GinBoy2

I've actually had good success with rentals, both in Thailand and the US. I rented out my house in the US while living full time in Thailand, I didn't have a mortgage so it was all paid off and I very willingly paid a property management to take care of it. I also had some rental condo's in Bangkok, and when I sold them, didn't make any equity gain, but the rental income was solid. When we moved back to the US, sold them and bought in the US. Unlike in Thailand where I managed them myself due to a lack of property management companies, I pay to have someone else take care of them, which is a Godsend, just send me a check every month

Baldness is to men, what going gray is to women. I'm quite lucky it's an issue I don't to deal with, since I haven't really lost much. I also look pretty much the same as my Dad, which is a good rule of thumb with regards to hair, look at your Dad and you'll pretty much end up the same. But it's like my wife, she's going pretty gray, and she hates it. I think the salt n pepper look is pretty sexy on her. But same with baldness, for whatever reason it's how it makes YOU feel, not particularly how others view you that drives to to hair dye, rogaine or whatever. The only guys I do feel sorry for are the young pups who lose their hair early. My best friends brother, had full on male pattern baldness by 25. Thats a real gut punch at that age

This is why tourist visa's for young single females are so hard to get for Western countries. This is a CO's number one fear

Not sure thats true. I also think it's foolhardy to cut all links to a country to which you are a citizen, and hopefully family to go back to, for a country for which you are at best a long term tourist. Only an fool doesn't have an escape plan should things turn south. At the end of the day you have a passport for your home country when things go bad, so don't expect Thailand to pick up the pieces. How many 'Go Fund Me' threads have we had on here? It might be a clue of how tenuous your life in Thailand might be! I'd put it this way. Thailand is great until it's not. After that it can be for many an aging expat a nightmare

Well thats the part many an older expat try to push to the back of their mind. 'I exercise and eat well' is the most often response on here, almost claiming that they can defy nature and live forever. It just ain't true, and you're right getting old and starting to have the inevitable health issues, despite exercising and eating well, coping alone is damn scary. Who knows what the stats are, but I also wonder how many relationships between the 50+ year old guy and the 20 year old gal work out 20 years down the road when the shi***t may be hitting the fan. I've said here before, Thailand is a great place for the 50 year old guy, but you need to know when to call it quits, before you become a very sad, possibly infirm and alone guy

I think thats what a lot of Europeans fail to get, the sheer size of the US. We just did a road trip from San Diego back to South Dakota. In 1500 miles we did beach, desert, alpine, prairie scenery, and thats only half way across the country. Maybe if all those States pretty much all double or triple the size of Belgium needed passports more Americans would get one!

Just binged through the second season of Annika on PBS First season was good, but definitely improved in the second season https://www.amazon.com/Annika-Season-2/dp/B0CHFB9ZV2

An interesting question would also be, why don't women retire to Thailand? Of course the obvious reason is sex. I'd speculate that once age takes over, and sex becomes less a part of your life the appeal of Thailand as a retirement location may wane, then the closer to home locations may well become more attractive. Don't underestimate how in the final chapter of your life being close to family is a huge draw.

We're heading to Iceland, Sweden then on to Thailand in December./January Prior that, I work at our local airport and Thanksgiving on, it's 20 frikken xmas tracks on the airport musak, played over and over again. If I ever meet that damn Rudolf deer, it's gonna get a bullet between the eyes. So, when we land in Iceland better not hear a damn Christmas song, or I'm gonna go all homicidal maniac

And there lies the rub. To backtrack on several previous posts. Yes age does come into this The fact that the OP is not American helps The applicant will need to show ties to Thailand that will make her return. What the CO is always thinking is 'will she return to Thailand' There's the problem. So many young Thai women enter the US on tourist visa's then vanish into the black economy. Or they enter with a BF, then marry in the US and apply for an adjustment of status, trying to bypass the immigration process. I don't think many recognize that the US has the largest Thai diaspora in the world, reading AN you would think it's the UK, but they are well down the list. Even here in South Dakota my wife has a group of friends, only her and one other entered as legal immigrants, all the rest, either still overstay, or the preferred method is to marry a guy of the local AFB. I'd suggest that's some of the reasons young single Thai women find US tourist visa's really tough.

Why does it always seem to involve so much drama when folks leave? I've lived (and I don't mean visited) in 6 countries in my life, all were great until they weren't. Some move because of work, others just tire of it Thailand comes somewhere in the middle. Still like the place, we still have a house there, but I was bored with it and MrsG wanted to follow our son to the US. You are allowed to still like a place but not want to live there 100% of the time, we snowbird back to Thailand. In many respects only being in Thailand a couple of months of the year makes me enjoy it like I did when I first visited. So my only advise would be, if things are beginning to irritate you, cut the cord, go home, reset and then re-access how you feel about Thailand. You might find it's a great vacation, but maybe not a place to live

Forever is an interesting word. None of us know what curve balls might be thrown our way. So whatever 'forever' means can change. When we moved from Singapore to Thailand, I thought it was 'forever', MrsG less convinced I might add. Decade later, I was bored, Thai son in the US, not coming back, had to reconsider the 'forever' thing So we moved back to the US to be with all our kids, and do the snowbird thing back to Thailand every year. Is that 'forever', not sure Events may happen that dictate otherwise, time will tell

The problem all nonrev's are facing right now is availability. With the pilot shortage flights are limited they are so full it's getting difficult to get a seat. We're a seasonal station, and usually passenger loads drop like a rock after labor day. Not this year. We're oversold on mainline flights to Denver and Chicago almost every day

Simply get a smart thermostat. Program it to the keep the heat on at something about freezing everyday and you'll be fine. Usually with all smart thermostats you can access them remotely on a phone app and adjust it as you need When we go to Thailand in the winter I usually set it to 50°F or 10°C

We work both the Delta and United contracts at my station Delta I pay a nominal fee per segment as an S4, United as an SAX5 is free with a $50 a year fee. We normally fly to Thailand on United using codeshares on ANA from NRT But it's the same for both Delta and United that we can use codeshares as part of our flight benefits Unfortunately we don't get ZED anymore

I guess you are a resident of 'Americas mailbox'

I had to laugh about the mushrooms. What is it with Thai's in farangland obsessing about foraging for mushrooms? My wife has many friends scattered around the world, and read their facebook posts and a helluva lot are about the 'mushroom obsession'

For non Americans; DoD: Dept. of Defense AFB: Air Force Base

I lived in Thailand full time for just over a decade. I'd lived in Singapore with my Thai wife again for about a decade before we moved to Thailand I liked Thailand when I retired early for about two years then boredom set in. When our son went to college in the US and after a week said he was never coming back, that set the ball rolling. My wife was already frustrated with her career, since in Singapore she'd been a pretty high flier, yet struggled in Thailand to get a decent engineering job as a woman. So we made the move back to the US. Can't say I regret it. My wife landed pretty quickly a DoD job on the local AFB, and I took a part time job with Delta Airlines, which got me out of the retirement boredom trap. As for cost. we already owned a house here which negated a lot of the housing costs that many expats face when repatriating, which for many get's them really hamstrung. After that, we lived in Thailand a pretty Western lifestyle, which is pricey compared to the real Western lifestyle, and I would ponder that our day to day expenditure is actually less than in Thailand. So now I think we get the best of all worlds. With my job at Delta, we travel free to our home in Thailand every year (post covid I might add) but both of us are happier with work, and close to our kids

Yeah your Brother in Law is exactly how you shouldn't do it. The learning to talk timeline is hard. Our son when he started to talk, it was a word soup of all languages he was being exposed to. Not sure how the brain figures it out but somehow it does. My brain can be thinking in English, but if I'm talking to a Spanish speaker it just comes out Spanish! Way above my pay grade to try to figure it out, I'm sure many a scientific paper has been written on the subject

You gotta be pretty diligent only speaking certain languages at one time. I don't know if you speak Thai, but since I do there was no need for Mrs G to speak in English to me when she was talking around our son, so we were both pretty discipled about that for the language forming years

Another language thing. Me and my daughters can swap effortlessly between English and Spanish, and we all 'think' in both, so in our heads thoughts swirl around in both languages. Now my learned languages that's not the case. I translate in my head, but I never ever think in them. My son learned Mandarin from me, which I learned, but for him it's a native language, so again he can think in mandarin. Languages are a gift which you can, and should give to your children. My son is mad that I didn't give him Spanish, but I just couldn't keep three languages straight in my head when he was little

It's always hard to say how genetics will work out. I have two daughters with my first wife, neither of them look the same, but both stunningly beautiful My Thai son is just a handsome devil. I'm hispanic, so he was never going to be white, but he does have a somewhat asian look. Seemed to serve him rather well with the ladies when he was in college in the US! Now all married and with a child, so we'll see how the next generation of DNA plays out. To the OP, just watch Thai lakorn's, half of the actors are Luk Luengs, might give you some clues how your kid will turn out

Well of course we're all different and we make different choices. I retired early at 55, I'd saved plenty in my working career so money wasn't an issue. Doing nothing was fine for the first few years, but then the boredom started to kick in. I'd travelled for work extensively, I've probably slept in hotel beds more than my own bed, and seen a lot of the world in the process. So travel now doesn't interest me at all, I want to be at home, in my bed, with my stuff. So as the years went on I realized, there are only so many books you can read, so much TV you watch! So at the end when our son moved to the US for college and declared after a week he was never coming back, Momma Bear distraught it was the catalyst to move. Ended up with a part time job at Delta airlines, which was great since I'd spent so much time on the damn planes. Now I have something to get up for in the morning, we can split our time in Thailand and US thanks to my free flights benefits working for the airline, and overall I'm a much more balanced guy. Again different strokes for different folks, but 100% retirement just wasn't for me

This is one of those dilemma's When we realized that our son's Thai HS educational was not as we had hoped, we toyed with the idea of maybe sending him to live with his half sister in Chicago, but Momma Bear just couldn't do that. I think we did a decent job between us making up for some of the glaring gaps, and it positioned him well for college life in Chicago. In hindsight I wish we could have stayed in Singapore longer to at least have gotten him through HS, that would have been ideal. But even though it was a rocky few years in Thailand, it all worked out in the end, and now he's a fully intelligent self thinking young man with a successful career in the US. On on the language thing. He speaks 4 languages. For all parents do this. As a baby, I only spoke English and Mandarin, Mom Thai and Lao. It's the tried and trusted method for all multilingual families. My parents did it with me in Spanish and English and it works, you can end up with polyglot kids