GinBoy2

Some of this agree with. The gift thing, totally on board with, but it's little different in the West when you go visit you take a bottle of wine or the like. I've never liked holding hand and certainly not kissing in public, so that for me is a given I supported my parents in their old age, but maybe an Hispanic thing not totally Asian. Food ditto Gik thing. Well pretty sure my wife would chop off my balls in my sleep if I even thought about it!

Sometimes I wonder about the reading and comprehension skills of posters on here. Read and you will see it's an Airbus. So that rules out Boeing and Airbus, best you be checking out flights on a Chinese COMAC aircraft. Good Luck with that

Thats exactly what it looks like. In the real world we'd be covering it with kitty litter, then shoveling it up and disposed as toxic waste, but TiT, go figure! Enjoy the water you drink, and the sea you swim in....

I love use of the word 'apron' it's a blast from the past Today we use the word 'ramp' pretty universally across the world, but apron still sounds good.

Now I work for an airline, and I've seen my fair share of hydraulic leaks, but they tend to be 'drips', that is a total failure, never seen that much fluid on the ramp ever. Since this was an Airbus, given the currents sanctions, good luck in getting the AOG parts to fix it! That birdie might be spending a few years in Phuket. Turn it into a themed restaurant maybe?

Apart from the stupid picture of the wrong aircraft, I love the fact that they stored them in Suvarnabhumi. Retired aircraft still have value, and there is a reason airlines pay to store them in the dry deserts of California, Spain and Australia. Corrosion, one of the reasons the A340-500's stored at Don Mueang were totally worthless was they were corroded to cr**p in a hot humid environment. That might not be fair since the A340-500's were never going to parted out since the planes themselves were worthless, but you get the gist

Most of us come from an age where it was taboo. I'm Hispanic where it was double taboo! About 10 years ago I got a phone call from a shocked female childhood friend, that our mutual childhood friend had finally come out at 50! My reaction was, I always knew he was gay from when we were teenagers in HS, but back then it was always safer just to hide it away, and I'm sure thats a hard thing to shake, even as attitudes changed in society. Try to remember what being Gay was like in the 70's. Not pretty, a lot of violence and hateful speech. He always seemed to have 'roommates' AKA boyfriends as I understood it, but he could never get his head around those teenage fears and didn't even tell his parents. I was his best friend in HS, of course I knew but we would never have talked about it back then. When he finally did come out in middle age and we talked, my reaction was "About Time" We both laughed and life went on

I kinda get this. I love my wife, she loves me but to be around each other 7x24 one of us would be dead. Thankfully we both work, so kiss goodbye in the morning and come home at dinner time to recount our boring day at work. Isn't that how life works?

I rather like Harry and Megan. Harry has for British tabloid reasons been vilified, but he's a decent guy in my view I'm an American, so I have no skin in the game, but he does good things, the Invictus Games alone gives him a free pass. His pursuit of the appalling tabloid press harassment of his mother should be appaulded

I'm a native Central Valley guy. Lived most of my adult life either in the Bay Area or San Diego and I still love San Diego county, my youngest daughter and my Grandson still live there. But OMG I just couldn't live with the traffic and all the people anymore. Daughter is contemplating a move to North Carolina, which I'm not thrilled about, but I get it

I vividly remember being in the lunch room at work as we watched the verdict One guy said "Lets all go and loot Best Buy"

Well, the truth for anyone speaking a second language is you lose some of the nuances, but if you speak nothing you lose it all. I have a friend who has joined Mrs G and me in Mexico. Now I'm Hispanic so Spanish is a native language, he speaks pretty good Spanish, but even then when we are with my family he loses some of the essence, especially the humor of conversation. My wife just looks bemused she speaks not a lick of Spanish past Ola! In Thailand I do OK, I'm pretty fluent in Thai and Lao, but they are my 4th and 5th languages, I wouldn't even try to say I understand all of the nuances when I talk to folks So I'd say unless you live in the expat enclaves, not speaking any Thai is very detrimental. Apart from anything else, for a lot of folks it means you are very dependent on your partner for almost any transaction you do, from the bank, market or immigration

Back to the OP Everywhere can run it's course, you just kinda tire of a place. Over my life I've tired of California, China, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. Not to say I hated any of them, but I was just done with them. Maybe some of us just aren't built to stay in one place for too long. Now I think I'm done with my world travels, and as boring as it sounds, I hate spending a night away of home. I've spent more than my fair share of nights in hotel beds Now just leave me at home with the missus and the cats, I'm a happy boy

I don't often agree with a lot Dan spews, but in this one I kinda do. When divorced my ex wife it's painful, mother of two of my wonderful kids, but we'd drifted apart and it happened. When we did all settle up, we did it quite amicably, she kept the house that she lived in, I hadn't for years, and we split everything. I know some divorce's are messy, but a surprising amount aren't. I had no problem splitting our stuff. She'd worked during all of our marriage and brought up the kids, so there was a premium she could have added to that Today I count her as my best friend, we'll talk on the phone couple of times a week, when we all get together at the Grandkids homes, she and my current Thai wife gleefully exchange stories about my flaws! I think where men lose their frikkin minds and any common sense is when a divorce goes badly, they visit Thailand meet the first pretty girl who shows them attention, the frontal lobes become dormant, and the little brain takes over

So, if you take out the old guy with money, and the poor as dirt Isaan maiden marriages, there is a certain physical attraction of different ethnicities to each other. Take a walk in downtown San Francisco, and I'd bet 50% of the couples walking holding hands are, white guy, asian woman. In that situation there is none of the sweaty old guy young woman money dynamic, it's just attraction. That might be why in BKK, it's a younger population with male expats (the real ones who work not the long stay retirees who call themselves expats) and that natural attraction happens