color of your shirt can put you over. As for me, who my wife calls Alpha-Chad, my voice is (at best) mid range and my tee shirts are black. I'm def well above average on comedy and money. Confidence I could give 2 you-know-whats about. IDGAF will take you much farther than confidence. But it has to be for real.

If she's a feminine girly-girl to begin with, then you can encourage more of the same. If she's not, skip the goofy red shirt-wearing and implausible Clint Eastwood eye-squinting. As my dad said, you shoulda stayed in bed. The idea that you can conjure this up with game goes back to old movies where the lead says to his secretary, "Miss Jones, please take off your glasses and let your hair down" -and is as believable. I have that kind of relationship with my (white) wife. Sex roles are sharply delineated for our pleasure. To get that from a strong woman, you have to make a real investment. And I'm not talking about $$$.

Well then, fair enough. But retorting HAHAHA! is on the demented side. A little tightly wound, huh? As long as I'm here, how does being a Trumpie go down on average in the mostly lefty expat pop.?

Um, why didn't he pardon these losers when he could? Another fund raising scam in the making. You notice no names of people he supposedly helped or cancelled checks have forthcoming. And no publicity of when these stinky polyester tee shirt wearers supposedly showed up at Mar A Lago. Trump doesn't write checks for his suckers -ever. They send to check to Him -always.

Coming to Thailand just because it's cheap is like going to France for the French fries.

Yeah, another brit enjoying the physical security of the special relationship while hoping the US fails.

Like most people, I prefer pics with people in them.

Nah, back now down by CM night market. Pai was great for gym, yoga, and meditation. All within a half a kilometer. Terrible spliff; like what I used to get in high school. Doubt I'll smoke again in Thailand. Sparky, your pics are great. You have a gift for composition.

I moved to Thailand from Trumpland. To run away from politics.

Real American conservatives hate gun control, abortion, gays, and ANY kind of socialized medicine -even if it's one that's just not up to your liking. They're not big on benefits of any kind. You, meanwhile, complain (probably reasonably) about your pension constantly. If conservatives were like you, an educated isolationist, I'd have one foot in that camp. But they're not. So yes, conservative people in Britosphere countries are moderates by US standards. And very liberal on social issues and the right to healthcare. Since you know that Daddy will never abandon you, you like to make a theatrical show of Daddy-defiance. Whatever.

And I AM American. And saw Muddy and Wolf live. All time best live was Otis Rush.

Not offended, and my mental health is fine. If you are so sniffy in the face of an only slightly diff opinion, maybe you're the one who wants to see a therapist. There's a blues thread here every couple of months, which does put it in the beat to death category -which again is fine by me. Next up: pro forma Stevie Ray reverence.

Nice to see Sleepy La Beef get a nod. He used to come up to NYC and play 3 hour sets, telling jokes and stories, and doing stuff like a 20 minute Hank Williams medley that kept crashing into his Chuck Berry medley. But as great as the blues are, I'd be good to not hear them much ever again -and that goes triple for played to death songs like Honkey Tonk Women. It was of its time, that time is gone and we're now well into the Hotel California range of please make it stop. As Hank W himself posed as a musical question: How can I miss you if you won't go away?

Excuse me Kancha-troll, but why do you even care? Are you even American? Do I get upset if some loser in the britosphere gets in trouble? Is it a heady man-crush for the guy with a gold toilet who views you as something he would scrape off his shoe? He love you long time.

If you're a true conservative -not a goofball, lying opportunist- the very cornerstone of your iffy and shaky belief system is being tough on crime. Sometimes tough on crime? No, as I've relentlessly heard on Fox News, ALWAYS very tough on crime. Why can't righties remember even the most basic parts of their made up in the shower script?