LaosLover

......Did the full day tour of attractions, but bailed early. Forgot to bring a towel to the hot springs and then when they drove back to town, went to the gym instead. The diff between the half and full day tour is the hot springs option in the AM. 200 baht admission for the springs on its own if you have a bike, 300 baht as a tour. Thai person price is 20 baht. They also toss you a passable plate of fried rice and a bottle of water. After the springs, they head back to town to pick up the people who opted for the the other 300 baht segment -stuff like The Pai Grand Canyon and a big Buddha. That gets back around 6 PM. Done it in the past, maybe a letter grade B as an outing.

I was here 12 and 5 years ago too. It doesn't seem appreciably bigger, but I have not explored the outer edges (and why bother?) to see what's developed there. But if anything did, Covid certainly killed it. There are plenty guest houses here without a single guest. I am staying at the slightly posh Yotaka Huts -maybe 4 of the twelve room have someone in them. Yotaka Huts review: beautiful property, good value. downside: Band across the street is playing Hotel California at room-shaking volume. Till midnight. I like the Yotaka chain and will book them again in Bangkok. Will be moving to the super-quiet Ban Pai Resort tomorrow. $20 seems a little on the high side of the hostel range. I saw plenty of rooms on Expedia between $6 and $12. You have your Israeli mixed groups of 4 to 5, and your 90 pound young Belgian women traveling chastely in pairs. A lot of 30-ish couples doing the Khao San Road, Chiang Mai Elephant Camp, Pai, and then down to Ko Phangan circuit. The route outlined in the movie, The Beach, is still their route. Oldies like me are maybe 5% of the mix. In fact, every oldie I've met is a long term resident who put in some long Chiang Mai years first. You can rent a small house here for between 5-10K. In December, maybe 8-12K (based on talking to a single agent and not walking around). The agents here are Westerners. Food wise, it's not all that vegan beyond say, half a dozen restaurants out of 60 and some food carts. Most restaurants have the same picture menu of pasta bolognaise juxtaposed with papaya salad as everywhere else in Thailand. Cheese Madness (huge grilled cheese sandwiches) is good and is well-represented on Youtube, if you want to preview your cheese sandwich before you get here -which I actually did. Weed-wise, I'm going to say a third off of Old City Chiang Mai prices and a bit nicer weed. Prices are a further 20% off if you wander down a side soi a fair bit. I'm here on a fitness holiday. Hommy's Gym is good for oldies and the two yoga places are solid. The competition to be a yoga teacher in Pai must be slightly more manic then getting a diving instructor job on Ko Tao. Can't fault them at all. A great place to take a private yoga lesson (500 baht). For my purposes of doing a sort of personal retreat, abetted with healthy food and meditation, it's fantastic. For the average AsianNow older reader, 3-4 days would likely do it. They have some hot springs, a big Buddha and the usual small list of natural attractions like a waterfall to see. Think of it as Chiang Rai on a budget. The walking street is prob the best I've seen in terms of imaginative offerings and stuff like Khao Soy Noodles done up right for 50 baht. If you like Thai cover bands, again, they gotta be pretty good to get a gig on the main drag, or even off of it. Not my taste so much, but I'm not their demographic. I liken Pai to the New Orleans French Quarter in that you have the mix of very diff age and reason for being there-people all on the same party street, but not too crazily.

No wait, I spoke too soon, upon late afternoon arrival. At 10 PM on a Friday night, it's hard to get a seat at any bar on the main drag and that goes for the side sois too. Street vendors are busy too.

I'm in Pai right now. About 90% open, pretty quiet. A lot of Israeli tourists who come only to Pai in Thailand.

Thanks, Globule-guy. My wife has been instructed to prop me in a corner, pay someone else to hose me down, and keep the afro-cuban jazz mix on, even if it looks like I can't hear it anymore. If I look like game, she should attempt a blowie. She can even get a boyfriend, but not in the house.

Had a bracingly cold can of Singha from 7/11 two days ago. But I didn't finish it. Beer Lao has a whole range of decent flavors avail in Vientiane and I recco them all. Check their website. I'm only about 18 months into my new booze-ultralite life phase. Had a lychee martini at the airport hotel (lifestyle advice: never order a lychee martini outside of a 5* restaurant). That and 3/4's of a Singha has been it for my 17 days here. I even passed on a glass of S.African red box wine with a plate of Bolognaise in a Nimman very good Italian place. It's just too damn hot to drink here, even if I wanted to.

Agreed, been here 4 times prior and this rainy season feels average. 3 showers a day due the humidity, and I find it hard to be out and about 12-5 PM, but very small potato's hassles for the pleasure of being in The Chiang Mai Old City.

I'm not afraid of dying per se, since modern death is almost always a nurse upping the morphine dose until you painlessly cross over. And I have truly had a one in a million life. If I even dare to ask for another single day, I deserve to be dodging lightning bolts from an angry God. But my wife is 15 years younger than me and my pension dies with me. Since some entity is literally sending. me a check every month simply for breathing, I'd like to milk that to the bitter end.

Can't be moved from Singha due the logo. I'm all about the logo. Because to a person like myself who might drink 12 beers in a year, they are all indistinguishable (except for Guiness). Note to Beer Lao fans (which def has the best logo), The Beer Lao brewery in Vientiane has a gift shop. I have a Beer Lao cafe umbrella that I shlepped home. It was $25. Beer Lao Brown is not far off Newcastle brown aie, referred to as Newkie-Brown when I lived in England.

Americans here need to google image immediately.

Zooey Dashanel. Her being legitimately named Zooey also turns me on.

At the tourist-oriented places, it seems completely down to the luck of the draw. I've even had the experience of having a good and bad massage with the same masseuse. For me, 1 in 5 was very good-great, 1 was like the poor guy above me, and the rest were as described above with lots of time-wasting faffing about; not something I'm ever gagging to do. I hate the head massage at the end. Or when they're sadistically flicking at my ears. I tend to have a better experience with foot massage. It's likewise underwhelming, but more consistent.

Yeah, but without us, the fruit shake business would collapse. I'm good for about 5 a week. That's just me alone.

I only get massaged in an a/c mall where I see plenty of Thai people inside -like a Truckdrivers spotted eating in diners assumption. If they also have facials and stuff, that's also a good sign. The a/c is worth the upcharge. But no way is a 250 baht massage as good as a $100 massage in the west. And Lonely Planet claims otherwise are nuts. I'll be surprised if I'll get even one a month here. I was talking to someone here about being pounded by hot herbal compresses. Even he said not all hot compresses are worth the trouble or expense. I notice they really mark that one up. I heard from my yoga teacher -but cannot verify- that the Woman's ex-prisoner's massage place is staffed by regular women, not ex-prisoners. Instead of being a tourist trap, it's a do-gooder trap.

I'm going in a week, and some hotels are listed as sold out (usually the pricier end), so Pai seems on the upswing. I'll report back. Relatedly, the Old City of Chiang Mai def feels a bit busy for a post-covid rainy season.

I just moved from Appalachia and rents doubled there in a year. Things like produce do cost a bit less at Walmart than in NYC, but the geographic discounts across America are smaller than they used to be. A pint of Ben and Jerry's is close to mono-priced by now. Your property taxes are maybe quarter or the NorthEast, but you get no services from the government other than snow plowing the roads. The schools are terrible. Your work opportunities are to own a legacy business (no market for an additional tax preparer or veterinarian), hope for a government job (in a region obsessed with "small government"), or do something medical on the low end like be an X-ray technician. There's no tall building anywhere where you can shuffle papers in an administrative role and make middle class money -that option seems to be on the decline everywhere. All in, I'd rather live in a closet in a commuter town of New York City, even with my mountain views that are as good as Aspen's for a fifth the price. Near NYC, I'd have a shot at making some money, not to mention, access to culture and enlightened people. When people would tell me they hate New York, I'd ask them what they did all day. They'd say something like, peaked in a couple of bookstores, had sushi, went to a park. I'd remind them that they'd been floating like a butterfly through it's glorious ambience all day and enjoying it without giving it any credit. To split the diff, maybe I'd live in a place like much dissed-Baltimore, which has it's bad area's but also has parts like Highlandtown that are like the West Village in Manhattan for half the price. I am very grateful that I got to be young in New York City and I now get to be old in Chiang Mai. America is the engine of the world. By definition, engines are uncomfortable places to live. I've since moved from the engine in my life to reclining in the back seat of the car. So why'd I leave? Medical costs. My wife's were $100 day with her insurance and medications. (about $500 a month here). Toss in state income tax, various fees, maintaining a car, and NOT even considering the relative costs of a mango, and you can easily add another $100 a day. I have been effectively paid $200 a day, tax-free, just to get the hell out of Dodge. . Toss in Trump BS (we lived in Confederate flag-land, one was viewable from my porch) and I would be crazy to return. I am grateful every day that 95% of my fellow citizens are too low-information, hide bound, and fearful to follow my example -even to nearby Mexico. Their stupid racism and improbable superiority allows us all here to live big, and free of them. But if I were a young Thai and could get to the States, I would do it in a heartbeat. The economic opportunity, the ability to re-invent themselves are things they can barely imagine. Like I said, youth is when you want to be sitting under the hood, on top of that stinky, noisy engine. In later years, you want the back seat with a/c blowing on you.

Yeah, wake away, Patriot. This aint gonna do nothing but buy your Fattie another gold toilet and shift a midterm seat or two. I put you in the entertaining category as the pub bore the other day who claimed to know for sure that "currencies were quickly shifting agains the dollar". Your wholly imaginary finger on the pulse of the "Sleeping Giant" -I'm actually laughing at loud, in your internet-face, cries out for a barstool summit of you two genius's.

-That they think that Orange Man Bad is such a withering comeback shows their paucity of wit, imagination, or even self-self dignity. They ape the speech of disabled speech and then they pretend (means make up) that they are somehow quoting some liberal. And then there's tragic fact that they don't even have a second joke. They make their grimacing monkey-face and intone OMB. And then they're outa gas. Even Suck It, Fill In The Blank didn't have legs. OMB really does convey their fake and self-assigned faux victimization. It's a whiff on their self-inflicted fantasy life. They are steely realists; and yet they are confounded by OMB nay sayers. Everywhere.

This is some serious cargo cult madness. The cargo cult? A nice wiki dip. An island of primitive people had airplane jettison food etc. over it during WWII. Henceforth, for generations, they waited, and waited for more Spam to fall from the sky. And so it for our Trump friends. He's down sending out his goofy word-is memo's to an ever shrinking base. They had their shot at civil war on Jan 6th and were just too fat and disorganized to do much more than drop a few deuces in the halls. He made liberals cry -for about a minute and a half- and then: he didn't. The party's over. No more thrill of the Spam drop. And you never did q-u-i-t-e get to trigger a liberal. Admit it: it was a madcap drama that played out only in your head -and perhaps here. Just a few diehards waiting -and waiting- left now; waiting faithfully for his impossible return.

I feeel like the word weaponization has been weaponized. By Boneheads. Formerly, it meant turning a non-weapon object into a weapon. Let's just make up new meanings to words to work ourselves into a lather. Who wants to live that way?

It seems like it's only weaponization if it's something you don't like. Impeachment of Garland? Justice, finally at last, not weaponization. At all. Let's face it: Fox News type are just thrilled to know a 5 syllable word. Hence, it's hilariously relentless overuse. They just told me I couldn't have a green teal latte. I asked: "Are you weaponizing the latte machine? Because that's how I feeeeeel."

Just reading Fatty's latest demented statement. One part resonates with what I read here a lot: "How many of Obama's 33M documents (not true) were about nuclear? WORD IS, LOTS (actually 0). Excuse me, "word is"? The hypocritical righties here demand endless proof, links, and shift the goal posts endlessly, and their idiot guru gets to skate by with "word is"? Too funny. The last usage I can remember of "word is" was in Starsky and Hutch: "Word is that a deal is going down, Huggy Bear. Can you help us?". Trump's frequent -how frequent? "LOTS"- channeling of 70's TV is my fave bit of Trump lunacy. Endless demands here and on Breitbart that the DOJ show their hand upon their command while Word Is-Fattie gets to prevaricate, speculate (word is) and foot drag shows a double standard that keeps comically collapsing into itself. As per The Wire, "When you come for the king, you best not miss". And when they do, they won't.

.....Oh no! Nuclear WWIII was lost. We were handily defeated by a crow bar.

I love how Trump actually bragged about finally getting around to slapping a lock on the storage unit. As I understand it, a padlock is an inpenetrable obstacle to would-be spies, often likened to Fort Knox.

"I have no answer and may or may not be a POC".