BigDUSA

It's only an asset if you can sell it and that may be difficult to do if your on the way to the border and your in a hurry. Thailand is not as solid as S'pore, OZ, NZ, US, EU. Unstable government equals much higher risk for someone buying a condo.

You could tell them to put it on your bill. Check the next day and see if they added it. One thing I do is always book a double.

With all the available cheap housing why should an elderly guy have a substantial amount of capital tied up in real estate in a country with a history of unstable governments? Speaking only for myself, I'm 60 y/o and don't need or want the hassle of investing in the stock market or buy new property in a foreign country where the government barely tolerates foreigners. FWIW when I speak about the hassle of investing in the stock market, I'm talking about all the research, I need to do to invest wisely. I don't need or want to spend the time investing.

Interesting analysis. One of the reasons, I plan on renting a house/condo instead of buying. If things go tits up much easier and far less costly to head to the airport/border and leave.

Going down Beach Road in Jomtiem drive as far as you can go and when the road turns left stop and park there is a Thai restaurant on the beach at the turn they serve good food. When I've been in there it's almost all Thai families eating. Reasonable prices.

I went back and reread your original post. All I can say is keep looking there are good women available. Sad to hear your about your MD report. I hope everything goes well for you. Good luck.

Couple of years ago I lived on 30K for one month and had a good time. I figure it would take 40K to do the same now. On a 100K per month I would live like a minor King. On this amount I'd be able to rent a three bedroom, two bath house and everything that goes along with it. I'm getting close to making the move to LOS and I'll let guys know how I make out.

If I'm one of the "level headed guys on this board" we be in deep shit.

You can save yourself a lot of aggro by following your own advice plus let the BG know your a butterfly and not interested in having a liv in. Plus buy an in room safe to store all your valuables in.

I was in Pattaya in April and I paid (gasp) 10 baht for me and 5 for the BG.

Can't beat the location and good pub grub to boot.

Like I said you don't know what your talking about. Couple of years ago my daughter wanted to come to LOS and spend one year in school. She changed her mind and she missed out on a fun year in LOS.

Once again you show you don't know what your talking about. I've always stated the following: when my daughter goes to college and gets settled in, my wife and I plan on moving to Thailand. My daughter graduates from high school next week and she starts college this September. Come December my wife and I will be in Pattaya looking at three bedroom, two bath houses to rent.

No but at one time I did have a fair number of certificate of deposit. You may consider it a dream, I consider it a well thought out plan that's coming very close to fruition. BTW it was 25 years of accident free driving and I never was driver of the year only driver of the month and it was the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Post Office.

Some men can only dream about relocating. Others do. Wife and I will be in Pattaya during December looking at three bedroom, two bath houses to rent. How sweet it is to have a fully funded retirement that gives us the freedom to live where we want and do what we want.

You know as well as I do that Boeing engineers are the lead designers and have a deep understanding of how to handle composites from years of experience working with them on other aircraft programs. One thing to remember the name of the plane is Boeing 787 not the Mitsubishi, Fuji or Kawasaki 787.

I wonder if the Airbus engineers realized they don't have the technological capability to work with composites on such a large scale and deliver the plane on time? Maybe they should ask Boeing to 'loan' them the engineers who have the skills necessary to handle this?

The owner of Sky-Top, Peter is from OZ. Knows Pattaya and more then willing to share his knowledge. He's located on 2nd Road near soi 6. Look for Gregg's Kitchen sign on 2nd Road and Sky-Top is a couple of shops down on the same side. Soi 8 and Beach Road. Beer bar on the corner on the right side looking toward 2nd Road. Friendly group of expats meet daily around 4:30. Stop by and 'shout a round'.

Yes.

Going toward Jomtiem go past the Residence Garden and about one mile on the right is a car/ATV rental place.

Once again Boeing leads the way and the competition has to follow.

I'm not an expat (yet) but IMHO it's a lot of money for a small room. I plan on renting a three bedroom, two bath house and I expect to pay around 20 to 25K per month. I'll be on the other side of Sukimvit (s)Road but with a motor bike, I'll get around. Maybe.

At least they are coming out with a firm date for the roll out compared to the almost endless delays the Airbus 380 is encountering.

No joiner fees at Sky-Top, Tropical Bert's, Flipper Lodge, Flipper House.

When machinists start the final stages of assembling the first 787 Dreamliner, the din of pounding rivet guns won't echo through the factory as it does on production lines for Boeing Co.'s other jets. Instead of hundreds of panels of aluminum, the 787's major components are being built mostly or entirely of carbon-fiber composite materials that are essentially baked in giant pressure cookers, flown in from faraway factories, then fastened together. In the past, workers at Boeing plants have stuffed the electrical wiring, hydraulic systems and other innards into planes as they got assembled here, but with the 787, suppliers scattered all over the globe are doing that work. "Basically ... we're snapping it together," said Tom Wroblewski, president of the union representing Boeing production workers in the Seattle area. "This is a whole new way of assembling an aircraft." Boeing's Dreamlifter, the 747 superfreighter it modified to transport large parts of the Dreamliner, made the last of four deliveries for the first 787 this past week. The company will show them off Monday when it hosts a grand opening for the 787 factory line, right next to the 777 line in a plant north of Seattle. At first, the Dreamliner assembly line will look much like those of other planes, because Boeing has pulled in extra workers to install wiring in the first few planes, said Mike Bair, head of the 787 program. The company decided to start flying in unfinished parts rather than risk falling behind schedule. Eventually, there will be fewer workers on the factory floor, because it won't take as many people to join the huge prefabricated parts. So far, Boeing says everything has been running smoothly, even as some production issues have cropped up. The horizontal stabilizer that will be part of the first plane's tail arrived with dings on its surface, indicating it wasn't handled properly during the shipping process. And temporary fasteners on some parts will have to be replaced because of an industrywide shortage of permanent ones. The company expected some bumps in the road and has contingency plans to deal with them, spokeswoman Mary Hanson said. If glitches become a big enough problem, Wroblewski said machinists are eager for the chance to do more of the work themselves. "We need to be ready and available to pick up that slack and show them we can do it better than the supplier, and our hope is then that we can draw that work back," to the Seattle area, Wroblewski said. Boeing executives insist the company has ample experience managing outside suppliers that build parts for its other planes, and that it's confident the 787's manufacturing network will be a success. "All it takes is one part and you can't build an airplane," Bair said. "One bolt and you can be in trouble. So managing that is nothing new." Bair said it's unlikely that substantial amounts of work will be shifted back to the Seattle area. "Clearly the plan is to make sure that all these partners will do what they have committed that they're going to do," he said. Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with aerospace and defense consulting firm Teal Group, predicts Boeing's suppliers will make the grade, even if there are occasional snags. "I certainly expect hiccups ... but I don't think they're going to be material enough to affect the program," Aboulafia said. Boeing hasn't said how much money it has saved by having suppliers take on various development costs, but industry analyst Scott Hamilton said it's bound to be substantial. "That kind of risk-sharing, which in the aggregate runs in the billions of dollars, is money that Boeing doesn't have to front," he said. Once production hits full speed, it will take roughly 700 to 800 machinists to run the 787's final assembly line, Bair said. That's substantially less than the work force needed for Boeing's other jets, though Connie Kelliher, spokeswoman for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 751, said she couldn't offer a hard number as a comparison because the company doesn't break out employee totals by production line. The 787 is a double-edged sword for machinists. On the one hand, it has given Boeing a huge boost as it's hustled to win back the edge it once had over its European rival Airbus SAS. The company has won more than 500 orders for the midsize, long-haul jet, which Boeing says will be 20 percent more fuel-efficient than comparable jets and cheaper to maintain because composites are more durable than aluminum. Machinists handled much of the research and development Boeing used to make its business case for the 787, then winced as the work got handed off to outside suppliers. "The rub is always that if we're good enough to do the R&D, and we can prove that it's a good process, it should just stay in the skilled hands of the people that develop it," Kelliher said. Boeing has said the outsourcing was crucial to keeping development and production costs low enough to make the 787 a good enough bargain that airlines would buy it. Boeing remains on track to roll out the first plane on July 8 (i.e., 7-8-07), begin initial test flights around late August and deliver the first 787 to Japan's All Nippon Airways Co. next May. For the first two years, Bair said the company will deliver 112 planes, with final assembly of each one taking three days on average. Beyond those numbers, Boeing won't say much about the production rate it's shooting for, but Bair said the company is already working on plans to pick up the pace. "It's pretty clear that our initial thoughts about the market demand were too conservative," Bair said. Boeing has fielded so many orders for the 787, airlines that order them today won't be able to get them until 2013, the same year Airbus' competing A350 XWB is scheduled to enter commercial service.