My Condo in Bangkok

I live in the heart of Bangkok at Sukhumvit and Soi 22.

View from the roof top pool

The kitchen

Eating area

Bedroom 1

Bedroom 2

It is pretty basic, with one bathroom and costs me 24,000 baht a month or about $850 CDN.

Downtown Bangkok has some pretty amazing shopping centers and they often host special events to promote traffic to the mall. I live close to a high end mall called Terminal 21. They recently hosted a motorcycle show and I took quite a few photos of bikes and models.

Guys

More guys

Some ladies

Lots of Bikes

Some local TV celebs.

Eye candy

Over the next few posts I will post photos of the 2nd most visited city in the world. A city of about 12 million people.

TTYL

Breaking Bread ...

Creating a meal and consuming the meal is very important in Thai culture. The preceding 2 activities are much better done with friends than alone. The more the merrier! Please remember to take a picture before consuming the meal. It is best if the pictures include both the food and friends and then the required posting on Facebook to garner as many likes as possible. It seems to me that the ultimate market for Facebook is Thailand.

The 4F's (food, family, friends, and fun) all go hand in hand with Thais. You will not often find a Thai living alone ... for a number of reasons. One, most Thais do have a lot of money to spend on living accommodations, 2, they like to be surrounded by family and friends, and 3, they have a strong belief in the afterlife, especially ghosts!

It is not unusual to have 5 Thai women curl up in a Queen size bed for a good night's sleep. The most number of Thais I have seen on a 125 cc motorbike is 7 (all without helmets). I will include more on safety in a later post. Whatever the reason, Thai's like company and lots of it and company means sharing. Most lo-so Thais would never go to the bank to borrow money. Instead, they borrow from their immediate circle of family and friends. Pay it forward and what goes around comes along ... are both alive and well in Thailand. Their credit rating is word of mouth. For the most part, this all works quite well except when the walking ATM, aka the farang boyfriend is involved. For whatever reason, Thai people think all farangs are wealthy and have unlimited funds available to them. I assume much of this is propagated from the 2 week vacationers who spend like there is no tomorrow and then spend the rest of the year paying off the vacation.  Reminds me of Christmas back in Canada.

So, it is a bit of an honour to be invited to dinner, but beware, if you are a farang, they expect you to pay.

TTYL,

Jim

Times are a Changing!

I have been involved with Thailand for 5 years and lately I have noticed that the typical Thai tourist has changed. The typical Thai tourist 5 years ago was frequently male, looking for a 'walk on the wild side'. Apparently, according to Thai tourism authorities, tourism rates are approximately the same despite the military coup of 2014.

So what gives? There are definitely fewer single farang males of all ages on the streets of Bangkok. They have been replaced by groups of single females (usually 2-4) and couples of all ages.

What does this mean for Bangkok? One must remember that economics seem to drive most everything in Thailand. Thais are very concerned with money and how to obtain it. The lo-so Thais want to eat and have a roof over their heads and the hi-so Thais want to get richer.

The night spots are definitely suffering and many places of business are either changing hands or closing shop. The new tourist types tend to not frequent these night spots. Instead, you find them in upscale restaurants and the many night markets where they can be seen snapping up the knockoffs that are produced in sweat shops throughout Asia. When these new tourists go to the various night spots they tend to gawk rather than engage. They take lots of photos to show the folks back home and and often, from their facial expressions, frown upon what they see. After 5 days in Bangkok they often head out to the islands and beaches and participate in what I refer to as a Florida, California, or Mexican style vacations. I am sure they enjoy themselves but I often wonder if any of them know that the Thai serving them or cleaning their room is making $10 a day.

So where are all the punters (I will leave it up to you to discover the definition of a punter in Thailand) of the past? I hear they are now going to the Philippines and Cambodia because the prices are cheaper. Thailand has full employment (despite the minimum wage of 300 baht a day) and apparently good help is hard to find. This means that the underground economy (bar scene) in Thailand has been the victim of inflation. The price of drinks and other things are up and the service is down. Thai immigration has also clamped down on the abuse of 30 day visa's and illegal workers. In my opinion this is a good things and much of the riff-raff that used to prowl the bar scenes is gone.

If you want to see Thailand the way it was over the past 20 years I suggest you get here soon as times are a changing and as always, economics is driving that change.

TTYL