JamesPhuket10

I salute your German guy, I wish I could run over and kill kids for less than 20k baht, it must be a great area to live in.😄 Phuket has 1/3 the area of Greater London, but what some farangs do is come here for a week or two and spend all of their time in the very small girly bar areas in Patong, they do not see the rest of the island so have a false view of the place. There are dozens of restaurants/bars in the area I live in but are mostly frequented by Thais, definitely no girly bars, etc here. But at the same time, it is very quiet in the housing estate I live in as there is no through traffic, and the access in and out is controlled. I can't imagine living anywhere else in Thailand, I do visit a small village now and then near Surat Thani but two days is enough, there are only so many trees I can look at, it even has a beach but still so boring. I do see the effect though of living in the middle of nowhere in some tiny village as I read the very many anti-Thailand comments from such guys on sites such as this one, many of them are stuck in Isaan for example with absolutely nothing going on around them, they must be bored witless after being there a year or two. P.S. I ran over and killed a cat while I was driving my car a few days ago, but that was for free.

No, it was a few years ago, they had set up a roadblock here in Phuket. They had caught about fifteen people, half of them were Thai and half farang. It was my fault as I did not know the drink limit was much less for people driving on farang licenses, I had two small bottles of beer and was over the limit. So after standing around for ten minutes I spotted who was in charge and asked if I could 'pay now', I offered 10k but they wanted 20k. One of the officers drove me and my car to the ATM, I gave him 20k baht, and he drove to a police station and got out, I said what now and he told me I could drive home. The roadblock was only a mins drive to my house. So now even with my Thai driving licence I do not drive at all even after one beer. I bumped into one of the other people a week later who had also been arrested at the same roadblock as me, he told me he had to spend one night in the monkey-house, go to court the next day, and pay a fine of 30k baht.

Your wife pocketed all of the money from her salary, which to me is seriously dim. A profit margin of 10% in a good quality restaurant is another seriously dim comment. (Especially as most of the takings were cash). "...being tied to a 60 year old aging woman because of finances would be my idea of a living nightmare.", where did I say I am tied, try and read the details, try and read more slowly, I wrote "Ex-Wife", we split the money years ago. I started buying houses in 1985 when they cost next to nothing, eg the first house when I was in my 20's cost £42k, with a deposit of 10%, another example was another one bought in 1994, paid £175k (mortgage), sold it two years ago for £750k, those are just two examples. In those days all you had to do was fill out a self-assessment mortgage form and you had the mortgage offer within two weeks. You really should read what people have written instead of ranting on like a madman, I said "....they are now worth millions of pounds", I did not say I bought houses costing millions as they cost bugger all when I bought them decades ago. I know all of these things seem impossible to people who have been employees all of their lives, but they are not. It must be a tiddly little house if it is only worth 500k now in a place like St Albans (I went there lots of times as a friend lived there), it looks like you missed the boat a long time ago. "....tons of guys on here send their kids to private school.", yes true, but there is no way you can compare private schools in Thailand to private schools in England, the rich Thais here send their kids to school in the UK. I don't understand your angry reaction to my comments, you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about something. If I were to show off and lie about things I would lie and say I have hundreds of millions, not just millions, you won't believe this but my brother does have that amount in properties, he has been building nursing homes for years and a management team has been running them for him.

Yep, I think the law is subtitled, "20k baht in the back pocket."

Live in full-time servants.

No, I was working in the USA on two occasions, not I only saw two American women. 😄 The first stay was in Arlington Texas, they just "loved" my accent I was told on many occasions by the local beauties. Short contract, only four months. I had a bit of a "go" with an ex-Dallas Cowboy cheerleader for a few months. The second time was in New Jersey for one year, I met loads in the Morris Town hotel I stayed at which on weekends was also a nightclub which I visited every week. Being young, slim, English accent worked a treat with the ladies. But I always did a 'runner' before they became too bossy, and a great time was had.

I only ever smoke when I drink a couple of times a month so I wouldn't know the difference between the two brands being that I am drunk when I smoke. 😄

Erm, no!

Oh no, not another one please, no it is not standard for Thai women to be the dominant partner, that job is left up to American women as I saw on the two occasions I worked in the USA. My Thai partner cooks both Thai and Farang food at home and she and I decide ourselves what we each want to eat. Have you not noticed a large number of Western restaurants all around Thailand, they are frequented by Thais mostly as they are well outside of the tourist areas.

You are right to a certain extent, the funny thing is according to the majority of Thais we all come from the same country, which is "farangLand", it does not matter if we are Russian, English, American, etc we are all farangs, we all have the same culture, I find it funny so don't take it as I am complaining. Also, the article is a little bit simplistic, there are lots of overlapping cultures in Thailand, the Thais in the south see themselves as completely different culturally to say the people from Isaan and vice versa, they even have completely different dialects and languages and would not understand each other if they were speaking in their local dialects to each other. I laughed once as I knew an Australian in Phuket for a few years and he went to Thai language school a few times a week, after a year he said he had learned a lot of standard Thai but it was not much use with his wife and her friends as they all spoke Laos (Isaan) to each other. Well-off Educated Thais do not mix with the less educated ones unless they are "conchies" (spelling?) working for them, even then, they eat at different tables as is the case when they are on a car trip with a Thai full time driver and they stop to eat. I have seen that firsthand on many occasions. In the late 1980's I was sitting in a very large house in Bangkok, it was owned by the ex-vice-president of Thailand, we were there to invite him to our upcoming marriage ceremony in Bangkok, a "conchie", came into the room with a tray of refreshments for us but saw we were sitting down so she got on her knees, walked on her knees across the large room and presented us with the drinks, I was shocked but the ex-president took it as being normal. Do Thais become very British for example when they live in the UK for decades, do they fit in and learn how to talk straight, become orderly and logical, do they heck like, they take what suits them just as the rest of us do, I have also seen this first-hand many times. So as long as we accept we will never be seen as or be accepted as a Thai, have to continue to get annual visa extensions, and 90-day reporting then all is fine but I do not intend to sit and look through rose-tinted glasses thinking I have been accepted as a local, that will never happen. But as I said I have accepted this as a fact, nowhere in the world is perfect, 99% of life here is great. Leave your wealth, and money in your home country as it is almost guaranteed we will have to go back there when very old, don't do as many do and burn the bridges to the only country which will look after them to some level when that old age point arrives.

Marlboro Gold at 7/11, 150 baht, genuine. You more than likely bought fake B&H made in Cambodia etc.

Where to find rolling tobacco? Try on the side of a hill.

The real danger is the idiots who voted for Labour. I will be laughing my head off on the 31st of October when Labour tells us how they are going to rob the twits who voted for them.

Yep, that is what the media and news are telling us to get our attention so we read their nonsense and so they make money on advertising, etc. Unless you are less than one year old you have nothing to worry about in your lifetime regarding the so-called AI, most people don't even know what it means, they just follow what people are saying blindly.

"Is there anything else in the world that can accomplish this miracle? " Viagra might help the old buggers get a head start (pun intended). 🤣

I agree especially if the topic is boring football, Coronation Street, or East Enders for example. I wouldn't have a clue. Seeing as you introduced knowledge of certain subjects, I am amazed at the number of people who go on about AI as though it exists, it might exist maybe 100 years from now. The simple solution is to ask ChatGPT if it has AI, it will tell you no, but it will tell you it has a set of complex algorithms, machine learning capabilities, and fast links to all sorts of data it can cross-reference in superfast time, much better than Google as a stand-alone system for example. But it is a fantastic tool as instead of traipsing through thousands of lines of reference manuals when I write system code for iPhone apps it can point me directly to the correct area to look at. But we do have to keep an eye on the results it produces as many times it has got it wrong, eg I asked it to refactor about 300 lines of my code, it was a test to see how good it was, and it got it completely wrong and missed out half of the existing code. Plus if we update it with some new information it says it can not use that info, hence another reason it shows it has no AI, it has to rely on database updates now and then.

From what I have seen a lot of old farangs in Thailand do not have a choice in the matter, they don't have the money to buy property. 😄 But renting a bedtime partner, no thanks, I have seen who the 'rentable women' have already been with. But why pay for a partner when we can get one for free? I remember a farang once telling me all Thai women are for sale. I made him a bet, I said go into that bank over there, hand over a note saying you wish to hire the female cashier for ten thousand baht for the night so as not to embarrass her in front of her colleagues. If you manage it I will give you the ten thousand, but if you fail you give me ten thousand. I have never been taken up on such a bet. Right, that is it, no more comments from me for this evening, I have skived long enough on this site, and now back to "work".

The comment I made regarding my education was a direct reply to someone who questioned my abilities which is why I made it, that seems reasonable to me. So using your logic I could also say you are insecure as you just told me all about your being a director of a board and retiring at 49 etc, your involvement in rugby, and the name dropping, why are you so insecure? Your comment ".......with your real or imagined educational achievements." I will show you my graduation photographs and my Oxford ID card plus my Oxford Union Society members card if you show me yours. 😄 Regarding English and US English, this editor has got a mind of its own and sometimes I do not spot the fact it has changed my English spelling to US spelling, it is quite a silly petty point for you to comment on. My comments on Footie supporters were meant as banter as I do like to watch the World Cup games when they are on. But you should be thanking me for my software engineering skills. Back in 1976, I had a summer job at a large insurance company near Bank tube station in the city of London, the boring job was to take a file, take a percentage of the cover, and work out the premiums, I think it was called reinsurance where a large number of insurance companies would share the risk to minimize their losses in the event of a claim on a valuable item. That has all been computerised now as the job was mind-numbingly dull, but as a poor student, I needed the money.

Yes true, for example, a Thai woman might love to eat Durian while an American woman might prefer an apple or an orange, I could make general assumptions about such things. But I would not be able to make statements like "All Thai women are bossy and controlling or are easy to control, or are mean, or are just after our money" etc, those things have nothing to do with the culture of a particular country.

I have a degree from a university in London. And an MSc, from Trinity College, Oxford, both in software engineering, I think I can pretty much hold my own in any discussion. I think most people in pubs talking about football probably have only achieved something like an 'O level' in woodwork. The thing that makes me laugh about footie supporters is they say "We did this and we did that" while talking about a game of footie they watched on TV as though they are part of the club, they fail to realise it is a business out to make money and they have no influence whatsoever on what is going on.

I agree with you on your ".....recipe for disaster....." comment as it is not natural for a young woman to fancy a much older man, he will remind the girls of her dad I bet. Some guys genuinely think Thai women are different and they do fancy old men, no young woman in the world would fancy a substantially older man, but they convince themselves or are convinced it is true. Regarding housework etc, you need a lesson on skulduggery. 😄 You wash up to start with but then do not do a good job, you break a plate or two accidentally on purpose, and you are then banned from washing up, same with the laundry, mess up a few times. Cleaning, do a half-hearted job. Cooking, no one would eat my food. But I must admit, I never cook or clean or wash up, etc as it is all done without me even noticing, oh except for cooking that is, I take note when the missus is cooking. 👍

It has everything to do with the neighborhood where people live, well-off people will not be the poor ones jumping into the back of a pickup truck. I have no supremacy towards the "common" people but Thai people certainly do have an attitude toward them, there is a huge class system here but if you are living in an area where your neighbours jump into the back of pickup trucks then you will not be aware of that. For example, I would not have a clue what happens in a very rich area like Knightsbridge in London as I do not have a spare 20 million pounds to spend on a house there.

You said, "It's quite interesting, when I was a Cayman lawyer earning 6 figures I got my then wife a job as a secretary. She earned 60,000 dollars on top of my salary. Do you think she paid for the rent, food or necessities? No. All saved for her." Sorry, I can't account for dim people, if guys can only retain a woman if they pay for them then it is not my fault. I can give you my contrasting story though. During the 1990's and 2000's I was earning about £140,000 as a freelance software engineer a year through European contracts and one USA contract, it was mostly tax-free seeing as I set up the company in the British Virgin Isles. My then-wife had a 150-seat Thai restaurant in an expensive area in England from 1994 and for the next 27 years, the takings were £12,000 a week, and the profit margin was high. I think after salaries and other costs, tax etc she made a profit of about £150,000 a year, our two kids went to private school all of their lives. We pooled our money and bought a few houses over the years, they are now worth millions of pounds, and we retired early. So that is one example of a male and female pooling their resources, therefore, your claim that women either expect not to work or keep all of the money themselves is not the case, it might just be happening to people like you.

From the article, you have extracted a couple of lines that support your view and have ignored all of the rest which does not support your view. Plus what about the real-life experiences of yourself and the people around you?

You said, "retarted thailand....." More like "retarded West". Hundreds of thousands of people put one foot on English soil and say the word "Asylum" and they are handed a nice free hotel room for the next year or two, how retarded is that. Or allowing stupid farangs to marry and bring low-life bar girls into England, many wait out five years to become British while stealing all the farang's money and then move on to the next one. I have heard many sob stories of this happening, it does make me laugh though. I don't mind filling in an online form for the 90-day reporting in Thailand, I can spare three minutes to do that.