LaosLover

Chiang Mai exerts a pull on me, partic when my wife shows up in a few months. I am fighting it because I lived there for a month already, but the expat comforts/access to to Thai-ness mix is the best and it's also the most culturally interesting part of Thailand with the Lanna style-etc. Still, I am determined to give Bangkok a 90 day try out to let it change my mind. I see this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to enjoy a super-low tourist rainy season in Bangkok. Will also pop over to Angor Wat, Hanoi, and Luang Prubang while they're still dead. I def agree with not living in Thailand full time forever, unless you have a family life there. It does seem hard to fill up the days. We're going to go back to New York City area for cat-sitting jobs in the hot months and then see a bit of Europe on the way back. I love Thailand, but 12 consecutive months is too much. And I def agree with a getaway every month or so. If it's not the beach, all of the provincial towns can be generously seen in 3 days: Fly in day, see the nice wat and the weekend night market day, trip out to old ruin or nature-day.

You can def get a vasectomy at Bumrungrad Hospital. I was happy to pay the upcharge for an English-speaking penis specialist. I don't know your outcome, but I admire your passion and nerve to do this. My own moving plan is to go to language school and the gym every day. Having that routine and social interactions will keep me off the weed and booze. Say what you will about weed and booze, they are definitely excellent time-fillers. For me, it was either Ekami to have some a western community around me or Ratchethewi (behind Siam Square/Jim Thompson's House). Ratch had the big 3 within waking distance: language school, gym, and $600 a month long term hotel stays (with mini-fridge). Plus it's a muslim-leaning area (love their food) and the canal boat is nearby. It's 2 BTS stops away from Youtube-approved, possible contender, Ari. Or maybe I end up a stop or two past Ari, which will be cheaper and more chill. I googled to death every single BTS stop in Bangkok to get sense of price and ambiance. And the commuter train lines too. If you have functional Thai language skills, you can live further out and save a ton of money. That's prob just as true in Hua Hin or Chiang Mai. I want to the amenities of Western life, but I'd be willing to take a train or bus for an hour to visit them and then drift back to a greener place.

8% yield in a sanely diversified income portfolio is impossible. Maybe 4%. You'd have all oil, REIT's, and MLP pipeline stocks. If one of your stocks cuts or eliminates the div, you'd def. feel it. And high yield stocks are by def low growth stocks -you can't have your dividend cake today and not endure low share price growth tomorrow. If a stock gives you a 4% dividend and 4% growth, you're doing as well as you can expect. Not many stocks even hit that mark. You need a min off $500K to make it worth investing in individual dividend stocks (call it 20 stocks as per Buffet) to make 4%. Below that, invest in a low cost dividend ETF like Schwab or Vanguard, prob nets you around 3%. An extra 1% off of $35K is only $350 a year. Is it worth $30 a month to substantially increase risking losing your principal? I'm moving in a month to Bangkok. I have someone house sitting for a while and paying the heating bill. Next year, we'll store some stuff at Grandma's house and rent out our place furnished. The last few times I went over to SEA for months, I brought a tea strainer and mini-kettle, cheap probiotics, ear plugs, Astroglide, decent sheets and a couple of pillows I know I like. Sheets and pillows are always polyester misery there, and worth the little bit of suitcase weight for that extra bit of $100 a month in-room comfort. It was the same in Mexico. A hot climate demands proper sheets. And a decent towel.

Love that Burmese spirit, pointing towards the truth of the dharma. Is the carving trade hereditary? Do the people who own that crafts business make decent money?

Un-buh-leavable. Easilly $2K on eBay or Etsy. Thanks for showing it. That's a batik masterpiece. I have a similar butterfly and patterned bed spread, deep indigo and white, but obv for the tourist trade. I think it's Miao. This style is likely from the China/Vietnam border. Googling Miao batik brings up lots of butterflies and fish. Do you have any idea how old it is? Is the lining original to the garment?

Nah, your's sounds for real. There's a proper antique store in Chiang Mai where stuff like that washes up. Poss. Hmong?

Went to a flea market in the outskirts of Chiang Mai 4 years ago. It was in the direction of Nimman, I think. Most of it was fake.There can't have been THAT many shaman shirts still floating around. As near as I could tell, most of the vendors selling fakes thought they were real.

In Laos, they wanted to get rid of the old currency because it had The King's face on it. So they sold it in the night market to tourists at a 100 times mark up.

In the states, after about 7 years, it's the state you live in who gets what's left in the banking account. So if you don't designate a charity or benificiary, your money goes to the general fund for the state to do with as they see fit. Me and my wife face this very problem. The only bio-heir left will be her daughter, currently in prison. We do not see enough (or any) improvement in her life happening to where she would not just blow it all on drugs. An irrevocable trust is the answer to leave her some money, a small lump sum and the rest in the form of a pension. We'll give our wild land to the local land trust. Preserving the Appalachian Mountains is something we'd want to donate to. The way to set up a trust fund is with a large bank that has a trust custody department. Custody means taking care of the trust, filing taxes, sending out the checks. They will charge you about 1-2% of the total trust fund amount every year for the service. You need a min $1M to have such an account. For smaller amounts and less service, try Charles Schwab.

Do you have a Hilltribe bedspread or a painting you bought at the night market? Have you ever visited a weaving village? Do you ever go to Thai flea markets that are for Thai people, not tourists? Does your Thai partner like different decor things than you? What are your spouse's favorite colors? If money were no object and you were given a Thai crafts unlimited gift certificate, what bit of Thai craft or tourist tat would you get? I collect indigo blankets from the Sam Neua region of Laos (the geometric diamond design is thought to repel mosquitio's and invoke spirits). And I have few Nang Kwak statues, prob circa '70's. I recently bought a 1.5 meter-long teak model of the royal barge for $120 on eBay. It's on my mantle.

A sleeping bag and a tent take up half a bag, not to mention the millstone of hiking boots. Toss in something like scuba gear and it's not hard to fill up a big bag. I prefer real sheets and a couple of good pillows, so my own bag has been upgraded to medium.

Yeah, those people would self identify as MAGA-Movement. It has just as many things you can't say and unsaid-rules as a lesbian marxist commune.

Students going after the Prof is mostly confined to Humanities majors where it's all always been a little on the flighty side. And at the extreme uselessness end of the humanities at that, you get a lot of woke in the Dance Department, less so in English Lit. To claim that Humanities Departments of universities at large are running the world is Lyndon LaRouch-level crazy. I was called woke -BY African-American people- who were in fact on the dark side, but hardly deep-black like everyone here keeps insisting they are. You have to go to Haiti or Zambia to see a lot of that. The first time was when I was chatting with a rasta at a Nyahbinghi drumming circle in Brooklyn about Franz Fanon. Certainly the very father of Woke. "Whoaaa, that is woke, Mon", he said. For me, a great moment. For many people here, a nightmare. I worked in a 50% AA government office and neither race really intermingled much. Like at an office party, both groups would slowly drift to opposite sides of the room. My boss had a picture of Martin Luther King in his office and AA people would mime gagging motions over it. Anyway, I went to a computer fair with a co-worker, the first inter-racial socializing out of work ever, and we both bought similar power-strips, which was actually a sort of new invention at the time. When my boss, A Clinton appointee, saw that we had the same power strip, she said "that is really woke". Who else here has encountered the word woke live from a woke person?

Can't believe people here are still in a snit about the usage of the term African Americans which dates to the early 90's. That means 30 unbelievable years ago. And still mad at "rad-fems" -which was 50 years ago. I have shaken Gloria Steinem's hand. All this cultural war white man grievance stuff from Republicans is a distraction for the gullible from the bare facts that they're taking away abortion, blowing the oil companies, and getting ready to cheat in the next election. That affects me. Transexuals do not.

Please tell me of your tales of being under the jackboot of feminism. Hopefully, hairy arm-pitted feminism. If I'm on the left, and .0001% of the left thinks something nutty, what's it to me?

I'll watch it later. The persecution complex's of men here who have never been cancelled, silenced, met a "rad-fem", or had an American force you to be American -is not in any way connected to reality. All of these bed-bug crazy claims have been made here in the last 48 hours. In fact, these men here moved to a place were: 1) locals don't listen to them so they have to go nuts and leave a bad TripAdvisor review to be "cancelled". 2) They are free at last from "rad fems" who largely don't exist and certainly ran the other way whenever they encountered them Mostly, I see guys here who never had it so good, but seem to be searching high and low for a headache to have. The Whine-ification of conservative viewpoints and the constant sense of grievance are the last rancid gifts of Trump.

Easy punt. Every third woman in The Bronx in the 70'-80's was named Donna. Diane's had a good run too.

White people don't make enough babies to replace themselves, brown-skinned people do. So it's more like race-giving up than race replacement. The guy who mows my lawn is 74 years old, when he finally slumps over the ride-on mower, I hope some go-getter who has swum the Rio Grande will do it. Because no younger white person will. This theory that Mex people moving here as part of a Democrat plot to win elections is undercut by the fact that Trump won 41% of them, an eight point shift towards the Republicans, that is now continuing in a Texas election. It was Latins in Florida who buried Hillary.

Some great un-obvious choices here like Grant Green and Hank Marvin, but I have to go for myself with what I am actually likely to Youtube up these days. And genius's like Hendrix or Santana I have played absolutely to death. These days, I like the country pickers: Jerry Reed, Vince Gill, Chet Atkins, James Burton (of the Elvis band), Pete Anderson (with Dwight Yoakum), Carl Perkins (with everyone). And of course, easily at the technical and innovation level of the above rock guitar gods, Willie Nelson, who plays everything from reggae to Django effortlessly. Django deserves a mention too. His bio was among the best music bio's I ever read. John Fahey was another one who exploded the possibilities of the instrument.

When is this ever encountered in real life? Have you had even a single encounter with a "rad fem"? When was it? 1974? It's an honor to meet a time traveller.

Most Americans barely know that the rest of the world exists. Even nearby Mexico and the Carrib are of no interest, beyond being vacations destinations. And even there, most Americans only bother to go to a few places. And please tell me the place on earth where the inhabitants don't think their culture is superior. Can you share a single personal example of an American trying to force something on you?

Sex with woman who think it's shameful but are also gagging for it may have gone the way of the Stagecoach. I pity the young who can dial up anal on tinder. It may be as tight, but no way is it as hot. My experience is that this is unavailable at any price in the sex-mecca known as Thailand. Them being repulsed by me is a weak consolation prize for being fake-repulsed by the act itself, but still ready to seal the girlfriend-deal. I had a GF (Italian-American, Fordham Road, like a chubbier Marissa Tomie) who used to have a statue of the Virgin Mary on top of her toilet, so she could look at it instead of her body after drying off after a shower. Just demented sex at Story of O levels. This has always made me curious about dipping a toe in the Muslim pool -but the honor killing thing is a downer.

I am honored to meet the OTHER person who has been to the Tibetan Museum in Staten Island. I knew someone who interned there and said days would go by without a visitor. It's not easy to get to. The rich woman who assembled that small room of nice bronze statues never left America. Nor was she a Buddhist. It was all bought at auction, about half of them in a single spree. Sadly, Jimmy Hoffa being interred in the bridge has been debunked. I always tell Baseball-loving foreign visitors to give the rightly ignored Staten Island baseball team a visit. They're stadium is on the water and it's like visiting a baseball game 50 years ago in terms of low key ambience. Thankfully, there is no specific Staten Island Culture. It extends to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and then in the other direction to Bayonne, New Jersey. Says my genius brother, "3 tribes connected by 2 bridges." SI culture is: being a blockhead, 8 hour red sauce, and having a girlfriend who thinks sex is dirty, but will still put out. OK, OK, I miss 2 of those things.

The Thailand Lonely Planet Guide used to push Farang as a benign expression. I remember a Thai noodle stall owner noting that "Dog loves Farang" -and then saying it in Thai, and the laughter around me going on a little too long. But what do I care? How is that any diff from brits and commonwealth sullenly sniffing my American you know what? Germans etc -never a single problem. 95% of brits and their ilk are totally cool and great to take the you know what with. But right above me stands exhibit A of what I'm talking about.

Just have to throw you a like for the Ken Dood reference. Saw him at a pier show. He claimed to be older than most of the pebbles on the beach. Of course it was a pebble beach. That's why people go to Benidorm -even without the Ken Dodd draw.