borrfors

EvenSteben!

You state that the cost of living and food is almost the same as in America. Well I do not know what prices you have in amrica by personal knowledge, but when I check for rental- and condo/house prices on the Internet they seem way higher than here in Thailand.

In Hua Hin, where we live, you can rent a condo (small 1 room) for as less as 3000 Baht a monts, wich is under 85 Dollars. It would be interesting to see what you can get for 85 US$ a month in the states. 

Me and my Thai wife have built a 210 Square meter (2260 Square feet) housxe with a land plot of about 3800 square feet which set us back 74 000 US$ (And this was in the more expensive areas in Hua Hin). Considering then, that you don´t have to pay any house or property tax for a house in this size makes it way more interresting.

Internet, electrics and water bills cost an average of 75 US$ a month (High speed fiber Internet of 40/mBit). Me and my lwife have a comfortable living, including a nice car (Nissan Juke) for about 23 000 Baht or 650 US$ a month. Could you live on that sum in America?

The food, compared for examnple my homecountry Sweden, which is one of the cheaper countries in the Eu, is about a fourth chepaer here in Hua Hin. If I don´t cook by myself I can have a nice meal at a streat vendor, or a small outdor restaurant for about 1.5 US$. But If you go to restaurants and eat fancy european meals, they are of course more expensive, but still much chepaer. The price I pay for a regular McDonlads menue in Sweden can give me a nice dinner for 4 - 5 people here in Hua Ahin.

So If you think the prices in Thailand is to high, maybe you have looked at the wrong places.

Good luck on your new price hunting in Thailand.

I didn´t even spend that amount when I lived in Sweden. But ofcourse you could spend 12 000 baht a day depending of what you want to do. Personally I think 2000 Baht for a holliday per day is more normal.

Why don´t the goverment make a deal with a good helmet manufacturer so families can buy good and cheap helmets. In my old country Sweden, the use of helmets in traffic is so widely acceptet that people who ride bikes or motorbikes without helmets are regarded as unresponsible idiots b y the population in general.

The thai government should also hand out reflex material for the kids to wear, and also educate them in proper behaviour when the are out in the trasffic. This is the only way to come to termes with the sadly high mortality rate4 in the thai traffic. To try to learn older people to act responsible is probably way harder than to educate children.

We should also have much more serious laws regarding people who drive without helmets. Why not impound their bikes until theu can show up with a proper helmet. Also rise the 200 baht penalty fee in a escalating scale, lets say first offence 500 baht, second 1000 baht, third 2000 baht and fourth time revoked drivers licence for a year.Then they have to make a new drivers licence from scratch.

My suggestion may sound harch, but the only thing people in general understand that it will cost money to not regard traffic safety. And imagine how much money the society loses every year when people who survive traffic accidents, but become invalides or mentally impaired dou to severe head injuries have to be treated and taken care of.

You obviously have to much sparetime to be able to bother of a thing like this. And I know this is also a behaviour made by foreginers to. get a hobby for god sake.

I can really recommend installing safety bars in your house. We did it at a very early stage when our house was finished. This was done seven years ago, and at the time it cost just under 30 000 Baht for all windows and doors in the house, (Around 12 places together with large entrance door, backdoor that can be locked when the normal door is open and so on).

We could got it even cheaper, but we decided to use thicker iron bars in the safety bars, and also a more nice looking design, instead of straight "prison-like" safety bars.

The bars, in a combination of door eyes and sliding extra locks. on the bedroom doors makes us even safer when we sleep at night. In our resort we had more than 10 burglary in houses without safety bars, but with alarm systems instead.

The burglars avoid safety bared houses in favor for more quick entry houses that use alarm systems. A normal burglary is over in a couple of minutes, when an attempt on a properly made safety bared house takes far to long time to do for the bad guys to feel successful without being noticed in their bad deed..

We also installed mosquito nets on all doors and windows, which have drastic lowered our electric bill, when it comes to cooling down the house. And as a last safety feature we installed our lovely dog Lilly, who have a very large built in alarm sound when someone approaches the premises-

I attach some photos of some of our safety bars made here in Hua Hin.

Good luck

Peter from Hua Hin

It´s an easy explanation to this question...

Thai people do not normally shake hands when they meet someone. They greet people by pressing their palms together....which means they are not use to our way of greeting gestures.

This is just an empty threat. I do not belive they are going to leave this lucrative businesds. But why not set up a minibus service or something and the gready Taxi drivers can find customers elsewhere.

I wonder why their sexual gender had to be used in the headline and article text. This is just a stupid way to try to make all transexuals look like criminals. Don´t they have enough problems trying to be accepted for what they are.

Towe the cars away to a outdoor remote parking space, fine the driver heavily and put a wheel clamp on the tires. Maybe then they learn.

Which New year are they referring to, The Thai or the westeren. If the latter, I think it will severely hurt the tourist industry if you can´t get a drink at your local restaurant or pub, on the largest drinking day of the year....

Maybe a lack of mirrors....

Well RustBucket, I think you are very wrong. The majority of the Thai people who get their homes ruined by flooding isn´t so amused as you say. I think your comment smells rasism in a large scale.

Stay for oner more month and then move without paying the last rent. And there you got your one month deposit back....

Since the insurance companies give you so lousy deals in case of a burglary, we decided to install security bars on each windows and doors in our house. It was not especially expensive either. And we got them made with nice decorations that did not make the house look like a prison. If I remember correctly (it was eight years ago we did it) we payed under 30 .000 baht for more than 30 places to cover in the house. Including sliding security doors at the entrance and a security door at the kitchen back door.

Some of the answers on this thread say that security bars can be easily broken. Yes they can, if you install crap. But if you use commin sense and good locks it will be rather difficult for a normal burglar to get in, without make attention to tnemselves during the brak in. And a good watch dog in combination of good security bars beats any security system you can buy.

We also installed mosquito nets on all windows and doors, which makes it possible to have them opened, without risk for day- or nightime burglaries, in order to cool down the house more or less for free. The money you spend on running aircons and fans easily save the cost for this installment in a few years time.

The best way to avoid burglary is to make it dificult and time consuming for a burglar to brake in to your house.. Many of our neighbours have invested in expensive alarm systems, but still had burglairs raided their houses. These day´s people have stop to react on alarm signals, since car alarmas and other similar alarms goes on all the time. And a skilled burglar only need a couple of minutes to do their evil deeds.

So I can strongly recommend good security bars. But do not save money on thin metal ones which easily can be braked off.

You can have the best insurances in the world, but when you get robbed of items with high personal and sentimental value, no money will replace them...

I think it´s very strange that the goverment allow this kind of slave labour to continue year after year.

It would be so easy to put some police / social workers on the places where these kids have to work, and then take away the kids in question from the streets, and help them to a proper home andf schooling.

Later in life they probably end up in the sex indistry, when they become to old to be used as lovely little flower sellers.

I do not know if it is possible to return them to their families, who probably going to sell them again to other mafia guys.

Probably ok to take the pill for a walk. But do not walk around when you have taken the pill, since there is a large risk to poke ot eyes of small children or very short adults. It is also NOT recomended to go in and walk around in a chrystal glass shop without being extremely careful when you need to turn around.

Since the information regarding the benefits of the forthcomming Windows 10 is rather meager at the moment, I think you need to know more in order to answer this question.

But the general idea of making a uniformed OS for all kinds of hardware platforms such as PCs, tablets and mobile phones sounds promising.

But also bear in mind that Google and the Linux distributions also are working on similar aproaches. And Linux is free of charge...

Well, I have been crossing the roads in Thailand and did not get runover.....yet. If you get sick from infections or other scary things here in Thailand I promise you will be more than sick. A friend of mine got sick from tap water. He almost died of the complications.

I did the same about ten years ago. And the only regeret I have is why I did´nt do it 20 years ago...

Todat my native countre seems strange when I have to visit it.

Why do you have to be "in to Ladyboys" just because you don´t think that the American was the victim. If someone would start to insult and yell at me I probably would have punched him to...

Well, I think it would have been better if he instead said No thank´s, with a smile and walked away, insted of starting to yell and make a scene. But maybe he learned something from his encounter. If you are such a homophobic person, Pattaya isn´t the best place to spend a vacation in...

 

In KL, Malaysia an ex-racer told me the prize was a girl for the night. Does anyone know the prizes to be won in Bangkok?

A lady boy for the night for the winner.  Two lady boys for the night for second place.

 

Stupid comment. Why involve ladyboys in this matter. They allready have a lot of shit from ignorant people to deal with. Respect for gods sake.

I live near the Kor Sor resort in the Bofhai district of Hua Hin. We have a very well maintained and straight road, around 1 km long. This road strip is frequently used by young boys who have speed competitions with their modified motorcycles. And no helmets or other safety gadgets. Flip flops and short pants are the standard wearable.

The mostly drive in speeds over 100 km/h. Not only people, also animals such as dogs, cats etc are in the risk of being run overed by these young "wanna be racing champions". I hope the local authorities will make road bumps as soon as possible. Otherwise someone will die soon...

Im an atheist but have no need to advertise the fact , certainly wouldn't choose to socialise with a group purely because they were non religious. Actually I find many vocal atheists rather smug , though on balance I prefer smug to sectarian slaughter !

I agree fully with your posting. I also mwould like to quote the late and great Graucho Marx, who was invited to join a society. He replied to the offer with this genious answer:

-No thanks, I would never dream of becoming a member of a society that would have me as a member...