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SE Asia Chronicles Podcast Transcript #11

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Good afternoon from Southeast Asia. Happened to be in Manila, but maybe not

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for long. We'll cover that later. We're gonna cover the various countries later.

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This will be episode or volume number 11 of the Southeast Asia Chronicles.

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Names gotta go. Stupid. I'm tired of Chronicles in every form. Let's see. All

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tapes, all images, all everything are copyrighted. 2023 by stockphotosworldwide.com.

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If you happen to like aliens, well no, no, you're not gonna. Once you learn

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about aliens, you ain't gonna like them no more. If you want to learn about

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aliens and why you will not like them, go to alienanoprobe.com or theclaim.com

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or vibratingcactus.com or... ready for this one? Save the gay whales for Jesus.

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I'm not joking. Look at me when I'm not smiling. Save the gay whales for Jesus.com.

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Okay. Alienwhispererproductions.com. I don't even know where all they are.

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They're in the RSS feeds. There's a sprinkling of them on YouTube. Don't

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care. Don't know. Don't care. Okay. The purpose. What the hell are we doing here?

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The purpose is to help you decide if you might want to escape the matrix and go

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to Southeast Asia. And a lot of the stuff we're talking about here, I

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specifically we're talking about Southeast Asia, but if you decide to go

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to Brazil, you know, a lot of this stuff is still gonna apply. Specifics would be

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different, but the general concepts are gonna apply all straight across around

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the world. If you're coming from a Western nation, hang on to your hat there,

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paisano. Oh God. It'll be a ride. Maybe a good one, might be a bad one, might be in

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between one, might be ups and downs like a rollercoaster, but it's gonna be a ride.

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If you are languishing in a life of quiet desperation in some Western

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country in which the life has been sucked out of it and out of you, and you're

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just existing. Get the hell out. Just get out the back, Jack. Get yourself free. Oh, bug. Bug.

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Got you. Got you, didn't I, you little bastard? Okay. This is bug central. Actually,

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Thailand was worse. Cambodia is worse, yeah, you know. That's funny. In the Philippines, I don't see people eating bugs.

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Maybe they do. Thailand is common. You have street stands with, I don't know, 15, 18

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varieties of bugs, and they're all in little dishes, and the guy's got a little cook top there,

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and you tell him how you want to prepare it, and how many you want, throws them in, cooks them up.

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Some eat raw, they're all dead. Well, no, they're not all dead. Most are dead. I've tried nearly

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every single one, many times over the years, because you know, you got some, yeah, who from

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the Western country comes to visit you. What's it like in Thailand? Okay, motherfucker. You're gonna

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find out. We're going right now. And you take them somewhere, there's a bug stand, and you say,

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chow down. And what are they gonna do? They just say, no. No, they're in Thailand. They're adventure

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of their life, you know. They gotta eat bugs, and especially when you start eating them, they don't have

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any choice. They're not gonna have you show them up. They gotta eat bugs. And I don't tell them which

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ones are truly hideous. I've got videos of guys popping in great big old, I don't know, like almost

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half dollar, well, almost half dollar size, big old black beetles. And you're saying, yeah, these

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are good. These are the good ones, you know. It tastes like almonds. They crunch them and crunch them,

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and their face just gets worse and worse and worse and worse. And they're spinning them. That's really funny. And they go, you let them go around the whole

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rest of the evening with a little leg hanging off their lip. That's what I live for. Okay, so we're supposed to be telling you,

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helping you decide if you want to move to Southeast Asia. And if you do, how are you going to do it? You get the

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money. How much money does it take? Stuff like that. We're not quite there yet. We're getting there. We're covering every detail I can

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think of. Okay, this is a comprehensive review instruction manual. Okay. We're at 11. This is number 11, volume 11. And I

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suspect we probably get 10 more to go. Maybe 10, probably not more than 10 to cover this to the degree and depth that I want to

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cover. And we'll give you the tools you need to make some decisions. Okay. We've covered this quite a few times. All you poor suckers

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up there in Western countries could be French. Well, we don't care about the French. Fuck the French. That's what they say to us. You

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know, you go there and you stop somebody on the street and you're very best French. You know, you ask them where's your

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restaurant. Fuck you. In French. It's funny, the French that leave France are not so rude. I think because they know once they

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get out of their native territory with their buds in their homes and they're rude like that, they're going to lose their goddamn

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teeth. And they will. So they're really brave in France. Get out of France, they're not so bad. So I knew lots of French people

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in Southeast Asia. They're okay. I got along with them. They're fine. We go hang out. They have adventures. No problem. And I'm

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going to do a breakdown of my personal experiences with and opinions of the various nationalities that come to

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Southeast Asia. And that's my personal opinion, but it's based on my direct experience. In fact, so I don't forget that.

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Okay, now, last time we left you in Bangkok, and we just chose Thailand because it's the center of Southeast Asia. You go to

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any other country and I'll tell you about the other countries. But that's what I did when I was tired of the Matrix. And

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my wife had passed away and I was adrift. I mean, I was adrift like few people ever adrift in this life. And I had money. I

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was fortunate. I had a lot of money. Not so much anymore, but some. And I just needed out. I needed out. My brain was

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going to explode. My heart was broken. And I needed out. And I literally pulled up a map of most of the world, mostly Southeast

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Asia, because I sort of had an inkling I wanted to go to Southeast Asia. But I was open to any place else in the world. And I

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had given away my business. I had money. I had no responsibility. My wife was gone. Kids grown. Cat's dead. No, the cat

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wasn't dead. That was a big, big thing. I was really, really close to the cat. And then I had to leave him. And then he died

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because they didn't take good care of him. That hurt. That hurt a lot. Still hurts right now. That's been 11 years. That hurts. 10

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years. I left everything, put it in storage, and just took a few suitcases and went. And I pulled up a map on the screen and I

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did pin the tail on the donkey. I closed my eyes. Yeah, that one. I'm going to that country and it turned out to be Thailand,

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because Thailand's the biggest and the most central. It wasn't any spiritual force that directed me. It was just the biggest

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country. I'm kind of in the middle of the map. I should have gone off to the edge or something like that. Could have been

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Bonio. That would have sucked. But anyway. So it's hot. It's hot. We've got a lot of monsoons going on, so humidity is 214%.

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Got two air conditioners going. Fans still just sitting here sweating.

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Okay, so we left you. We just hypothetically said you went to Thailand. And the first place you're going to go in Thailand is

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Bangkok. And you know, if you're kind of footloose, you're probably going to hang around in Bangkok for a while. See what

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Bangkok is. Another bug. See what Bangkok is about. Oh, I'll kill you. Geez. And most people do. I did for a while, a couple

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months, at least a couple months, and learned a lot. And so we've got you as far as Bangkok. You're in a hotel. You're,

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you know, if you're a girl, you didn't come to Thailand. Because they don't. They don't want. There are quite a few reasons

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ladies don't come to Thailand. It's a little too exotic for them. It's a little too rough. It's a little too backwards. I

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think honestly, they don't, Western women don't want the competition because they're gonna lose. They're gonna lose.

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They're gonna go from top of the food chain to the bottom. And once like bottom. You know, that's not going to that.

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That's a whole other tape probably. Ladies alone don't go to Thailand. Ladies with husbands go to Thailand and then they

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regret it. You figure out why. So it's guys. So you're a guy and you came to Thailand and you're in Bangkok and you're

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looking for girls because you're stupid. Because you didn't get the anti-testosterone shots that I told you to get before

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you left Western country. Get them. You know, go to the doctor. Say you don't want to think about girls anymore. You want

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to be disgusted by them. Oh God, this is serious advice. I'm not fucking joking. I'm not. I wish I was. If you do that.

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I don't even know if she can do it. I don't know if they have shots like that. I'm just making this shit up. If they do,

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get them. Get them. If you're test, if you're old and your testosterone is naturally low, do something to finish it off.

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You don't want that. You want to have a nice peaceful life and have some adventures and not lose all your money and not be

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aggravated and purge out that testosterone. Just get it gone because it's not your friend. I know you don't understand what the

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hell I'm saying. You will. After about five years in most Southeast Asian countries, you're literally just like, oh my God, that's what

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that jackass was talking about. Oh, he was brilliant. He was a genius. Oh my God, but I didn't get it at the time. And now I've

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wasted all this time and all this money and all this heartache and oh, I wish I would have listened to him.

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Okay. So if you come to Thailand, you don't have any testosterone in your system, you're going to have a lovely life.

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Lovely. You're going to explore. Oh, it's going to be great. But if you still have testosterone or like some fools do, they

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realize their older testosterone is going down. And in Thailand, there's like testosterone clinics on every third corner for the

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phalanx because they know they want that. They want to be the stud they were when they were 23. That ain't going to happen, but

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they'll milk you as best they can. So you go in and you get some pills that probably is going to make you sick. Can you get some

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big testosterone shot up the ass? You do that once a week or once every 10 days. And you know, your libido will go up. It doesn't

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mean your capability is going to go up. Maybe a tiny bit, but basically you're old and you're fucked.

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But your life, oh God, you're going to learn. I mean, if the purpose of life on earth is to learn, oh God, you're going to the

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concentrated school of learning, school of concentrated learning about life. And having Thai or Southeast Asian females in your

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life is going to accelerate that. I feel like in the last 10 or 11 years, I've lived 10 lifetimes, 10 or 15, maybe 20, compared to a

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guy who is an insurance salesman in a Western country. I mean, he's learning also, he's learning what it's like to be bored and why

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you should not be bored. That's what he's learning. Everybody learns, period. You can't help it. You're going to learn.

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You step off a cliff, you're going to learn why you shouldn't have stepped off the cliff.

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Okay, so you're in Bangkok and you kind of figured out the routine a little bit. You can get around.

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And I've been telling just sort of random stories. People write in and they post questions or they

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sometimes they just like send one word. Like yesterday, somebody just made a one word message. It's snakes.

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Yeah, got him. What do you want to know? So we went through a discussion of snakes. Here's one that says driving.

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What about it? Can you drive in Thailand? Well, yeah, you can. You don't want to, but you can.

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I've said many times Thailand is the most dangerous country in the world to drive in. More fatalities

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per capita, per mile, I guess, or something, than any other country that Thais routinely try to cook in.

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The books and they say, no, we're number two, we're number three. When the independents come in and,

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you know, sift through the books and say, no, I'm sorry, you're number one. Thais say, no, that can't be true.

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Well, it is true. You drive for one fucking day, you know it's true. They're stupid drivers.

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And they're crazy drivers and they don't care. Anyway, you can get a Thai driver's license.

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I'm probably not going to go through the procedure for that right now. Maybe,

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maybe toward the end of the series when I'm, you know, searching for scraps to toss out there,

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we'll go through the procedure to get a Thai driver's license. It is now so convoluted and

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absurd and ludicrous, beyond ludicrous. Oh, that's one of our domains, beyond ludicrous speed.

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You can go there for aliens, beyond ludicrous speed. Remember the old Spaceballs movie.

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That's how fast they were going beyond ludicrous speed.

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Okay, so

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you can get a Thai driver's license. You get a driver's license pretty much any country.

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The procedures are vastly different. Thailand has become,

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has become, oh god, the last time I did it, just to renew, just to renew was pushing a month.

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And I couldn't get through it. I had gone through it for the 11 years before that,

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10 years before that. But I couldn't get it done that last time because Prayut, the Prime Minister,

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my force, had instituted so many new policies that he made it impossible for a felon just to walk in

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to get a driver's license anymore, even to renew, even to renew. I guess I will go through that

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because it'll be yet another example of the insanity of Southeast Asia. I'll go through that,

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not this time probably, but one episode. Yeah, you can do it. You don't want to do it.

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Ah, your life's going to be so much better if you just take taxis. They got every kind of taxi.

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They got tuk-tuks and they got song-toos. Toos, I never pronounce it well enough for the Thais.

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They are in some cities, well, okay, song-toos, sounds Frenchy, is just a pick up with some bench

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seats in the back and it stops. They go on kind of sort of established routes, but they'll veer off.

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You'll be on one thinking you're on the way to the mall. And they just take a right-hand turn

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to go somewhere else that day because they just feel like it. And you go a couple of blocks and

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you think, what the fuck, what the fuck? You can't ask them because they don't speak English. So,

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you're banging, hitting the buzzer to get off, and you get off. And then what the fuck, you've

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got to walk back to the main line. You got to pay them even though they took you the wrong way. You

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got to pay them. And then you walk back to the main line, a couple of blocks, however long,

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and then you wait for the next one. Hopefully it's going to go where it's supposed to go.

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Well, it might or it might not. Probably will, might not. They're cheap. They're called bot buses

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or the Thai name is the song, two, two, two, fuck, whatever. Ten years, I couldn't pronounce it.

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I got corrected every time. I'd say song two and they'd say, no, song two. What? Song two. No,

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no, no, you're a stupid filet. Song two. We just call it joking in English. You know,

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what's a Thai word for joking. Okay. So the English is bot bus, but in, they're not a tuk-tuk.

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They're not a tuk-tuk. A tuk-tuk is T-U-K, T-U-K. They're not a tuk-tuk, but in some towns,

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they call them a tuk-tuk. It's just insane. I think the Phalanx got that started because they

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didn't want to say song two. So they just said, oh, it's a tuk-tuk. Well, no, it's not. A tuk-tuk

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is a little three wheeled thing. There's a lot of those in Bangkok. They're really expensive.

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They're really dangerous. They're really smoky. They're little two stroke engines.

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The fumes will kill you. You know, you stop to the light and there's no breeze.

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The two stroke fumes are, God, they're going to kill you. It's horrible. But they're everywhere.

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And the cheapest way is a motorbike taxi. The next thing would be a Grab or an Uber type thing.

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The next one would be, well, I don't know, the buses. The buses are going to be the cheapest,

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but you're never going to figure those out. Not in Bangkok. If you've got a Thai girlfriend,

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just go, just go, just tell her you want to go somewhere and she'll figure out the best way to

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get you there and she'll take you. It'd be painless. Bus, whatever it is in there.

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No air conditioning on the buses.

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Windows are all down. It stinks. It's rough. It's nasty. Get driving.

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Don't do it if you don't have to. I resisted for the first six months. I would just sit in

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places, sidewalk cafes and watch the traffic and say, nope, nope, ain't doing that. Nope, nope.

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And then I would just sit in the bus and watch the traffic and say, nope, nope, ain't doing that.

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Nope. And then I did it and I learned to do it really well. Tens and tens and tens of thousands

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of miles on countless motorbikes. Never got hit, never went down, but that was luck.

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Drove lots of cars, rented lots of cars, drove them crisscrossed Thailand driving cars.

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You could do it. You got to get used to driving on the left side.

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Some places, Western countries, you do that anyway. Some places, it was a big thing for me.

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I had a hard time adjusting, but I did and now I can't adjust back.

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I drive around in Western country and I'm constantly trying to go over the left side of the

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road. Okay. So driving is driving. I'm just going to leave it there. So I'll mention it later. Okay.

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Health insurance used to be nothing was required before COVID. Hospitals were cheap. You just pay

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for it. Whatever happened, pretty much you just paid for it. If something really went haywire,

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hopefully you were still lucid enough to get a flight back to your Western country and take

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advantage of whatever national insurance system they had for anything serious. And then maybe you

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got patched up and you came back. Lots of guys did that. Health insurance now is stinking expensive

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in Thailand. Not so much in some other countries, but in Thailand, they just did kind of land grab.

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Oh, now they got to have insurance with COVID. Let's see, how much can we rape them? Oh, I think

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the sky's the limit. Okay. There's all kinds of really, really, really bad insurance that

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will satisfy the government requirements to get you into the country or get you a visa.

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But they're shit. They're not going to cover hardly anything at all.

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If you want good insurance, it's going to give you good coverage. You're going to pay through the

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ass. You're going to have as much as 500 US a month. How much you're paying in your Western

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country, probably a lot less than that. So Thailand has gone berserk. The cost of medical care in

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Thailand is probably 20% what it is in a Western country, but the insurance is more. So you figure

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out who's getting rich on that bullshit. Okay. I've got a couple of questions. I mentioned in

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the very first one that in 10th grade, I went to the school counselor and said, I can't take this

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shit anymore. I don't like the kids. I don't like the teachers. I'm not learning anything. There's

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nothing here that I'm learning that I could not get out of a set of encyclopedias. Nothing.

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And I sat there and I just waited for the argument. Well, you got to stay in school.

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You'll never be a success. And he looked at me for a long time, 30 seconds, just looked at me.

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No words. And he said, you know, I talked to him before and he was a rational guy. He said, you know,

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I've always held that there are some people on this earth who don't need school. And I thought,

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oh, well, that's kind of a positive development. And he said, you sure you want to quit? I said,

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yes, yes, sir. Done. Done. And he signed the papers and I walked out. Done. 10th grade. Now,

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so people are asking me, don't you regret that? Oh, fuck. You must be such a failure.

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No, I haven't regretted it for one minute. Not for one minute.

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Truly there was nothing in there that I was learning or was going to learn that I couldn't

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get out of a set of encyclopedias. There was nothing. Nothing. It could be argued that, well,

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you stay in school, you're going to learn about social interaction. Well, I didn't want to learn

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about that anymore. I saw it. I knew what it was. I didn't want any more social interaction with

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Western Yuppie kids. Still don't to this day. I don't want them around. Don't want to think

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about them. Don't want to see them. Don't want to smell them. Don't want to hear them.

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I went out and learned about life. Real life.

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And I never regretted it for one microsecond. I made more money in my life. Probably.

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I don't know. Probably a hundred times more money in my life than I ever would have made

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had I gone into some normal profession, especially a salaried profession. In 1976 and onward,

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1977 and onward, I was working as a commercial diver and I was making on the deepest dives that

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I could do that I had equipment for. I was making 2,600 USD an hour. One hour minimum. I could do

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two hours a day. You know? Okay. So money. The money argument is a stupid bullshit argument.

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No, I never regretted it. I did go back later. Some years later. I did go back and I got

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into some deal on an Air Force base. I was doing some weird government stuff and I got into an

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Air Force base on a program that was going to put me through college pretty much for free.

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So I finished out the little bit of high school thing and started into some college stuff.

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And I think I've stuck that up for a year. And the same old story as high school. I had hoped,

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okay, these are college people. These are going to be smarter and more involved beings.

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And they weren't. They were high school kids. They're just stupid, loud, mouthy, pushy,

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idiotic high school kids. Now at the college level. Pratt boys and girls. Teachers were just the same.

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Uninspired. Teaching me stuff that I could get out of any encyclopedia.

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If I even wanted to know it. Well, one of the beauties of school is that they're going to

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expose you to things that you didn't know you needed to know or didn't know you wanted to know.

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And then suddenly it sparks something and you go, oh my God, that's cool. I like that. I'm going to

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learn more about that. Okay. That's a good thing. Okay. You could do the same thing with a set of

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encyclopedias. Once a day you go open one at random. Same exposure. Same exposure.

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Same exposure. Okay. No, I didn't regret it. No. Never did. Don't now. Do I recommend it? No.

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Not for the vast majority of people.

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A lot of people just need that structure. They just can't think on their own.

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The ones who don't need it, know it.

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And they're going to do what they want anyway.

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Sometimes that'll work out for them. Sometimes it won't.

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Okay. So I got another note here. It says, what do I think of the various nationalities

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that I find throughout Southeast Asia? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

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I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

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Let's save that for a little later time. We did health insurance.

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Monkey story. I want to save for later. Okay. So you're in Bangkok and you've been there a while.

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We've covered, you know, pretty soon you're going to need to extend your visa. You got to decide,

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are you going to go for a retirement visa or some kind of long-term visa or, you know, every

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country is set up differently? Or are you just going to stay out your visa that you have,

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your tourist visa, and then go to another country or go back home?

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If you're going to go back home, then, you know, just stop listening pretty much now

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because you're done. If you're going to go to another country, we'll cover some other countries

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later on. I'll cover all the ones that I have, you know, firsthand intimate knowledge of.

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What happened in my case was I mentioned that I had met the girl

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and she hung with me pretty much every day.

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Nice girl. What happened between us, what happened to that girl? That was a really sweet, nice girl.

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She stayed with me pretty much every day and most nights. And I talked about her before.

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It was not romantic in any, not even remotely romantic, never kissed her, never hugged her,

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nothing. Just a nice friend. I don't know for sure what she wanted. I never really figured out what

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she wanted. She wanted a friend that much, I knew. She would not let me give her any money. She would

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not let me buy anything for her except food when we went out to eat. She would not let me buy

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when we went out and pay for the taxis. We'd go to mall after mall after mall.

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I had a lot of money and I wanted to do nice things for her because I knew her life was

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shit beyond comprehension. She lived in a tiny room with between 10 and 12 people.

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No fans, no air conditioners, no nothing. Just, you know, they cooked on a,

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on top of a propane five gallon bottle in the room. That's it. Lucky to have rice.

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Lucky to pay the rent. The rent was 30 or 50 dollars a month, something like that.

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And between the 10 of them, they could barely scrape it up. And I tried every possible way to help her

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financially. She wouldn't think of it. She wouldn't let me buy her anything at all.

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Lots of times she had a little sewing business thing and she had to pretty much take it with

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her everywhere she went. It was kind of a little embroidery thing. She did this real detailed,

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almost fine art embroidering thing for customers.

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And lots of times I wanted her to just take a day off. Let's go just, you know, come on, let's go

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play. Let's go just go here, go there. Come on, come on. And she couldn't because she had some

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things she had to do because her, she couldn't take a day off because she couldn't afford to

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take a day off. You know, I don't know, she was making 50 a day, you know, maybe three dollars a

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day, two dollars a day, something like that. She couldn't afford to miss a day. And I'd say, look,

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I'll just pay you. Here, I'll give you 10,000 bucks. You don't have to work for a while, you know.

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She wouldn't even, God, I couldn't force it on her. It was really distressing to me

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but that was her moral code. She didn't want to be one of those Thai girls who took money from

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phalanges. It was unacceptable to her. She didn't do it. She never did it.

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There's a story about that. Some guy was talking about how he went somewhere and

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saw somebody who was really poor, really in a hard, hard way. And he tried to give him money

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and they said, no sir, I can't take it. You know, I work for what I have. I can't take this

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from you or anybody else. Thank you for the offer, but you know, no. And the guy

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says, look, this is for you but it's also for me because if I give you this money,

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I know it's going to help your life a little bit. And if I can help your life a little bit,

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that's going to make me feel good. It's going to make me happy. Now, please don't cheat me

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out of that happiness. And the guy, a street guy or something like that, I can't remember what it was,

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and he thought about that for a minute. Okay, took the money, went and bought whatever, some food or

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whatever. I wish I would have tried that argument on her. That didn't occur to me at the time. But

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anyway, so we got to be, you know, somewhat close-ish as friends, depended on each other

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to a degree, not financially for me, but for companionship from her because I was just lonely.

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Just objectively, desperately lonely. And as I said, we went everywhere. You know,

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every opportunity that we could, we jumped in a cab and we went somewhere. She took care of it.

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She was the travel guide. And she could speak almost no English. And so we had to use Google

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Translate or some other translator. And so we're just, you know, we're just, you know,

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we're just constantly clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking,

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you know, in the back of the cab, just clicking, clicking, clicking, talking, talking, talking.

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And what happened was more and more, increasingly, we started to have little misunderstandings

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in our exchanges. It was due to, well, it was due to several things. It was due to just the language,

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for one. It was due to the differences in culture for another, but 90% of it was due to Google

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Translate incompetence. Google Translator, in Thai at least, is just pretty close to worthless. In

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fact, it might be a negative value. It might be worse than worthless. It's like they made no attempt,

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whatsoever, to make it accurate in any possible way. If you type he, Google Translate in Thai,

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will translate it to she. Boyfriend is girlfriend. You make a very simple statement, you know,

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can we eat someplace? And Google will translate it to some bizarre fucking thing. And I can't think

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of any specific examples, but Google Translate would take something like that and translate it to

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have you ever fucked a buffalo? Something that outrageous. And it would do that one out of three

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times, even though you're keeping the words really simple and the phrase is really simple, three words,

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five words tops, and Google would fuck it up. Okay. I've picked up on that fairly early. I realized

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what was going on. And she didn't really. She didn't seem to. She didn't seem to grasp that it

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was Google causing these misunderstandings. And so she would say something outrageous to me,

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and I would be like, oh, Google fucked that up. And I would say something that turned out to be

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totally outrageous to her. And she thought that I meant what I said. And then she would fire back

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with some insulting, angry thing, which probably was going to get screwed up in Google also.

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And really, really quickly over about three or four or five exchanges in the back of a taxi,

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or in a mall, in a restaurant, whatever, she would be reduced to screaming apoplexy

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because she thought that I was such a dickhead. I was saying horrible things to her.

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And I wasn't, I was as nice and sweet as any human could possibly be, but Google was fucking it up.

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And I couldn't get that across to her. I would say Google made mistake.

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And that just never really seemed to register. Maybe it registered a little bit, but she couldn't

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imagine that Google could be that wrong. I'm positive I was the first filanx she had ever

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tried to communicate with in this way. Maybe later with other filanx or other people she figured this

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out. So very often, once or twice or three times a day, we would end up, I mean, you can't have big

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fights, you know. She ties don't do screaming stuff, but we would have screaming silent exchanges

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across Google. And then we would both end up just sitting in the back of the taxi with our arms

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folded, phone turned off, silent, you know. Then after an hour, we'd try it again. And those

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exchanges got more and more frequent and they got worse and worse as we tried to communicate more

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ideas through Google Translate. Everybody I know has the same trouble. This was not a one-off.

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Everybody. We had one translator for a while that was a little bit better, I think maybe. I think

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they actually used ties to do the translations. And it was somewhat better, but still not very good.

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But it was unreliable. Google was there all the time. And our relationship deteriorated.

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And it got to the point where I was beginning to realize, well, I don't really have a relationship

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here in Bangkok anymore. And all I had seen around me was hookers and

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scammers and can you give me money, please? And can we go to your condo right now? You know,

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that's pretty much all I'd seen in Bangkok. The nice girls won't talk to you, especially if you're

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not fluent in Thai. So you're not going to, if you're not fluent in Thai, you're not going to meet them.

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So they're going to be invisible to you. All you're going to meet is the scammers and prostitutes.

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And that's true in most other countries, even in the Philippines, where English,

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quote unquote, is their biggest second language. Well, it is, but it's still very, very rare.

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It is, but it's still very, very, very poorly done. Cambodia claims it speaks English well,

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not as well as Philippines. Philippines is not good. It's really not good.

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So our relationship got more and more and more strained. And finally I thought, well, okay,

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I'm not thriving here in Bangkok. It's too foreign. I can't find enough English to get anything done,

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to do anything. I've been here a couple of months. I can't meet any friends.

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I've seen all the touristy things and all the non-touristy things.

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Maybe it's time to go look at some other part of Thailand.

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I can't base my whole... I'm still deciding whether or not to stay there.

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And I can't base that decision on just Bangkok. So I was sitting in the hotel lobby one day

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and figuring my relationship with that girl was, you know, probably over 98%.

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And there had been a clerk in the hotel who had been really nice, really sweet to me. She yelled,

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teensy little bit of English. God, it was terrible, but you know, more than anybody else in the hotel.

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And she kept smiling and giving me the eye and waving and stuff like that all the time I'd been

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there. And so I was sitting in the lobby one day just feeling dejected and thinking, well, what the

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hell? Maybe it's time to go. I don't know where to go. I don't know what's out there. I, you know,

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going back to the U.S. was really not an option. I, jeez, I've been trying all my life to get out

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of there and I'm out. Now, why would I go back? You know, it still had stuff ahead of me that might

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be doable. And I was sitting there, I guess I looked pretty bad. Anyway, the same girl came

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over, the hotel clerk, and she sat down next to me and put her hand on my leg. And

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how are you, Susty-Kong? And we kind of talked a teensy little bit. And

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I thought, well, you know, she wants something and she's already got a job, so she's not going to

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ask me for money. She had never asked me to go to my room, you know, maybe possibly this could be a

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nice girl. Not a bar girl, certainly not a street hooker, not a freelancer, nice, really pretty girl.

353
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:54,400
She'd always been extra nice to me. And I thought, well,

354
00:44:56,800 --> 00:45:00,320
maybe I should pursue this one just a teeny little bit, see what happens.

355
00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:05,280
And we talked for quite a while there in the lobby, probably an hour. I don't know how she

356
00:45:05,280 --> 00:45:14,160
got away from the desk that long, but nobody said anything. And then after an hour, she finally

357
00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:22,800
revealed her reason for being there, talking to me. And it was to sell me a tour package.

358
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:30,400
Oh yeah. No, you're not a scammer, but you know, you're a spammer. You know.

359
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:40,320
Yeah. Oh God. So I said no, done talking. She went away.

360
00:45:40,320 --> 00:45:51,600
And then I thought, well, okay, now it's really time to get out. Bangkok is just not working out

361
00:45:51,600 --> 00:46:01,600
for me. And so I sent one last email message or whatever to the girl from before. And I said,

362
00:46:01,600 --> 00:46:10,320
I think I'm ready to leave Bangkok. I don't like it anymore. I'm not happy here. I want to see new

363
00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:17,040
things in Thailand, all around Southeast Asia. And I thought, let's give this one last shot.

364
00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:24,560
I said, would you like to go? And she wrote back and said, well, I can't go.

365
00:46:24,560 --> 00:46:31,120
I don't have any money to go. And I said, well, that's fine. I understand you don't have any money.

366
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:40,000
You can stop your work. I'll give you an allowance. And we'll just travel and we'll see Thailand.

367
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:46,800
We'll see what can happen between us. We'll just see. If you don't like it,

368
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:55,600
come back to Bangkok. I'll give you money. And she fired back and she said, how dare you offer to buy

369
00:46:55,600 --> 00:47:03,920
me? Oh, I hate you, you stupid fool. Oh, I hate you. She just rattled on like that. I don't think I

370
00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:11,200
read it all. I just blocked it. And so she went back to Bangkok. And she said, I don't like it.

371
00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:18,080
I don't think I read it all. I just blocked it. And so that was the end of Bangkok for me.

372
00:47:19,760 --> 00:47:26,880
Never saw her again. I missed the friendship. I wish it would have worked out. If not for the

373
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:31,840
language, I think almost certainly it would have. It would have been fine. I might be still with her.

374
00:47:34,240 --> 00:47:40,160
The language was the problem. And then Google was the exacerbating factor on top of that,

375
00:47:40,160 --> 00:47:50,880
making the language problem 140 times worse. Google makes many, many things, maybe most things worse.

376
00:47:53,440 --> 00:47:58,160
Because that's a company of morons as far as I'm concerned. What do they do that's good? Well,

377
00:47:58,160 --> 00:48:07,280
my email is pretty reliable. Search engine is pretty good now. In the early days it sucked. When

378
00:48:07,280 --> 00:48:12,480
they first launched it, it was terrible. It was just as bad as anybody else. Now it's pretty good.

379
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:22,080
Search engine is pretty good. But it's not that good. So I don't know what Google does to enhance

380
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:34,640
my life, except complicated and cause trouble. Anyway, so I went to, I guess the hotel manager

381
00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:43,600
or something. And while I was like three or four up there and between them all, each one knew one of

382
00:48:43,600 --> 00:48:48,400
the English words I was using. And so we were able to have kind of a conversation. And I said, well,

383
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:53,840
I'm ready to leave Bangkok. I don't know where to go. Can you recommend someplace that's nice?

384
00:48:55,120 --> 00:49:00,560
And they said something like, well, we can see that you, since you don't know Thai,

385
00:49:00,560 --> 00:49:07,280
you are really struggling here. You need to have English in your life. You know, if you want to

386
00:49:07,280 --> 00:49:12,480
learn Thai later on, well, maybe that's okay. But right now you don't know any Thai and you're having

387
00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:16,720
a hard time in life and you need to be where there's English. And I agreed like, yeah, yeah,

388
00:49:17,600 --> 00:49:22,880
I think you're right. I think you're right. And they named some town and they said, well, if you

389
00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:28,560
go here, it's pretty, it's quieter than Bangkok. It's a lot cheaper than Bangkok.

390
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:35,440
There's some tourists there and there's a lot of English. Everybody speaks English.

391
00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:47,520
And I thought, well, what the fuck? Why not? Yeah, whatever. Okay. And I said, okay,

392
00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:56,320
tomorrow I can go. Can you arrange a cab? And they said, yeah. So the normal fare to go down there

393
00:49:56,320 --> 00:50:04,720
was about a thousand baht. I didn't know at the time. They arranged a cab for me for like 2,700

394
00:50:04,720 --> 00:50:10,320
baht. And they said, well, that's the best price you're going to get. Well, they paid the thousand

395
00:50:10,320 --> 00:50:18,400
and they pocketed the rest. Welcome to Thailand. And so anyway, he showed up in the morning,

396
00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:23,600
packed my stuff, went down on the way down. I got across to him that I needed a hotel. Well,

397
00:50:23,600 --> 00:50:26,960
he had said, what, where are you going? I said, well, the name of this town. And he said, do you

398
00:50:26,960 --> 00:50:33,440
have a hotel? No. So we're thinking about that all the way down. And he finally suggested one.

399
00:50:34,240 --> 00:50:40,160
Okay. Whatever. Now in the U S you can ask a cab driver, do you know a hotel that's like this?

400
00:50:40,160 --> 00:50:47,600
It's not too expensive, not too cheap. And they'll say, well, we'll see. I can think of one or two

401
00:50:47,600 --> 00:50:53,440
places that might work for you. They'll recommend a place or two and you can drive by and look at

402
00:50:53,440 --> 00:50:57,520
them and stuff like that. And it's pretty, it's a pretty doable thing to ask a cabbie for

403
00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:03,280
a recommendation for a hotel. And in Thailand, you don't do it. You don't do it. You don't do it.

404
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:07,280
Not one time. You don't do it. I don't care who you are, what you, I don't care. You don't do it.

405
00:51:08,080 --> 00:51:11,840
You don't ask them to take you some, some place on their recommendation.

406
00:51:14,080 --> 00:51:20,640
There's a whole host of reasons why you don't do it, but you don't do it. Give birth, give birth,

407
00:51:20,640 --> 00:51:28,480
not one time. But I didn't know that. And this guy says, yeah, I know a hotel. Okay. Yeah,

408
00:51:28,480 --> 00:51:35,840
I'll take care of you. Don't worry. So, shit. So we go to his recommended hotel, get there late afternoon

409
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:46,080
and he helps me with my bags and walks in with me to the desk and they hand him,

410
00:51:46,080 --> 00:51:52,640
I can't remember, 300 baht, 500 baht, something like that. Well, it was his little payback hotel

411
00:51:52,640 --> 00:51:59,920
for bringing guests there. He got a little kick back. Okay. So it turned out to be a,

412
00:51:59,920 --> 00:52:07,280
hey, it wasn't a horrible hotel, a little bit expensive. It was okay. Right downtown,

413
00:52:07,280 --> 00:52:16,640
right in the middle of the busiest touristy section. And I settled in there, paid for a month, I think.

414
00:52:16,640 --> 00:52:20,800
And by that time, when that month ran out, I was going to have to do something about a visa.

415
00:52:22,960 --> 00:52:27,280
I figured, well, okay, this is going to tell me once and for all, am I going to stay in Thailand

416
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:39,040
or not? And so I settled into that hotel and then started venturing out to look around.

417
00:52:43,200 --> 00:52:51,760
It was night and day from Bangkok. It was, I don't know, 10 or 15 or 20 times busier,

418
00:52:51,760 --> 00:53:07,760
a whole different crowd of people. Activity level was incomprehensible. 500 times more girls.

419
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:14,960
It was so overwhelming to me that I couldn't stay out more than about 10 minutes.

420
00:53:14,960 --> 00:53:23,360
I'd go out, stand by the main street, look around, maybe buy a Coke,

421
00:53:27,200 --> 00:53:32,960
look around some more. I would be so into sensory overload that I just went back in the hotel,

422
00:53:32,960 --> 00:53:40,480
laid down on bed, talked to my family. And I did that for, I don't know, like a week.

423
00:53:40,480 --> 00:53:44,880
I would walk a little farther each time. It took me a while to get to the point where I walked a

424
00:53:44,880 --> 00:53:55,440
whole block and then came back. It was so alien. It was all I could process.

425
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:02,080
Okay, now I see that and you're thinking, well, what the hell is he talking about? Oh, I must be

426
00:54:02,080 --> 00:54:09,280
a wussy. Oh, shit. Okay, I need to quantify that. How can I, how can I,

427
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:17,680
how can I describe that? I don't even know. And this is the problem I've always run into,

428
00:54:17,680 --> 00:54:21,760
you know, friends from the US or whatever country, they would say, what's it like in Thailand?

429
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:26,320
I say, well, it's overwhelming. It's bizarre. It's crazy. It's a,

430
00:54:26,320 --> 00:54:40,400
I, it's another planet. And they're like, well, what does that mean? I don't even know how to

431
00:54:40,400 --> 00:54:46,960
describe it. The smells, I guess, probably the first thing that hit you, the smells,

432
00:54:47,600 --> 00:54:51,360
good and bad and ugly. Traffic was

433
00:54:51,360 --> 00:54:58,640
helter skelter. Four lane Boulevard in front.

434
00:55:03,680 --> 00:55:07,840
Look at the pictures. Okay, here, this is for the visuals. All you can do is look at the pictures

435
00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:14,320
on stockphotosworldwide.com. Scroll down until you get to, you know, page one, page two, page three,

436
00:55:14,320 --> 00:55:21,760
like that. There's about 60 pages and so many more to post. I just got around to it. But those

437
00:55:21,760 --> 00:55:27,840
will give you some ideas of the visuals. I should have taken a lot more videos. It's a video world

438
00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:35,280
now. I retired as a photographer. I was not a videographer. I should have been, and I should

439
00:55:35,280 --> 00:55:42,000
be now. I should just concentrate on video because that's the world now. Video. I'm trying,

440
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:46,000
I'm trying to make that switch over, you know, old dogs, new tricks, you know, like that.

441
00:55:49,440 --> 00:55:53,360
So look through those pictures. You'll get an idea. You cannot possibly get the smells.

442
00:55:53,360 --> 00:56:00,320
You cannot feel the heat. You cannot hear the sounds. Oh, you need video. Video will give you

443
00:56:02,400 --> 00:56:04,160
more dimensions, except for the smells.

444
00:56:04,160 --> 00:56:11,840
Smells are a huge part of it because the smells, you know, your nasal sensors are right there next

445
00:56:11,840 --> 00:56:18,080
to your brain. A couple of things will hit you throughout your life. You hear a piece of music

446
00:56:19,360 --> 00:56:25,280
after about the first 10 notes. Oh my God, you're back. You're back to wherever that song had

447
00:56:25,280 --> 00:56:30,800
meaning to you. You are back there, transported magically. Okay. Smells are the same way. You smell

448
00:56:30,800 --> 00:56:37,760
something you haven't smelled for 50 years. You're back there. You're instantly back where you were

449
00:56:37,760 --> 00:56:46,080
when you smelled that before. These are all new alien smells. So they're just overloading you.

450
00:56:46,080 --> 00:56:55,600
Your brain is close to implosion. A little Titan brain, you know, too much pressure on it.

451
00:56:55,600 --> 00:57:03,600
Traffic was... people more or less stayed on their side of the street. Not really, not that much.

452
00:57:05,040 --> 00:57:10,960
Predominantly, but not, you know, certainly not totally. Somebody wants to go somewhere

453
00:57:10,960 --> 00:57:14,400
over there or they just drive down the wrong side of the road till they get there. People

454
00:57:14,400 --> 00:57:21,840
got to swirl around them. You know, it's a lot of people. You know, it's a lot of people.

455
00:57:21,840 --> 00:57:28,560
People got to swirl around them. Soy dogs everywhere. They'll bite you. Half of them are rabid.

456
00:57:30,720 --> 00:57:40,160
Scroungy mangy hairless motherfuckers. They're bad. Don't ever kick one because then they will bite

457
00:57:40,160 --> 00:57:45,520
you and the friends will come and bite you. I got along with them pretty good because number one,

458
00:57:45,520 --> 00:57:54,320
I loved all dogs, pretty much all animals except for snakes. So they could tell that I loved them.

459
00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:58,240
Even if a pack of them came at me with the intention to tear me to smithereens,

460
00:57:58,240 --> 00:58:05,360
they could feel that I loved them. And that almost always just stopped them.

461
00:58:06,240 --> 00:58:11,040
What is this? What? He loves us? What the hell? What the hell? Okay, it doesn't always stop them.

462
00:58:11,040 --> 00:58:18,640
Don't count on that. But later after I'd been there a while, I started carrying little buggies of food

463
00:58:20,640 --> 00:58:25,120
and that would pretty much always stop them. You know, they're coming over, they're massing,

464
00:58:25,120 --> 00:58:30,160
they're in a semi-circle around you and they're just daring each other. Bite that fucker, bite

465
00:58:30,160 --> 00:58:33,920
that fucker. Come on, you do it, I'll do it. You know, like that. And you pull out a little

466
00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:43,920
baggie and you drop it on the ground like, oh, what? Well, okay, Bob, we'll bite him after we eat this

467
00:58:43,920 --> 00:58:48,160
shit, you know. And then after they eat that shit, they're like, well, maybe he's got some more,

468
00:58:48,160 --> 00:58:53,280
you know, let's not bite him yet. Let's see if he's got more. You know, kind of like that.

469
00:58:53,280 --> 00:58:56,640
I got myself out of so many soy dog situations like that. It was just absurd.

470
00:58:56,640 --> 00:59:04,080
I never really, well, not really, I never had any serious trouble with soy dogs. Every day I knew

471
00:59:04,080 --> 00:59:10,000
that bit, you know, they're in there for the 29 maybe shots in the stomach, you know, shit like that.

472
00:59:11,920 --> 00:59:16,240
I never, no, I did get bit. I was on my little e-scooter one day, I got bit.

473
00:59:17,280 --> 00:59:20,080
I had a little tiny terrier piece of shit, lived in a home

474
00:59:20,080 --> 00:59:26,400
and I didn't go get checked because I figured, well, he's probably safe. I should have gone to

475
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:33,040
the hospital and got the shots and made him come and get the dog and cut his brain open. You know,

476
00:59:33,040 --> 00:59:36,640
I should have done that because he's, okay, that's a whole other story. But

477
00:59:39,760 --> 00:59:43,280
not too many cats there because the dogs eat them all.

478
00:59:43,280 --> 00:59:50,720
The girls, both the street prostitutes and the other kinds of freelancers and

479
00:59:51,600 --> 00:59:55,280
pretty much any girl in that town was for hire. Pretty much,

480
00:59:56,400 --> 00:59:59,200
God, it would have been really rare that the girls there weren't for hire.

481
01:00:02,960 --> 01:00:07,760
I'm not sure I ever saw it. I mean, I didn't approach them all for, you know, but

482
01:00:07,760 --> 01:00:15,840
pretty much all of them, I would say, even the old fat ones were available. You know, they are.

483
01:00:15,840 --> 01:00:24,800
I'm sorry. That was the currency. Sex was the currency. The incredible mix of foreigners

484
01:00:24,800 --> 01:00:28,000
everywhere, most of whom didn't speak English,

485
01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:35,600
we'll talk about types of foreigners there at some point. And I just keep coming back to the

486
01:00:35,600 --> 01:00:44,000
smells, the food and the poop, scrumptious food smells and then nauseating poop smells. And just

487
01:00:44,000 --> 01:00:47,760
go back and forth depending on which way the wind wafts at any given moment.

488
01:00:49,360 --> 01:00:55,040
I don't know if you've ever seen a dog that's been in a car accident or something like that.

489
01:00:55,040 --> 01:01:01,040
The wind wafts at any given moment. The heat, everything smelled like wet jungle.

490
01:01:07,120 --> 01:01:11,280
Interestingly, the traffic is not allowed in Thailand. The Thais don't honk hardly at all.

491
01:01:11,920 --> 01:01:18,080
It's considered very rude and we'll get you shot. Thais don't honk. Vietnamese

492
01:01:18,080 --> 01:01:27,520
honk for fun. I have literally, truthfully watched Vietnamese driving down the main

493
01:01:27,520 --> 01:01:33,600
boulevards of Saigon early in the morning, not a car in fucking sight. And they're on that horn.

494
01:01:34,720 --> 01:01:39,040
Nobody in front of them. I mean, for 200 yards, nobody in front of them, nobody behind them,

495
01:01:39,040 --> 01:01:43,120
nobody going the other way, nobody doing anything, no dogs, no people wanting to cross the street.

496
01:01:43,120 --> 01:01:49,280
There's no one around and they're just on that horn. Seen that a lot of times in Saigon and Vietnam.

497
01:01:50,480 --> 01:01:56,640
In Thailand, they don't honk. If anybody's honking, it's going to be some goddamn fucking fat Brit,

498
01:01:57,280 --> 01:02:07,680
pretty much every time. So in this little town, there were lots and lots of places where you

499
01:02:07,680 --> 01:02:18,960
could get drinks and eat. Menus were often or usually in English or they had both. So you

500
01:02:18,960 --> 01:02:22,640
actually had some idea what the hell you were going to order. That was amazing to me.

501
01:02:24,720 --> 01:02:30,000
Still every third entree is going to be no have, you know, because that's just the Thai way,

502
01:02:30,000 --> 01:02:38,400
Southeast Asian way. Every country is the same. Food was passable. It was really cheap.

503
01:02:43,600 --> 01:02:51,200
When the sun went down, it was, let's see, let's see. Oh my God. That makes me miss it right now.

504
01:02:52,880 --> 01:02:57,280
I mean, that's a very concentrated evil. You know, you can only take so much of that for any

505
01:02:57,280 --> 01:03:01,600
given period of time, but I've been away from it for a year and so now I miss it.

506
01:03:02,320 --> 01:03:06,240
Now I miss it. You know, if I was back in it for one evening, I would have enough and I'd have to

507
01:03:06,240 --> 01:03:12,400
go away again. But you talk about excitement, especially when it's brand new to you,

508
01:03:13,680 --> 01:03:15,440
as it was to me at that time, brand new.

509
01:03:15,440 --> 01:03:28,880
It was absolutely, the first few weeks there, first months there were absolutely the most exciting

510
01:03:28,880 --> 01:03:38,480
time of my life in any country, anywhere in the world. It was, every single moment was

511
01:03:38,480 --> 01:03:47,520
pretty close to thrilling and some of them were actually thrilling. My God, what an experience it was.

512
01:03:50,000 --> 01:03:54,320
And of course, as always, you know, familiarity breeds contempt and it starts to wear off.

513
01:03:57,360 --> 01:04:03,440
I don't think I ever felt contempt. I just, you know, you can only take so much sensory input and

514
01:04:03,440 --> 01:04:09,200
then it starts to wear off. It's the same sensory input, but you're used to it now. It's not so new.

515
01:04:09,200 --> 01:04:15,040
It's not so fresh. It's not so thrilling, but it's still pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good.

516
01:04:16,560 --> 01:04:22,720
And you're thinking, if I would have had to leave Thailand at that time for some reason,

517
01:04:22,720 --> 01:04:26,880
I would have cried my eyes out. I don't know that I would have wanted to live.

518
01:04:27,840 --> 01:04:31,120
I mean that honestly. If I would have had to go back to the US right then,

519
01:04:31,120 --> 01:04:37,280
I don't know that I would have. If there was just no choice but to go back, you know, 10 guys with

520
01:04:37,280 --> 01:04:43,040
guns and they're going to tie me up and put me on a plane, take me back, I don't know that I would

521
01:04:43,040 --> 01:04:48,480
have wanted to live. Because to me that was life. That was the beginning of real life

522
01:04:48,480 --> 01:04:50,480
that I'd never really experienced before.

523
01:04:50,480 --> 01:04:59,280
Wow. So I hung out there and I walked around. I walked farther and farther and farther.

524
01:05:00,640 --> 01:05:04,480
Had my big cameras started clicking, just clicking, clicking, clicking.

525
01:05:06,960 --> 01:05:13,920
And it's like, I'm going to go back to the US. I'm going to go back to the US. I'm going to go back

526
01:05:13,920 --> 01:05:24,880
and click, just clicking, clicking, clicking. And food was okay. Health was good. Plenty of money,

527
01:05:24,880 --> 01:05:34,400
lots and lots of money. And I started trying this cafe and that cafe. They're very vast majority of

528
01:05:34,400 --> 01:05:41,440
them are open. Open on sides. I mean, a lot of them are just have one side and they're open on

529
01:05:41,440 --> 01:05:45,120
three sides because it's just hot. They don't want to pay for air conditioning. So they just leave

530
01:05:45,120 --> 01:05:48,800
them open and let the breeze blow through and they got fans. They got fans every, that's one

531
01:05:48,800 --> 01:05:55,600
thing in the Philippines that ticks me off. They don't have fans. Nobody has fans. Thailand's got

532
01:05:55,600 --> 01:06:04,400
fan everywhere because they work and they're cheap. Fan is a really, really cheap to run.

533
01:06:04,400 --> 01:06:11,120
Air conditioners are horribly expensive to run. But fans use almost no power. They just

534
01:06:11,120 --> 01:06:14,560
have use almost nothing. They're very cheap. So they use them. They're smart.

535
01:06:17,120 --> 01:06:22,240
So I would sit at these various places. Usually you get a stool and a counter and I would sit next

536
01:06:22,240 --> 01:06:27,360
to the streets and watch the people, just watch the people. And every few minutes some girl would

537
01:06:27,360 --> 01:06:36,000
come and offer herself. And I said, no, thank you. My old cup can curve. And when you're polite about

538
01:06:36,000 --> 01:06:42,240
it, God, they love you more. If you just wave them off, brush them off. Well, that's rude.

539
01:06:43,680 --> 01:06:46,400
You know, yes, they're prostitutes. Yes, they're sluts. Yes, they're,

540
01:06:47,680 --> 01:06:57,520
they're whatever, but they're offering you their body, which actually is connected to their

541
01:06:57,520 --> 01:07:05,680
soul. Okay. And you don't take that lightly. Maybe they do. Doesn't mean you have to.

542
01:07:07,120 --> 01:07:10,960
Maybe they don't even understand what they're offering you, but you can understand it.

543
01:07:11,520 --> 01:07:20,160
You got a brain. Don't be rude. Fuck. Take that rude fucking shit, shove it up your ass and stay

544
01:07:20,160 --> 01:07:29,520
in America, stay in England. When they offer you something, you say, my old cup can curve. Thank

545
01:07:29,520 --> 01:07:37,680
you. Thank you. No, not today. And they'll give you a little why, maybe a little curtsy thing, a bow,

546
01:07:38,720 --> 01:07:44,800
and then move on to the next. What reason do you have for making them feel like shit?

547
01:07:44,800 --> 01:07:49,600
Okay. The Brits do this. They just wave them off. Fuck you. Get out of here. Fucking whore.

548
01:07:51,040 --> 01:07:59,040
Talk to Brits. Really? I said this a thousand times. When I first went there,

549
01:07:59,040 --> 01:08:02,160
I had no experience with Brits at all. I don't think I'd ever known one.

550
01:08:05,680 --> 01:08:12,080
And after, I don't know, about 800,000 to 900,000 experiences watching Brits be assholes,

551
01:08:12,080 --> 01:08:20,320
I learned about Brits. They taught me well, and it was relentless. And now my hatred for them is

552
01:08:21,680 --> 01:08:32,320
pretty much total for the Brits in Southeast Asia, not for normal Brits in Britain, England.

553
01:08:32,320 --> 01:08:36,480
The ones that go to Southeast Asia are a different breed. There are a certain

554
01:08:37,600 --> 01:08:45,840
tiny little strata of Brits in England, and they're the scum of the scum. They're the worst.

555
01:08:45,840 --> 01:09:02,880
They're the worst element of England. My real downside to Southeast Asia for me is the Brits.

556
01:09:02,880 --> 01:09:07,600
Well, the Phalangs in general, but the Brits especially. And I've said I know lots of people

557
01:09:07,600 --> 01:09:14,000
who just left Southeast Asia, maybe went to South Africa, maybe went to the United States,

558
01:09:14,000 --> 01:09:18,960
East Asia, maybe went to South America, something like that, because they couldn't stand the Brits.

559
01:09:20,240 --> 01:09:26,640
If they're polite, intelligent people, you're not going to be happy with the Brits.

560
01:09:31,120 --> 01:09:35,200
The Russians are another factor. They're completely different than the Brits,

561
01:09:35,200 --> 01:09:39,680
completely different, but they are as annoying, almost as annoying.

562
01:09:39,680 --> 01:09:48,000
The Brits, I mean the Russians, I'm sorry, they aren't... Oh God, they're about 1% as mouthy as

563
01:09:48,000 --> 01:10:06,080
the Brits. They're thieving, scamming, violent assholes like Klingons, but they're not mouthy

564
01:10:06,080 --> 01:10:12,240
like the Brits. And the Brits... It's one thing to be mouthy and back it up. The Brits are mouthy

565
01:10:12,240 --> 01:10:19,840
and they won't back it up. They're just fat pudding headed. No, that's enough Brit fashion. Jesus

566
01:10:19,840 --> 01:10:22,640
Christ. You go live there for 10 years and then you tell me you love the Brits.

567
01:10:24,160 --> 01:10:31,040
Maybe you're one of them. He says, God, they drove me crazy. They drive everybody crazy.

568
01:10:31,040 --> 01:10:39,680
And they are the biggest reason why Thailand especially has soured on Phalangs, because they

569
01:10:39,680 --> 01:10:45,440
see how the Brits act and they think, oh, that's how all Phalangs act. They don't understand that

570
01:10:45,440 --> 01:10:52,160
England is a tiny little place in Western Europe. It doesn't represent all Phalangs.

571
01:10:52,960 --> 01:10:57,440
They just see the Brits acting badly and they think, oh, okay, now I understand what

572
01:10:57,440 --> 01:11:02,000
Phalangs are like. Oh yeah, they're fucked. Okay, we don't want them here. Okay, so that's what has

573
01:11:02,000 --> 01:11:10,320
happened over the years. And now, well, in the tourist areas especially, Phalangs are barely

574
01:11:10,320 --> 01:11:22,000
welcome. They're treated badly, rudely, mostly due to the behavior of the Brits. Jesus Christ.

575
01:11:22,000 --> 01:11:32,720
Jesus Christ. In all fairness, among Phalangs, Pharangs, there are more Brits in Thailand than

576
01:11:32,720 --> 01:11:41,680
any other Pharang, because it's pretty close to England. So it's easier for them to come.

577
01:11:42,480 --> 01:11:48,080
There's a lot of Germans there. The Germans, nobody likes the Germans either, but they pretty

578
01:11:48,080 --> 01:11:56,080
much stay to themselves. They're somewhat intelligent. They're really super anal-retentive.

579
01:12:01,040 --> 01:12:07,040
I had trouble with one German. He was a landlord, anal-retentive piece of shit, screwed me on my

580
01:12:07,040 --> 01:12:19,440
deposit. Okay, so I hung around in that town for a while. So at this point, we're, I don't know,

581
01:12:19,440 --> 01:12:26,400
probably seven months after I lost my wife. And I'm feeling lonely because I had had her for 40

582
01:12:26,400 --> 01:12:34,800
years. We were close, close. You know, if one of us had to travel somewhere, we'd be in a

583
01:12:34,800 --> 01:12:44,640
real. So I was feeling lonely, but I had never taken a prostitute in my life and had no intention

584
01:12:44,640 --> 01:12:50,800
to, no desire to, what the hell, what the, what, for what? Go look at porn if I want to see naked

585
01:12:50,800 --> 01:12:58,960
girls. You know, a picture in a porn video has the same soul. I'm going to get as many

586
01:12:58,960 --> 01:13:05,920
of an exchange from the soul of a picture as I'm going to get from a prostitute.

587
01:13:07,520 --> 01:13:15,120
Well, not really, but kind of seemed that way. I wanted an exchange of souls, not an exchange of

588
01:13:15,120 --> 01:13:21,920
bodies. I just was never worried that way in my life. Never was, never.

589
01:13:21,920 --> 01:13:27,520
And there were plenty of times I wished I was because life might have been easier, don't you?

590
01:13:30,000 --> 01:13:34,240
Some ways it might have been. Anyway, so I,

591
01:13:36,800 --> 01:13:42,160
I finally found a restaurant slash bar. It was open on one time,

592
01:13:42,160 --> 01:13:51,760
two sides on a busy soy. And I made it a point every day to stop in five or eight different

593
01:13:51,760 --> 01:14:00,320
places like that and just have a coke. I didn't drink, I don't drink. What's a great well? Great,

594
01:14:00,320 --> 01:14:07,920
great one. Once a year. And I was like, I'm going to go to a bar. I'm going to go to a

595
01:14:07,920 --> 01:14:17,040
bar. What's a great well? Great, great one. Once a year. And so I was doing the Goldilocks thing.

596
01:14:17,040 --> 01:14:21,920
You know, this bed is too soft. This one's too hard. You know, looking for places that would

597
01:14:21,920 --> 01:14:30,800
be comfortable to hang out. And I found this one bar slash restaurant. And it had a lot of stools

598
01:14:30,800 --> 01:14:40,160
lining the soy at a counter. And I could sit there or whatever I wanted and watch the people,

599
01:14:40,160 --> 01:14:44,720
just endlessly watch the people and take pictures. And I was in hog heaven.

600
01:14:46,640 --> 01:14:53,120
Truly in hog heaven. A little bit of jungly stuff right kind of around the building. And so,

601
01:14:53,120 --> 01:15:00,000
you know, you didn't feel like you were totally in the middle of the city. And you were, but

602
01:15:00,720 --> 01:15:04,880
vegetation I'd never seen before. Really lush, beautiful vegetation that made it feel exotic

603
01:15:04,880 --> 01:15:13,840
and smells and sights. And it was a lady bar, which pretty much every bar, I don't think pretty

604
01:15:13,840 --> 01:15:20,480
much. I think every bar, it's not an exception, was a lady bar in that town. So they always had

605
01:15:20,480 --> 01:15:30,960
lots and lots of ladies available for hire if you wanted to. And occasionally, not occasionally,

606
01:15:30,960 --> 01:15:37,120
I don't know, two or three times an hour, I suppose, one of them would come over and sit down

607
01:15:37,120 --> 01:15:43,920
and want to talk and, you know, can you buy me a drink? Well, no, I'm sorry. They talk for a minute

608
01:15:43,920 --> 01:15:47,600
anywhere, a few minutes or sometimes a fricking half an hour, you know. And their English was

609
01:15:47,600 --> 01:15:52,720
better because they had been fucking lots and lots and lots of flangs and they had learned English.

610
01:15:53,840 --> 01:16:00,000
And you could talk to him a little bit. You weren't going to have any intellectual,

611
01:16:00,000 --> 01:16:05,520
philosophical conversations, but pass the time a day a little bit. And then when they finally figured

612
01:16:05,520 --> 01:16:10,000
out you're not going to buy them a lady drink and you're not going to take them, then they'd

613
01:16:10,720 --> 01:16:15,200
give you a nice little why and a little bow and they'd go off and look for somebody who would be

614
01:16:15,200 --> 01:16:22,000
a customer. And that was fine. That gave me a little teeny little bit of companionship. Girls

615
01:16:22,000 --> 01:16:31,600
were all gorgeous, gorgeous. And that's how I passed most of the next month, just hanging out

616
01:16:31,600 --> 01:16:36,480
there and a few other places, but a lot of time there. So everybody got to know me.

617
01:16:36,480 --> 01:16:43,840
And it was fine. It was a good life. I was happy. I was pretty happy. I was still lonely. I still

618
01:16:43,840 --> 01:16:50,880
wanted, quote unquote, a real relationship. But even a friend, you know, even just a friend,

619
01:16:51,520 --> 01:16:58,400
just somebody, somebody in my life. But I wasn't going to go the prostitute thing,

620
01:16:58,400 --> 01:17:04,640
just go there. I was going to go to the bar, go to the bar, go to the bar, go to the bar.

621
01:17:04,640 --> 01:17:09,120
And I was going to go to the prostitute thing, just go there. I just couldn't, I was just sort of genetically

622
01:17:09,120 --> 01:17:14,800
prevented from doing it. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't do it. I just wired in a very strange way,

623
01:17:15,440 --> 01:17:27,520
which has vexed me all my life. And then it got to the point where I had to make a decision

624
01:17:27,520 --> 01:17:35,600
because my, the last of my visas was just about up, about a week left. And I'm thinking, okay,

625
01:17:35,600 --> 01:17:41,040
well now it's crunch time. What the hell are you going to do? Paisano. You got to stay here a while

626
01:17:41,600 --> 01:17:45,200
or are you going to go to another country? Well, it was a pretty, pretty much a no-brainer.

627
01:17:45,840 --> 01:17:52,560
I was happy. Still in that same hotel. It was okay. A lot of it was kind of raucous at night,

628
01:17:52,560 --> 01:18:04,720
but not that bad, you know. And it was okay. So I decided, okay, I've got to go get a real visa.

629
01:18:06,160 --> 01:18:13,040
And I thought, oh God, this is going to suck. This is going to be fucked up. And I was in a,

630
01:18:13,040 --> 01:18:21,600
I was in a gentleman's club. I met some guy in a gentleman's club. He was a doctor from Australia.

631
01:18:22,640 --> 01:18:25,600
And I told you his story earlier, in one of the early ones,

632
01:18:27,280 --> 01:18:31,840
about the lady he took to Australia, found her in the back of the cab.

633
01:18:31,840 --> 01:18:45,200
So I met that guy about this time. And the subject of visas came up. And I'm thinking,

634
01:18:45,200 --> 01:18:49,760
God, what am I going to do? How do I do this? I didn't know anything about how to approach it.

635
01:18:51,120 --> 01:18:56,400
And he just mentioned off the cuff, he said, hey, there's this guy that he used for visas.

636
01:18:56,400 --> 01:19:02,000
This guy is the best guy in the world. He's a, he's a, was he Australian or American? I can't

637
01:19:02,000 --> 01:19:07,600
remember. He was an attorney. He was an actual registered attorney in Thailand. And that's all

638
01:19:07,600 --> 01:19:15,280
he did was visas. That's all he did. I told you before, there are billions of these quote,

639
01:19:15,280 --> 01:19:21,280
unquote agents who will set you up with a visa in Thailand. And I don't know, somewhere around

640
01:19:21,280 --> 01:19:24,640
half of them are just scams. They're just going to take your money and they're going to say, well,

641
01:19:24,640 --> 01:19:27,840
we've got a problem. We've got to pay off this guy. We've got to pay off that guy. We need more

642
01:19:27,840 --> 01:19:31,760
money, more money, more money in there. You're never going to get a visa. And if you do, it's

643
01:19:31,760 --> 01:19:37,200
going to be a fake visa and you're going to go out of the country someday, maybe for a trip to

644
01:19:37,200 --> 01:19:41,040
somewhere. And then a few days later, you're going to come back and you're going to try to check back

645
01:19:41,040 --> 01:19:46,800
into Thailand on your retirement visa. And it's going to be non-valid because it was fake. And

646
01:19:46,800 --> 01:19:52,960
you're probably going to go to jail. You might get banned from Thailand for a year or two or three or

647
01:19:52,960 --> 01:20:00,720
five. Jesus fucking Christ. Some of the agents are legit, but you've got to research them.

648
01:20:00,720 --> 01:20:06,960
Fucking God. Anyway, so this guy, this doctor had been using this attorney for, I don't know, 25

649
01:20:06,960 --> 01:20:16,400
years, 20 years, 20 years. And he was just the best. He just recommended him as the best in

650
01:20:16,400 --> 01:20:21,680
Thailand period. So I went to see him the next day and he said, yeah, no problem. 600 bucks,

651
01:20:21,680 --> 01:20:30,800
retirement visa in a week. That's it for a year. He done. Oh, happy days. Happy fucking days.

652
01:20:32,960 --> 01:20:38,960
Gave him the money. And then we have the passport back, nice shiny one year visa stamped in there.

653
01:20:38,960 --> 01:20:54,160
And I was skippity doo. I was happy man. Happy, happy, happy, happy. Okay. So then Thailand was

654
01:20:54,160 --> 01:21:05,760
mine. Good for a year. God, what a nice feeling. Stability. I had a little stability in my life.

655
01:21:05,760 --> 01:21:16,080
And I decided that the hotel, it was time to get out of that hotel. A little bit expensive. Why

656
01:21:16,080 --> 01:21:21,760
be paying that much? I was paying 10,000 about a week probably, and I should be paying 10,000

657
01:21:21,760 --> 01:21:35,200
about a month for a room. And so I started asking around in this bar slash restaurant thing. I

658
01:21:35,200 --> 01:21:41,120
started asking around, anybody know of a room for rent? And somebody didn't.

659
01:21:41,120 --> 01:21:50,080
And that's a story unto itself. And I'm going to cut this one short so it'll be easy to render.

660
01:21:51,520 --> 01:21:56,080
And the next one, we're going to tell the story of how I got my first room in Thailand.

661
01:21:58,400 --> 01:22:02,480
So I'm going to tell you a story about a room in Thailand.

662
01:22:02,480 --> 01:22:11,440
And then we're going to talk more about you getting a room in Thailand and what not to do.

663
01:22:13,920 --> 01:22:22,560
God, there's some pitfalls. I've got a huge website, huge website about a scamming, scamming,

664
01:22:22,560 --> 01:22:30,000
real estate property rental place. And I'll probably put the link up here at some point.

665
01:22:30,960 --> 01:22:34,000
I've never been scammed by anybody in my life except by them.

666
01:22:39,520 --> 01:22:44,000
I mean, in a real estate deal like that. Never been scammed by them.

667
01:22:44,000 --> 01:22:53,520
I mean, in a real estate deal like that. Never been scammed like that in my life.

668
01:22:56,960 --> 01:23:02,960
Oh, Jesus. I don't have words for it. The website is, I don't know, probably 30, 40, 50 pages long.

669
01:23:02,960 --> 01:23:08,320
It's humongous. Details there are a goddamn dishonest criminal fucking thing they did.

670
01:23:08,320 --> 01:23:14,880
And I'll give you the link to it and I'll tell you the name of it at some point.

671
01:23:18,000 --> 01:23:23,360
So there's lots and lots of pitfalls to getting a room in Thailand. Lots. How many are, how many,

672
01:23:23,360 --> 01:23:27,120
okay. Of all the places that are going to try to give you a room, how many of them

673
01:23:29,520 --> 01:23:36,560
are you going to end up being scammed by at some point? Right off the top or in a month or in six

674
01:23:36,560 --> 01:23:43,520
months or in a year when you try to leave, whatever. I'm going to say somewhere around 60, 70%.

675
01:23:44,880 --> 01:23:48,000
It's a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad place to be rent in a place.

676
01:23:50,880 --> 01:23:57,680
You've got to be really, really stinking careful. You're almost never going to get back a deposit.

677
01:24:00,080 --> 01:24:04,400
No matter how well you documented it. You know, I would do videos of the walkthrough when I was

678
01:24:04,400 --> 01:24:09,600
first moving in with the landlord there. And I would document every little thing that was wrong

679
01:24:09,600 --> 01:24:14,800
or dirty or anything with them in the same video. No cuts in the video, no nothing.

680
01:24:15,520 --> 01:24:22,560
And then I would do the same thing when I'm moving out. And they would just make stuff up.

681
01:24:23,840 --> 01:24:27,280
And I would go back in the video and say, look, what are you talking about there? You know,

682
01:24:27,280 --> 01:24:31,360
this damage right here, it's in this video when I moved in and now you're saying I did it. No.

683
01:24:31,360 --> 01:24:40,640
Well, take me to court. Well, you can't. There's no real meaningful court. And if you do go to one

684
01:24:41,360 --> 01:24:47,040
tithe, you're going to win every single time. So you're going to lose your deposit most times,

685
01:24:47,040 --> 01:24:52,240
somewhere around 85% probably because you're just going to lie and cheat and steal and scam.

686
01:24:53,120 --> 01:24:56,240
But what I found was after all those years,

687
01:24:56,240 --> 01:25:01,520
yes, the Thais will do that to you, but the Phalangs, Phalang landlords will do it much more,

688
01:25:02,240 --> 01:25:07,200
much more because Thailand is an invitation to scamming,

689
01:25:07,200 --> 01:25:13,520
thieving, stealing, dishonest, dishonorable Phalangs. You know, half the time they left

690
01:25:13,520 --> 01:25:17,200
their own country because they're being run out of that country because they're scammers.

691
01:25:18,160 --> 01:25:21,840
And maybe the police are closing in on them or something. They got to get out. So they go to

692
01:25:21,840 --> 01:25:29,840
Southeast Asia. They start a new business where the laws are much more lax and they can get away

693
01:25:29,840 --> 01:25:38,880
with much more shit. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you the first story of my first real room in Thailand.

694
01:25:41,200 --> 01:25:46,080
I got screwed on almost every place I stayed there, almost everyone.

695
01:25:46,080 --> 01:25:51,360
Anyway, so that's for the next one. Get in the room. It's called getting a room in Thailand.

696
01:25:51,360 --> 01:26:19,360
Okay. And that'll be number 12. It's a horrific story. Okay. And that's it. So thank you very much.

697
01:26:21,840 --> 01:26:28,720
Yeah. They're fun. I like to watch the dogs swimming down the street. That's funny as hell.

698
01:26:30,240 --> 01:26:36,160
Sometimes the people. Philippines gets far more rain than Thailand,

699
01:26:39,200 --> 01:26:45,440
which I like. I come from a rainy environment and that's kind of in my DNA. So I like,

700
01:26:45,440 --> 01:26:51,520
I don't like the rain of Ketchikan. You know, that's fucked up. What did they get in there?

701
01:26:52,320 --> 01:27:00,720
150 inches a year or some damn thing. Seattle gets 29. Ketchikan gets like 150 or something.

702
01:27:03,360 --> 01:27:07,360
I don't know how much like Manila gets. It's got to be up there.

703
01:27:07,360 --> 01:27:14,160
I don't know. Never looked it up, but there's enough rain to satisfy me.

704
01:27:14,880 --> 01:27:20,560
It's nice. It cools things down. It's refreshing. I love walking around with an umbrella,

705
01:27:21,600 --> 01:27:27,280
going to coffee shops, stuff like that. Okay. So this is it. We're done. Thank you very much.

706
01:27:27,280 --> 01:27:37,920
And if I didn't say it, all tapes are copyright 2023 by stockphotosworldwide.com. The link to

707
01:27:37,920 --> 01:27:41,840
these things is right there near the top of the page. It's very hard and impossible to miss it.

708
01:27:44,640 --> 01:27:46,720
RSS feeds are starting to pick them up now.

709
01:27:46,720 --> 01:27:54,080
We allowed a few of them to go onto YouTube, just a few, because we hate loathing to test YouTube.

710
01:27:55,040 --> 01:27:58,480
And then we cut that off. So they're not automatically going to YouTube anymore.

711
01:27:58,480 --> 01:28:05,360
We just wanted a small handful on there. This is a token presence. But everybody, I'm pretty sure,

712
01:28:05,360 --> 01:28:10,880
100% of people who ever put content on YouTube have trouble with YouTube because YouTube will

713
01:28:10,880 --> 01:28:15,920
object to something they say. And God knows there's plenty in these things for people to object to.

714
01:28:15,920 --> 01:28:20,960
So we don't expect anything we ever put on YouTube to stay there very long. Or maybe they'll allow it

715
01:28:20,960 --> 01:28:26,400
to stay there until it gets to the point of being monetized. And then they'll go like take a hard

716
01:28:26,400 --> 01:28:37,040
look at it and jerk it off. Or maybe they'll let you accrue a whole bunch of money from revenue,

717
01:28:37,040 --> 01:28:44,320
from advertising for the content you've put on there. And maybe they haven't paid you for two,

718
01:28:44,320 --> 01:28:50,160
three, four months. And then all of a sudden they just jerk your content because you said something

719
01:28:50,160 --> 01:28:55,520
they didn't personally, like some little snowflake was offended by it. And they just jerk your

720
01:28:55,520 --> 01:29:01,520
content and we're not going to pay you. And that's it. So we're not ever going to put enough on

721
01:29:01,520 --> 01:29:09,120
YouTube where that can piss us off. I don't like being pissed off and you won't like me when I'm

722
01:29:09,120 --> 01:29:14,640
pissed off either. And YouTube sure enough, fuck won't like me when I'm pissed off.

723
01:29:16,400 --> 01:29:20,240
We can go a whole nother level. Steal from me and we go to a whole nother level.

724
01:29:21,360 --> 01:29:27,120
Because I'm tired. I'm sensitized to it now after a decade in Southeast Asia.

725
01:29:27,120 --> 01:29:31,680
There's no recourse against Southeast Asians when they rip you off. There's virtually none.

726
01:29:32,400 --> 01:29:37,360
Against people in the Western countries, yeah, there's all kinds of recourse. And I know most

727
01:29:37,360 --> 01:29:41,280
of the tricks and I know how to use them really well. But I don't want to go to the trouble. I

728
01:29:41,280 --> 01:29:46,480
don't want to expend that energy to do it. So I just stay away from places I'm likely to be

729
01:29:47,280 --> 01:29:50,720
scammed and ripped off. And YouTube is one of the biggest ones. So I just avoid it.

730
01:29:50,720 --> 01:29:58,320
Stockphotosworldwide.com. That's where all the content will always be. Maybe you find it in

731
01:29:58,320 --> 01:30:04,480
other places, but it's always going to be stockphotosworldwide.com. Okay. Thank you

732
01:30:04,480 --> 01:30:21,760
very much and good evening and good night. We be done. Where's my camera? Okay.