what to do in Thailand at 47?

[BuaBS]

squandering 500,000 (16k usd) on an elite card is pretty idiotic when you could take a short trip for another visa. even a millionaire with their head screwed on would not be up for it. also, in that bracket your going to enjoy trips anyhow whether it be to visit family, holiday or whatever.

i dont get the whole elite card thing.

A millionaire would not choose to live in thailand !

[Kenny202]

Must admit I been having the same thoughts. I am 52 this year, been here around 6 months now. I am in central Isaan. Have a really nice missus and we communicate well, joke around, like the same things. Don't have any family issues or spongers. We have neighbours but we're not in the central moo ban so we have a reasonable amount of privacy. People here are actually really nice however we do have the odd challenge here and there as you do adapting here. Been fairly busy the first 6 months. Missus had a little shell of a house which we spent around 200kTHB doing bits and pieces and that has occupied much of our time thus far. Not a big farang palace but a nice larger 2 bedroom home on a nice little piece of land in a nice area. Now very nice and comfortable but starting to feel a bit the same....ie: what to do. The biggest thing for me now is the heat. Up to 40 degrees some days and although the mornings are nice you just don't want to do much. We been doing little trips, stay up north a few days, over to Petchabun....national parks etc and some days we go for a picnic or go for a swim. A trip to Udon or KK is nice every now for a bit of farang life now and then to remind myself how Mcdonalds is :-) I don't drink a lot, certainly not at home or in the mornings. Don't really have funds to go and live in Europe for 3 months of the year etc but we will go to Vietnam, Cambodia etc. Funny thing I felt such a feeling of relief disposing of all my possessions in Australia and swore I would never be Mr Materealistic again but you do start to acquire stuff even tools, gardening machines, pumps etc and although we have a reasonable security set up and the people here are ok, I don't know how comfortable I feel leaving our house alone for more than a few days. Other days we go into the city although we are about 50km out of the main town. We have air conditioning but I am trying to avoid locking myself indoors everyday. I have had plenty of hobbies over the years but just not really interested in anything too specific. I don't really miss farang company at all and my area has very few farang but I guess if I lived somewhere like that there would be more entertainment options. Having said all that I was bored shtless in Australia for many of the same reasons. Seemed like unless you wanted to go to the mall and see the same old there wasn't many options. Of course much of this is my state of mind and I was always of the belief that if your bored it's your own fault. Get off your a$$ and go and find something to do. I do a bit of Cooking and food isn't a problem for me. I actually like Thai food. We have even been discussing having a kid to give us some focus in life.... although I have had 4 kids and swore would never have more. Now before the arrows start coming out I have no intention of having a kid purely for my amusement. I do think kids are an important part of life and do give you purpose and focus in those 20-45 years. Anyone have good or bad experiences of having kids with a Thai wife and raising them Isaan? My wife is totally all for it. I have enough funds I believe for a comfortable if not budgeted longterm lifestyle so don't really need to work. Business here to me appears to be dicey. I can definitely see opportunities as Thai people seem so limited in their original ideas or maybe its just because they haven't been around and have few new ideas for business. I am on a retire visa so any business of course would be my wife's. I don't want to put any sort of big investment into anything that may not work, I cant legally own and maybe give my missus an incentive to flick me :-) Two things I picked up early on was never put anything into Thailand you can't afford to leave behind and Thais are opportunists, the trick is never present them with "opportunity". I can't say I am bored out of my brain at this stage....many days something comes along or we do something but there are a few long days particularly in this heat. I guess someone cant have something to do every day all the time. We only got back from Petchabun last night after a couple of days touring around and my first thought this morning is christ what am I going to do today?

No real answers I guess. Hoping something will come to mind. Would love to hear from anyone else been through this or has some ideas. Of course what you want or like to you is up to the individual so I guess no miracle solutions but any thoughts appreciated.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Kenny202

[MaeJoMTB]

^^^

Forget the business, any good ideas will be copied by locals who undercut you, giving you a total loss.

[Kenny202]

I noticed that. Never do anything here that can be copied. Only got to look at the 50 watermelon stalls all in a row at the side of the road. Access to capital and fresh ideas however is our advantage. I see people here selling stuff where they can't be even making a small profit. They do t last long of course but they just don't seem to do the math. Wife's uncle has a car wash and clearly they are too cheap and running at a loss with no idea to improve

[Craig krup]

Business here to me appears to be dicey. I can definitely see opportunities as Thai people seem so limited in their original ideas or maybe its just because they haven't been around and have few new ideas for business.

Basically Thailand is under-capitalised. They are still fighting the industrial revolution. Humans and machines are equally mechanically efficient, but humans take expensive rice and chicken to fuel, and they get tired. So for the sake of a couple of thousand pounds farmers are turning rice and chicken into watts of power rather than doing the same thing with cheap (per BTU or watt) petrol or diesel.

Nong Khai has the world's worst gym, and the local are paying 200B a month to use it. Farangs pay 500B. I looked at it and thought, "For $50,000 I could buy a load of reconditioned equipment from China and set up a really good facility. Nong Khai's a reasonable size. Two hundred members at 500B a month is 100,000B - you could buy a lot of local labour and electricity for air con for that".

But then you think - hassle from criminals, hassle from bureaucracy, hassle from the cops.............Why bother?

[Kenny202]

Yes. I feel fairly certain anything successful here u got off the ground here cud be easily taken away from u. At best u'd be hemaoraging back handers and kick backs

[gerry1011]

squandering 500,000 (16k usd) on an elite card is pretty idiotic when you could take a short trip for another visa. even a millionaire with their head screwed on would not be up for it. also, in that bracket your going to enjoy trips anyhow whether it be to visit family, holiday or whatever.

i dont get the whole elite card thing.

A millionaire would not choose to live in thailand !

May is disagree?

I will not give my opinion about the Elite card this time though...

Edited April 9, 2015 by gerry1011

[samsensam]

i was dating university students and younger women up to the age of 45, after that there was less interest (from them) so i started dating older women. that's what i did and do. no complaints.

oh yes, stay away from the bars unless you're really desperate.

[Ghostnigel]

This is all what's scaring the crap out of me. I could retire, but what the hell do you do all day. Last Summer in Isaan was a little trial run, and very quickly you discover it's a bloody long day. I've written a couple of kindle books - one sells reasonably okay - so I thought I could write some more. It turned out that the whole culture shock thing, the heat, the lack of compulsion....all of it meant that I did nothing. Now maybe that would have worn off, but still, even if I did write from 0800 to 1200 could I really fill every day? I can't write for much more time than that even when the going's good. If I went to the gym, went to the food court, grabbed an iced coffee and shlepped around the park, watched BBC News, did some reading, had dinner, had a massage in a tent in the park......could I really do that, or something like it, every day?

An awful lot of the guys hitting the Chang at 1100 around the "Top Man" area of Udon Thani, having just shifted a plate of grease for brekkie, really needed something else. I'm guessing Pattaya is exactly like that only raised by orders of magnitude. My pal did a Masters degree with Insead over the last couple of years, and that filled in the mornings. But then again, he only had a couple of hours after that before the kids arrived back from school, so that gave him plenty of structure.

You still got to 'fill' your days no matter what country you live in....at least here you can be bored in a warm climate, and don't have your government taking the piss around every corner!

Nowhere is perfect, Thailand isn't perfect by a long way, we all know that, but i like it here because i can be comfortable here without busting my balls working every day....

[Stan42]

THE INTERNET

In my free time I...

...watch movies (downloaded from the internet)

...watch TV shows (downloaded from the internet)

...play video games (downloaded from the internet)

...browse imageboards (on the internet)

...browse forums (on the internet)

...read the news (on the internet)

...download porn (via the internet)

...watch video clips on youtube (via the internet)

...listen to music (through the internet)

...educate myself reading wikipedia (through the internet)

[game4shame]

Do what every other middle aged sexpat does........drink beer, have fights, bum ladyboys. In no particular order.

[BKKdreaming]

Learn how to do stuff......

rebuild a car engine or motorbike engine ,

cook stuff more than MaMa noodles

sew your own clothes so you can alter them when you lose weight ,

wood working and build a table to put the rebuilt engine on ,

teach english for free ( or your home language)

There are so many things......

Except go to the bar at 9am , watch TV all day and bitch about having nothing to do !

[VIPinthailand]

in fact, I see people all around me having dumb jobs. they hate their job and when they leave at 6pm, they feel happy. is that freedom?

[AYJAYDEE]

Exercise, bike ride, meditation, reading, nap, socialize, BBQ, TV, swimming, travel,photography, learn to play an instrument, gardening, LEARN TO READ,WRITE AND SPEAK THAI AND LAO, etc etc.

Edited April 14, 2015 by AYJAYDEE