JamesPhuket10

".....the Patong police remains resolute in their mission to maintain safer streets and restore order on the island,...." Nope, to make the streets safer regarding motorbikes, the real culprits are Thai and they do not have visas to revoke.

That is what I think about sometimes. (69 this year). But then again we never know what is going to happen, if we just suddenly die a couple of years earlier but have had a good time up to then, no problem, but if boozing causes us to have a few years of illness and a very poor quality of life that is another thing. I will think about it tonight as I "sup" a few beers. 😃

What is scary is that American politicians during many speeches say "God save America", now that is really scary as they have nukes. That has never been said in the UK, in fact only a small percentage of people are actively religious there, but that is growing though with immigration, and we have nukes too.

The "drug" I take is a "party drug" sometimes, it is available at every street corner shop in Thailand, it is called "a load of beer". 😄

So not much of a problem then as the dangerous fruit cakes of the world are the ones who believe in religion, they are the real threat. 😀

Oh dear oh dear, of course you have never fallen off the end of the world, Trump had a 20-foot-high fence around it decades ago, it is there to keep all the Aliens out. By the way, I was an alien once, I worked in New Jersey for a year and before going there I had to fill out an alien landing card, so that means I became an alien and remained one for a year, once I left the USA I was not an alien anymore not even here in Thailand, I am now a farang. 😄

Re your funny comment and my comment about someone with a large spirit level. I should have said at the time there is a very large spirit level, it is called the sea, and so if the earth was flat, when we stand on the beach we should be able to see more than a few miles into the distance, in fact, we would be able to see Mount Everest. Plus my GPS would not work if there were no satellites in space. So now your spirit level is broken due to a ghost we will be in the dark forever. 🤣

Great, is it a fact the products from iHerb are made in the USA or at least to USA standards?

The problem here is you do not know iHerb exists online and you can buy as many as you want in Thailand.

Thanks for the info, I just looked at iHerb and downloaded the app to my iPhone, it looks genuine and is giving 20% off for the first order so I will order a large batch of supplements plus I can pay in Baht. I tried twice to order a large batch from Amazon UK but the package was turned back at Heathrow Airport so I suppose they can not be shipped by the regular route.

I have been to one a few times, it is in Centra Shopping Phuket, it is out of the tourist areas so 90% of the customers were Thai. They eat mostly meat with a side dish from the self-service salad bar as that is included in most if not all of the meals. I took four people on holiday from England there a couple of months ago, the quality of the meat has gone down, I had to force myself to finish mine. The salad bar is good though as it included salad of course but also three different types of soup and desserts. Regarding your comment on Issan, I think the majority of farangs living in Thailand as far as I have seen over the last 30 years have a Thai partner/wife/girlfriend from Issan and so they think nearly all Thais are poor, I know many well-off Thais as my circle of friends are not from Issan. In Phuket my gated community complex which contains about 300 houses the majority of houses are owned by Thais, and there are one or two Mercedes cars around as well. The comment about Issan is not derogatory but one to balance things up regarding Thai society.

Is your spirit level many miles long, if not then what you are saying has no meaning.

In England, we have always used trousers or pants interchangeably for men unless they are to be worn by women where they are always called pants. In Scotland, they are pronouced "Troosers" 🙂

I went back to the UK in November last year for a month to buy some property. I stayed in a hotel for a month near the area I was going to buy. Electric heater, I was cold so I turned it up, after the room was at a comfortable temperature I happened to look at the setting, it was set at 29 degrees. 😄 I have been in Phuket for two years so I am comfortable at a setting of 28C, the main thing is the humidity is greatly reduced so it feels cooler, I would feel ill at 18C 🙂 I have friends living in CM but they leave when the smoke season starts and go and live in their other houses in the South for five months, there have never been any smoke problems in Phuket, my PM2.5 monitor is showing a reading of 6 at the moment.

I have a feeling they are the same person with two accounts on this chat. But Bob does make me laugh, what makes me laugh more is that people take him seriously, he is just taking the piss.

So the simple solution is to stay away and go somewhere else. I do not want to live in Russia or Iran etc but I do not bother to write about it.

From a man's point of view. (In Phuket). Apart from earning lots of money being a software engineer meant you could wear whatever you chose to wear, no one cared, and you could wear shorts to work if you liked, I can think of nothing more counterproductive to output than wearing a suit, etc. Suits are for salesmen. Here in Thailand during the day, most people wear shorts and loose-fitting soft shoes except those who have to work for a living and as I have seen in banks etc men wear a shirt tie and long trousers. In the evenings I wear a decent pair of long trousers, soft shoes, and a shirt when going out to counter the mosquitos. It is never a good idea to be too well dressed, for one it is uncomfortable, two, I like to blend in with the crowd, and it is not a good idea to stand out here. I do like to wear a suit, bowtie, etc when going to a gaudy at my Oxford University college now and then, but that is in the evening when cool, plus all the men are dressed similarly so there is no competition etc. I am currently sitting in one of my air-conditioned rooms in my house in Phuket, the air conditioners are Mitsubishi and work as well here as they do in any country in the world, cars, large department stores, restaurants, etc are also airconditioned, so it makes no difference if it is the hot season or any other season in Thailand.

The very few times I go to Patong in any year I see the same police operation, at the small roundabout at the start of the road that goes up the mountain to Kata and Karon beaches there are two police officers, they only stop farangs motorbikes, it is a nice little earner for them. In the Kathu district of Phuket where I live, there are very few farangs, 99% of the motorbike traffic I see is Thai, most of them do not wear helmets and many drive very badly, eg when I am turning left into the road I live in from the two-lane highway many undertake me in my car on my left even though I am part way through the turn, thus causing me to have to stop to avoid an accident, many times when driving I am overtaken by Thai bike drivers on both sides at the same time, I would just have a dent in my car if hit, they would have a 'dent' in their body. I turn right at a major crossroad near where I live, bikes from the opposite side of the traffic lights are showing red but the bikes just turn left into your path even if there is a sign saying no left turn on a red light for them. Many just zoom onto the highway from the left without even bothering to look for other traffic, many times as you follow them you can not see the rider's face in the bike's mirrors which means they can not see you, they think mirrors are there to check on makeup etc. The police could just park up outside my gated estate and catch a bad driver or a rider without a helmet every ten seconds, the reason they do not is Thais can vote for the local government so they are allowed to do as they please. Isn't having a man, wife, and two kids on one motorbike considered dangerous driving, none with a helmet? Isn't young boys zooming off down the street from school racing his schoolmates considered dangerous, I have seen it many times over the last two years. I have seen about six accidents with motorbikes and as I drove past (ambulance etc. in attendance) I saw they were all Thai. The vast majority of dangerous bike riders on the roads in Phuket are Thai so why just target foreigners, they are barking up the wrong tree as usual. But as usual, of the millions of visitors each year a few of them drive badly, and they are then in the news, the millions of Thai bad driving incidents are never even mentioned as it is normal, it would be the same as reporting it is hot in Phuket every day of the year. 😀

"Thai government employees get a pension. Around 20K per month", you said. So they end up with a pretty miserable life then unless they have savings or a private pension pot of their own. I know a Thai woman who worked at Thai Airways all her life and then retired at 60, she gets more than 20k baht a month in her company pension, plus the 600 baht a month government pension, plus her house and car were paid off a long time ago in a nice area 60kms north of Bangkok.

And wondering if it was a bloke or a bird giving you the BJ I can imagine. 😄

That is the main point, it was more fun and seemed great because we were young, it was new to us and we were full of adventure. We could get Thai girlfriends who were real girlfriends as we were the right age, no bar girls needed, now if we want a younger woman then of course it would all be about money, and what fun is there in that? Thailand has not become worse, it has become better, we just got older and many oldies as far as I can see have just become miserable old gits.

Yes, that is the best policy and that is why they leave us alone as almost all of us are paying our way and not scrounging from Thai society.

I saw lots of Thais yesterday as I was stopped at a red traffic light outside a school. I saw quite a few schoolgirls getting onto motorcycles, four on each bike, I asked my partner how old they were and she said about 15 years old, hence no driving licence, they must do it every day. Oh yes and none of them were wearing crash helmets.

The 700 baht 'service charge' was so I could get the visa extension and the multi-entry permit at the 'same time' as they are in different buildings and it would have meant me going back another day to get the multi-permit. If I don't need the multi-permit next year then the total cost will be 1900 for the visa extension. Seeing as I was writing Thai with English phonetic letters the 'clap' part of it does not mean 'the clap'. 😀

Nope, I did not expect a receipt for the 700 baht "service charge", I would have paid more if needed, it is not much fun wasting time in immigration offices, and I have a much more interesting and profitable way of using my time.