Prubangboy

1 hour ago, proton said:

Sadly no schoolgirl outfit last night 

 

 

I would def love to be you for two hours while my wife is out of town. 

Bignok, if you already saw it all twice, why not just pick a place or two, stay for a week or two, and get the benefit of the little relationships that form?

I was just on Koh Tao for a month in a lower-tier hotel. Without trying, I became enmeshed in a schedule of little chats and routines with the staff, the breakfast place, the banh mi place, and the various comings and goings of other tourists and long termers.

None of it was riveting, but I feel like I semi-"know" Koh Tao a bit. If a restaurant owner in a place like Koh Tao sees you spending money 3 times, they are usually up for a chat. You can learn a lot in 10 minutes.

On 2/17/2024 at 11:23 AM, Celsius said:

 

You go to open a bank account and they give you 2 years of free banking and a platinum non secured credit card

 

 

Free checking -The next expat destination must-have?

JingTing, can you get on it, researching which Latino desert hell holes will toss in a toaster if you open a passbook account?

Where are the places on earth where people can only but dream about snagging a non-secured credit cards?

Zambia? New Guinea?

If you already drove around Thailand once (or more than once), stem to stern, why do you need to do it repeatedly? 

Does Roi Et change dramatically from visit to visit? Or were there just too many Roi Et attractions to take in in one go?

I can see going to Paris a few times, but being Nan-ophile is a baffler.

On 2/17/2024 at 6:34 AM, GinBoy2 said:

I've dreamt about this, and when I get home from Thailand I'm going to volunteer for my local heritage railroad

 

https://www.1880train.com/

I hope you buffs get to ride the rails in Myanmar. If you like old trains and cheap prices, it's two weeks minimum to see it all.

America's best Thai restaurants could be a CNN article (not a Fox New one, ever).

Here's my entree, deep in Hillbilly Land.

How they got there: Claiming oppression as Christians in Laos. Repub chumps will believe anything. All those Mex washing dishes are christians too.

Any way, proper stinky papaya salad:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g55129-d15196140-Reviews-Zaap_Lai_Thai_and_Lao_Cuisine-Johnson_City_Tennessee.html

Thailand plans (if I can be fully @rsed:

Try every 5* restaurant in Bangkok (11 left to go)

Learn enough Thai language to talk to Thai people about their folk religion beliefs.

Get a useless advanced degree from Chunglakorn for networking purposes.

Go to Koh Lipe (the last hold out).

7 minutes ago, couchpotato said:

From the details in this post, you should keep hiding.

had to toss you a blue heart.

1 hour ago, gamb00ler said:

I rarely eat any beef in Thailand.... too disappointing.

 

100% agreement

When my brother was a rock and roll bouncer, a skin head leapt on his back and was choking him. I leapt on the skin head's back and then we all fell down a flight of stairs. 

It was the Public Image show where Johnny Rotten wouldn't come out from behind a screen. So more fighting at the show.

And:

Do you ever take trip without your wife or GF?

To do what?

What's the longest you want to stay in a place on vacation? Do you still have multi-destination vacations? How long is your typical getaway or full blown trip?

For me, 3 days is good, for say, Chiang Rai or a Bangkok BTS stop. My wife likes 5 days, so 4 is the compromise.  After 4 days, she wants to go home.

I can enjoy a pinging and ponging trip of 2 single night places followed by a 3-dayer. For her, no way.

The only way she'd do two days is on a long haul layover. As I get older, the layover is increasingly worth the money. We're doing Quatar on the way to Morocco. I'll do a China layover one of these days now that they have the 4 day visa on arrival.

Somewhere that's hard to get to means I stay a lot longer.

I'm going to a trad village in Sulawesi that takes 4 days to get to from Jakarta. So I'll book a ho-hum 5 nights there since it's such a schlep. At 71, those kind of travel days are numbered, so I am def front loading them.

7 minutes ago, sirineou said:

Perhaps where you eat, or what you eat. I don't disagree with you that there is some good street food.

But for the most part the quality has declined.  

 

 

 

Fair point; I practically never have "real" Thai food, in a Thai area, at Thai prices. If you say it's gross, I believe you.

Do people pick a lane and stick to it? A lot of people will eat in a food court, but not on the street. I prefer restaurants.

2 minutes ago, steven100 said:

 

you really need to get a hobby ...

A lot of anti-street food sentiment seems out of date. I've been coming her for 35 years; the pad thai of today is def less oily. Everything is fresher. Local tastes have evolved.

Last night, I had a pad thai and a papaya salad -from the place I mentioned.

Health-wise, the papaya salad makes that meal healthier than any cheap eats I might get back in the states. A papaya salad must be minus-zero calories. I only very rarely don't order it.

In Ubon I found my first Som tum only restaurant. They also had unripe mango and cucumber. A som tum specialist is my favorite kind of Thai food foodie snobbery.

There's a woman in the Old City of Chiang Mai down a quiet alley who bangs out a few outside of her house (near carrot coffee bar). Is it really any better, or am I just inhaling the last of the ol' Lonely Planet vibe?

A piece of TrumpTrash was boasting about beating me up here yesterday. TrumpTrash regularly threaten people here. It's funny that I can't post certain links here, but this is allowed. 

In 2 years,  5 such pieces of Trash have faux-threatened me over me making fun of them, including a much beloved autist here who did so twice. I laugh at these impotent, loser, hotheads.

Pre-age 18, I had dozens of fights. I was bullied badly. I got creamed about two thirds of the time.

One semi-funny story: I saw my mother's boyfriend slap her in the face. I picked up a bottle of Chivas Regal, and gave him a few head whack with it till he staggered out of the house.

He was semi-mafia, so I had to go hide out at the YMCA for about half a year. 

13 hours ago, Middle Aged Grouch said:

If you to to Hua Hin, .you will definately be ripped off

 

 

I killed a smoke season month and liked the cheap Thai food there. Yellow curry was on most menu's which is rarely seen in Chiang Mai.

Southern Style Sour Curry is also one you don't see much south of Bangkok. I had it every other day on a month stay in Koh Tao recently. It's a simple dish, but sour is a very hard flavor to get right.

What is the most disappointing curry? I very reluctantly have to say Mussaman. I love the name, I love the idea of peanuts, but it's usually too sweet and overloaded with very blah potato chunks. 

Why is Green Curry the only one that occasionally comes with roti slices? You'd think that Massaman would too. Maybe it's the potato's.

Jungle Curry seldom lives up to its exotic-sounding name. Wiki says it's supposed to be coconut-free and a bit bitter, but Jungle Curry is the most variable in terms of what you can expect to get put in front of you.

3 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I see the grammar police has arrived.

That's not grammar, that's manic depression.

18 minutes ago, frank83628 said:

and if that is paid off what exactly is the issue? 

Lying on legal documents is bad.

Bad things get punished, not always, but sometimes.

Even if you do a bad thing and nothing bad happens, bad things are still bad.

Like if I go into the bank and give the bank teller a stick-up note and then I DON'T actually rob the bank, I still did a bad thing.

Like I said, bad things are bad.

Your -and his- basic defense is: well, not that bad. How's that been working out for Ol' Stinky?

56 minutes ago, kingstonkid said:

 

 

 

 

 

How many Bank managers or people went to jail because they did not do their due diligence?    

 

 

 

 

None, am I right? Obama and his justice department did not crucify them to appear moderate.

They therefore got off for political reasons. But it's not a 100% Get Out of Jail Free card. Sometimes you do a bad thing and get whacked.

You pretend to worry about Microsoft getting whacked for doing a bad thing. The only way not to get whacked for doing bad things -is not to do bad things. 

I mean, duh.