GinBoy2

Language and integration are two different things. My whole family is bilingual or multilingual. I speak English Spanish Mandarin Thai and Lao and I'm fluent in all. My kids too. Did what all multilingual families do. Dad speaks only one set of languages and Mon the others. They end up speaking them all. Now 'learnt' languages and integration are two different things. My childhood languages are English and Spanish and I can flip between them in my head without a thought and yes I'm integrated into the society I was born. My learned languages means I can communicate, but I translate in my head, not the same as native language and I'm not sure that ever makes you truly integrate And if you aren't multilingual it's very hard to explain the difference between how your brain deals with core languages and learned ones

I know a lot of you don't like it, but I'm almost at the end of season 4 of 'Only Murders in the Building' I love it, good hearted fun, easy to watch and i love the characters. This season to add to Selena Gomez add Eva Longoria, whats not to like

Well Mrs G will cook what she 'knows' I want to eat, with own twist. We do have some ding dongs on the fact I strangely want some more greens and color at dinner, but she's the cook and gets a little bit aggravated if I want to step in and 'advise' She calls it her 'secret menu' Again joys of being married to a Thai

On the food thing, a couple of pages ago. In Thailand I eat Thai food 100% In the US I don't think my wife has ever eaten Western food at home, only at restaurants. Then we get in the terrible argument that sometimes I do want to eat western food at home, but she's got this weird thing that she wants cook for me and not let me cook what I want. My wise lekung son said to me recently "when in Thailand you do the Thai thing for Mom. In America you do what the Hell she tells you" The joys of being married to a Thai!

It never fails me the naiveté of folks when it comes to insurance. Health 'insurance' Medicare or whatever you have in your country for older folks in the West isn't insurance it's a State backed guarantee. Real health insurance is like car insurance. Have a couple of claims and watch that annual premium increase. Private health insurance inside Thailand is the same. Raw, real insurance. My wife had a ruptured fallopian cyst which resulted in sepsis, required emergency surgery to save her life. After that rider on our policy to exclude all gyno problems. So travel insurance, same thing and it gets to a point where you just can't get it. My Dad in in the last years of his life just couldn't get travel insurance to visit me in Thailand because of age and pre-existing conditions It's the same thing all aging expats in Thailand face. Age and pre-existing conditions can make any insurance either unaffordable or just impossible to get as the risk for the insurance companies increase

I kinda resonate with the comment. I'm a total American Anglophile, and I have loved British comedy in the past. Fawlty Towers, which is the best Blackadder Goes Forth, Gavin and Stacy you can't beat them. Now I'm a naughty boy and I use DNS masking to watch UK channels. Maybe it's just my age but I just don't find a lot of modern British comedy that funny anymore Oh, and unlike a lot of my fellow Americans I never found Benny Hill funny

Well there are three kinds of guys who get hooked up with Thai women. Some of us get hooked up early through work or whatever, similar ages and it tends to look like a typical relationship in the West, will it last, who knows. Then you you get to what I think are the more problematic relationships. You're right right some older guys come for a couple of weeks, and it's pay for play. The sadder one's are the older fellas who will come for a couple of weeks, fall in 'love' with a gal half their age, sell up everything and move to Thailand. That's when it really is the 'recipe for disaster'

I must admit you are right there, and kids, especially girls know the trick. I would have my teenage daughters mow the lawn. They quickly learned if they did a totally half ass***ed job, I just say, screw it and do it myself. Humans in general are a devious lot!

So my take on this is substantially younger woman, older man, total recipe for disaster and car wreak emotionally and financially. And a point about that. When things go south when you're younger, you're working and more importantly you have time to recover. Things go south when you're 60+, you just don't the resources and more importantly the time to recover the loses. Now we get on to thing where I both struggle and laugh.. Thai women 'know' how to treat a man. Now me and Mrs G are 55/65 so we're up there and sex isn't what it used to be, but still good, but that aside. She's a pretty Westernized woman having grown up in Chicago. But cooking, she will fight hammer and tongs about NOT letting me cook. Maybe there is something in the DNA about her getting pleasure out of cooking for me. On other aspects of recreating the 1950's, she's pretty OK letting me do the laundry lol

Well, immigrant and tourist, totally different balls of wax. For a tourist visa, you are not even part of it, she's applying in her own right, no need for any ID from you. Immigrant visa, totally different and a wad of ID's and docs required

Well I'm 65 she's 55 we're both past the scene, more now 'shall we have a cup of cocoa and go to bed' Been together since 2004, so we've gone the distance. Up's and down's, who doesn't Kids are gown up, now we revel in juicing up the grandkids up then letting mom and dad settle them down lol

So this is interesting. I'm a latino, but like many of us I'm white as the driven snow, but with black hair. I've grown up my whole life in the US, but I'm still latino. I can bounce between full blown white American and pseudo Mexican in a heartbeat, and in reality Mexican apart from the language is basically the same. So what 'white' culture 'is' not exactly sure what that means When I lived in San Diego I could go to the mall on a Saturday and probably half the people would have crossed the border from TJ, looking exactly like me talking Spanish, and basically 'white'

Yeah I've kinda thought about this. I'm sure most of their parents are just devastated by it. Brought them up right, but violent video games and the toxic internet world in their bedroom, can warp a young man's mind

My Dad fought in WW2, hated the nazi ideology, and was pretty OK with killing nazi fighters. But he came home and wasn't radicalized against all Germans That's what's different now. Kids living a suburban life in a Western country get their heads turned around and thinking killing innocent people for some mythical cause is OK in some way.

You are quite right the US was built on immigrants. But my family didn't arrive at Ellis Island but walked over the border at San Ysidro. Different times, empty country looking for people. But for immigrants back then they wanted to assimilate and become part of American society. My Mom would actually rap my knuckles if I spoke Spanish outside the house. In no way am I endorsing that, but it illustrates how immigrants back then are different from today. And I hate myself for saying this, but I can see the difference between my parents and grandparents and today's people crossing the southern border. A lot of European countries also contain a large proportion of immigrants, especially from former colonies who have integrated and become part of the fabric of those countries. I think the jury is certainly out on how this new wave will work out

I 'think' a lot of the problem of immigration into the EU is the fact it is made of largely young males. Young men are a problem even when they are indigenous to a country. My Grandparents went to the US as a family. Both they and my parents learnt English within a few years and were fully integrated, not sure thats true for the demographic entering the EU, who, if the media is to be believed seem to want to live in ethnic enclaves. I'm now a third generation latino, my daughters fourth and I would never consider myself anything but an American. I speak Spanish but I'm most definitely not a Mexican. Even my Thai son, born in Singapore educated in the US see's himself as American, while still recognizing his ethnic roots I think thats the real difference with this wave of migration we're seeing across the world

well of course I'm not native American. But accents are subtle. I'm Mexican decent, but even visiting family, even though I speak Spanish as a primary language every Mexican knows I'm American. I think that why I tried to get the Spanish lisp. If you don't speak Spanish who probably don''t get it, but it's a very cool way to speak Spanish. Now I'm too old to be bothered, and my Californian Spanish is what it is

Well as a native American Spanish speaker I take a little offense to that. But I do wish I could perfect that Spanish lisp It is kinda cool And i know it's ridiculous but I have actually tried to change my Spanish accent, to well 'Spanish' never with much success. My Mom, wise woman that she was just called me an idiot and told me to embrace my own culture and not try to hijack someone else's

So on the Thai medical insurance thing Going back to the fact it's a real insurance thing. Probably 15-20 years ago my wife had a ruptured fallopian tube which ended up with sepsis. had to go through emergency surgery to save her life. The outcome was Cigna added a rider to our policy excluding any gyno issues. So don't have any heart, prostate, or anything else, because soon as you do thats going to be excluded

I think you're creating a justification for why you won't go home. Nobody in their right mind thinks that you can drop into any insurance scheme right when they need it. Oops had a car crash, better sign up for insurance. Not how it works. As for the deductible stuff, did you actually read what I posted about my plan? I have no deductible. If I get sick they pay from the first $. Medicare may not be perfect but add Advantage and it's a hell of a lot better than you'll get in Thailand, especially as you age. Medical insurance in Thailand is a real insurance market. It rackets up based on your age to a point where you can't afford it or they just won't insure you A lot of folks talk about the low cost of medical care in Thailand. Well that depends. If you want something similar to what you would expect in the West, it's gonna cost

Well you live overseas away from your home country income source and you live with it. Not a lot you can do but tighten your belt when things get tough, then splurge when things get good

Yeah I git the same email. I don't take anything exotic but my Part t D costs are zero

When moved our cat back to the US, I caved and paid an agent to handle it, I couldn't be dealing with it all Curiously the paperwork and procedure to export her was a lot more complicated than the import into the US! Which in many ways doesn't/didn't surprise me

Well pretty much I guess. I do part time retired work, she's the one that earns the real money from DoD on the local base I earn the pocket money and the flight benefits

I kinda am in that 'normal' world. My wife wasn't a hooker, we worked together in Singapore so I guess you'd count us as a normal couple. Been together 25+ years kids all that good stuff so we're solid But it's naive to believe that a good percentage of Thai/Farang relationships aren't based on bargirl/sex/money/old/young it's just reality. You can try to spin it as best you can but thats reality