NorthernRyland

I say it's mostly the hill tribes who are foraging and hunting, and yes they extend into Myanmar and Laos. Just look at who's living around the areas which are burning. It's the same places every year around the same people.

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

Ditto my home in Samoeng loses power constantly during storms and it's because all the power lines are running along roads in the mountains and when a tree a falls it will take down the lines.

and Thai's put them to shame with their speaker stacks loaded up in the back of pickups. You wouldn't think it by looking at travel brochures but Thailand has a hardcore redneck culture well surpassing anything in America, with the one exception of monster trucks and wrestling.

The Songkran gods must receive sacrifices before the rains can start.

No joke this happens at least once a year where my wife works. Same thing every time. Poor guys, I wish Thailand had more squirrels, I quite like them.

This seems way off base to me. Ok maybe very old people or actual government officials in uniform are spared but everyone else is game on. The majority of the people splashing water are kids in the 9-20 age range and you've given them full permission for 3 days to run around in a pickup truck with a barrel of water. Do you seriously think they know any better or even care? Thai's are so repressed the rest of the year you really see the excitement in their eyes when they find a target. For the rest of the people mob mentality and booze is another powerful factor. They do not care. I long ago gave up trying to go out unless I'm 100% prepared to get wet and even so it's not the water that pisses me off it's the being targeted aspect and drunk people trying to get you to pull over so they can soak you and if they get you stopped they won't take no for answer. It's like hunting almost. The real reason I hate songkran is because I can't go outside for 3 days without a car and have to sit home and listen to retardation inducing music. It's horrible. Why didn't I get buy the cheapest ticket to some country? I need to make that my songkran resolution for next year.

take that your partners family.

Where I'm from in America it's always expected to yield to pedestrians in parking lots and it would be considered extremely rude to do what the car did here. The car however is doing the usual rude stuff you do in Thailand so can't be considered at fault. Obviously this isn't America thought so you can't expect cars to yield and especially shouldn't get all pissed off like that (the guy was probably American). What do other Europeans do? If you're in an area where people are likely walking (parking lot, or this mall entrance with foot traffic) do the people need to be extra careful to not get hit (like Thailand) or do you look out for them and yield when need be?

No video just dropped, same theme. They do this constantly but no one seems to be learning any lessons.

I started learning how to read within months of arriving in Thailand. I just thought it would be cool to be able to read a menu and order food, kind of like a magic trick. You can learn on your own at home easily and it's really rewarding. Maybe the only choice I made in Thailand which I'm 100% confident was the right one.

Is this a joke? that's basically all jobs in Thailand. Selling fried chicken under a metal roof in 38c? Thai people do that crap all day.

Those pesky Ukrainian-Portuguese again.

"she was talking back so I hit her. What else could I have done?"

You are retired in Thailand and you can't find the time to bake your own beans? Let that sink in for a while.

This is such a sad comment. I really enjoying speaking with the women who clean our house and do laundry. They work at my wife's company earning not even 10k month so they take part time jobs to earn extra cash. They are such nice people if you can make some banter with them and joke around.

it pains my soul to see American wigger culture has infected Australia. All countries should ban American mainstream music as a national security threat. Yes it really is that bad.

It would be sad to not be able to speak Thai. I suspect many of the people here who become lonely and depressed are this way because they can't communicate with the people around them. It's debated but my experience is Thai's are already repressed and don't speak enough in public so it's already kind of lonely in that regard, but if you can't speak when you have the chance it's even worse. Just today I did a massage with the wife and I appreciate being able to chat with the massage ladies a little and complain about the smoke, heat etc.. Afterwards I got a Roti and ask the girl what the shop was with the frosted glass all the teenagers walking in and out. It's a vape store apparently. It's a little thing but that little bit of interaction helps to not feel as isolated.

Official shirt of the Chiang Mai expat.

So be it. It'll be a cold day in hell before I don't get my annual filthy bucket of water dumped on my head.

that truck crossed right over the right side lane and stopped, totally blocking it, so it's amazing another car didn't crash in to it going full speed. This could have been so much worse.

My thoughts exactly. I was devastated to learn the driver in the black car survived.

This one is intense, maybe the best I've seen so far. Very well captured and it illustrates perfectly why Thailand is a horrible country to drive in. Amazingly only the driver of the offending car was injured. There's a lesson here too. We see these kinds of recklessness drivers everyday in Thailand and obviously the useless police will do nothing about them. Since the drivers are too stupid to understand risks and think two steps ahead it's only a matter of time until their magic amulet fails them and they make a move this like. A ticking time bomb waiting to explode. It's all so tiresome.

Look at this video. Some guy burned his field and totally destroyed this property next to him. Madness they allow this to go on without more supervision.

The breeze is nice I grant it that. I'm going to continue exploring the south but I've not seen anything appealing yet. Honestly though I'd rather spend more time in the US but that's difficult too. You can still get an ok house in a cheap rural state in the US for like 150k. Sure the 5 mil baht CM house is bigger but Thai houses feel like prisons to me and property developers have captured the market so all houses going forward and in cramped projects where the US house will have some space. For right now I'm going to build a house in the mountains and get the F out of that city and that will give me clean air for the rest of the months (CM is always polluted unless immediately following a rain storm). When the smoke hits, the mountains are much worse than the city though so I need to find an escape. That doesn't solve the smoke problem but it solves the big city pollution, which I argue is a concern as well.