Acharn

I met my first wife at the NCO Club at the Army base in Sattahip, in 1971.

Last time I spoke to a foreigner was about four and a half years ago. It was the last time I spoke English, too. I live outside Nakhor Sawan, if it matters.

I live outside Nakhorn Sawan. Everyone here seems to have tattoos, especially religious in nature. It's an ancient tradition in Thailand, maybe because the government used to tattoo people to show their citizenship (for taxation purposes).

It all depends on China. If the Chinese let Trump back down, the shortages and recession will be comparatively brief. If they maintain their tariffs and export restrictions for long, the US is probably going to be in a Depression in 2028. Before 2001 I would have expected that to be good, but given the state of the Democratic Party now the future does not look good.

Oh, yes, I'm from the U.S. I spent twenty years in the Army, half of it overseas. I was in high school during The McCarthy Years, and things have been that crazy since 2016. Maybe since 2001. I've mostly lived away from farang areas, among lower-/middle-class Thais.

It may be different in Bangkok. My belief is: Thais don't tip, so neither do I. Restaurant and bar owners pay living wages, unlike the barbaric United States. I consider a need for a tip to be a sign of desperation, taking a bad job.

43 years, the end of May.

I wore masks and have never caught Covid. It's still there. I'm 87 years old. Why should I not wear a mask? They aren't that much of a hassle. Lots of people get vaccinated and catch Covid, maybe even Long Covid. Do what you like.

Well, I would recommend Alcoholics Anonymous, but you don't sound like you've hit bottom yet. I interpret your post as blaming others for "making" you drink. I don't care how much you spend on rehab programs, you aren't likely to achieve long-term sobriety until you accept that you drank because you're an alcoholic. In other words, I think you want to be reassured that alcoholism is not your problem. Anyway, according to Tradition Three, anyone who wants to stop drinking can be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous Go to a couple of meetings. They don't force you to join. Some groups are not for everybody; the first meeting I went to was a disaster. Don't be put off by the "God Thing." It's not really necessary.

Sorry, it goes back at least to the 1990s. Her father oversaw a particularly bad event, the Tak Bai Massacre, when something like 200 "insurgents" died. I think it was in 2004. You could argue it goes back to 1959, when the CIA first offered Field Marshal Sarit funds to "combat Communism" (there was no "Communist" activity before that). That set off a low-level civil war in the Northeast and the South. Both came to an end for a while under Prem, but the South started up again at a lower level in the mid-'90s. It dies down and falls off the news, then something like this pops up.

I've lived here 43 years, most of them without air con and up-country. to me 30℃ is too cold. I usually turn the air con off at night. This past "cold season" wasn't too bad, but my room is usually several degrees warmer than the outside air. I was able to leave the air con off almost every day.

There's a paragraph on the Arrival Card that informs everyone of the 90 Day Report. It's interesting. The report was initiated during one of the governments that followed the 1976 counter-revolution, but it wasn't enforced for 20 years. Nobody was aware of it. I mean, who actually reads the arrival card? It actually took a couple of years to make it a regular thing.

Errr... the children in Thailand seem to be able to cross the roads safely. If you don't have the trick of it, Thailand is probably not a good place for you to be.

This is absurd. It seems to have been adopted from Parsi "fereng" around 1500, and specifically refers to people of European extraction. Since the Vietnam War, most Thais also apply it to American blacks. It's not derogatory at all. You must be paranoid to think it is.

Because you didn't catch measles, because most of the kids around you were vaccinated.