nisakiman

I've seen mentioned a couple of times in this forum (although I can't find the posts now) that people have bought economy class tickets, and then upgraded to business when on the plane. I seem to recollect it being said that it could be done relatively (compared to the advance purchase) cheaply. Does anyone know how (or indeed, if) this works, and what sort of price differential there is from the advance purchase of a business class ticket? When, precisely, do you ask to upgrade? At the boarding gate? As you board the plane? After you've taken off? And who and how do you pay? Is there a fare structure to cover it, or is it at the whim of the chief steward?

I'm guessing you would take a gamble on there being spare seats in business if you did this. I've never seen anyone on any of the flights I've taken doing it, so I'm wondering if it is actually possible or whether it's another urban myth.

I want to know what she's feeling with her right hand.

Same what she was trying to feel in this photo :>

You didn't get the whole series:

http://roflrazzi.cheezburger.com/news/tag/yingluck-shinawatra

“The Moral Statistician.”

Originally published in Sketches, Old and New,
1893

“I don’t want any of your statistics; I took your
whole batch and lit my pipe with it.

I hate your kind of people. You are always
ciphering out how much a man’s health is injured, and how much his intellect is
impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of
ninety-two years’ indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the
equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards
occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc. etc. And you are
always figuring out how many women have been burned to death because of the
dangerous fashion of wearing expansive hoops, etc. etc. You never see more than
one side of the question.

You are blind to the fact that most old men in
America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought
to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and survive it,
and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and
fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much solid comfort,
relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a
lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it
alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your
kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying
yourself all those little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can
you do with it? What use can you put it to? Money can’t save your infinitesimal
soul. All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment
in this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment where is
the use of accumulating cash?

It won’t do for you to say that you can use it to
better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting
tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty
vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so in
the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never dare to
laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a good humor,
will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are always down on your knees,
with your ears buried in the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around;
and you never give the revenue officers a full statement of your income.

Now you know all these things yourself, don’t
you? Very well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable
lives to a lean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that
is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don’t you go off somewhere and
die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as ornery and unlovable
as you are yourselves, by your villainous “moral statistics”?”

Mark Twain

"If women workers stopped drinking, the campaigners claimed, they would be happier."

What arrogance. The sort of people who spout that kind of arrant nonsense really boil my piss. Who the hell do they think they are to assume knowledge of what other people's desires and pleasures are, and what is good for them?

These organizations, while relatively harmless, are generally useless.

Far from being harmless, they are thoroughly dangerous. They presume to remove personal choice on the basis that they know best what is good for others. That those others whom they would coerce into lifestyle changes don't agree is of no consequence to them. Like the government funded fake charities in the UK who lobbied for the total smoking ban on the basis that it would "protect the workers". Yes, I bet the 150,000 workers who lost their jobs as a result of the ban were eternally grateful to those interfering busybodies for protecting them from the non-existent threat of "second-hand smoke". And now the anti-alcohol lobby is up to the same tricks, lobbying government to ban all sports sponsorship by alcohol companies. Can you imagine the effect that would have on just about every major sport? It would decimate those sports just like the smoking ban decimated pubs.

"Ah, but it's for your own good" they chorus.

Thank you, but I prefer to make my own decisions about what is good for me.

A plague on all their houses. If I had any say in the matter I would de-fund the lot of them and tell them to go and get proper jobs instead of making people's lives a misery for a living.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised
for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live
under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s
cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but
those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do
so with the approval of their own conscience. -- C S Lewis

Never had shots for anything. I got malaria when I was in India in 1967 and Hep B in Afghanistan in 1968, but I don't think there were shots for either of those back then, just quinine tablets for malaria. Which I didn't take. I never think about it when I travel anywhere.

My wife lives with me here in Greece at the mo, but she has said on a few occasions that when we move back to Thailand she wants to visit Vietnam and Korea. Not been myself either, so I think we will be doing that! Not a long flight to either of them too!

Thai wines are on a par with Egyptian and Greek wines.

I have to take issue with that statement.

I drink red wine on a daily basis - it's been my alcohol of choice for three decades now. I also live in Greece, and have done for ten years. There are some excellent wines produced here, from many regions but predominantly Nemea and Noussa. They tend to be a bit pricey at the top end, but they can compete with the best. Also it is possible to find very drinkable table wines. My standard evening tipple is a 2009 Agiorgitiko (a native grape variety) from Nemea, 13.5% ABV. I buy it direct from the producer in a 10 litre box for €18 a box. It is streets ahead of most French and Italian table wines I've tasted.

Price is my beef with decent Greek wines. It's crazy, but I can get Chilean and Argentinian quality wines here much cheaper than the local wines.

Endure has the right of it with his photo of Penfold's Grange. One of the great wines of the world. The younger of my two sons (both of whom are Australian) used to work for Grant Burge, a winery in the Barossa Valley, and their top end wines were truly magnificent. Yes, that's something that Australia does get right. They have a great wine industry.

I haven't been back to LOS for about 5 years, so the news that Australian wines have come down in price is good news indeed. It was my big complaint when I was there that my standard drink was so prohibitively expensive. The Thai wines I tried were expensive crap. I ended up buying 1.5 litre bottles of barely drinkable Italian table wine from Big C for about 700 baht, I think. I did a visa run to Lao last time I was there, and picked up a couple of boxes of Aussie table wine at the border. It was great! Really quite drinkable! I'd be very pleased if those boxes started appearing in the Thai supermarkets at a reasonable price!

The Thai wine industry has still got a long, long way to go before I'll be spending my hard earned on it again.

As Harry notes, Chiang Mai was definitely "up-country" in the '70's and the random robbing of buses was a hazard.

Cannabis in the form of hashish was the drug of choice for most travelers, though an unfortunate few fell prey to harder stuff. This applied to the India, Pakistan, Afghanistan nexus. Thailand was different with their Thai-Sticks and heroin, both being freely available and cheap. Thai-Stick and Double O Globe. The book "The Politics of Heroin" was released in that time-frame, detailing Air America aka certain American government agencies' role in facilitating the movement of Guns and Drugs in SEA.

Fast-forward 40+ years. I recently read an article pointing out that SEA is now increasingly out-of -step with the West regarding drug policy. Mandatory death penalties and long jail terms are now the norm in several countries, while the West is increasingly moving towards relaxation of the prohibitionist approach.

In Canada, domestically-produced cannabis is the largest cash crop in British Columbia, worth an estimated C$7 billion , far out-pacing the traditional lumber and fisheries industries. That is just one of our 10 provinces and the pot business is well-entrenched in each of the others, adding up to significant economic impact. In these economic times, government messes with numbers like that at their peril. The recent complete legalization vote in Washington State and Colorado will no doubt negatively affect those numbers, as much product went south.

Legalize and tax is the new mantra.

Indeed, I remember when I was in Thailand in 1971 it seemed that Thai Buddha Sticks were everywhere, and although I didn't travel north of Bangkok, as I was meandering my way down towards Malaysia just about everywhere I stopped I would be invited to share a bong with the people I met. I was stuck in Sadao for a month waiting for money (they wouldn't let me into Malaysia without), and I had a good friend there who was, in theory, Hi-So, but adopted no airs and graces. Lovely guy. His name was George (pronounced Yor' with a glottal stop at the end) Na Songkla, and his father had been head honcho of the state I think. I would spend many an evening with him surrounded by serried ranks of tropical fish tanks (it was his hobby) smoking dope and drinking Mekong Whiskey. It was both normal and accepted. By contrast, about fifteen years ago when I was there (Hua Hin I think), I asked a local I'd got to know if he knew where I could buy a little grass (I still enjoy the occasional spliff), and you'd think I'd asked him where to get bulk heroin! Looked like a rabbit in the headlights. "No no no, don't know, don't know" he said. Ha! how times do change! I've never asked again, needless to say!

One of the most interesting characters of the early "hippie' travellers who made it beyond India is Tim Page.He was in Laos in the mid sixties during a coup de tat , took some pictures which eventually reached some editors desk and by pure accident ended up with Press Accreditation.

He went on to become one of the legendary photographers of the Vietnam War.He was as much known for the ridiculous risks he took, the hedonistic life of drugs and drink as his photographs.Seriously wounded 4 times he just kept coming back.The Dennis Hopper character in Apocalypse Now is based on Tim Page and he is the main character in one of the best books of the Vietnam War - Michael Herr's" Dispatches" along with his best mate Sean Flynn [the son of Erroll Flynn] who disappeared in Cambodia in 1970 and was presumed killed by the Khmer Rouge.

That's very interesting. I've not heard of Tim Page before, but I will most certainly investigate further now. I'll also look the book out, as I haven't read that, either.

Thanks for those snippets of info!

The "Let's see how long we can keep this thread going" brigade.

(Apologies if someone has already done that one. I really couldn't face going through 29 pages of this stuff.)

I hitchiked through Europe back in 1968 with a mate and his girlfriend. I hitched on my own and we used to arrange to meet up at campsites along the way. First to arrive would wait until the other party turned up. Our destination was India but we were in no rush and I remember spending a month on the island of Cofu on a beach. No electricity and drinks were kept cold down a well at the local bar. We could see in the distance along the coast that there were hotels being constructed and the locals were quite excited at the prospect of finally getting electricity. We liked it better without electricity.....a novelty to us, I suppose.

When we reached Athens it was decided between my mate and me that his girlfriend wasn't the right material for travelling 'rough' and we managed to send her home by putting her on the magic bus that went direct to London. It was quite a relief to be shot of her. We continued on to Istanbul and met up with quite a few travellers at the Pudding shop that were returning home from India. There were several horror stories being told to us about the locals on route burning your hair if it was long (which ours was) enough for us to decide not go any further east. We turned back and hitched up to Scandinavia instead.

I regretted not getting to India but some year's later

and travelled to countries such as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Jordan. So my lust for travelling through Turkey and beyond was eventually satisfied still sporting long hair so I think those horror stories told to us were somewhat exagerated!!

Ha! That's a couple of things we have in common! It was Corfu that I stayed for three months in '67. I got a ferry ticket from Brindisi to Patras, and the ticket allowed you to disembark in Corfu for a couple of days and then continue your journey to Patras on another ferry of the same line. I got off for a couple of days, and was still there three months later. And in fact, that's where I live now, and have done for the past ten years.

"...(mid 70's) I had become a long distance lorry driver..."

I lived in Australia most of the '70s, And I was doing just that - interstate driving!

I've been fiddling with photobucket to see if I can post thumbnails. This is my first attempt - I hope it works! If it does, I'll put up some more photos.

Hmmm. Not working very well. Some more work needed!

The OP is right; a lot of expats are in Thailand because they love the country and/or they are married to a Thai. And many of them don't have an excess of money. When I move there in a few years with my (Thai) wife, I certainly won't be living the high life. I will have a very small pension and my wife will work as an accountant. What she can earn as an office manager is not bad, but it's by no means a princely salary. So we will be living comfortably but economically. And it's only a question of not being extravagant that will enable us to live comfortably. It's not a matter of having to buy crap to save fifty satang. And the more people say to us "Oh, you can get so-and-so much cheaper if you go to whoever", the more money we'll have for other things. Simples.

Many (most?) people who live in a place for some time learn about where savings can be made without compromising their lifestyle, and I think that's the main thrust of the OP's post. If most of the people reading this thread moved to Greece, they would find it much more expensive than I do, simply because I have ten years of experience here. But I can easily share that experience with them. And there will be other expats here who have discovered savings that I haven't, and that's where a forum like this comes into its own, when there is a pooling of experience which is to the benefit of all.

And then of course you'll get the clever-dicks who have loadsamoney and pour scorn on those who haven't. But we can ignore them.

A good thread, and should throw up some useful ideas.

I don't know about flying farts, but I learned to throw a fart from a very young age

What, like ventriloquists throw their voices, you mean? That's a handy talent. You can let one rip at full volume and pin the blame on the snotty bitch standing nearby!

Expelling flatus was studied in the design of the Boeing 787 dreamliner. True

That actually doesn't surprise me. In fact I would imagine that most pilots know at what stage of the flight they should increase the fresh air flow into the cabin!

That's great! Those machines don't come cheap, and nor do the grinders. I know because I had one in a bar I owned some years back. Prices look good too, although the cold coffee prices are cut off in the pic. A capuccino here costs between €2.50 and €5, so 35 baht is pretty good considering the cost of the kit. Mind you, a 7-11 isn't the most comfortable of venues to enjoy a good coffee...

I came across one in a hotel once which had extremely high water pressure, I aimed, fired and roared, although no damage was done it fairly made my eyes water.

Following this close call I now aim slightly off centre of the bulls eye so as the initial pressure surge is hitting a spot of slightly less importance.

Here in Greece, bum guns aren't available, so I picked up one of those garden water spray jobbies with the trigger (not the multi-head type), but it had a nozzle that throws out a wide spray. I had to drill and adjust the nozzle to get the right profile jet, but with a bit of experimentation managed to achieve what I was attempting. The only problem with it is that the jet is a bit fierce, so unless you're gentle with the trigger you end up giving yourself a high pressure enema. The water gets pretty cold here in winter (although not as cold as UK), but oddly enough, the wife has never complained about it, even though she doesn't like the cold at all. Hmmm...

I haven't used toilet paper since I was first in India in the late 60s. There, they had these containers that looked like aluminium teapots without a lid, and you'd fill it with water and take it with you to the loo (taps in loos were a luxury back then). After an initial resistance to this culture change in my toilet habits, it quickly dawned on me that it was an immeasurably more hygienic method, and I felt so much cleaner as well. Since then, when I've lived in UK or Aus, I've always kept a bottle (an old white wine bottle is ideal) next to the bog.

But bum guns are vastly superior to teapots or bottles. Much easier to use.

The thought of using toilet paper horrifies me. Ugh!

The British Consul to Thailand, Michael Hancock, gave a very good talk at Pattaya City Expats Club today.

He said there were about 50,000 British expats in Thailand.

i would guess he meant "official" ones.

But what constitutes 'official'?

People with residency? Work permits? O visas? The ones who are married to a Thai, have kids here but still have to do visa runs? There are many layers of 'official'.

I honestly think the Thai government would make it a lot easier for themselves if they simplified the visa situation.

Nice story.

I note the joyless puritans were on to it immediately.

"Unnecessary", "corrupt", "shouldn't need to pay"...etc.

I think 12000 sounds quite reasonable. The UK police charge huge amounts of money for that sort of thing.

Once in the 80s, a friend of mine who had a "showbiz" trucking company in London asked me if I could take a large van (Merc 508) full of music gear down to Madrid, as Sade and her band were there and had decided to stay there and rehearse. I had an address for them, and so when I got to Madrid, asked directions. For the next two hours, I was sent hither and thither from one side of Madrid to the other, but never to where I wanted to be. Finally, I spotted a couple of motorbike cops parked up, so stopped and asked them. They were less than helpful at first, but when they found out that the address I wanted was where Sade (who was big in Spain at the time) lived, the attitude changed.

"Follow us", they said.

And I proceeded to be led by these two outriders, lights flashing, through Madrid. Traffic was swept aside, red lights were crossed, and I made it through Madrid in record time! Hah! It was quite surreal! Like the parting of the Red Sea.They were cutting through the traffic so fast I had trouble keeping up!

I think they got a few cassettes (maybe even signed) for their efforts, but I don't think they asked for, or expected payment.

More willy waving by the zealots.

"My photoshopped medico-porn is bigger than yours..."

Tossers.

Of course, the rise in the prevalence of cancer could have something to do with this:

"Before Russia, Britain and America outlawed atmospheric testing on August 5, 1963, more than 4,200 kilograms of plutonium had been discharged into the atmosphere. Because we know that less than one microgram [millionth of a single gram] of inhaled plutonium causes terminal lung cancer in a human, we therefore know that your friendly government has lofted 4,200,000,000 [4.2 Billion] lethal doses into the atmosphere, with particle radioactive half-life a minimum of 50,000 years."

"The plutonium mentioned above exists in the actual nuclear weapon before detonation, but by far the greatest number of deadly radioactive particles are those derived from common dirt or sand sucked up from the ground, and irradiated while travelling vertically through the weapon's fireball."

"In most cases several tons of material are sucked up and permanently irradiated in transit, but let us be incredibly conservative and claim that only 1,000 kilograms of surface material is sucked up by each individual atmospheric nuclear test."

"Before being banned by Russia, Britain and America, a total of 711 atmospheric nuclear tests were conducted, thereby creating 711,000 kilograms of deadly microscopic radioactive particles, to which must be added the original 4,200 kilograms from the weapons themselves, for a gross though very conservative total of 715,200 kilograms. There are more than a million lethal doses per kilogram, meaning that your governments have contaminated your atmosphere with more than 715,000,000,000 [715 Billion] such doses, enough to cause lung or skin cancer 117 times in every man, woman and child on earth."

I haven't checked the veracity of these figures, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they are correct.

It could certainly explain the massive rise in cancer over the last generation.

But then again, people are living longer, and cancer is a disease of old age. It might be as simple as that.

Children of Greek citizens automatically become Greek citizens, no matter where they are born. Last I heard, Melbourne has the 3rd largest population of Greek citizens after Athens and Thessalonika. Many Greek immigrants retire back to Greece, explaining the high death rate there.

When I lived in Melbourne in the 70s, it was the second largest population of Greek citizens after Athens, even larger than Thessaloniki! I believe you're right about the death toll of retirees to Greece, as the country is relatively crime-free. Maybe some road deaths, but that's more the younger tourists on their hire scooters. I would imagine the majority of deaths here would be from old age.