thaibeachlovers

They are not leaders of the free world and don't have access to the firing codes.

I'll be happy if she is the candidate as IMO a sure loser, whoever the GOP candidate is. My worry was that she'd be in as VP and then Biden would opt out leaving her as POTUS.

Thanks for that. When I was a regular on them they had inflatable life rafts, but they obviously wouldn't inflate- probably never checked. Life jackets- only after a ferry sank in a storm that had none at all. I think it was one of those fast ferries- don't remember the company, I think Raja. I spent 4 hours on a Raja fast ferry floating around after the engine failed. We were only 1/2 hour from Samui, but had to wait till a boat came from the mainland!

I was so concerned by the lack of liferafts that worked on the ferries ( perhaps that has changed ) that I always took my own flotation device.

Thanks for the reply and the entirely appropriate reason for not going on the train. I always went sleeper so as to save the day for sightseeing ( and save a night's hotel bill ). I'd leave Bkk in the evening and be on Samui by mid day. It's not as though Samui had a lot to do except walks on the beach though. Hua Hin was nice till they destroyed it with the monstrous Hilton right in the middle. Had some nice restaurants over the water. It was OK for a couple of days.

Thanks for the laugh ( I know it was unintentional ). Building something on land that they had no right to is so typically Thai that I just had to laugh. I'm very happy to hear that the airport never got finished- IMO it would have been the end of Phangan as the last refuge from the flashpacker menace. Most flashpackers won't travel with us peasants and it has to be by air or not at all. With any luck the concrete road they were building on the East coast didn't get finished. I was at Haad Khom after it reached there and the flashpacker palaces were already being built. It'd be sad if it reached Bottle or Than Sadet

Trump used to be a Democrat and pals with the Clintons. $60 billion could do a lot of good in the US, but it won't because it got used to kill people. You seem to be OK with the Ukrainian disaster because no Americans are getting killed. Too bad about all the Ukrainians that died then!

I did that twice. first time was great, second not so much. Different farmhouse as we went up stream.

No problem. I was based at Scott Base in the 70s. Flew in on a Hercules plane with skis for landing on the snow. Soon as arrived was put in the back of a truck and driven to the base which was quite primitive, having been constructed to last just a few years in 1957 during IGY. Water was melted glacier ice, and showers were about once a week during summer. No tv or radio, and obviously no internet. Main after work entertainment was the bar, and also going over the hill to the American Base of McMurdo. They had a big desalination plant and showers any time. They also had a large US Navy contingent which maintained the base ( time in Antarctica was counted as sea duty ) so had all the various bars for sailors, NCOs and Officers, plus the civilian bars. We were allowed to visit any of them. Americans do know how to party! They had about a thousand on base in the summer, we had about 100 at capacity. In the winter, we had 11 and they had about 100. We had huskies and a ski tow though, so IMO we were better off. We had 2 women on base, only in the summer, but they had loads in summer and 1 in winter- that led to some interesting times! I was maintenance, which involved a lot of outside work, which could get quite cool, though Canadians would have been fine. About a max of -4 C in summer, and a minimum in winter of about -50 C, if I remember correctly. Base was maintained at 15 C. Storms from the south were exciting, and in the winter we had a lot of auroras. In winter we had a movie every night, though I spent a lot of time over at Mac 10 pin bowling, playing volley ball, enjoying movie marathons with as many hot dogs and soft icecream cones as wanted. They also had a sauna- lovely. Getting to sleep was a problem,as insomnia is common, and the sleeping quarters air supply was humidified as the air had no natural humidity. Antarctica is officially a desert as it has so little precipitation. We had loads of snow, but it was very old snow and it never actually snowed. It just blows around in storms. Complete darkness for 8 weeks, and most of us went up a hill to see the first sunrise, when it just peeped over the horizon. After that it was just getting ready for the summer arrivals, and then back to the real world with strange green stuff ( grass ) and I could look into the wind without getting frostbite. Best year of my life, and still miss it.

Hmmmmm. Have you read the book and was there any comparison between The Sanctuary and the book version eg, was it completely covered by trees to make it invisible from the air? To be authentic, the visitors to The sanctuary would have had to go spear fishing for their food and smoke copious amounts of dope. I'm in two minds if it has a basis in fact or is just clever marketing. The below is hardly convincing evidence, though the dates of starting are the same, and The Sanctuary had a long house just as the book did. https://www.2oceansvibe.com/2020/11/17/real-story-behind-island-community-that-inspired-the-beach/ Asked whether Garland actually visited The Sanctuary, [one-time resident Michael Doyle] says, “I have a fuzzy memory of a guy hanging out in a hammock and just watching the flow of life for a couple of weeks in the mid-’90s. And I can put names to a few of the characters in the story, so there’s that. It didn’t click so much with the book as with the film.” "It didn’t click so much with the book as with the film.” is what makes me sceptical. Basically the movie had little in common with the book. Also, Garland was not, far as I can discover involved in any way with the movie, other than drawing Daffy's map. Certainly Doyle bent over for DiCaprio and ruined the entire premise of the book, just because DiCaprio wanted to nail the girl. I've read the book twice and saw the movie 6 times when it came out, and also on DVD. I've also researched the making of the movie extensively, and the book is by far a superior version, though I watched the movie for nostalgic reasons. As an amusing aside, the character Richard of both book and screen despised the sort of tourists that went to Full Moon Parties, but https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/thailand-the-sanctuary-koh-phangan/index.html Behind the project were two Koh Phangan residents, Gill Beddows and Steve Sanders, who decided to establish The Sanctuary after becoming annoyed with ongoing commercialization in the Hat Rin scene. “In Hat Rin we ran a café, and we were involved in the big parties,” says Beddows.

Jokin' right? The US under Biden is getting a big hammering in world opinion for supporting netanyahu in his atrocities in Gaza

Putin is deflecting, and you seem to need to see a good psychologist about that TDS.

Why do people think she'd make a good POTUS? She was married to a president, but that doesn't make her presidential material or have a clue about actually doing the job. Hopefully she won't have to prove why she was a bad idea.

They never asked me what I think of Biden.

I'm not an American and I'd vote for him if Biden was the alternative- lesser of two evils and all that.

I came on expecting one of the usual idiot with no insurance rents a motorbike despite not knowing how to ride one stories. Happily it's about someone that actually had insurance. Nothing wrong with riding a m'bike as long as one knows how to and drives according to the conditions. Oh and is prepared for a life altering accident that was caused by some one else. I had my accident, though only slightly life altering and a pain in the wallet, caused by some moron driving into me while almost stationary.

Lomprayah do an all included from Bkk. They don't go all the way to Surat, so it's not that long a bus ride. What's wrong with a sleeper train to Surat? I did it many times and never a serious problem. You can take a first class cabin if don't like bunking with the commoners.

Is there an airport on Phangan? Google is giving me contradictory information. I know one was started, but happily wasn't completed.

What was so bad about it? I did that many times, except I took sleeper train to Surat or stayed the night near the train station. I didn't experience any major problems.

That certainly applied to all the decent beaches in LOS. They went from paradise to concrete hell this century. Even the little gem of Haad Khom had started building the flash packer palaces, which was always the beginning of the end for a beach.

I only left because I couldn't get pension in LOS, but that undoubtedly brought the divorce on. I can still see her face when I told her we'd have to "economise". I'd have stayed there even if I could never afford another shag, but I couldn't afford the medical insurance.

We might have passed each other then! I thought it was OK, but the taxi rip off was a big problem till I discovered the bus.

Not as I've seen it used.

The White Temple is worth it, definitely. Just go before the Chinese hordes return as it's horrible when they descend on it.

IMO Biden and his cronies think everyone is too stupid to put the two things together, and they can do anything they like as long as they say the right words.