jdinasia

They are right across from Metro ... in the Ringby Realty office

I think the name Chonburi Flying Club is taken already .... but we could have the Pattaya Flying Club ... and the Pattaya Extreme Base Jumping club .... and the Pattaya ...

The Digger is right

http://www.mfa.go.th/web/474.php

however I don't know about the travel thing .... I just don't see them stopping someone with a passport and ID from getting on a plane ... but ....

not gonna find tons of kids in standard Suk restaurants ... but just go and have fun

you could TRY Gullivers ... or next to New Wave

geeze ..... look at my post ... it clearly says "The Above" along with arrows ^^^^^^ pointing at "The Philosophers post as an example of insults...

I pointed out to you earlier your anti-religious bigotry ... you don't HAVE to keep it up

ooops my above post should say "8 hours more"

again ... I answered both questions you raised right on the beginning ... no I don't agree with Orwell's assertions .. in fact they are kinda silly.

BUT you didn't raise a question with your OP .... you made a statement. Seems clear that when you think in absolutes; That kills creativity.

To frame this closely ... To ask a question and then answer it is NOT asking a question ... it is building a platform to spout one's views

Your continuation of the thread about dealing with some of your "playmates" and how you treat the women in your life made it CLEAR what the agenda was. It is a good (VERY good) thing that your experience is what it is! The things you say you like about asian women are the flip-side of the coin about what you complain about!

But it doesn't surprise me that we have different views on this ... since my "more than playmate" is an IT pro/ Engineer/ IT Security specialist. The Thais I know are for the most part interesting credible people ... not the shallow vapid "up 2 U" asians that you seem to know!

so TheDude .... you never answered the question ... what age to travel ? and I guess what age to get a passport?

yeppers .. addressed above I think ... but not counted in the 10 day count the Gov't runs

That's just the beginning of potential problems .... but for travel etc ... I think 18 is correct.

Personally I'd not be taking someone that lives at home out of the country without her parental consent.

Marsh ... is it OK if I change my mind and NOT go to Pattaya tmw?

Taking a piece of writing ABOUT writing ... and trying to make it about "Face" is plain silliness .....

It was misquoted through ommission (thankfully ... it was a dry paragraph to begin with)

Forbidden thought in Thailand? I don't know ANY forbidden thought ... there are some forbidden (taboo) topics of discussions .. either across age boundaries or other boundaries ... in polite company. These boundaries are set aside often.

But oi .... the madness that ensues

I pretty well answered right there .... but hey!

I think it is a very interesting question the OP has brought up, and that's all it was... a question.

I am sorry ... what was the "question"?

Are you really unable to see the question, JD? If so, it sure looks like you have some mental blocks and taboos limiting your vision.

Do you agree, or disagree with Orwell, that if there are some things we are not supposed to think or say, it will in generall hamper our overall ability to think creatively? Do you think that Face makes it harder to discuss some things publicly? If yes to #1 and yes to #2, shouldn't the conclusion be that Face hampers free thinking and free expression?

Read through your original post and point out the question ......

but now that you posted it here ...I do disagree with your conclusions about Orwell and what he was saying. He was stating that a writer needed to free himself from taboos to write creatively ... (I disagree with that as well --- but it is the context of what he was writing)

Do I think that "face" makes it more difficult todiscuss things publicly? Yes again ... Face and "greeng jai" are related and perhaps similar to people that do not quite understand them. They are not the same. How can one "lose face" by telling a story? One CAN cause someone else to lose face and "greeng jai" will often prevent that but again what does it have to do with telling a story?

Your conclusion yet agains states that you are NOT asking a question .... but stating an opinion "Face hampers free thinking and free expression. (Not that those 2 things are related either. What someone chooses to express is not the same thing as their ability to think).

Did you really THINK this through? or did you just expect people to agree out of Greeng jai?

The original post asked the question does Face make people boring. Below are some other negative consequences to face that I've noticed.

hmmmmmm add what follows and WOW!

I do now understand that you didn't "get" what I was talking about ... that Greeng jai and face are different ... you aren't dealing with Thais ...

but please can you once again tell me where the bold highlighted question is in your original post?

it is Thailand ... everything is kinda gay friendly .....

try an ad on Thailandout Photos

Nice.. you go for it, BoyBrat..

Yet another weekend in BKK and another chain of disappointing farangs. Its always hard to meet a decent and self-assured farang in this town who isn't chasing after docile/sissy/money boys. Oh well... the hunt goes on.

TC ... it is always tough for you tourist asian guys to compete with the locals for the butch bottoms .... but when you change your luck let me know! I have the strawberry jam in my fridge just waiting for your next trip

One of the best threads I've read here once everyone stopped attacking the OP. I think Mark45y's observations of Thai culture, while being difficult to swallow for this "nice guy" farang may just be spot on, and I will definitely bear this in mind when living there.

Thailand is a wonderful, beautiful and captivating country to live in or visit, but to deny that it is utterly repressed in certain aspects of life is also to deny the Thais their own values and their own culture. This is this observers standpoint, and is not meant to offend

There is nothing in my posts to suggest I'm a nice guy falang, expecting Asian women to be western. I actually prefer the dominant role I get to play here - that seems natural enough. I can't say here just how dominant I have chosen to be at times - I'd get run out of town. Sometimes a child or mate wants boundaries to be enforced, is all I'll say. Boundaries are what are needed to maintain family, and sometimes you have to highlight the choices - stay in family or not? Sometimes you have enforce boundaries, up and to that point of choice - make it painfully obvious.

But no one likes unnecessary drama.

hmmmm did I peg it in one about the spousal abuse profile earlier? .... sure could be!

To the OP ....

sorry but nothing I said was insulting ... just accurate ....

unlike your original post or anything that came after it.

I don't think I have heard "up 2 you" from a thai that was not in some manner working for me or my guest in over 2 years. And when it was a guest when asked again about something they would offer an opinion.

Your experience in Thailand and your gross generalizations show you to be quite shallow even though you seem to want us to think you are "deep"

I really do hope that you get some concept of the difference between "face" and "greeng jai" though! (I don't expect you will ... but if you do your life will get immeasurably better here!)

OK .... here ya go .....

Not an option you looked at but one worth a thought anyways.

Keep your place ... then start looking at buying a second place as a rental. The thing about the property values in the US is that they keep going up!

You can visit Thailand as often as you want and save a ton of money by not owning. Just rent a place for your stay and then the next stay rent a different one. Lots of good points to this ... first you can spend years looking for a place you WANT to retire in ... try a month in Hua Hin ... didn't like it? next trip try Krabi .... didn't like it? etc

Find a place you DO like? Lots of ways to start setting up a perm abode here that would give you some flexibility ... Long term lease on land (with option to renew) and you could be good for a LONG time!

Having said that Thais are FAR from stupid. When given the chance to express an idea, albeit one that is prompted and suggested whithin a rigid frame, and away from other Thais, they are able to do so. They are simply not used to doing so. Thais will often admit that.

In answer to G. Orwell. Yes! I do think that that enforced taboos hinder the thought process. You only have to look at how political correctness stifles free thought in the west. We are unable to say what we think in case we upset someone, regardless of weather our view is true or not.

The first paragraph above invalidates the premise of the OP ..... the second invalidates that of the OP and this poster ....

free thought in the west isn't stifled ... think whatever you want! Just spare the rest of us your bigoted/biased inanities tyvm

Yes ... and each death is sad for the people that are around/affected by it ....

But overall ... besides being a really low number. It is WAY fewer than should be expected based upon the annual traffic fatality count factored against just the sheer NUMBERS of people on the road during Songkran not to mention the booze-up this is for the people here!

"Even a single taboo can have an all-round crippling effect upon the mind, because there is always the danger that any thought which is freely followed up may lead to the forbidden thought... If (the writer) is to switch his allegiance at exactly the right moment, he must either tell lies about his subjective feelings, or else suppress them altogether. In either case he has destroyed his dynamo... the prose writer cannot narrow the range of his thoughts without killing his inventiveness... Unless spontaneity enters at some point or another, literary creation is impossible, and language itself becomes something totally different from what it is now, we may learn to separate literary creation from intellectual honesty. At present we know only that the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity" - George Orwell.

Ask a SE Asian to tell you a fictional story - to on the spot invent a tale. All that I have asked can not. Ok, maybe that skill is too complicated. Ask one to narrate any interesting instance of their life. Most not only will not, they CAN not. There are simply too many mental blocks - there is too much dangerous territory - will they reveal something about themselves? Must they take some sort of stand, betray an opinion? They will panick at the thought of free flowing yet structured thought, freeze, and claim that they "have no stories to tell". A Thai has no story - no history - no personal identity that can be shared. Because of the blocks to thinking imposed by face.

Sometimes someone is capable of narrating some personal events, but I've never heard a story told that included commentary. It will be a strict chronological telling of events that happened. Nothing will be mentioned of the meanings of events, their import to the person, their feelings about them, how they were affected or changed by them, how they see the world now because of the events. Strict narrative with no editorial. Meaningless, or at least, the meanings in the story must remain unconscious and unspoken, like meanings in a passing dream. Vaguely felt but not fully known, ephemeral, and relating to no real thing. The Thai remains semi-conscious, not articulating his history to himself, not making mental maps of meaning, not gathering and garnering potions of wisdom from his events. He just wades from moment to moment, semi literate, semi conscious. May pen rai. "You think too mutch", he will say, when you catch him in inconsistencies. He prefers his mental blocks and illogical catch22 paradoxes and blind spots to too much thinking or other painful clarities.

Now ... would the OP please Highlight his question in this (the original post?)

The original post asked the question does Face make people boring. Below are some other negative consequences to face that I've noticed.

The catchphrase used in SE Asia "up 2 u".

“I don't trust you because you lie.”, I say. "Up 2 u.!" she retorts. ““No, not up to me. I don't move your lips. If you lie, up to you. If you lie, then I don't trust you.”

Wow ... again you confuse things. You say "I don't trust you because you lie" She hears "I want to fight" so she replies with "up to you" ... Like you wouldn't hear "yes Dear" in your home country .. or just get a frying pan to the head.

“I'm tired of your games and manipulation.”, I comment. "Up 2 u!" God gracious, what an insane cultural trait this avoidance of all personal responsibility for ones own actions! Up 2 you, up 2 you.

you say "I am tired of your games and manipulation" she hears "I want to fight" and replies "Up to you" which in this case is "<deleted> off"

It seems they refuse to exist. All motivations and responsibilities are exterior. “Up to you.” “I can't because my brother won't let me.” “My father wants me to marry.” “Yes, I agree with you. And yes, I agree with you, with the opposite opinion.” Agree without taking a real stand, agree without being consistent, so no problem. No self, no problem. With that sense of no responsibility for anything said, and no importance attached to a personal stance, lies are flippant and expected. Truth is not hard, just not useful. No one has cultured a taste of it. It is irrelevant. There is no self who maintains opinions and hold responsibilities anyway, so no use to cultivate any allegiance to a silly abstraction like truth. It wouldn't make one a better person to be an honest person who can take an informed and thoughtful and moral stand on an issue that she believes, irrespective of what others believe. A person is bettered by being pragmatic about circumstances, doing whatever is convenient. Deep thought about deeper meanings about what is happiness need never impinge upon blissful ignorance. Mai pen rai remains the best and most insightful mantra. The nihilism in that protects all from embarrassment Don't think too much. Don't think at all, and if it causes pain, forget it.

What a load of drivel ... so someone doesn't want to fight with you and it's the cultural thing? Could it just be YOU? But I guess maybe you haven't been here long enough to meet Thais that are your social equal. You could be describing the 1950 male/female dynamic in the USA .... but you ARE describing the dynamic of a batterer/battered spouse now. Doesn't take lifting your hand to be abusive.

No wonder a lot of us drink a lot when in Thailand – it is impossible to communicate verbally with much depth to those who derail the conversation whenever it gets a bit sticky or tricky, so we have to find our entertainments in other ways. Sex and alcohol seems to work.

That would pretty well describe a pattern that would be common amongst batterers too.

Asians are not straightforward. Everything seems to be some sort of negotiation, and everyone is expected to not disclose their hand. The other morning my cell phone was off because of a dead battery, and there was a power outage until late afternoon. My playmate freaked, assuming I was ######ing. There became no way to be straightforward – everything I said was interpreted as some sort of strategic lie. It couldn't be the drinking and sex .... plus a history of hearing excuses from you and/or others?? And then everything she said was a strategic lie. She starts saying how she hates me and will never see me again, when the day before it was that she loves me and wants my baby. So I tell her that I am a western guy, and that I am straightforward, and that I don’t' bullshit around - I aim exactly at what I want mean and I say it with words that mean exactly what I mean. If she wants me to love her, then say yes and I will, if not say no and I'll find someone who wants my love. That shook her up enough to start to change the subject, but I swear she was really getting off on the drama of the whole thing, and didn't seem to care one way or the other if I was telling the truth or if she was telling the truth. Truth totally left the picture. Reality had nothing to do with anything. She just wanted to show me how much jealousy she was capable of, and to show me that she was prepared to freak if I did anything that made her jealous. It's tiring. That constant mis-trust and emotional manipulation never once happened to me in the west. If I said something, it was either believed, or if the person thought I had such a character that I was lying, then there wasn't really much more to talk about – no need to continue the relationship. What is the point of talking if it is a lie?

Your total agenda become clear with this thread at this point (if not at the very beginning of this post .... sorry I had to ruin the Orwell stuff you were trying to use just to rant about a personal problem with your "playmate"

Asians use language fundamentally differently - this has been noted in business manuals. At the negotiating table, Asians spiral around and about, as if getting to the point would cause everyone physical pain and reveal embarrassing genital flaws and long unspoken family shames. They often will purposefully obfuscate, puffing clouds of words at your direct questions, diverting question from hitting answer. Compound that onto feminine guile onto pre-rational unempathetic selfishly motivated confused and mixed desires, and what you've got is slush over ice on an ice floe on water. No traction, and even if you get anywhere, you aren't going anywhere. "How does that make you feel?" can not be translated into any Asian language. It would be heard as "What would you like to present as your face regarding this difficult and awkward issue, or would you prefer to remain silent or change the subject just now?" In Asia you aren't expected to look like a stupid ass if you giggle or twitter or otherwise completely avoid an unstoppably direct question as if it were not a twenty thousand pound elephant thwapping its trunk onto your forehead. Other people would be expected to show deference to you by not noticing elephants.

OK ... we get it ... you don't understand Asia ... particularly the women! We have no idea where you are meeting your "playmates" but we could probably accurately guess.

" Even if the love is real, the words you hear are somewhat less than genuine, because they’re said for effect rather than a natural outpouring of emotion. " - Lookpapa

Yes, language is used fundamentally differently here in SE Asia. Instead of to convey what actually is, as if there is a real external world worth talking about and real inner worlds worth disclosing, it is mostly used to emotionally manipulate and to create advantage. People say either what they think you want to hear, or deliberately try to throw you off balance to gain an emotional advantage over you, or invent some lie, to see how you will react, in order to try to find out your "real" motives. Thais don't and can't understand this: that westerners do not lie. The can not grasp the abstract concept of "truth". It is totally without meaning to them. They do not and will never trust you.

Every word is always said for effect.

How ######ing boring is that?

Actually your life doesn't sound boring ... just sounds like it confuses you. If you understood life here better you would probably see the results of your behaviour ... AND you'd probably understand that not everyone communicates the same way and that YOU ARE NOT INHERENTLY CORRECT ... in fact ... look out your window ... if you see Thailand then you are likely the "wrong" one. (But when you have been here long enough to understand ... your behavior will get better and you will begin to see things less as right and wrong)

I would agree with Hua Hin

but if you decide on Jomtien ... take a look at Rabbit Resort ... they have a website

sooo Final count UNDER 509! cool!

I think it is a very interesting question the OP has brought up, and that's all it was... a question.

I am sorry ... what was the "question"?

Are you really unable to see the question, JD? If so, it sure looks like you have some mental blocks and taboos limiting your vision.

Do you agree, or disagree with Orwell, that if there are some things we are not supposed to think or say, it will in generall hamper our overall ability to think creatively? Do you think that Face makes it harder to discuss some things publicly? If yes to #1 and yes to #2, shouldn't the conclusion be that Face hampers free thinking and free expression?

Read through your original post and point out the question ......

but now that you posted it here ...I do disagree with your conclusions about Orwell and what he was saying. He was stating that a writer needed to free himself from taboos to write creatively ... (I disagree with that as well --- but it is the context of what he was writing)

Do I think that "face" makes it more difficult todiscuss things publicly? Yes again ... Face and "greeng jai" are related and perhaps similar to people that do not quite understand them. They are not the same. How can one "lose face" by telling a story? One CAN cause someone else to lose face and "greeng jai" will often prevent that but again what does it have to do with telling a story?

Your conclusion yet agains states that you are NOT asking a question .... but stating an opinion "Face hampers free thinking and free expression. (Not that those 2 things are related either. What someone chooses to express is not the same thing as their ability to think).

Did you really THINK this through? or did you just expect people to agree out of Greeng jai?

80 hours more for a $40 difference in price?

I have flown EVA and Thai ... not that route

I enjoyed EVA more ... but for 8 hours less I'd be right in the Thai seat with no issue