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please tell me how thailand was 20 years ago?


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Great thread!

I'm in my 20th year now (though only the last 10 as resident), The main difference for me is that back then, Thailand had no rules - or at least non that applied to Farang. So no speed limits, drink driving laws, bar closure days, visa issues (hop across the nearest frontier for another 30 days for as long as you wanted, a small investment got you a 'B' visa), you could open a small business - no questions asked, no taxes to speak of......

+ There were loads of real 'characters' from UK, Europe, US, Oz etc, many quite insane, but amazing people - Vietnam vets, Brit tax dodgers, Aussies 'shooting through' etc,

The Thai Amaat didn't flaunt their wealth back then but were part of a genuine mutual respect culture. Thailand was Thailand.

on the downside: no cheese, bread, wine, decent beer and most other Farang goodies. Those dreadful tannoy speakers blared out government propaganda all day have largely disappeared. (they still exist in a few out of the way places). Internet makes it much easier to organise your life and keep in touch with family. I remember sending an 'email' from Khao San Rd in 1998, not believing that this form of communication could reach England (it did!). I can, and do, Skype my dad for free twice a week. back then communication was a nightmare!

So was it better 20 years ago? No it was different, almost unrecognisable from today, but it is still basically a great place to live!

nice one mate ,

i love the positive attutide from the older generation

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Two days I took about 1,000 slides and negatives to have them turned into photos on CDs. Some go back as far as Nov 1970. Many slides are from a trip in 1978. I had photos on most of this developed in Thailand but they did not us Kodak paper and the photos are all a different of orange. You are in your twenties. I have been married to a Thai for 43 years. I plan to put the photos where people like you can access them. My wife's parents would not recognize Thailand today if they were able to come back to life.

Adobe Photoshop "Auto color"-function can do miracles to orange-faded photos - my old 1987 Thai-photos was like that, one click and they came back to life in what appears like "real colors" (I've made an example, posted below) - probably other image software can also do the trick...

attachicon.gifColor-sample_Thailand1987.jpg

for old pics , can i suggest this FB page (thai) you will find jewels ....really The Aladdin's cave

https://www.facebook.com/77PPP

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Two days I took about 1,000 slides and negatives to have them turned into photos on CDs. Some go back as far as Nov 1970. Many slides are from a trip in 1978. I had photos on most of this developed in Thailand but they did not us Kodak paper and the photos are all a different of orange. You are in your twenties. I have been married to a Thai for 43 years. I plan to put the photos where people like you can access them. My wife's parents would not recognize Thailand today if they were able to come back to life.

Adobe Photoshop "Auto color"-function can do miracles to orange-faded photos - my old 1987 Thai-photos was like that, one click and they came back to life in what appears like "real colors" (I've made an example, posted below) - probably other image software can also do the trick...

attachicon.gifColor-sample_Thailand1987.jpg

for old pics , can i suggest this FB page (thai) you will find jewels ....really The Aladdin's cave

https://www.facebook.com/77PPP

Thanks, some really great stuff...wai.gif

There has before been postet a link to a collection of old Lanna (Chiang Mai) photos, for any interested, the links is here:

http://library.cmu.ac.th/ntic/en_picturelanna/search_form.php?page=1&keyword=&searchby=1&click

Edited by khunPer
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Two days I took about 1,000 slides and negatives to have them turned into photos on CDs. Some go back as far as Nov 1970. Many slides are from a trip in 1978. I had photos on most of this developed in Thailand but they did not us Kodak paper and the photos are all a different of orange. You are in your twenties. I have been married to a Thai for 43 years. I plan to put the photos where people like you can access them. My wife's parents would not recognize Thailand today if they were able to come back to life.

Adobe Photoshop "Auto color"-function can do miracles to orange-faded photos - my old 1987 Thai-photos was like that, one click and they came back to life in what appears like "real colors" (I've made an example, posted below) - probably other image software can also do the trick...

attachicon.gifColor-sample_Thailand1987.jpg

for old pics , can i suggest this FB page (thai) you will find jewels ....really The Aladdin's cave

https://www.facebook.com/77PPP

Thanks, some really great stuff...wai.gif

There has before been postet a link to a collection of old Lanna (Chiang Mai) photos, for any interested, the links is here:

http://library.cmu.ac.th/ntic/en_picturelanna/search_form.php?page=1&keyword=&searchby=1&click

wai2.gif thank you too

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Last year Saigon gave me nearly the same vibe like Bangkok did 20 years ago. So i advise you try Saigon.

friend of mine, has said to me that cambodia by now also is the same as thailand 20 years before...

Not even close.

The same phenomenon that has hastened Thailand's deterioration is afoot all over Asia, and the world, for that matter.

The Internet.

It has enabled the lowest common denominator to figure out how to navigate to Thailand, Cambodia, etc., without the slightest appreciation of their respective cultures. Cambodia doesn't have much culture to fall back on, since the KR set them back to year zero.

At least Thailand had the dubious advantage of freedom from colonialization, and, even today, retains some of its quaint culture.

However, the ones showing up at the airport today are mainly of a very different generation, the ME generation, without much education (in a real-world sense), who see greed as the norm, and couldn't care less about Thai culture. And the other extreme, arguably more enabled by the internet, are the loser retirees, who couldn't survive or prosper in their own countries, and who come to Thailand wishing it were a kinder, gentler version of old Blighty. Constantly whining about Soi dogs and motorbikes on the sidewalks, and the awful bargirls, and street vendors, ad nauseum...

I arrived late, in '82/'83, but there was no internet then, and while there were plenty of guys here for the girls, a lot more had some inkling about Thailand, and took it as a point of pride to be able to speak Thai, travel and experience Thailand on its own terms. Very little whining about infrastructure, weird Thai attitudes, etc. This was a generation of, or at least influenced by the '60s, so aggressiveness and greed were at least nominally frowned upon. Now, it's every man for himself...

It's no wonder that there is a Royalist/traditionalist "yellowshirt" movement, reactionary though it may be. It's only natural in the face of changing values, and foreigners are the most visible symbol of it.

While everyone did grumble about Immigration back then, the problems were mostly about bribery; now, there is political motive behind the ever-increasing hassle. The Thais are largely fed up with the jerks they inevitably encounter, jerks who couldn't find Thailand on a map, but can tell you what the taxi fare from the airport to NANA is to the nearest salung. Hey, it says so on ThaiVisa. Or Nanapong, for those who remember it...

Now you can whiz over a thousand hardware shops on the BTS, but have to go on ThaiVisa to locate a drill bit. Yeah, I'm happy for the BTS and MRT, but I spent a good chunk of time walking past shops and parks, and learning something more than how to operate the ticketing machines. And once you knew the prices, from experience, the taxis were a no-brainer. Now of course, why bother to learn anything at all about the place? The answers you seek are a few keystrokes away.

So, I guess the place was better for certain people then, and not so much for others. I know whom I prefer...

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It was better back then!

It was 1996 and I was walking down Sukhumvit on my way to work, early on a Saturday morning, the sky train track was under construction and Suckie. was a real mess. At 6am the last remnants of the night before were leaving the Thermae, as I walked by a group of eight or ten fairly attractive young females bid for my attention with one calling out, 90 baht for everything, poor girl needed money for food I suppose - I continued to my office. Later that day I flew up to Chiang Mai which at the time I didn't like as much as Bangkok, it was too sleepy and nothing ever seemed to happen there, very few people seemed to speak English and trying to find decent western food was difficult and for me invariably that meant Riverside.

On the weekend I would fly to Koh Samui which was a great place to escape to and relax, in the mid 1990's there was only a dirt road through Chaweng Beach (miserable when it rained but hey) and the place hadn't been westernized/invaded - a decent room at a decent hotel on the beach was about 1,500/2k baht as I recall. A couple of the beach bars on the North end of Chaweng still had that laid back tropical island feel about them, people were friendly and I don't recall being hustled other than by tailor shop employees, the idea of violence or feeling threatened were never part of any picture here.

Chiang Mai was fine in early '90s especially if you could speak Thai. motorcycling up into the mountains in 90 or 91 you could see and do a lot and get lost quite easily. it was always an adventure. problems were there was no western food, as was pointed out. I mean NONE. There was one shop in Gad Luang that was run by an old lady who sold western stuff. Then another on Nimmanhaeman that opened as well. At least you could get jams and some canned goods and packaged chocolate and peanut butter sometimes.

There was no coffee in Thailand, except at 5 star hotels and their coffee was brewed with dirty socks. There were no espresso style steam coffee machines at all. It was Nescafe or Ohliang or cafeyen (market coffee).

I have no idea where you lived in Chiang Mai in the early 90's, maybe one in a different universe? I was in Chiang Mai in 1988/89 and there were plenty of places where you could get western food, like Lek Guesthouse on Chayapoom on the moat. There was a bakery on Moon Muang, somewhere around Soi 7, that sold whole wheat bread. It wasn't very good, but it was whole wheat. And there was a Robinson's department store on Manee Nopparat, with a great supermarket in the basement.

What I remember more than anything, though, is the winter of 1988/89, and being able to see Doi Suthep almost every single day from miles away, the sky was so clear, there was no smog at all. I lived on Nimanheamin and every morning when I woke up and looked out the window, there it was: Doi Suthep. Now when I come back in the winter and spend more than a few days in Chiang Mai I get bronchitis.

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You missed it all.....Thailand was the best back then!!!

I remember BKK having no traffic, girls who didn't see Westerners for weeks, and pollution was non-existent...and the phrase 'sex tourists' wasn't said every five seconds....

now there are 10 million more people, bad air, every girl with AIDS, expats going crazy, selfies with elephants that are tortured, and it's a concrete jungle.....

Just find a place like Thailand 20-years ago and go there now!!!!

for only 23,923 baht I can give you the name of this special place

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It was better back then!

It was 1996 and I was walking down Sukhumvit on my way to work, early on a Saturday morning, the sky train track was under construction and Suckie. was a real mess. At 6am the last remnants of the night before were leaving the Thermae, as I walked by a group of eight or ten fairly attractive young females bid for my attention with one calling out, 90 baht for everything, poor girl needed money for food I suppose - I continued to my office. Later that day I flew up to Chiang Mai which at the time I didn't like as much as Bangkok, it was too sleepy and nothing ever seemed to happen there, very few people seemed to speak English and trying to find decent western food was difficult and for me invariably that meant Riverside.

On the weekend I would fly to Koh Samui which was a great place to escape to and relax, in the mid 1990's there was only a dirt road through Chaweng Beach (miserable when it rained but hey) and the place hadn't been westernized/invaded - a decent room at a decent hotel on the beach was about 1,500/2k baht as I recall. A couple of the beach bars on the North end of Chaweng still had that laid back tropical island feel about them, people were friendly and I don't recall being hustled other than by tailor shop employees, the idea of violence or feeling threatened were never part of any picture here.

Chiang Mai was fine in early '90s especially if you could speak Thai. motorcycling up into the mountains in 90 or 91 you could see and do a lot and get lost quite easily. it was always an adventure. problems were there was no western food, as was pointed out. I mean NONE. There was one shop in Gad Luang that was run by an old lady who sold western stuff. Then another on Nimmanhaeman that opened as well. At least you could get jams and some canned goods and packaged chocolate and peanut butter sometimes.

There was no coffee in Thailand, except at 5 star hotels and their coffee was brewed with dirty socks. There were no espresso style steam coffee machines at all. It was Nescafe or Ohliang or cafeyen (market coffee).

I have no idea where you lived in Chiang Mai in the early 90's, maybe one in a different universe? I was in Chiang Mai in 1988/89 and there were plenty of places where you could get western food, like Lek Guesthouse on Chayapoom on the moat. There was a bakery on Moon Muang, somewhere around Soi 7, that sold whole wheat bread. It wasn't very good, but it was whole wheat. And there was a Robinson's department store on Manee Nopparat, with a great supermarket in the basement.

What I remember more than anything, though, is the winter of 1988/89, and being able to see Doi Suthep almost every single day from miles away, the sky was so clear, there was no smog at all. I lived on Nimanheamin and every morning when I woke up and looked out the window, there it was: Doi Suthep. Now when I come back in the winter and spend more than a few days in Chiang Mai I get bronchitis.

I didn't live there at that time so it was a case of knowing what you know. Sure there was western food to be had, if you knew where to find it but often, trying to find it was very difficult.

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They always say it was better back then.

Who are "they" and do "they" say that always ... ? Stupid comment ...

Dont listen to him, he dosent even live in Thailand ... hahaha

And how would you know?

You don't know me, are you one of those forum stalkers?

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You missed it all.....Thailand was the best back then!!!

I remember BKK having no traffic, girls who didn't see Westerners for weeks, and pollution was non-existent...and the phrase 'sex tourists' wasn't said every five seconds....

now there are 10 million more people, bad air, every girl with AIDS, expats going crazy, selfies with elephants that are tortured, and it's a concrete jungle.....

Just find a place like Thailand 20-years ago and go there now!!!!

for only 23,923 baht I can give you the name of this special place

Umm aids was around in 1995.

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My first trip here, 1982, is rather beyond your 20 years back.

It is a matter of swings and roundabouts, some things got better. Infrastructure for example. I used to set off from Pattaya a day early to make a flight! Attitude was mostly better years ago, there was a great sense of appreciating tourists. Exchange rate was actually worse but everything was just so cheap you didn't even think about it. A cold beer could be had anywhere at pennies. A lobster dinner in Phuket under $20.

Girls, well attitude fantastic, experience minimal, but they were skinny little things with no shape that always smelled of Som-tam.

Some of the restaurants were hopeless, no English skills and shamblistic in their organisation.

I still look back on those times fondly, but I was a different person. Some of the travelling discomforts I endured would not suit me now.

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20 years ago there are only very slim women, no "smart-phone" so the girls had plenty of time to take care of foreigners. It was really the paradise.

Wow, no smart phones. Must've been nice!

Even when i first came over here some 14 years ago everybody wasn't fat like now. Overfed pigs everywhere.

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Last year Saigon gave me nearly the same vibe like Bangkok did 20 years ago. So i advise you try Saigon.

friend of mine, has said to me that cambodia by now also is the same as thailand 20 years before...
Not even close.

The same phenomenon that has hastened Thailand's deterioration is afoot all over Asia, and the world, for that matter.

The Internet.

It has enabled the lowest common denominator to figure out how to navigate to Thailand, Cambodia, etc., without the slightest appreciation of their respective cultures. Cambodia doesn't have much culture to fall back on, since the KR set them back to year zero.

At least Thailand had the dubious advantage of freedom from colonialization, and, even today, retains some of its quaint culture.

However, the ones showing up at the airport today are mainly of a very different generation, the ME generation, without much education (in a real-world sense), who see greed as the norm, and couldn't care less about Thai culture. And the other extreme, arguably more enabled by the internet, are the loser retirees, who couldn't survive or prosper in their own countries, and who come to Thailand wishing it were a kinder, gentler version of old Blighty. Constantly whining about Soi dogs and motorbikes on the sidewalks, and the awful bargirls, and street vendors, ad nauseum...

I arrived late, in '82/'83, but there was no internet then, and while there were plenty of guys here for the girls, a lot more had some inkling about Thailand, and took it as a point of pride to be able to speak Thai, travel and experience Thailand on its own terms. Very little whining about infrastructure, weird Thai attitudes, etc. This was a generation of, or at least influenced by the '60s, so aggressiveness and greed were at least nominally frowned upon. Now, it's every man for himself...

It's no wonder that there is a Royalist/traditionalist "yellowshirt" movement, reactionary though it may be. It's only natural in the face of changing values, and foreigners are the most visible symbol of it.

While everyone did grumble about Immigration back then, the problems were mostly about bribery; now, there is political motive behind the ever-increasing hassle. The Thais are largely fed up with the jerks they inevitably encounter, jerks who couldn't find Thailand on a map, but can tell you what the taxi fare from the airport to NANA is to the nearest salung. Hey, it says so on ThaiVisa. Or Nanapong, for those who remember it...

Now you can whiz over a thousand hardware shops on the BTS, but have to go on ThaiVisa to locate a drill bit. Yeah, I'm happy for the BTS and MRT, but I spent a good chunk of time walking past shops and parks, and learning something more than how to operate the ticketing machines. And once you knew the prices, from experience, the taxis were a no-brainer. Now of course, why bother to learn anything at all about the place? The answers you seek are a few keystrokes away.

So, I guess the place was better for certain people then, and not so much for others. I know whom I prefer...

Couldn't of said it better. Nail on head

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It was so much better even just 15 years ago when I was there teaching. Loved Samui, Phuket, all over, cheap, absolutely beautiful girls and all was cheap and good. Hey, things to in cycles, good times will return...20 years ago when I first came there (I cant believe I am wring this!!!) most places were still mahem traffic, bars etc but it was nothing like it is now. Far too many Russians and all these other undesirables and international crime gangs they have now. It was quiet Mahem then now its disaster now.

What goes around, comes around eventually!!

Mid Seventies to Mid-Eighties A night on the town in Bangkok might, might cost you about $15.00, Nana didn't exist, Pat-Pong was the only ral game in town, 'cept for Old Sukumvit has dozens of bars, Washington Square........etc etc etc.

I go back a lot further when you could count how many large hotels there were in Pattaya on two hands, you could actually see the beach from the tip of North Pattaya to South Pattaya. It was only 20 baht to the dollar, but it went a lot further - 8 baht Singha's - Amarit was 9 baht. No Bar Fines, these didn't pop up until the Eighties when the Germans & Japanese unvaded the place. But as some of the old timers point out

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It was better back then!

It was 1996 and I was walking down Sukhumvit on my way to work, early on a Saturday morning, the sky train track was under construction and Suckie. was a real mess. At 6am the last remnants of the night before were leaving the Thermae, as I walked by a group of eight or ten fairly attractive young females bid for my attention with one calling out, 90 baht for everything, poor girl needed money for food I suppose - I continued to my office. Later that day I flew up to Chiang Mai which at the time I didn't like as much as Bangkok, it was too sleepy and nothing ever seemed to happen there, very few people seemed to speak English and trying to find decent western food was difficult and for me invariably that meant Riverside.

On the weekend I would fly to Koh Samui which was a great place to escape to and relax, in the mid 1990's there was only a dirt road through Chaweng Beach (miserable when it rained but hey) and the place hadn't been westernized/invaded - a decent room at a decent hotel on the beach was about 1,500/2k baht as I recall. A couple of the beach bars on the North end of Chaweng still had that laid back tropical island feel about them, people were friendly and I don't recall being hustled other than by tailor shop employees, the idea of violence or feeling threatened were never part of any picture here.

Chiang Mai was fine in early '90s especially if you could speak Thai. motorcycling up into the mountains in 90 or 91 you could see and do a lot and get lost quite easily. it was always an adventure. problems were there was no western food, as was pointed out. I mean NONE. There was one shop in Gad Luang that was run by an old lady who sold western stuff. Then another on Nimmanhaeman that opened as well. At least you could get jams and some canned goods and packaged chocolate and peanut butter sometimes.

There was no coffee in Thailand, except at 5 star hotels and their coffee was brewed with dirty socks. There were no espresso style steam coffee machines at all. It was Nescafe or Ohliang or cafeyen (market coffee).

I have no idea where you lived in Chiang Mai in the early 90's, maybe one in a different universe? I was in Chiang Mai in 1988/89 and there were plenty of places where you could get western food, like Lek Guesthouse on Chayapoom on the moat. There was a bakery on Moon Muang, somewhere around Soi 7, that sold whole wheat bread. It wasn't very good, but it was whole wheat. And there was a Robinson's department store on Manee Nopparat, with a great supermarket in the basement.

What I remember more than anything, though, is the winter of 1988/89, and being able to see Doi Suthep almost every single day from miles away, the sky was so clear, there was no smog at all. I lived on Nimanheamin and every morning when I woke up and looked out the window, there it was: Doi Suthep. Now when I come back in the winter and spend more than a few days in Chiang Mai I get bronchitis.

While I always say they ruined Pattaya, the Germans and Northern Europeans made Chiang Mai a lot better, organized fruit, vegetable farms, pork farms, good cheese - don't know how they did it, but it made Chiang Mai bearable, spent a year there in 89 in the AF Radio Station.

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20 years ago the exchange rates were very bad.

25 Baht to the dollar, and however the Euro didn't exist yet, for 1 BF you got 0.65 Bht. In Euro terms that would translate to about 27 Bht for a Euro.

The exchange rates were less; however, the purchasing power was much greater. A thousand baht may have purchased what B3k buys today.

So you are referring to "inflation"?

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20 years ago there are only very slim women, no "smart-phone" so the girls had plenty of time to take care of foreigners. It was really the paradise.

Wow, no smart phones. Must've been nice!

Even when i first came over here some 14 years ago everybody wasn't fat like now. Overfed pigs everywhere.

farang or thais?

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20 years ago there are only very slim women, no "smart-phone" so the girls had plenty of time to take care of foreigners. It was really the paradise.

Wow, no smart phones. Must've been nice!

Even when i first came over here some 14 years ago everybody wasn't fat like now. Overfed pigs everywhere.

You should consider a diet and the gym then tubby or is it Thyroid problem you have Edited by Soutpeel
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