Bobthegimp

In Australia? Then they send Sharkey around to collect.

I was in a small bar on Buakhao and they had to drag a bunch of tables and chairs farther into the bar to avoid the wind driven rain. I arrived as the first drop of rain fell. By the time the beer was in front of me the skies had opened up. It's kind of cozy, like being snowed in, but without the cold and snow.

You might have done yourself a favour. Examine many of the recent threads and it starts to look like a data mining/profile building operation.

In a chest in the basement of this guy's pawn shop.

Not a boomer. I love the stories of millennials thinking their good intentions and leftist proclivities are some sort of armour against criminality and violence. Did you make it to the part of my story about the stabbing?

Thankfully this type of rot hasn't set in here and is unlikely to. Did mommy catch you wearing your sister's clothes?

Many years ago I was with 2 friends from work and a couple of Thai women at one of those after hours places that pop up after the regular businesses close. They even had a truck mounted bathroom system with sinks and flush toilets. It was off Sukhumvit between soi 13 and 22 if I remember correctly. What was less good was the number of Africans hanging about for no discernable reason, eyeballing us. One of our group was a filthy smoker. One of the Africans used "can I get a light?" as a segue to try to weasel his way into our conversation and work one of their scams. Maybe he was an exiled prince. After the second request for a light, I asked my friend for his spare lighter and handed it to the African and told him it was a gift. Well, the ungrateful bastard flew into a rage! He now had no excuse to approach our group and try to work his grift. After the Africans left the lady who owned the pop up bar told the Thai women with us that the Africans were scary men who had stabbed someone two nights before. She was terrified of them, but the police and immigration did nothing about the situation.

I'm curious as to where that number came from. It seems very high, almost as if it had been massaged by an NGO whose budget approval was due. Did 85 Thai women per day, every day, for a year, march into police stations or a Dean's office to report that they had been raped? Few women would put themselves through the degradation knowing that their assailant will face zero consequences.

Reminds me of a line from "The Little Prince". "You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed".

Read the thread. I've contributed much more. It's not being a "Nazi", it's reading an otherwise thoughtful and articulate post and seeing something that is usually corrected by the time a child is 6 years old.

I love the post but what's with this spelling? There's no such word.

That's called "means" testing (vs "income" testing) and is a more fair way to measure a person's need for old age welfare. Trust me, the people who are above the income/means threshold level don't need the additional few hundred per month. Many pride themselves on not qualifying for it, having managed their finances well enough to garner an ample income and asseted for retirement. They're the ones carrying the rest of us, though most of us are too ignorant of taxation laws to realize it.

Start a meaningful thread. I haven't done it yet, so I'm grateful for those who start a thread on almost any topic. Go back as far as you can on this board and read the old posts; they're not as stimulating as the old members remember them. Are the posters with negative feelings meeting Thais from the same social strata, or are they only surrounded by service industry or rural people? It the latter is true, your interactions back home would be similar to what you have here, if anyone deigned to speak to you (beyond filling your order) in the first place. My minimal ability to speak and understand Thai are what limits my ability to converse with and understand the people here. I'm working on it though because the people are so friendly when I'm warm and open with them. I'm still in the honeymoon phase, and hope it lasts for as long as I remain here.

That was 20 years ago and it took a monumental effort on the Boeing guys' part. I was backed into a corner and they weren't going to let me walk away without saying something, so they got a dose of reality, and if we weren't in a national park I'd have likely come down with an acute case of lead poisoning.

Canadian here. Do you drag that garbage around with you everywhere you go? If someone brings up politics around me there is one subtle redirection of the conversation, then I get up and walk away. Life is too short to waste it on that topic. Back in the Baby Bush era I met a couple of Boeing engineers on a hike around Mt. Rainier (Wonderland Trail). They were friendly at first, but it didn't take long for their conversation to devolve into politics. They asked what Canadians thought of Baby Bush. I evaded as long as possible before unloading the truth. "The man is a moron, and the intelligence of anyone who feels represented by him is highly suspect". Oh man, that set them off 555. One guy would have shot me if he had one of his guns with him; instead he ran off into the forest like an angry baboon. I never saw him again. His more rational friend was angry, but did an excellent job of explaining the situation to me. The alternative was John Kerry, a chameleon who flip flopped on everything and had a dodgy military service record. He said that they just couldn't trust the man. The election results made more sense to me then, so I thanked him and cranked up my pace so as not to come across either of them again.

Back in 2011 I met an Indian/Aussie guy and his white Aussie wife who were building a house in Pattaya. Both were great people to talk and joke with. The guy was making very good money as a crane operator and debating whether to retire early or carry on filling his bank account. I have no idea what he ended up doing. One day we got a chance to have a talk when his wife wasn't around. He told me that the happiest time in his life was when he had almost nothing and spent a year training Muay Thai in Pattaya. He lived in a small fan room, didn't drink and spent the year working on his fitness and skills. There's no doubt that he loved his wife, he'd just gotten comfortable and lost the fire.

As a Canadian, I assure you that it isn't a lie. Your mom's experience is not indicative of the experience of a vast number of Canadians. My niece waited 12 hours in a clinic with a small child who was burning up with a fever. My friend's mom died on a gurney in the hallway after being left there for 8 hours in a pool of her own excrement. People who require urgent care usually receive it in a timely manner. Quality of life issues, like joint replacement surgery or other issues that plague the old or infirm take much longer to receive care for, sometimes years. Good luck finding a dermatologist in BC. I haven't had a GP since 2006 when my lifelong doctor retired. Canada has rationed healthcare. Clinics have become the backbone of front line care and are often staffed by nurse practitioners. In my very limited experience the NP provided excellent and compassionate care, whereas most doctors are burned out and dead inside. The Canadian healthcare system won't bankrupt individuals, but it can kill them. Does your medical system euthanize people yet? Ours killed 12k last year and the numbers are growing.

This is incorrect. Canadians are entitled to both, and poor seniors are also entitled to the "Guaranteed Income Supplement" (GIS) which can still be collected if the recipient spends a minimum of 6 months in Canada. Old Age Security (OAS) is paid and indexed no matter where the recipient lives.

I've tried Cheap Charlie's a few times but it didn't work for me. The waitresses were great and none of the other clientele bothered me; it was the oil they cook with that sent my guts into a tailspin. Next up was the Thai food, which I eat at least 60 percent of the time. It was fine, but not great, nor was it an outstanding value. Another miss. Edit to add: I went to Hungry Hippo (?) twice and that was a rock bottom experience. The most broken, dispirited staff I've encountered in Thailand, who were compelled to wear masks long after other places tossed them in the bin. For a while I voted with my wallet and stopped patronizing places where the staff wore masks. I want to see the lady's face. Communication can be difficult enough without putting a rag over someone's mouth. The additional cost of eating at Witherspoons or the Sportsman is worth it to me. The Sportsman has some of the best Thai food I've had in Pattaya, especially the Panang, which is creamy instead of the oily mess that some other places serve. Witherspoons has the 7 item breakfast that allows you to choose from a long list of items and have the breakfast that you actually want. The service in both establishments is great. .

It's way too nice out to be online. Time for a scooter ride.

I did a couple of trips down to Quartzite from Vancouver and stayed at the free BLM (Bureau of Land Management) sites. There's a spectrum of people who stay there that ranges from people living in an old beater car on SS to retired couples in million dollar bus conversions and cruising around town in side by sides. Safety wasn't a problem in the sites but I can see why you'd get the impression that it was. Slab City is a different matter, being chock full of meth heads and mentally ill people who dislike being told what to do (more than I do). My last trip down there was in 2019. I highballed down the I5 and stayed in the desert for a few days before booking a flight to Thailand and highballing back home to spend the following 9 weeks in Thailand.

I do that quite often, always without booze. Nice and cool with far less traffic than in the early evening. It's certainly easy to spot the drunks; a lot less easy to predict how they will react to sudden impulses for snacks, hos, or more booze. It's great to see the first responder holding C-spine on one of the victims. A spinal injury doesn't heal like the cuts and scrapes do.

It's a double edged sword because newbies are told to "use the search function" by the guys who have been here since they had hair on their head, or they're criticized for dredging up old threads. What is dodgy about new members? Are they bot accounts? Maybe they're hired guns from an Indian troll farm to make the forum to appear more active. One would think that new ideas and perspectives would be welcome on a dying forum.

Interesting because I was just riding my scooter on Beach Road and appreciated the new pavement. There are massive new concrete highways all over the country that are beautiful to ride on and practically empty. Then, there are the roads that the OP mentions. Everything is smooth one minute and suddenly I was bottoming out my front suspension and praying not to hit the deck at 100 km/hr. Those incidents were frequent and serious enough that I paid for YSS front and rear suspension. It didn't fill the potholes, but it did stop the bottoming out and near- loss of control problems. Next up: traffic on Buakhao thread

I hit a den of vipers in a family restaurant during my trip home this summer. All late middle aged women, except one in her 20s, who were done with work but work wasn't done with them yet. The waitress threw the plate down in front of me and sprinted away from my table before I could ask for the cutlery(that she forgot to provide) with which to eat my meal. At first it made me angry, then I tried to imagine what her life must be like and I couldn't remain angry with her. I did something counter intuitive: handed her $5 and complimented her on the excellent service during a very busy seating. Empathized with how the large tables were running the ladies' asses off. If you've ever worked in the industry you'll know what I'm talking about. Families are awful to deal with and usually tip poorly. Cleaning up after them is like mucking out a pigsty. The change in her and the other ladies was transformative. It was my Tony Robbins moment 555. The lady needed a bit of kindness, not another kick when she was down.