Gary

Since the PI's land laws are similar to Thailand, how can a farang OWN property?

Pre-existing health conditions are NOT covered by any of the insurance companies. You will want to have the policy BEFORE you are sixty years old and you can expect your premiums to go up every year. I have LMG Pacific. I have a maximum of 1,250,000 per occurrence coverage. At age fifty nine the premium was 17,000 baht per year. At age sixty four, the premium is now 24,000 baht per year. I have had one claim (three years ago) for appendicitis. The bill was 41,000 baht and they paid it all.

A friend of mine had his Sony Ericsson die on him. He used it for five years, so he did get his moneys worth out of it. He bought a Nokia 5800. It may grow on him but so far he hates it. Says the touch screen is a pain in the ass. He also says the GPS map sucks. I have had a Nokia E51 for a long time. During Song Khran, I had it in a plastic bag in my pocket and it still got wet. It died so I bought a much cheaper Music Xpress 5130. It's a nice little phone. Recently my wife found a repair shop so I had her take the E51 to them. Amazingly, they fixed the E51 and it works as good as new. To

The older I get, the more crotchety I get. I don't socialize with the local Thais nor do I socialize with the very few local farangs here. About once or twice a week I go to one of my favorite watering holes and drink beer with whoever else happens to show up. Believe it or not, I enjoy my own company. I encourage my wife to visit with her family, BUT, at their houses, not here. I'm really not antisocial but I do enjoy my privacy. I have my computers and a well equipped eight meter by eight meter garage/work shop. I have a great Thai wife. She is a good cook, cleans the house, washes my clothe

I wouldn't worry about a driver's license. What you NEED is a very good health and accident insurance policy. You also need a pile of money available if you have an accident because it will likely be your fault.

Seven years ago, if someone would have told me that I'd be happy living upcountry, I'd have told them that they were insane. I finally agreed to try it and went so far as to leave my condo empty for over a year. My trips to and back from the farang ghetto were fairly frequent for the first year but at this point, about every four months is plenty. My wife is busy planting rice so I planned a two week road trip to Krabi/Ao Nang. I spent three days in Cha Am and another four days in Ao Nang. I missed home and my two week plan ended up being one week. It's great to be back home.

I seriously have to question the sanity of some of the farangs who come up here. They build a huge mansion and then complain that the wife has moved her family in. Why would the old retired farang and his young bride need five bedrooms and four bathrooms? In any case, I have pissed off some of them to the extent that they never even said good bye when they moved back to the farang ghetto. I'd guess that four out of five big houses up here were built by farangs. The only one occupied by the original builder (payer) is by a Japanese who only visits a couple times a year. Unless you enjoy

Once in a while when I go into town, she gives me her ATM card and asks me to draw out some money for her. No secrets here.

I take a different approach. My wife is tighter than the bark on a tree and she HATED to ask me for money. She definitely wasn't happy to ask me for money every few days. I had her sit down and work out our monthly expenses. She came up with the figure of 20,000 baht per month. That amount pays the household expenses for everything including my cigarettes and clothes. I have been giving her 25,000 baht per month for the past three or four years. She has managed to bank about 5,000 baht per month. What she does with her extra money is up to her. Prices have gone up and she is due for a raise so

Solar hot water is VERY efficient and viable although commercial units are expensive. As far as solar electric, I did a lot of research and found that it would take a minimum of fifteen years for payback. Batteries and electronic components won't last fifteen years even if the panels hold up. Unfortunately Thailand is not very friendly as far as importing components. The government did have a program for areas without electric service. They furnished three solar panels and the system that would power a few lights and a TV. The person getting the system had to pay monthly for it and it cost

I use CAT CDMA EVDO upcountry and it works pretty good. The speed is up and down like a yoyo but is normally usable. The problem is that CAT has most of the country and Hutch has the rest. Hutch is Bangkok, Chonburi and I think as far south as Huan Hin on the other side. As you may suspect they DON'T work together. I don't think that Hutch has EVDO coverage in most of their territory. Speed test; Last Result: Download Speed: 765 kbps (95.6 KB/sec transfer rate) Upload Speed: 156 kbps (19.5 KB/sec transfer rate) Latency: 675 ms Saturday, March 28, 2009 9:59:22 AM

That Brit isn't all bad. He knows enough to drink Fosters.

Well jacko, I think I gave him some bad information. I read his post again and he is using an Apple. An Apple computer is a different animal. EDGE in Thailand uses a class 10 for the best performance. Class 6 will be a little slower and GPRS slower yet. If EDGE coverage is not available, the phone will revert automatically to GPRS.

Upscale Nokia phones come with a CD that installs a program called Nokia Suite on your computer. You can then use a data cable or Bluetooth to connect. It will work with Dtac or AIS with or without a package. I think it costs one baht per minute if you don't subscribe to a package so packages are MUCH cheaper to use. You subscribe to monthly packages with your phone, easy to do. Your phone must be EDGE capable to be usable. The regular GPRS is VERY slow. Nokia Suite does everything for you so just follow the prompts.

This is the exchange rate from the Bangkok Post today. You should get the buy rate on a bank transfer. Buy Sell USD 35.56 36.24 GBP 49.20 51.09 EUR 45.78 47.01 JPY 35.81 36.89 HKD 4.52 4.71 13-03-09

I have a sixty square meter condo in Jomtien that stayed empty after I moved upcountry. I turned down several rent requests by saying that I wanted a place to stay when I visited Jomtien. A friend of mine rented a condo that got sold and the new owner raised his rent substantially. I told him that he could stay in my condo until he found a new place. It turned out that he liked it there and he now has it leased from me. He had offered me the going rate for rent, 12,000 baht per month. I asked him for 9,000 per month. He decided I was crazy and wanted to know why so cheap. I told him t

You can buy an AIS SIM card for less than 100 baht. Trying that will tell you whether it is your modem or Dtac giving you the problem. If you have the same problem with AIS you may want to look at your connection settings or software. When I was using EDGE full time, I used both AIS and Dtac. Usually one of them would work. Where I am located Dtac works better. ADDED - I wouldn't waste the money buying another modem. The Solomon is as good as any and maybe even better. If all else fails, you could try CDMA EVDO. I use CAT EVDO upcountry. I think where you are is covered by Hutch. I'm not s

A couple years ago I was in Washington Square in Bangkok. I tried to speak to one of the girls in my not so good Thai and she gave me a funny look and spoke to me in perfect English. She explained that she was a Filipina and not Thai. I asked her if she was actually working in the bar. She was but soon after that she was fired and eventually worked in several other Square bars. She wasn't well liked by the customers because she was VERY mercenary.

I live about 160 kilometers north of you in Loei province. We have had a lot of 4, 5 and 6C nights lately. Global warming? I'm headed for Jomtien tomorrow morning to see if I can get warm. My wife says I am a wimp and to just go ahead and go, she prefers to stay home.

To sum it up, they are issued in the US. The embassy will NOT mail the new passport to you within Thailand. It took mine 15 days and they requested that I pick it up in person. If you have a Thai visa, the embassy will give you a letter asking the Thai immigration to transfer the visa into your new passport. About the only thing free anymore is the extra pages. That is quick and easy.

When I first officially retired, I had some checks come from the US, utility deposit returns and things like that. after finding out what a hassle it was to try to deposit them into my Thai bank, I sent them EMS to my US bank endorsed for deposit only to my account. If you want to deposit them to a Thai account, as Joe said, the fee is quite high and it will take from 30 to 45 days for the check to clear.

I remember a friend of mine getting a farm fresh country girl. She had never been with a farang and spoke no English. That was true. Unfortunately she has just come from an upcountry army camp brothel.

I park in Jomtien and take the baht bus. No problems at all.

It certainly doesn't take a rocket scientist to have a quick look at you bill when it is put in your cup. I enjoy bar hopping and have been in some real dumps. I always look at my bin. I have been charged 120 baht for a beer in places where similar competition charges 70 or 80 baht. I don't complain, I pay my bill and leave. My memory is still pretty good and I remember those places. As far as Misty's, I try to peek in the door before I go in. If I see SOME of the regulars in a group, I try to slink away unless I had planned on spending a LOT of time getting shit faced.

Who does all the shopping, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes and paying the bills? My wife always hated to ask me for money so I had her figure out how much she needed for the monthly bills including our clothes and my cigarettes. She came up with a figure of 20,000 baht. I give her 25,000 and she manages to save about 5,000 baht a month in her savings account. She doesn't have any kids but even if she did there would NOT be a housekeeper nor a nanny. No wonder your wife is bored. She has no work to do.