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farangatm

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Posts posted by farangatm

  1. Is there any way to bow out of this thing a little more gracefully? Here's the problem, one of my best friends is married to her neighbor, and the "fiancee's" family is a lot more powerful in the Moo Ban. I want to make sure that I deflect any blame from them, 'cause I know she's gonna be pissed. It's getting to be a bit like a like a soap opera -- she called me not 10 minutes ago..."Dahleeng, why you no call me?"

    How do I get myself into these things?

  2. Would anyone want to keep a sailfish? They are not good to eat, but lots of fun to catch (and release) like this one I caught in Mazatlan, about 100 lbs. Oh, and lads, note that's a fly rod I'm holding (12 weight).

    post-39044-1168573905_thumb.jpg

  3. Thanks so much guys (still laughing), you confirmed my first inclination. The only problems I face now are: 1) how to avoid her family from finding out who told me, because that person is very vulnerable. She doesn't know that I'm on to her yet, so I have to be careful about timing. I WILL be coming back to Thailand as planned though, because of all the truly wonderful people I did meet. If I can only just avoid her family at the airport...

  4. I'm not sure where the base is of which you speak, but America most certainly did not carpet-bomb fro Thai bases -- they did that with B-52s flying out of Okinawa, Japan, or the Phillipines. I have met (and know personally) several Vietnam Vets who spent time in Udon, but most of these were Special Forces, electronic spying experts, etc. The Laotian (Hmong) leader Vang Pao, a US ally, conducted a lot of his operations through Thailand too. Don't forget too that the Laotian PDR was a puppet state of the of the Soviet Union during this cold war time. Aren't you glad it's over?

  5. Well, as they say, there's no fool like an old fool. I met a woman while traveling through Isaan, and after a week together we were engaged. She is 35, divorced, and has 3 kids. I was introduced to her by her mother, of whom I am very fond, and I promised to return to marry her daughter at the end of this month (Jan. 2007). Now I find that she has been seeing a Thai man while I'm gone -- possibly the ex-husband, and has confessed to friends that she doesn't really love me, but wants money and is willing to move to the States and live with me to get it. I found out all this through a good friend in the same village.

    None of this surprises me, although one can imagine my disappointment -- I really fell for her, but here is my quandary. She is planning a wedding, she sent out 300 invitations, arranged for music, etc., and I promised her Mom 50,000 THB for the food and drink, etc. Her brothers are comng from Bangkok w/their families, her sister is coming from Europe with her farang husband and 2 kids (she hasn't seen her in 4 years!). Half the family is meeting me at the airport when I arrive in Bangkok, and then I'll be frog-marched out to the village for the wedding 2 days later.

    My inclination is to keep my word and return to Bangkok, and at some point confront her, I just don't want her family to think that I was the "bad guy" and dumped her. I am fairly certain that her Mom doesn't know about the boom-boom with the ex either, because she's been away from the village since I left. However, there are no secrets in the village as you all know, so it would be real strange for me to go through a ceremony knowing all this.

    I don't know how I'll play this yet, maybe go through the ceremony, take her on a honeymoon then dump her -- I never promised her money or a ticket to the US. Any suggestions?

  6. I work for a company that allows me to buy computers at a deeply discounted rate for friends and family. I'd like to buy a computer for the GF's kids. They really want to learn English, but speak only Thai. Mostly they want to play with digital photography and games, but I want to get them something they can also use for schoolwork. There's not much connectivity in the village -- but I know there are phone lines at least.

    HW:

    So, laptop or desktop? The biggest problem I see with a laptop is changing to an English/Thai keyboard, anything else? (and fragility, of course, the youngest is 9)

    Desktop: only problem I can see is to change the power supply to 220V and get an EN/TH keyboard like the ones I see in the Internet cafes in the nearby town.

    SW:

    What OS? These machines normally come with Windows, so do I just get a Thai OS and boot from a separate partition? What applications/versions do they commonly use? I've read that the kids in school spend a lot of their computer time using MS Word or MS Paint. Are there any lightweight graphics programs available in Thai -- like Irfanview?

  7. Wow, how these threads get OT, but to respond to the original post from John down in Sattahip, here's some advice from a newbie. I met my fiancee in Isaan last month while attending a friend's wedding. My friend met a girl from Isaan while in Pattaya -- NOT a bar girl - there's plenty of Isaan girls working in the south as motel maids and stuff and many of them are hoping to meet a farang.

    I had dated a few Thai women by this point, but none of them floated my boat until I met Pon -- my friend's wife's 1st cousin. However, when I was in Isaan, it seemed that everywhere I went women wanted to meet a farang husband -- they kept telling my fiancee to ask me to bring them back farang husband from America too! My buddy called me from a jewelry store in Khon Kaen just yesterday, and said that all 3 young ladies who worked there wanted a farang boyfriend.

    If you can get invited to an Isaan wedding that would be great, but otherwise, take a week or two and just go up there. I recommend picking a decent-sized city like Khon Kaen or Khorat, and just stay there -- the longer you do, the more chance you have of meeting people -- and it's really, really easy to meet women in Isaan.

  8. I can attest that Isaan women are some of the most beautiful women in the world -- and they do NOT all look alike. I grew up in California, where there a lot of beautiful women of all nationalities. To me though, the most endearing aspect of Isaan women is their desire to please you -- to make you "happy" It's kind of a Buddhist thing -- if you make others around you happy, then you create a better world for yourself -- that's my theory anyway.

    I'll never forget an experience I once had returning to California from fishing trip in Mexico. After a week surrounded by wonderful and warm Mexicans, I entered the waiting area for all my fellow Americans at the airport for the flight back to LA and I thought I had made a wrong turn into the walk-in cooler. The people were palpably unfriendly and self-absorbed. Think Isaan -- think opposite, that was my experience anyway, and I've only spent 4 days there. But judging from what I've read here by people who've lived there for years, I don't think I'm too wide of the mark. Peace.

  9. Thanks so much for the preview! After a twenty hour gut-wrenching ride from Trat to some Godforsaken village in Roi Et, I arrived about 3AM on the morning of my 55th birthday; just in time for an hour of blissful sleep before the roosters began crowing and Black Eyed Peas was blasting from someone's stereo. It was wedding day in Isaan. I had come to Roi Et for a friend's marriage to an Isaan girl. I never drink during daylight hours, but fortunately, the sun hadn't come up yet, so when someone handed me a cold Leo I downed it and wandered off into the rice paddies to watch the sunrise. I walked for miles, not knowing or caring where I was. I've been single for four years now, and although I've been dating, I was beginning to think that love was an illusion of youth. Yeah, right. Until Pon walked into the room. I had met her Mama and Papa previously, the aunt and uncle of my friend's fiancee and I found myself drawn to them instantly -- with the sort of humanistic recognition I have often felt with certain people, even if we don't speak the same language, whether it be in Mexico, Polynesia, Thailand, or wherever I have been. Sometime soon thereafter I was introduced to their eldest daughter, Pon, 35, a divorcee with three kids. She asked me not to go back to Bangkok that night, but stay a few days with her and her family and go fishing. Now I am a HUGE angler, but frankly, if she'd asked me to be the human cannonball at the county fair, I'd have given her my Bic lighter. Within four days we were engaged, and I've been miserable ever since I left Isaan for California, but in those four days I had enough of a preview of village life to really appreciate this thread. I now know what to expect on a day-to-day basis, and I am familiar enough with my various relatives and neighbors to know what they expect too. You guys would be so proud of me: just tonight I stood up to "the Boss" and told her, "I'm not an ATM!" I also know now that I better keep my day job here in the US and bring her over here for a while -- I'm not ready for full-time village life just yet, as much as I love it there.

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