GinBoy2

You might like to read my previous post. That's the risk you take when you take a point to point LCC. They have no alternative solution to offer other than give you your money back. No interline agreement, means no other options. Just be aware of that and if you're OK with the risk go for it

As some of you know I work for Delta and at my station we service United as well. I've lost count how many times I've stood in front of passenger explaining to them, when stuff happens and they booked through a third party there is little we can do to help and they need to contact the 'website' they booked through. Most of these website booking tools don't even have an option to call anyone, just send an email, and "we'll respond with 48 hours" That really helps when you are at the airport staring at a cancelled flight. Thing is you don't even save any money using these folks. Use them as a price comparison tool then book directly with the airline. The other think to note is when you use a Low Cost Carrier(LCC) they are point to point carriers. Part of the whole model of LCC's is they don't have interline agreements so they can't put you on another airline. At my station we have Allegiant, if they cancel no way you are getting on any UA, DL or AA flights outta here, you're on your own. So, sucks to be him, but these are the choices he made and now it's time to flex his credit card and buy another ticket. 'Trapped' is just a ridiculous tabloid headline, no one here is trapped, just unfortunately out of pocket Oh I forgot another gem with LCC's. Never lose your bags with them. If your bag gets lost or delayed we use a tool called Worldtracer and your bags once found get put on any airline to get them to your destination. LCC's not so much. They don't participate in Worldtracer and if they get lost they are probably lost forever

This rings a bell with me too. My Dad was a GI in England during WW2 and told me stories of various bar brawls with the local men over women. They had more money access to stuff local women hadn't seen for years and it just drove the local guys off a cliff. Same stories, different countries, different times. Male testosterone stupidity never evolves it appears!

I hate to be negative to this as well, but tourist visas for Thai's, especially women are notoriously hard. I kinda gave up with it after we wanted to go visit my daughter who had just had a baby. My wife professional woman, money in the bank, we weren't married at the time, but I thought we ticked most of the boxes. Of course she was denied! Several years later when we wanted to move to the US with her an an immigrant visa, couldn't have been different. There's the rub. A tourist visa is highly subjective, but with an immigrant visa is objective and all you have to do is tick boxes and it's a done deal. Hope it works out, but it's a toughie for sure

But equally unless you are retired and can basically decamp to Thailand for the winter, for a normal family it'll be at best a couple of weeks turning the heat off. I don't think that equation works out so well, especially given the price of airfares right now

So lets take out the Chinese, the CCP is still clinging to its zero Covid policy, so they ain't traveling for a least another year. If everything I read is true, the Brits and Europeans are looking forward to a winter of soaring energy prices just to heat their homes. I wonder how many of them are planing to vacation in Thailand rather than heat their homes? For North Americans just based on the travel time it's always been a bit of a secondary vacation destination. For we're back to the Indians! Good Luck with that to boost revenues

Damn those hunky farangs, seducing these poor vulnerable Thai maidens with their testosterone fueled manly wiles. Who could blame a poor Thai guy for losing it

Alright I'll take the bait. Now I've heard Brits say all of those with the exception of 'Sunbeam' What does that mean, other than the obvious literal meaning?

Well that is true, and of course I'm being facetious when I call it a lisp, we do it to <deleted> them off, and I know it's just a dental fracture in the same way 'th' is in English. But all part of the joys of language. My English is different from the Brits or even our North American cousins the Canadians with their damn 'A'. And contrary to popular myth my Californian Spanish is subtly different to my family in Mexico, we can all nearly always tell where we are from. Now do I write like I talk? I think so. It spews from brain to the page as if I was talking in every language I speak and can write

think it helps if you are bilingual from birth. I grew up with English and Spanish swirling in my head effortlessly and they could spew from my mouth in either language even if I was thinking in the other. In later life I never found learning another language hard, and I've added Thai, Lao and Mandarin. There is a difference to my learned languages, I don't think in them. I know I translate them in my head before I speak very different to how I speak English or Spanish. Now back to the OP. Should expats speak Thai well, thats up to the individual. I've always found speaking the language of where I live very enriching, but I've know folks that have lived for decades in a country without the ability to say much more than Hello and Thank You without a problem

So back to the OP. Does anyone here fess up to obscuring their nationality, and if you do why? We are a product of where we are born, no escaping that. Few nations can claim to to be squeaky clean, even the whiter than white Canadians have their demons with the treatment of native Americans. So I don't know if my written English betrays my origins, but I could also write in Spanish to 'betray' my Mexican origins, neither of which I am embarrassed or ashamed of. My spoken Spanish, the Spaniards think is ugly Spanish since all North and South Americans don't have their snooty 'lisp'

I just looked at that. Curious small, huge country with most of the population in a few cities

Hmm, I've lived in a couple of the mega cities, Shanghai, Taipei, and although Singapore doesn't hit the list the whole island is simply one city, and not sure looking back they are the best places to live. Now I am not trying to defend Des Moines, I've been there, but size isn't everything. Sometimes a smaller city, you can just kinda feel more at home. I look back fondly at the time I spent in all those places, but that was then and now I'm much more comfortable in a small city where i know my neighbors and there is just less pressure. We went to one of my other locations, San Diego where my youngest daughter still lives. Showing my wife around my old haunts it just struck me I couldn't deal with the people or the traffic anymore. We went to visit some old friends in Rancho Bernardo just north of San Diego where I used to work. Coming over the hill on I-15 past Miramar (think Top Gun) it struck me 8 lanes of traffic going south into the city, all crawling, nah I'm done with it. We now live in sedate Rapid City SD, where 5 cars at a stop light is enough to trigger a 'red' on google maps! As for the OP, why would anyone want to try to hide their nationality in an online forum? Nobody knows you, I don't think you need to prove anything. Now if I was a call center operative in Bangalore, maybe trying to pass myself off as 'Kevin' might make sense!

Well all of us are different, don't think it matters where we are from. I've only had one relationship with a Thai woman, my wife of over 20 years, so I can't comment on the Thai female nation as a whole! But I've been around enough Thai women to believe they not so different than a similar American female population. Fiercely vocal, to tightly guarded, which is a good thing, because we all make our own way, and the same could be said of men. My wife is most certainly in the fiercely vocal category

It's funny how these things work out. The contrast between my American and Thai wife couldn't be more extreme. My American wife was/is very in control of her emotions. Reticence isn't in the toolbox of my Thai wife. I'm made abundantly and instantly clear whats going on in her head!

My wife who earns a <deleted> load more money than me regularly raids my wallet for cash. Definitely a Baaaaad girl

Interesting perspective. Depends where you are in life. Now if I had a short term girlfriend, I probably wouldn't give a rats ass about her feelings. Now if I'm talking about a wife/partner of 20 years of course I want to know and understand her feelings, as I hope she would mine

My wife is an oddball having grown up in the US as a teenager. But she's a helluva lot more willing and able to verbalize her feelings than I am. And of course as any human would she uses this power dynamic to her advantage. She outpours her anger, I capitulate, problem solved lol. But seriously I think we both express feeling equally to each other, the good and the bad, albeit she does it more loudly!

I would agree with that. At the time the thought was that admitting China to the WTO, would make China look more like Hong Kong. Well fast forward 20 years and Hong Kong is now looking a helluva lot more like China!

I'm not sure it's happening any more than before, more likely the advent of everyone having a cellphone camera in their pocket, means more of it comes to light than ever before!

Definition: woman who used to have sex for monetary gain who then left the profession of paid sex work to pursue other occupational opportunities. In other words they either got too old or landed some old farang to take them outta the bar

Well thats kinda the rub isn't it. We've all seen the 60/70ish guy slopping around the mall pushing the kid in a stroller. He'll never see a high school graduation, a grandchild or anything we're supposed to see before we die. The idea that you come to Thailand and hook up with a woman who could be your daughter or your granddaughter and then then have kids, I'm sorry it's just wrong. I've loved being part of watching all my kids grow up. HS, College, and my first grandchild on the way. You don't have kids in your 60's and 70's it's just not fair to the children you spawn

This is for the Europeans chickens coming hone to roost. The only reason Russia can afford this war is because idiots, in particular Merkel decided to become an energy cuckold to Russia. If you cut off the demand for energy from Russia, which is pretty much all they have to sell, they would be on their knees within a month. But here we are, Western Europe without many energy options essentially funding Russia's war in Ukraine. Well Done!

China has long been subject to restrictions to leading edge technology, and rightly so. My last job was in lithography and China was forbidden to acquire EUV equipment which would enable sub 10nm device manufacture without double patterning. We then get into highly technical stuff when trying to pattern sub 3nm which are essentially a few atoms width. Give the Chinese that kind of technology and we're <deleted>&^&^ed

One thing that all this turmoil has revealed is that globalization is dead and buried. The idea after the end of the cold war was that we could all be friends and trade together. Manufacturing moved swiftly from the West to China, energy dependance for Europe moved to Russia. Well Ukraine, Hong Kong, threats to Taiwan have pretty much knocked all of that in the head. We are seeing a pretty rapid retreat to the 1980's orthodoxy of power blocks. Manufacturing is beating a pretty hasty retreat back to the US and North America in general and the CHIPS act is pretty significant. I worked in semiconductors all my working life and few of you really comprehend how much we globally depend on one single company, TSMC for all advanced semiconductor manufacturing. The chip may well be designed in California or Munich but its manufactured in Taiwan. If and when Beijing does go for it and try to invade Taiwan all Hell will break loose. So the idea that the US would give Thailand access to F-35 technology which would without a doubt leak to the CCP and aid and abet the regime is farcical.