LaosLover

Nan is flyable from Bangkok. Def one of my fave towns. And they have Thailand's most famous painting. Viewable for free. Most of the towns in Thailand are 2 day towns. Nan could squeeze 3 out. Nimman is $800 a month for an apartment with a pool on the roof. I live in one of the poorest parts of America. That would buy you a room share inside a trailer.

Lampang is a total 'why am I here?'-headscratcher. Lamphun has some great old relics. I mean other than the tiny expat population there. It's like a lunch place and 90 (at most) minutes of wat-viewing. You only have 3 weeks, right? It's like $60 to fly from Udon to CM. s

Sukothai is crazily out of your way. Gotta go with the consensus: prob the best Thai monumental site, even surpassing Ayuthaya (which would not be out of your way all that much), but the definition of a one and done, and a single day (or even a single hour with the right tuk tuk guy) would more than cover it. Def stay in the new city, the old part by the ruins is def sedate. [I misread and thought you were going direct to Udon.] Loei is your worst nightlife pick since Mukhadan. There was some other shambling pile of old bricks in the midlands that you also thought was sex-nirvana. Kamphet Phet Historical Park, am I right? Do you envision hookers jumping out from behind crumbly old pillars? Finally, a sound and light show I can get behind. Since you're hoping for a lurve connection, stick to major cities. You should go to Hat Yai/Danook. That's like a BBC documentary on the evils of sex work. I'll be in CM after August 1 if you want to have a drink. I'll be in the fancy Nimman section. At least, that's what the estate agent called it.

That is some delightfully slipshod lip synching by Millie Smalls; it looks like she miming at a party. It was that song that bankrolled Chris Blackwell who 'discovered' Bob Marley, U2, and started Virgin-everything. The second shortest #1 record. The Box Tops' The Letter was 2 seconds shorter.

My all time personal best was 4 trips to the well, with my wife about a dozen years ago. We were new, we were rampant, we were in Amsterdam fighting jet lag and zonked on Jack Herr, a pot strain apparently only available within sight of the train station.

You can be as courteous and sanuk-ish as you want, but if they think you stink (and they do), "warm feelings" are only going to make you the grudging best of a sorry (and stinky) lot. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I want to move to Australia. Sparktrader says that fully 50% of the women there are hot to trot.

This. Every once in a while, think about what the OTHER person might be getting out of the interaction. If it's just the benefit of your searing outrage, think again. People have their OWN garbage to work through. In a bar or a waiting room, they just want to have a bit of a larf.

I was married to someone who was physically sickened by the thought of having sex with me (English, it turns out). After our break up, I found her online diary documenting what she had to put herself through to even think about blowing me -which was her favorite, since at least she didn't have to see my face. The idea of sex with someone who's not into me now gives me a soft-on. And that goes double if they want money from me. My American wife is pushing 60 days and has seen better days. But she's into me. And that trumps everything. If I could pay them to be into me, I most def. would. But I tried and tried, and I can't.

I don't listen to opera, and I don't spend my internet days complaining about opera lovers and dissing them for it. Opera is out there if I want it, and Opera fans are sort of along the lines of "more opera for us" if I don't.

Can't recco Hat Yai at all. Heavy Malaysian-oriented P4P, also pretty Muslim, both of which work against your plans for friendly hookups. For a glimpse of brothel-world, have a night out in Danook. How long is your trip? Why Phuket and then all Issan? Why not just flog Issan to death?

The mean-funny school of comedians is declining over all. The young fear offending anyone and having it googlable forever. The problem: Mean-funny is the funniest-funny. To list but a few in order of my preference (which means meaness): Chris Rock, Ricky Gervais, Eddy Murphy, Frankie Boyle. Even Amy Shumer; she's a little bit mean. Frankie Boyle is literally too mean even for the mean-comedy States, where mean-comedy is alway neck and neck with the English (plus he won't fly). He called his book, My Piece of ---- of a Book. The Germans get off some zingers too. The French, you'd think would be mean-comic, but not so much. Maybe a language barrier.

This guy has few of these that are even funnier. I liked the social influencer who really just worked in a real estate agent office. Her minimum man salary requirement to go out is $200K. The female fantasy is Christian Grey buying them a car on the first date. The male fantasy is a nymphomaniac showing up with a pizza. And it would be perfectly OK if that pizza box was empty. This is not changeable. Once I offered a bartender a drink and he told me that honestly, he would prefer half the money as a tip instead. Their needs, licit and il-, are pressing on them, all the time. And no safety net. If not for BritmanToo, what happens to that child? Economic terror, over a few generations, does not foster financial good sense. In fact, just like where we all came from, it creates the opposite. Toss in low education and being constantly preyed on by the better off of their ilk, and it's not hard to see why they decide to do unto others what was done to them.

Can't believe the low hotel prices in Bangkok. Florida Hotel, two stops from Siam Square is $19 a night on a monthly basis -and 5 minutes walk from my Language school. I'll bet in person, I can get it for $16 a night.

I talked to my wife about buying long term care insurance (not worth it, btw), and she said, Honey, I'm your long term care insurance". I had a spouse die of a really miserable disease and she wanted me to assist in her suicide, but like I thought, when she got near the end, she didn't want to pull the trigger. It's a very small percentage of humanity that does. People's wishes should be respected, but most people will want to hang around just for the prospect of still hanging around.

In the states, zoning kills most old trailer and tiny house idea's. Where I live, old trailers are grandfathered in, but no new ones (or new-old ones) can be sited. And Walmart etc is much less welcoming to letting you stay over night in their parking lot. Another good idea for people who want to live cheap getting squeezed. I took a vacation in Japan with the idea of writing an article on capsule hotels. But after night #5, I was eager not be sleeping in what was essentially a plastic refrigerator crate anymore. I did it at the same time as a slightly mad trip that involved abusing the Japan Rail Pass to see 7 cities Japan in 7 days -which meant lots of late arrivals and early departures from capsule hotels near train stations. They all had bars, swimming pools, massage chairs, and porn avail for $2 inside the little capsule. I was def glad to end up in Tokyo in a 3 by 4 meter room, which felt very plush. But full marks for squeezing into a Honda. Are you a normal-sized person?

I keep hearing: Cheaper beer, less crime, more willing women.

It seems like for P4P, the decades-long consensus on this board is Thailand first, Cambodia second, and the PI a distant and begrudged at best third. Dominican Republic is worth a google. They have a Love Island thing where you get assigned your own Eastern Euro companion of appropriate blondness and breast size,

In Mexico, it's about 80% of places foisting the phone menu on you. Only one place didn't have a paper menu to offer (a discount sushi chain). In all places, it was the phone menu that was incomplete, not the paper one. If you didn't have a phone, they'd lend you one to look at. None of them let you communicate directly with the kitchen; they were all about serving you to earn a tip. It's part of unwanted progress, like self-check-out.

Sticky, I always sneak an empty Snapple bottle on the plane with me so I can take a whizz or two on the 27 hour flight. Sometimes, there's an epic line for the toilet. Referring to a bottle as a toilet is very standard among van-users. I went down a rabbit hole of looking at YouTubes about converting our Rav-4 into a sleeping van (you have to get the backseats removed -and the Toyota dealership won't do it). But doing the same thing with a Camry is def on the tight side. Are you sleeping diagonally in the back? Have you considered a roof storage unit? I see that's where a lot of car-dwellers stick their spare tire so they can use that bit of floor to have some ceiling height to sit in. The biggest car-dweller mistake I see is trying to have a little kitchen with a stove, ice box, and table and chairs. Like, why not a bird house and a hot tub too?

I aint dissing Ubon, like I said, I spent a week there. It's a rare tourist who does that. It was my fave of the big 4 Issan towns because it had a speck of a downtown around the park. It wasn't just a bunch of traffic circles. And the spiritual vibe with the forest wat and the candle festival is very unique. The riverside part was my favorite such place in Thailand. Also, My favorite Mark Weins video has him eating chicken and cashew nuts at a Chinese shop house there. Very hard to get GREAT chicken and cashews. That video is worth a look. I'm saying that wouldn't be my first address in Thailand, partic without a lot language skills. A solo westerner is not someone the locals have much room for in their lives, nor do the expats. You want a bigger westerner pool of fellow loose cannons to swim in when you're alone. Places like CM old city or Pattaya Beach Road, or Ekami are like the departure lounge before you get on the plane to real Thailand. Going direct to a town like Loei is like just jumping out of the plane.

SparkTrader, I spent a week in Udon and I felt like I saw every square foot of it twice. Not so many westerner comforts, and I realized I need more than 2 bars to go to -and I'm not even a boozer. Loved it from a temple and nature perspective, but how often are you ever popping into a temple or national park a second time? If it costs $100 extra to live in a more westernized place like Chiang Mai, I say do it. The people here living happily in Roi Et are all MARRIED. A single male rattling around in Ubon with little language skills better be very excellent at entertaining themselves.

Many nightlife YouTubes in Vientiane. The vibe will be amateur, which I believe is what you seek. The tourist part is about six square blocks, lots of very beautiful French shuttered building mixed with 60's concrete sun block.. You're an Ibis Hotel fan and their's is a good one and very well located. But you can be paying half with a breakfast a block away.

The reason the sex was so hot was because you were shocked -shocked, I say- that a good looking woman was having a truly moving sexual experience with you. But she wasn't really. Duh. So in general, do woman who are not that into you get MORE into you the more time they spend with you, or do they tend to get even LESS into you over time? And what about a woman who had to literally force herself to seem lavishly and implausibly into you right from the get-go? And currently finds it a bit of work to keep up? Aren't we looking at a cliff-like drop-off in the sex interest department on her part? And soon? Without that, do you have any real interest in this person at all?

I have just come from and expat stay in Guanaurjunto Mexico. The big diff between them and Thai women is that they are much less physically repulsed by westerners. They're less good looking, but they're more likely to be into you. I have total respect for the guys who say, Oh for christ's sakes, just give me good looking instead.

Yeah, that area and north of Khao San Rd would def be my first choice -but no Thai language school. The schools are where their expat customers are, which is along the Suk train line. A great language school, Duke, is located on Soi 11, where I have already spent plenty of time as as tourist. I picked my school because it was at least on another BTS line. The way in which our situations are similar is that we both will likely start out in an expat area and then find our footing somewhere else. In my deal, it would be just as easy to acclimate in Chiang Mai as Bangkok (but with less language school choices). In your's, the leap directly to Udon Thani is more daunting.