I do visit ThaiVisa because I visit Thailand and this is the biggest forum for the purpose. It is in fact valuable for information about visas and many other things.

I am however out of place because I don’t care for the bars or bar girls or too much alcohol. I’m also an American which puts me in the minority by far, and makes me a neanderthal.

Horrors above horrors, I posted something which was said to violate a forum rule of being off-topic. Haha. If I had a nickle for every off topic post I’ve seen on that and other forums I could buy all of the members. 🙂

The REAL issue was that I said something they disagreed with. I was polite. In fact I was very carefully polite. But it was a political debate which followed a news article as the OP, and my opinion wasn’t welcome.

An excuse was found to get me out of there even though I wasn’t off topic. I posted about the topic, and used an analogy as a comparison. Well, the analogy was of course something else and I couldn’t add that to my post which was on topic, respectful and made a good point.

I was winning a debate and that isn’t allowed if you aren’t “one of them.” 🙂

If you, like I, are from the US it would behoove you to not mention it on ThaiVisa or even among expats in Thailand. The great majority are from the UK or Australia and I never realized just how much hatred there is among so many for the US worldwide, even in other Western countries.

You will be presumed to be a neanderthal from a gun toting, war mongering, rip off bankster and Wall Street country who is arrogant and from the dark ages because you don’t have a national health care plan for everyone or a complete gun ban.

I have no intention of starting a political debate so please don’t.

As an American I can see where some of those beliefs may be justified and I don’t have my blinders on. I don’t like political debates.

Just be aware that what I say is true. You will be among people who you suddenly if not already realize don’t like you because of where you’re from. They are the clique and you are the outsider especially among expats.

The Thai people won’t care and my experience is that they are friendly to all Westerners, called farangs or falangs in Thailand. Some are friendly because they are nice people and some because they want your money, but they don’t discriminate due to country of origin.

If the OP here thinks that ThaiVisa is bad, it’s just as bad trying to assimilate with expats on the ground in Thailand. That’s true not only for Americans but for any Westerner because Thailand draws the misfit who couldn’t make it socially in his own country but is adored by all including pretty girls for his perceived wealth by third world standards in Thailand.

The expats in Thailand don’t much associate with each other. It’s often hard to get them to even make eye contact with you. For the most part they appear to be still socially inept and depressed.

If anyone thinks I’m exaggerating just join ThaiVisa and see how far you get trying to socialize even there.

Thai is an incredibly difficult language for a native English speaker to learn. Most expats I’ve met never learn it, nor have I. This is a disadvantage to living there. Thai is tonal, has forty some odd characters in its “alphabet,” and any word can have several meanings based on the tone used. Every written word can have several meanings based on small symbols or even how wide the word is made. It’s not for casual use for the expat. You could easily insult someone just saying hello if you used a rising rather than falling tone somewhere in a word.

Spanish is far easier to learn because like English, it has a Latin derivative, uses the same alphabet and isn’t tonal. Many words have the same Latin root. “Casa” is “home” and “a man’s home is his casa,” pardon.

In Ecuador you can own land. You can run a business. Visas are far easier and there is no age limit, where in Thailand you have to be 50 to get a retirement visa.

If the goal is to have a lot of cute young Asian girls for the night at a price far below what’s found in the West, and if one’s favorite hobby is drinking cheap but lousy beer in a bar from can-see to can’t-see, then maybe Thailand is the place. It helps to be a fat, balding misfit because the illusion of acceptance is a feel-good thing for some who don’t get it that they are only renting it.

If the goal is clean air, choices of climate due to elevation instead of solid heat and humidity and air pollution in Thailand, and if a clean family or even single person lifestyle is the goal, I’d head for S. America and Ecuador is certainly worth a look.

If the author of the original article here thinks that only ThaiVisa is negative it would be a mistake. The expats on the ground are therefore also negative because their dreams didn’t come true and they are stuck.

Thai women, even the most uneducated rural ones in Isaan, have a knack for going for the money. They know that foreigners can’t own land there, and that if they can just marry one and get him to buy her a car and build her a house she is set for life by her standards. Many expats have lost their shirts believing that some tiny cute young thing actually loved a fat, balding man who was 30 or 40 years her senior and who was such a social misfit he couldn’t get any woman in his home country.

Go the ThaiVisa site and spend a little time reading the Divorce in Thailand section of the forum. The stories should warn anyone.

Most of the expats in Thailand are from the UK or Australia due to proximity. It takes me 30 hours to get from the West Coast of the US to Bangkok. Also, costs of living in the UK and Australia are far higher than the US. I should say the common, middle class areas of the US. That’s a debate for another day, but the US doesn’t tack on high import tariffs for one thing. Just price cars, motorcycles, electronics, and Western food as comparisons and that can be done on the internet.

Thailand is no longer cheap. A lot of retired guys are having to cut back lifestyles and are bitter about that because they can no longer afford to repatriate or even change locations. A lot of them are barely getting by.

Internet and electricity are fairly cheap so a lot of disgruntled expats sit at their computers 16 hours a day in their 4,000 baht ($US135.00) cold water dumps in rural Thailand and make fun of anyone who’s making it in this world.

You can lose your fanny in Thailand if you believe any of the lies that you can ever own land or work your own business or that a woman 40 years younger than you loves you for yourself.

Thailand is a great place for a sexpat if he gets it that he can only rent, and never own much of anything including that sweet young thing.

Ellen, I’m sorry to hear about your Panama forum experience, but I guess it’s typical of the ones I’ve seen and that the China person mentioned.

I’m one of those “location independent lifestyle” people so I’ve been living in many different places, and it seems like people who retire to “cheap and sunny” parts of the world are often bitter about most everything in their lives, so they like to spread the bitterness around on forums. Sometimes I think they are so common that they chase off the happy people so they end up dominating the message boards and making every place sound awful. Good luck with your medical things. -Tom

I’ve made acquaintances with some men and women who live what they now call the “location independent lifestyle,” mostly internet entrepreneurs, but although they seem really nice and offer some great advice, they’re mostly very young and don’t know much about health care except for where they’d go for a sore throat, a broken bone, or something fairly minor compared to the more serious medical care needs of a middle aged or elderly person. They don’t seem to have a handle on costs of meds either. I recently explained to someone that telling me that she paid $5 for antibiotics is not a good way to judge the cost of meds in Panama. I recently got some antibiotics here and they only cost $4 with insurance. What many expats need to know is what will their long term meds cost them, what does a doctor visit cost, etc. The forum I was on didn’t seem to have anyone who knew the answer to the question or lied.

Aussie Oi,

You know, that doesn’t really surprise me about Japan, and I believe you. My theory about many of these grumps is that they left their home country for a new one to get to someplace cheaper and/or with better weather, but often NOT because they were particularly interested in the culture there. In Thailand it seemed that the majority of frequent forum posters would drone on and on about the things they dislike about Thailand.

Japan, on the other hand, is expensive and not much of a great-weather destination, so I’d think that people who relocate there generally do it because they WANT to live in Japan. Thanks for the interesting perspective. -Tom

John,

Probably no need for a strategy because there are a lot of great people out there on these forums. Maybe a strategy would be to have a thick skin and not take insults personally and also to not necessarily trust the first person who answers a question. Usually you’ll get a correct answer, even if the first one or two people are wrong. -Tom