GinBoy2

Well, we have had countless discussion on here about the cost of repatriation to the US, and housing is always the major stumbling block for many. Now, the recent spike, and it is a spike, hasn't made that dynamic any easier. No as with all housing booms, prices at some point will ease but maybe back down to where it was, which was still too high for many. When we sold our BKK condos in 2017 we re-invested in rental properties here, and we're seen an almost 30% appreciation. Now is that sustainable, probably not, but what it's also done is drive up rental prices, which if you are in a location with limited availability probably won't drop to the same extent as the property equity, when the correction comes. So yeah, to @Jingthing point it doesn't help if someone wants to do the simplest relocation back home. So as I have always said to folks. If you have a house in your home country, and that applies not only to the US, don't sell it. Keep it, rent it out if you must but its your ultimate bolthole if push comes to shove

I love reading Red Bull stories. The amount of outrage written on TVF is probably 100% more than the total coverage on domestic Thai media. The whole case outrages farangs more than Thai's because it's hard to wrap your head around how a justice system could work this way. Most Thai's will simply roll their eyes and just say 'this is how it is' The noobies and the apologists either are too new or refuse to accept what goes on in Thailand when it comes to so called Justice. There are two parallel systems, one for those with money, the other for those without money. Both are equally corrupt, but I'd argue the one for those with money is probably more egregious. The 'Boss' has been identified in multiple locations, nothing was done to ask local authorities to arrest him. Unlike most real justice systems, the clock does not stop if you flee the country, so you wait and run out the clock on charges, assuming that is you are super wealthy Whether or not there is a Red Notice who knows. It was visible on the Interpol website when the famous pictures of him emerging from a house in London surfaced. RTP never asked UK authorities to pursue him and the Red Notice disappeared. No Thai journalist will ever pursue this, for fear of defamation, computer crime or whatever. Much safer to cover the local loso murder case, or the road rage case du jour. Anyone with a couple of brain cells know this a simple case of going through the motions. No one with exception of a few minions will ever get prosecuted, the money will continue to change hands and all will be fine. In point of fact the only guy who has ever been found guilty was the Isaan servant who was, I'm sure paid handsomely to say he was the one driving at the time. I sincerely doubt a kid caught with a couple of Yaba pills would have been able to claim he was sick, couldn't attend an arraignment then fled to Singapore to make himself feel better. I'll guarantee we'll be reading stories just like this, right up to the day the Boss returns from some luxury penthouse right after the clock runs out on all charges

So this is referencing good times. We owned several units in Noble Remix, nice places and we never had a problem renting them out. But at the end of the day when we sold up we broke even, no capital appreciation at all, mainly I think because of the constant overbuild in BKK, Now with the rental income we got, it supplemented our income rather nicely, but it did nothing to equity. Now Remix is a prime location, skybridge to Thong Lor BTS, yet still didn't acquire value. Not complaining, since we got out with our shirts intact. I suspect those invested in less desirable locations can do as many google searches they wish, but the fundamentals don't change, Way too much construction with potential buyers without cash, so google searches doesn't translate into folks plonking down hard cash

I'll throw an American hand grenade. From reading about this topic for years on here, maybe the best answer is to have the English & Welsh vote on Scottish independence. From my non scientific analysis, pretty sure the SNP would get the result they want! .....over to you boys lol

As one of those clearly evil Americans, I don't really want to get in the middle of some internecine fight. But looking from afar, isn't the overall lack of surface ships a problem? An aircraft carrier is a wondrous sight, but it needs to be part of an overall carrier strike force to be in any way effective? At a bare minimum 2 destroyers or frigates, supply and logistic ships and as in often the case with the USN submarines. Take those from the available fleet for one aircraft carrier and it puts stress on the remaining activities of the Royal Navy

Slightly different issue. The US banned Iranian websites from being hosted on US servers. Those same websites simply relocated their hosting to servers within Iran. Those domain names are still accessible to every US citizen should they wish to read them. That's very different from banning your citizens from reading content. As for VPN's, Beijing works tirelessly to ban encrypted VPN's, and do a pretty good job, but the VPN companies work to develop new protocols to avoid detection, but it's a cat n mouse game. I haven't lived in mainland China since 2004, even back then the online censorship was pretty extreme, and I know from friends in China who tell me those were the 'good times'. My prediction is that sooner or later the regime in Thailand will move aggressively to import and utilize Great Firewall technology. At that point some of the less tech savvy of you, better be brushing up on your IT skills

We've been to Vietnam several times over years, and I was talking Mrs G about it, and neither of us can remember any unpleasantness being directed at us. Now we're quite close in age, so we don't have the young woman/old man dynamic going on which probably helps. My wife having grown up in Chicago also sounds 100% American which most certainly helps in the South. On a tangential note to this thread, which might really require a new thread, I'm always somewhat curious about the success rate of Thai women going overseas. Anecdotally at least it seems pretty good, almost regardless of where they go. In our little South Dakotan bubble the Thai community seems pretty stable, with the exception of the one obvious ex-hooker, although I'm not sure about the 'ex', she might just have relocated the biz!