LaosLover

I'm American. I need subtitles for Billy Connelly. Picked up his Route 66 book at Lost Books in Chiang Mai. Pretty good, but is there anyone left on BBC who hasn't beaten the Americana/Route 66 thing straight into the ground?

Thanks for the lesson, but I only have so many hours in the day to deep-study Thailand and I have to squeeze in shtupping my wife too.

Yeah, def a scholarly work reworked for a general audience of Thai-ophiles, and quite a readable editing job. Who's going to go to the trouble of writing a serious Thai book just on spec? Even getting published by tiny Silkworm Books is the equivalent of recording for Chess Records instead of a major label. I sometimes feel like I could collate a decent Thai society book from real life accounts of people posting here.

Been to Nahm (great, a little gimmicky), Bo Lan (no sadly closed), Ruang Mahal (single best food experience of my life), Sri Bua (best 5* Thai to date), and Paste (too modern molecular, but stunning), Ministry of Crab (derangedly overpriced), Gaggan (very pretty plates, food merely very good). Down a notch: Gaucho Steakhouse (great, but I can eat a steak at home), Charcoal (modern Indian fusion with a killer brunch; check out Indus too), The Lemongrass House (superb mid priced thai in a nice old house). If you had $100 for a meal that you had to spend, where would you go?

Good point, Globule. Every last thing I've read says that you need to study the written part either at the same time, or alternately as you progress from beginner to intermediate states. That's my plan. But language schools will need a few more westerners accumulating in Chiang Mai before anyone re-opens. Not much pickings in Bangkok either.

I used to live in The West Village of Manhattan and as far as I remember, a Special Master is a leatherman who can deliver the goods on scat play. Oh man, I promised a sensitive sincero here that I wouldn't make any more gay jokes here and I only lasted like 2 hours.

I smell another hilarious grift. The only library in history with no books, just ketchup-stained McDonald's wrappers. I have a junk email account for republican fund raising emails. Every year, I toss some Bible thumping dimwit $5 to keep them on the hook since they all use the same troll-clogged mail lists. Future email from Don Jr: "We need a bazillion dollar library to cause more liberal tears and put the Kenyan's presidential library to shame".

If ONLY all sentences could be handed down along rigid arithmetic formulas exactly to your persnickety liking. But you commit crimes, and then you roll the dice with the judge. Them's the breaks. Anyone with the brains that god gave them knows that entering the capitol building in the middle of a riot is a recipe for legal problems. He didn't force his way in is the militia excuse equivalent of The Dog Ate My Homework.

Can we all at least agree that with those eyebrows and that beard, this sad miscreant is basically dialing 1-800-NeverBoinkMe?

I saw Frenchie from afar. No way. If I have to go with a man, I'm more holding out for someone like the lead singer of ColdPlay. But to get back on topic, if Thai language won't move the woman-needle at all, and if you have no compelling cultural reason, then with learning Thai, the juice is not worth the squeeze. And with the explosion of expat living -not to mention fake global nomads- the world seems to have moved on from you gotta speak the local language mentality.

I'm 69. I still have sex with my wife. That's a small club indeed. As Saint Kenny Rodgers pointed out, You Gotta Know When to fold 'em.

My wife met her. She kept her Frenchie spouse far, far away from us. Which I guess means me.

Seriously, pop over to Vientiane. They have many diff Beer Lao flavors there. Just had an OK Beer Lao IPA here in Pai. Verdict: Beer Lao is a bog standard lager like Stella's or Heineken. But you will find plenty of company-friendly women there, as well as $7 Peking Ducks. And the sushi restaurant at the Intercontinental Hotel where Obama ate (for half off western prices). Obv, open-minded Obama is the only president to ever visit Laos. Your odds, pricing, and general ambience will be ten to one over why-am-I-here KK>

Def hate Banksy. To death. I had a hi-so bohemian GF for about a minute and a half. In Laos. Might be as many as 8 bohemian hi-so women in Laos. And she was a solid 9, looks wise. It was down to my historic preservation project there. Prob not replicable. But we keep in touch yearly in case both our spouses die -one hopes painlessly. So I had my day in the sun and now that ship has sailed, just to mix metaphors.

I'm in Pai after a long stay in Chiang Mai Old City. Both seem moderately busy for a post-covid rainy season. But these are popular places. I'll bet a tourist bound for Ubon finds plenty of discounted hotel rooms. I def think that inflation and heating costs poverty will at lest moderately dent the Euro-arrivals in season. On the other hand, there are the hard core Thai-ophiles like me with pent up demand who are determined to be here. So my very safe prediction is a semi-full Dec/Jan and a steep fall off mid-January.

Gotta agree. The competition for these rare hothouse flowers is fierce. And Asian men -who Thai women seem to much prefer- want them too. The sort of arty, bohemian women I love barely exist here; and they have much better prospects than me. Would Thai fluency improve my odds from zero to snow ball's chance in hell? I'm going to go with a hard no.

I had a near-crippling, inept massage the other day. I suddenly remembered an injury I had, and that was my excuse to bolt from the massage, after handing over the 200 baht. Is this an example of respecting the Face needs of the masseur?

We need (means: I need) to stop leaping like a dimwitted carp into Trump's troll net with his every wacky pronouncement. At this point, he's devolved into the world's saddest pub bore. I will no longer click on any internet story that begins Trump Demands..... Where are the Biden-demands stories? Nowhere. Biden may be merely competently dull, but he not delusional; ie. he's not demanding anything, let alone every single day of the year.

Prob more like a slow economic takeover like in Laos where they turned the northern part of the country into a giant palm oil plantation. In which case, the US would not intervene. Who eats more palm oil junk than Americans?

I'm an American with an American wife who just moved to Chiang Mai, if bad luck ever brings you up here. I hear that CM is as good as it gets for farang-couple-dom, but we def expect to be pretty self-contained in terms of our social needs. Prob some Facebook groups etc are worth a look with limited expectations. I've only been in Thailand a month and have already heard the bringing a ham sandwich to the picnic-joke twice. My wife has read the AsianNow forum at length and I'm not supposed to go to 7/11 alone, lest I get stolen by a size 2 young'un.

I'm interested in the Asian and Thai-specifics of Face, but I also note that some variant of it pops up in most poor places, whether they be Doncaster UK, Port Au Prince, Haiti, or Appalachia.

This is broadly my own approach: Some light/medium fluency for Emergencies and the pleasures of small talk. Partic with Thai men. There def seems to be a strong female bias in terms of English language skills.

Because laughing at hypocritical liars is always great fun. But like I said, point taken. I will be more careful with my speech here in the future. There are gay people here who I respect and I don't want to offend them. If I were a righty, I'd be wailing about being cancelled. Instead, I think you're a bit of a killjoy drip, but also in the right.

Just cracked open the book, The Way Thai's Lead: Face As Social Capital. It's a decent read that's not too academic. Must recco all Silkworm Publications for Thai-ophiles. So far, it seems that face is survival mechanism to placate the powerful and also improve your standing in the pecking order with those you judge as a possible threat or competitor to you. I've read some good examples of relationship problems here with women who seek Face via your wallet. Someone who saw me reading the book said that Face is whatever an individual Thai says it is to guilt trip westerners. As a newbie, I interpret face as always giving a Thai person a face-saving out in any conversation. How does face impact your interactions here? And what's you best face-story?

Point taken, fair enough. BUT effeminate, closeted gay men posturing as threateners are also the very definition of fair game.