Prubangboy

Your experience may no longer be replicable. Right now is the lowest of the low season. The helicopter ride was fully booked out. Over-tourism will need another Covid blowup to get cured. I have an upper-medium favorable opinion of Brazil and I will def come back next year. I am not much of a Big Bang tourist sight kind of tourist, so that colors my view. I imagine if I was writing about the current state of The Grand Canyon (my all time fave Big Bang sight), I'd have the same mobbed-out aversion.

Problem: Massive tourism like everywhere now. It's $200 for the day out with the lady driver, a Bolisaro/Trump worshipper -just work in that angle -as always. Up at the crack of dawn, it was wall to wall people by 11 AM. You have three trails with 3 overlooks to view. By the time we got to trail # 3 (the money shot one), it was a slow-moving trudge along a 20 minute metal grating walkway, fully packed out, both coming and going. You get your obligatory selfie shot by the railing and then you are very happy to leave. The to and fro is very wetlands-scenic with a few exotic birds about. The little train that takes you between the trails also starts requiring missing a train or two until you can finally get on. My 5 minutes there was true grandeur with the roar of the falls and the dizzying mist - but dampened (literally) by the 500 people I shared it with. Many a photo buff is setting up stepladders and and other equipment to further block your view. Many a baby is a-wailing. I stayed at the pricey hotel on the Brazilian side which has what is supposed to be a very inferior view. It was def less dramatic (you're viewing the falls from a distance), but you're also viewing them with a cocktail in hand, 5 minutes from your room. At 8 AM, you're viewing them completely alone. The hotel was half off 4 Season rates, but only about a third as good, so do your own personal math on that. Food was a letdown, not particularly Brazilian, more like a very good Marriot anywhere in the world. A few monkeys scamper about near the pool. Wouldn't do it again, but it was a satisfying one and done with very warm and personal service. I skipped the bird parks and the power station tour. 36 hours in town felt a little long.

Without commenting on the moderation here, I want to express my great appreciation of the moderators here. First stop: Iguazo Falls. I didn't love it. Anyone who wants to see them to great effect with Morricone's most stunning soundtrack should watch this clip:

Interest-wise, it's a grower, not a show-er. It takes a while for it's qualities to impress you. I thought it was Mex City with worse food, but it's the Thailand of S.America -the weird left turn place from the greater continental mass of it's neighbors. Battery is getting low, so I'll come back with more later. But: Anyone been here or S.America in general?

Bignok and Trump actually fear bread. Bread = death.

What point exactly are you trying to win here?

RainMan strikes again with his limp-wristed, passive-aggressive little confused icon. Could he be any weaker? Even after all that time in 40 baht gyms?

Would you go out of your way to go to a specific fast food burger place? Me, no. I prob eat about half of my dozen or so a year at an airport. Whichever one is closer to my gate. In Chiang Mai, only McD is 24 hours. So I might get 2 of the dozen delivered at 5 AM.

Trump said yesterday: "You can't even cross the street to buy bread without getting raped, shot, and killed". Rainman: What say you?

He really is Rain Man, Part II. I like the thread where he said he went to a 40 baht gym 15 times in 4 pages. You can't really get any more Rain Man than that. How about we all just call him RainMan for laughs till he runs away again?

A speech is scripted. Front page news only to Bignok.

.....Actually, the place on Suk across from Nana is/was a Carl Jr. About the same. Most fast food burgers are close to interchangeable. I rate Burger King slightly for the marginal charcoal taste. It's the sides where they differentiate. Like he said, BBB has better than average fries. It's madness to say, "I don't like X" in a thread about X. I don't like sports, but I feel no need to go into that board branch and tell people not to like a thing they clearly do.

Agreed. Call in half a letter grade better than McD, on par with Burger King. Used to be one across Suk Nana Plaza. But MBK has the world famous food court on the top floor and Hua Seng Hong Chinese where they employ a very liberal hand with their crab-fried rice. What kind of person orders a Green Curry at Bob's Big Boy? I believe the word is 'girlfriend'.

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy." -Tom Waits, while seriously drunk.

I'm in Brazil right now. Stunner-wise, incredible. I was skeptical, but these are the best looking women on earth. I'm going to Scandalino's, a Scarface-level plush brothel (with a 1st class sushi bar attached) and will report back. Just for Bob.

I keep hearing about statistical analysis but so far, have never seen any of it. Statistical analysis is a moron's conception of what smart people might do with their smartness. Luckily, we have a poster here with a 130 IQ (down from a previous claim of 185) to explain everything to us. He also slept with 1,500 women. And yet, and yet, these geniuses have all day to post here. Usually, for hours on end. Check the timestamps.

Most regrets are self-flagellation. People regret that they didn't try harder at something, but they forget that they were unsupported in their trying or raised badly. Or they regret outcomes that were really down to luck. Or they regret relationships where they were doing the best they could at the maturity level they were at at the time. The most painful regrets are about character, where people willfully make selfish choices. But to even then, the regret itself is proof that the person has morally improved since the regret-situation. These days, I have worked through all of my regrets as above. My primary regret, then and now, is not loving myself enough.

Board Games is the #2 meetup group in Chiang Mai (after Moat House Bar Language Exchange, Tuesdays, 7:30). Gets about a dozen people (but not me). Pattaya has a board game meetup too. Sundays at 1 PM https://www.meetup.com/th-TH/bangkok-improvisation-language-friends-bilf/events/302246572/?recId=1faae4c6-6740-468e-a4ae-7354b702bcb8&recSource=ml-popular-events-nearby&searchId=b92683a3-0d13-4167-b0da-c43fe06de15c Bring your board game and you will find a taker.

It's impossible to overcome deep-rooted aversion. I don't like mustard. After year of trying to like mustard and trying all the varieties, I can tolerate a little grainy French mustard on a ham sandwich. But I am never gagging for it. A little dab, once a year. If I skip a year, that would be fine. And that's a food choice, not an emotional connection. Give me the best mustard on earth, and I too will never have my heart in it (so to speak). You should respect her boundaries and be accepting of her as she is. That will foster plenty of valuable intimacy between you, just not the kind that you specifically want. You have a right to be you, and she has a right to be her. It requires no long story about her childhood, any more than my mustard-rejecting does. If something is truly a must-have and she can't deliver it, that's grounds for a no-fault breakup to set both people free. You can be friends. You cannot be lovers. As time goes on, you both will just feel angry and worn out. Your posting here shows a fair amount of travel already down that road.

Prob won't get better on the intimacy stuff, she'll prob get worse. And it will def. bug you more over time. Either buy all the way in and accept this, or get all the way out. Me? when faced with this, I did the first thing and regretted not doing the second thing. Good luck.

Today, I went to the Chiang Mai expat group. Sadly at a mere 71, they told me I was too young to join.

Yorkshire pudding should be huge in America. It's greasy and full of fat. Where is the McD Yorkie-burger? In Suffolk, they had prefab Yorkshire pudding bowls to serve bangers and mash in. Eat the bowl for another 500 calories -you couldn't get more American-taste than that. English cuisine is one the last holdouts for bitter tastes. Keep bitterness alive!

Agreed. The diet in Japan is a lot of noodle soups and deep-fried food. Very veg.-lite. A ton of sugar too. Those tofu meals in a temple were few and far between. And very much a mono-culture where Kobe is not too different from Nara. They're much less into Whitie than SEA. 'Lived in Kyoto for six months. Gorgeous, but essentially a small town. For other-worldly foreign-ness, hard to beat. But also hard to live in long-term.

I was booked on a tour for a big tribal festival this September, but it just got cancelled due to internecine tribal warfare. Again. Go to Sabeh instead. More touristy, but we're talking about places that get less tourists than Roi Et. Brunei is worth 3 days too. A day's worth of sights, dementedly friendly locals; you better like Indian food. Their bit of very manicured rain forest was the best rain forest experience I've had to date. About $200 for a private 2 night tour.

I give it to Laos for maximum strange for minimum $$$$ with zero hassle. Anyone there is interesting. 'Can't say that about Chiang Mai. Myanmar = orthodox buddhist vibe, def min $$$$, but it's hard to get to, visa required, terrible food, and you will def get sick. Cambodia: diminishing returns outside of Angkor Wat, but prob best for the eco-tourist jungle experience. Vietnam: Went only twice. Too much traffic, too little sanuk, boring food. I can why people love the commie French Indochine vibe. Malaysia: Cheerful, boring, Penang would be the obv. pick. Kuching, Borneo is the like Rain Forest Chiang Mai. Singapore: Do you love Indian food? Because that and nice parks in glass domes are the big attraction. Japan: Requires about 4 trips to see it all. If you have to pick, do the South. Abusing a 7 day rail pass was a top 5 vacation. Korea: Duller Japan, tremendous nature-Buddhism (Won-style). Pusan to Hokkaido Japan is a great two weeks. Taiwan: Cheerier China. Under-rated, partic the food. Hong Kong: Still a bit neon-atmospheric, but go to Tapie instead. Bhutan: A little boring for the money. But the green Himalaya's stayed with me for a long time. A week would be on the long side.