KevinN

They told me that it was connected to the pay account I had with them for the bigger box,but since I only use it once in awhile I quit the pay thing.

so pobly wont get the bigger box without paying the $20

JOHN;ain't the milk here really a laugh,,only thing you can get that sort of tastes like milk is powder and it is skimmed,,they even take the butterfat out of the canned/evaporated stuff,,they make it with milk powder[skimmed] and add palm oil of 5% to put the fat back in and palm oil is not as healthy as butterfat. ###### hard to get anything without sugar and flavoring.

I would think that in the US that the bar girl thing is not that much of a topic,,but it is here in Thailand,,

I am married to a school teacher and everyone here in our area knows what she is,but when out of the area she says that most people think she used to be or is a whore by being with a farang,,But it doesn't bother her or I as we both know and it wouldn't make 1 iota of difference to me anyway if she was a whore as I truly love her and she loves me..so fuk em.

Not all if any BG's lie about where they work, I know of a few that are telling their familys where they work if not exactly what they do.

And have you ever noticed that all[most] people in a village are "cousins" and in the next village,same thing,all "cousins" so must be some thing to it about keeping it in the family.

Where ya been Johnny,you have been missed.

well, NO-ONE (and this includes you expats) seem to be really interested in this topic and (possible) solutions as mentioned. Have to say, quite disappointing

Well it is really none of our business as long as we do what is right and do not contribute to the problem.

It is not our place to come to someone elses country and tell them how to run it,and I do not think that they appreciate it when we do..so either love it or leave it.

The derogatory spin to many of the posts so far is interesting in and of themselves.

The "golden years", regardless of when they start, are the years one finally becomes free of the contraints of earning a living.  What one does with ones time when retired varies as widely as individuals do.  I have always felt that boredom shows a lack of immagination. 

Those who cannot imagine what one would do if he weren't working, must indeed be fairly limited in their recreational interests.  All the time I was working, from age 11 and my first newspaper route, until 63, when I retired, I was dreamig of what I would do if I didn't have to earn a living.  Now, I am free to pursue those dreams, desires and interests without time contrstraints.

I have never been happier and visiting friends say I have never looked better.  Lifetime medicated high blood pressure is now normal without medication, if you need factual proof of the foregoing.

There are many who just can't handle retirement for whatever reason and they too have freedom, to return to work and many do so. Those who are are so fortunate as to "love" what they do to earn money, may well have difficulty giving that up, and why should they? 

Many expats plain "just don't like" living in the west and the freedom to move to Thailand in retirement is their ultimate reward. As for me, I  create "my own corner of the world" wherever I may be, so I am not in that category.

My days are full and filled with the freedom to do what I want, when I want and how I want and to not do most  things until I feel like it.  For one who worked for 35 years in a profession that demanded scheduling of my time tightly for three months in advance, I am fully enjoying my freedom from the "rat race".

Now don't that take the cake, cept for our trades we pretty well did the same things,

I semi retired at 58 and finally guit working part time at some job when I was 65.

I have had no trouble keeping my self occupied specially as far as my mind goes.

I had always liked my work,what ever it was at the time,I wouldn't work a job if I didn't find it interesting.

no trouble at all if you can imagine, or have the intelligence to amuse your self. As long as you have the capitol to do it.

Guess ya gotta live part of your working life as a hopeless drunk to be able to enjoy what it really takes to be happy.

And you should do that just "ONE DAY AT A TIME"

What is wrong with you?

When people can be told not to voice neg. opinions,news papers are told what to print and you think that it violates your human right just cause you gotta piss in a bottle?

Bed at 2330,read til 0130 and asleep usually by 0200 and up at 0600,seldom nap,,sure wish I could. but as you get older I guess you don't need so much sleep..

Altho I hear with age some folks have trouble with kidneys or bowel movements,, I never have any trouble that way,,every morning at 0430 I have a real good piss,and at 0500 I have a sound bowel movement,,but I sure wish I could wake up before 0600.

sounds normal to me,if you just bought the car,there should have been insurance put on by the dealer you got it from, but as far as I know,they always impound til an investigation is made.,,Might check with a lawyer to find out for sure tho.

But as you should know,,nothing is ever the same here in Thailand,they just do waht ever feels good at the time,,next time it will be different again.

Kinda keeps you on your toes.

My wife tells me that any Thai can go to the public health office in their village and register or go to the gov't hospital and register,get your card and then give the 30 Baht,

Open to all Thai's. I also have Thai gov't insurance because my wife is a gov't employee. so there fore I go to gov't hospital for physical therapy and for prescriptions as that is the only place the ins. will pay.

If something is really wrong and I want to talk to a good Dr. then I go to a private hospital..but it is not that cheap. about half of what it would cost in the states.

Most have no shots at all before coming or while here,unless you will be in the forests and you said that you will not be,,so just come and enjoy.

Not sure of all the details but I thought all Thais were entitled to the 30 baht scheme . My wife and daughter both use them but been told u have to use a hospital within the same district . Although my wife was admitted to a hospital for 10 days not in the district. Alot of debating by her family with the hospital, leave it up to the Thais to do the negotating ,a falang on the scene will not help Her hospital expenses were covered by 30 baht. But, told next time to go to a district hospital or foot the bill.

I think the 30 baht puts alot of western countries to shame , but can't see it lasting as it is a political vote winner and the money for all this 'free' health care has to come from somewhere

As of last year the hospitals were talking about not having drugs or services to give as the hospitals were broke because the gov't would not pay the money to support the patients on the 30 baht deal,,so for all practical purposes,the deal was a bust before it ever got started, just another wet dream from cheerless leader.

Dunno - but I once got a 1,000bht fine for dropping a fag end on Kaosan Rd - a road that has no public bins except for a couple of big wheelies at the Burger King end of the st.

Unfortunatly for me, I had just gone to a cashpoint to draw out 30,000 for a flight to Johannesburg and had the cash in my hand as the policeman tapped me on the shoulder holding up my still smoking dog-end.

A very devious way of getting money from the unsuspecting farang, but hey, at least his wife can now get that new rice cooker she needed.

The same happened to me once when I came out of immigration and lit up and walked to the sidewalk and a taxi stopped to pick us up and I dropped the butt in a raindrain at the curb,and was fined for dropping it,altho it was down the drain and could not be produced.

When I lived close to CM out towards San Sai,there is a cross road that I used to go on to my house when coming from town that the shoulders of the road are used for dumping large amounts of trash and garbage, It not only was it a smelly eye sore,but every week or two they would set it alight and then for a couple of days the stink of burning garbage was a real enticement to move to LOS.

There's nothing tragic about this story at all. He gave her the money of his own free will. He's an idiot.

Hear-Hear

I am not into the smell of the Thai red curry that is available in some places,we use a red curry sometimes at our house but it is not to smelly.

As far as kissing goes,I think it has something to do with bad breath as they must know that it a turn off.

My wife sometimes eats it at a foodshop where she eats lunch close to her school. And I can smell her when she comes in the door in the evenings,and I sleep with my back to her and still the smell bothers me.

But they all eat it at times,sometimes I can smell her brother when he is 5 feet from me and we are talking, Once an old broad got on a bus and set right behind me for about 3 hrs. and I thought I was gonna puke from the smell of that shit she had been eating, I wouldn't even have let her kiss my ass.

So all in all,I am kinda glad that they realise that it does make their breath very unappealing and so do shun kissing to some extent. but I do not find that they are again kissing except ,Why would you want to swap slobbers with a working bar girl..I have never seen a working whore anywhere in the world that was into kissing. Sex to them is a business deal and kissing is an act of love.

Been reading with interest. I still live in UK at moment so can only give limited input.

But many of the supermarkets in UK import asparagus, beans etc. from Thailand.

And We import more chicken from Thailand as well than anywhere else in the world.

My point being, they must be able to farm a bit, UK supermarkets are notorious for being picky with the food on their shelves.

Also when I'm in LOS I've had some great salads.

We live in central Thailand,and only have one large market store,and they do not sell much fresh anything,some butter,milk ,small packages of vegs,meat or fish mix,kinda like a U-cook it TV dinner,and soap canned goods[Thai only],

meat and vegs. are sold in the open markets like in every village, and a Thai will not buy or eat a fryer chicken raised in a chicken shed for export,they prefer field range chickens. My bro in law raises 8000 at a time for an export co. and the family will not eat one of em.

I have seen some fair [not good] produce in the large chain markets,Lotus,Big C Carrefour and such,but never in the open markets. and it is 170 KM to one of those markets for me.

When I lived in mexico they started to import mexican avacados into the USA, we could buy a dozen large,fine avacados for less than a dollar and all mexicans ate quite a few of them,,then when they started to export,all the good ones went north and what was left was ones that no one would buy and the prices were more than doubled for the cull that remained.

And import produce is not as good as would be grown in an importing country,The reason is that it is cheaper to import, Why??

one reason is because it is seasonal,and the main reason is because it is inferior as the rules of sanitation and pesticide are less in the growing country,and the standards of quality are lower also, I have bought mexican bell peppers in the states to make stuffed peppers and inside every one was worms growing,you would never find that in an american grown pepper,and my mex wife always washed all produce with bleach/water mix to sanitize the stuff before we used it. In the US,you can take an apple or any fruit or produce and eat it right in the store without any ill effects.

I won't even eat this stuff here after it is washed in sanitizing wash as the cauliflour that we were going to use awhile back had a dozen worms left in the flowerettes after it was washed.

must be all the edible stuff is sent to england.

Now KevinN, I can only agree with what you say but ya gotta be careful saying bad things about Thais like "they do not really understand anything about farming)""

I said nothing bad about Thai's,,I just stated a fact, The beef that they sell is not fit to feed your dog,the pork isn't that much better,chicken is terrible,and all the produce that I see should be thrown in the dumpsters,worms,bugs and all. golf ball size Broccoli with 4 kilo of stem,baseball size cabbages that taste bitter instead of sweet, Asperigass that looks like shoestrings, and most of this is because of bad farming practices or poor feeding technique.

Poor farming and work ethics go hand in hand it seems.

I saw the page where one of the Australian man having motorbike accident and needed blood urgently ,It remind me one of the Pattaya guide book,which tell us every year tourist die in road accident is about the same amount that killed in Bali bombing.

Should we set a forum which inform tourist about road safety in Thailand,example we are drive on right handed side,beware of monkeys crossing when you are in Island and don't drive when you are drunk etc.

Some useful information which maybe safe a life in the future is better then we pray 100 times.

It is not that simple. You are trying to use Logic and logical thinking,,LOGIC is a word not in the Thai language.

They will sometimes obey the written laws,and sometimes not,they do not understand them and if they do ,then they will still do as they want at that time,if they are making a move,they are prone to change thir mind half way thru and do something different.

So to be fairly safe, Never think that you know what they are going to do, Just because you are in a turn lane or safety zone,do not ever think you are safe. and just because there are policemen there does not mean that the written law will be obeyed.

Well...duh!  I think we all know that Spanish is spoken differently around the world -- different accents and some different vocabular/grammar, but still the same language.

But to my ears, when someone says they speak "Mexican" (or "talk Messcan", more often than not), it sounds like they're an uneducated yokel.  (And, coming from Texas, I should know a little about yokels).

Especially if you come from West Texas, Now from the eastern part of the state they are a little more civilized and educated and really hard to believe they are Texans if you have been around them in other parts of the USA.

Seems that the Eastern part of Texas is where the people tend to stay and the Western part is where the immigrants come from that spread out across the country, good place to be from apparently.

Spanish and Mexican are like going to Vientaine and trying to speak Thai to them or understanding what they say.

Spee was just being nice and didn't know that you were so intilligent and would take offence.

because spuds require sandy loam soil,and we have only clay,as in most of thailand,A lot of the worlds finest spuds are grown at Moses Lake Washington,and is high desert country that was without water before the Grand Coolie and other big Dams were built on the columbia river, Now you can buy 5 kilo of huge #1 USDA baking potatoes for a dollar.

Most of your large US corps. that use Freedom Fries[french fries til Iraq war] are made by Nestle co. there.

They grow tomatoes all over and one reason that they are trash is the Thai do not really understand anything about farming,even rice,the way they do everything is very labor intensive,,tomatoes are of ther commercial grade and picked way to green, but a lot of things just do not grow to a size that they would other places,and Apples grown here are really quite nice,they havent learned to pick em so green yet,just wait,pomagranites are never left to ripen,and they wonder whay they are not fit to eat.

I really do not think that most olives will produce a good crop here as the humidity is just to high from what I have seen in good olive country, but maybe over in ISSAN,I don't know,never lived over there. and maybe a strain that will do OK.

Give it a shot, I have been wondering about chessnuts,I might try it fore I croak.

must have been a drunk cop,huh. Best forget it and keep your pooch in the house then.

I didn't see how much a kilo,but the market here in Phetchabun had the good ones and the price did seem a little steep. But the vegs is on the end of the meat isle and it stinks so bad that I do not take longer than I have to to get what I need and getty ass out.

And the flies are as thick as kamakazi at the invasion of Okinawa.

I might nod, but that is all cause most do not speak english that is understandable,,they either speak german ,Swiss, Dane, Swede , Brit or Dutch and I can't understand any of em. I do ok with aussie's,Kiwi's and americans.

Let me guess KevinN, you're an old Ausie, Kiwi or American and don't speak any foreign languages and have a hearing disability?

I tend to nod and be friendly to other farang but am surprised by the characters that roam the streets in Bangkok.

Dutchy

Wrong on most of it cept I do not hear as well as I used to,get by with mexican,and have done OK with arabic,korean,tagalog,Viet,but been many years since I had to use any of it,cept the mexican.

But that is not the main reason that I do not speak to farang,,I didn't come here to associate with farang,I came here to enjoy myself and I get all the farang I need on a daily basis on TVF,some good humor,but I do not care to speak with others,I have lived by my self on cruising sailboats for months at a time and in the high mountains for months with out seeing anyone else and I am OK with me and I like me and so I am what you might call a loner I guess. Others pobly do not feel this way about me,but that is OK.