Semi Expats

[Foggy Dew]

Hi All and especially Moderators,

It seems we have forums for just about everything in Thai visa.

Do we need a forum for semi expats? Those of us who live in Thailand and our home country for “x “ number of months each year.

Are their issues unique to us? How do you juggle both life’s? The older you get are you able to deal with the climate change? By the way if tolerable climate is important where is the best place to live in Thailand?

I am sure there is a good proportion of Thai visa members are semi expats. The real question is, have we enough questions that would justify another forum category?

Regards

Jim

[noise]

Hi All and especially Moderators,

It seems we have forums for just about everything in Thai visa.

Do we need a forum for semi expats? Those of us who live in Thailand and our home country for "x " number of months each year.

Are their issues unique to us? How do you juggle both life's? The older you get are you able to deal with the climate change? By the way if tolerable climate is important where is the best place to live in Thailand?

I am sure there is a good proportion of Thai visa members are semi expats. The real question is, have we enough questions that would justify another forum category?

Regards

Jim

What do you think?

[longstebe]

Its a good point.

As long as its Thai related then who cares.

We all have a right to be on here.

Sometimes you may not need to ask questions because someone has beat you to it.

Most of the older guys have seen and been through the lot.

Its good to pick there brains.

[jackdanielsesq]

I know several perps who broke away from 'forums' where felt felt their interests were not being properly served.

Alas, they wrecked what could have worked, because it actually requires a lot of hard work - rote - as well as a great deal

of imagination and intelligence, as it easy to blow people off. If you ask any of the mods here - and they do a stellar

job in my humble opinion, as I have only been keel-hauled a couple times - they will tell you the same thing. It becomes

ever more difficult in a wide-ranging and technical forum such as this, where you need qualified folks on hand 24/7.

Its not your average cooking channel with Wolfgang Puck doing the odd cameo.

Their biggest failures were in flames & discipline.

Quite often a very good quasi-politico would bring up a very relevant financial or technical POV and the Polar Bears

would simply steamroll the post into the weeds. One has to be very good, to steer it back on course.

I personally, believe that this forum has very broad lateral appeal and depth.

But hey - dont shoot the messenger.

My Dime.

BR>Jack

[Maestro]

A nonsensical post and the two replies to it have been deleted.

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Maestro

[Wrinklygoatlikedo]

Hi All and especially Moderators,

It seems we have forums for just about everything in Thai visa.

Do we need a forum for semi expats? Those of us who live in Thailand and our home country for "x " number of months each year.

Are their issues unique to us? How do you juggle both life's? The older you get are you able to deal with the climate change? By the way if tolerable climate is important where is the best place to live in Thailand?

I am sure there is a good proportion of Thai visa members are semi expats. The real question is, have we enough questions that would justify another forum category?

Regards

Jim

i vote yes also!

[Maestro]

Foggy Dew, yours is a valid point. I have seen the term “snowbirds” used for what you call “semi-expats”, people to spend about half a year, the winter period, in Thailand and the rest of the year in their home countries.

Having been a snowbird myself for the past ten years I have given a lot of thought to your idea and I believe there could not be a single forum on ThaiVisa to cover all aspects that snowbirds, and only they, are dealing with. If you look at the dozens of forums already existing you will find that the great majority of them covers issues of interest to both the full-time expats and the snowbirds. And even if a particular forum, perhaps the family forum, offers no direct benefits to a snowbird he may after a while drop in there just to see what other foreigners, with families, he may be interacting with in Thailand are dealing with.

Therefore my conclusion is that there is no need for a separate forum for snowbirds on ThaiVisa. Having said that, I would like to mention that ThaiVisa is in constant evolution and there have in the past many new forums been added, usually by popular demand of members, eg for specific sports, for swimming pools, etc, and this will no doubt continue in future.

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Maestro

[Maestro]

...I am sure there is a good proportion of Thai visa members are semi expats. The real question is, have we enough questions that would justify another forum category?

Yes, it is the answer to this question that generally determines whether a new forum is called for. In the meantime, I would like to encourage all snow birds to post their varied questions in the various forums and if you are not sure where your question should go post it in General Topics and if necessary a moderator will move it to a more appropriate forum. When posting, identify yourself as a snowbird if you think that your topic is unique to snowbirds and this way we may be able to glean an answer to the question whether there might be justification for a new forum. Shall we make "snowbird" the common denominator for the snowbird topics so that a search on the forum with this word will give a quick indication of the number of topics?

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Maestro

[IanForbes]

Further to what Maestro said I have seen many forums dry up when there are TOO MANY sub forums. It splits the number of people involved and the fewer the people responding the duller a forum becomes. It ends up with just two or three people yacking about the same old stuff. There are already almost too many sub forums on Thaivisa. I posted a valid question on the central forum site and didn't get one answer. I've seen other good questions on the same forum sit unanswered as well. No doubt the reason is because there isn't enough English speaking TV traffic from that area of Thailand. Pattaya and Chiang Mai forums get lots of replies to just about everything... even stupid stuff. Once a topic gets pushed off the first page it usually dies a slow death.

[Jingthing]

I do not think it is a good idea to segregate people this way. Most expats here have been tourists and/or semi-expats before. All people with different experiences with Thailand often have different points of view to share that can be interesting to all of us. If people have specific topics that are truly of interest to semi-expats only, there is plenty of space on already existing forums to place such topics.